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Rapid growth is the stuff most entrepreneurs dream about as they take their fledgeling company through the early years but when it happens, it can quickly become the stuff of nightmares.

The bubbles in the celebratory champagne—“Here’s to our success!”—barely have time to go flat before the problems arise across the high-impact growth or Scale-Up business.

Suddenly owners are beset by problems involving the people they’ve hired or not hired, their cashflow chokes, and processes that once worked so smoothly groan to a halt. Customers then leave snide reviews because products or services aren’t delivered on time, and key suppliers get angry at delayed payments. Bankers who were once so keen on business begin to crank up the pressure as overdrafts or loans get close to the ‘red zone.

No wonder then that so many business owners spend hours every night staring into the darkness wondering what on earth happened to their once easy-to-manage business.

The owners of high impact growth or Scaled Up businesses are often the loneliest, most isolated and overworked individuals. While start-up owners get an avalanche of government help and assistance, their Scaled Up counterparts get very little attention or assistance.

The FD Centre’s Chairman Colin Mills says he’s seen first-hand what pressure does to business owners.

“I’ve sat in sales meetings with entrepreneurs who had literally been brought to tears by stress and frustration and the feeling that it’s all too much.”

It’s for this reason that Colin has written Scale Up: How to Take Your Business to the Next Level Without Losing Control and Running Out of Cash.

It’s aimed at the owners of companies facing or already experiencing the problems of scaling their businesses to ensure they minimise the problems and achieve growth in a controlled, sustained way.

“Our experience suggests that scaleup issues start to bite at about £1M/$1M Sales Revenue or a minimum of 10 employees,” he explains.

“By the time a business reaches £50M/$50M Sales Revenue or 250 employees (larger firms tend to have fewer employees per £/$ of Sales Revenue) they can most often be considered a “scaler”: they are past the main dangers of scaleup.”

In his book, Colin explains why scaling a business can be so problematic. The business owner has to deal with one or even all of the following:

• People challenges
• Sales and marketing challenges
• Operational challenges
• Administrative challenges
• Financial challenges

Colin explains, “Businesses run the gauntlet of increasingly severe challenges, mostly because they are growing but don’t have the necessary infrastructure to support their expanded operations.

“While on paper, they may have the revenue, the manufacturing base or customer reach of a substantial business, the culture, the controls, the processes, the personnel and the leadership remain those of a much smaller business than they were a short time before.

“Worse, they haven’t yet accumulated the resources to build and maintain that infrastructure.”

This creates a hazardous situation for the business, he says.

“The biggest danger in this period is that the business will either outrun itself or get stuck, like a deer in headlights. Outrun, as the company spirals out of control and its cash reserves dwindle trying to meet the expanded demands of the business.

“Or stuck, as the entrepreneur tries to cope with everything at once, frustrated that the problems he could happily once deal with—back when the business was smaller—are not being dealt with by the people he is employing, often at substantial cost.”

Overcoming such problems or avoiding them is only possible if you revise your business model.

“You need to consider your whole business model, because if you have a terrible business model, then the last thing you want to do is to start scaling it. If you do that, then all the small problems that make your life a nightmare now will become major headaches.

“If your business model isn’t great, however, it doesn’t mean that all is lost: there’s a lot you can do to retrofit, design and redesign a business.”

Besides explaining the challenges scaling businesses face, Colin also provides the methods you need to use to overcome them—the same methods that the FDs from the FD Centre offers their clients.

They’re also the methods the FD Centre has used in its own scaling-up process, says Colin.

The FD Centre is a scaleup that has been growing at over 30% for the last three years with close to 400 FDs but Colin admits he keeps a keen focus on the business, the business model and the key performance indicators.

“It might be a scaleup now, but that doesn’t mean to say it’s not going to career out of control. I have to keep my eyes on the business, re-evaluate the business model, watch the indicators.”

Along with practical advice that you can use immediately, the book features an array of case studies in which business owners describe how they overcame the challenges of scaling their businesses.

So, if your business is on the verge of or already experiencing the ‘difficult teenage’ phase and you’re wondering how to overcome the nightmare challenges you’re facing, this book is for you.

It’s available on Amazon as a paperback and Kindle ebook here.

And to discover how the FD Centre will help your company to scale up, please call us on 0800 169 1499 or contact us here.

On the first day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave to me an introduction to business reporting and advice on creating a business strategy. 

On the second day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave to me more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting, and advice on creating a business strategy.

On the third day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave to me the secret of lowering my tax liability, more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting, and advice on creating a business strategy.

On the fourth day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave to me ways of doubling profitability, the secret of lowering my tax liability, more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting, and advice on creating a business strategy.

On the fifth day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave me the key to productivity, ways of doubling profitability, the secret of lowering my tax liability, more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting, and advice on creating a business strategy.

On the sixth day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave to be better ways of business processing, the key to productivity, ways of doubling profitability, the secret of lowering my tax liability, more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting, and advice on creating a business strategy.

On the seventh day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave me the way to do business legally, better ways of business processing, the key to productivity, ways of doubling profitability, the secret of lowering my tax liability, more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting and advice on creating a business strategy.

On the eighth day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave me the way to keep cash flowing, the way to do business legally, better ways of business processing, the key to productivity, ways of doubling profitability, the secret of lowering my tax liability, more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting and advice on creating a business strategy.

On the ninth day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave me the way to keep my bank happy, the way to keep cash flowing, the way to do business legally, better ways of business processing, the key to productivity, ways of doubling profitability, the secret of lowering my tax liability, more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting and advice on creating a business strategy.

On the tenth day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave me a great exit strategy, the way to keep my bank happy, the way to keep cash flowing, the way to do business legally, better ways of business processing, the key to productivity, ways of doubling profitability, the secret of lowering my tax liability, more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting and advice on creating a business strategy.

On the eleventh day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave to me the benefit of business planning, a great exit strategy, the way to keep my bank happy, the way to keep cash flowing, the way to do business legally, better ways of business processing, the key to productivity, ways of doubling profitability, the secret of lowering my tax liability, more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting and advice on creating a business strategy.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my part-time FD gave me a way to stop fiddlers fiddling and protect my equity, the benefit of business planning, a great exit strategy, the way to keep my bank happy, the way to keep cash flowing, the way to do business legally, better ways of business processing, the key to productivity, ways of doubling profitability, the secret of lowering my tax liability, more ways to attract money, an introduction to business reporting and advice on creating a business strategy.

And in the spirit of Christmas, you can discover all that I learned by downloading these 12 free business growth reports—jam-packed with practical ideas and information for every SME owner.

Business Reporting:

• The three key financial statements you need and why they are so important
• How to interpret your key financial statements and use the information to drive growth
• How to reach a place where you actually enjoy reviewing your financial statements!

Strategic Funding report:

• The main sources of funding available to SMEs (including advantages and disadvantages of each one)
• New funding sources which make funding available in days or weeks rather than in months or years from the application date
• How to get independent specialist advice to walk you through the process and present your case for the best chance of success.

Tax Planning report:

• The benefits of ensuring your business are optimised for tax
• The importance of using the best tax advisors
• The importance of using the best legal advisors.

Profit Improvement report:

• Why you need a clear, measurable strategy for increasing your profit
• The four ways to increase your profit: sell more, get customers to buy more frequently, increase prices and reduce costs
• The main reasons for low profits and how to avoid being unprofitable.

Outsourcing report:

• How to access expertise that you would otherwise not be able to afford
• How to source talent to focus on important priority areas in your business
• How to increase efficiency and productivity across all areas of your business.

Internal Systems report:

• How to create systems and get fully in control of your business
• How systems and internal controls create more headspace for the senior team
• The benefits of great systems and internal controls for making your business more efficient and more valuable.

Compliance report:

• How to free up headspace and sleep better at night by devising a strategy to ensure your business is always fully compliant;
• Why it can be disastrous for business owners who don’t have a compliance strategy;
• How The FD Centre can devise a strategy specific to your business, to ensure you always remain fully compliant.

Cash flow Management report:

• Why poor cash flow is the number 1 reason businesses fail
• How to create a cash flow management strategy to avoid running out of cash
• How to find cash in places you may have never considered.

Banking Relationship report:

• Why the banks lend to some businesses but not others
• How to secure lending from your bank
• How to secure preferential rates and better terms from your bank
• How a part-time FD can manage the relationship with the bank so that you don’t have to.

Exit Strategy report:

• The things you need to do early in the process to plan your exit
• Why ‘exit planning’ has a lot to do with ‘running a good business
• How to make your business attractive to potential buyers and what they are looking for
• How to evaluate what is important to you when selling your business
• How to maximise your sale value and increase your multiples
• Property, Pensions, IP, Contracts, ‘The Numbers’
• The due diligence process and how to make it much easier for yourself.

Implementation Timetable report:

• The best way to build (or redesign) your business plan so it works as a simple but effective tool for ensuring you reach your goals
• Key elements of a great business plan and how to decide what to include and descaled
• How to set clear milestones for your implementation timetable
• How to get your team aligned so that everyone is working towards a common goal.

Risk Assessment report:

• How to sleep better at night by identifying major risks and building a strategy to avoid them
• How business owners of great businesses manage their risk so they can free up headspace and focus on creativity, innovation, and growth
• How a part-time FD can conduct a full, watertight risk assessment process with you.

Imagine being an employee at German manufacturing giant, Leoni AG who recently fell prey to online scammers and approved the payment of bogus invoices via emails totaling 40 million Euros.

The scam, which came to light in the past few weeks, involved cybercriminals sending official-looking payment requests via email to a Leoni satellite in Romania. Leoni is the world’s fourth-largest manufacturer of wires and electrical cables and owns four factories in Romania.

The emails were received and handled by the unfortunate employee. Since they appeared to be emailed from one of Leoni’s top executives in Germany and it was normal practice to pay even large invoices in this way, suspicions weren’t aroused. The fake invoices were subsequently paid to a bank in the Czech Republic. Bye-bye 40 million Euros!

Of course, Leoni is far from alone in falling prey to email scams like this: earlier this year, toy-making giant Mattel lost almost $US 3 million in a phishing campaign.

So how safe is your company from cybercriminals? Or even from your own employees?

If you have formal internal controls in place your company might be relatively secure from internal and external theft. But without such internal controls, designed to help your company achieves its goals and limit the internal and external risks and threats you’re likely to encounter, your company is a lovely soft target for the criminally-minded or for those who have something to hide.

People like the employee of the French banking group Societe Generale (SocGen) used his in-depth knowledge of the bank’s fraud control systems to circumvent checking procedures so he could hide trading losses of $US 7 billion.

He built up large positions and made unauthorised bets on stock index futures, and as his losses mounted, covered his tracks by using his knowledge of the bank’s technology systems.

Of course, internal controls do more than minimise the risk of fraud. They also help your company to:

• Reach your performance and profitability targets
• Prevent the loss of assets
• Ensure financial reporting is accurate and reliable
• Achieve compliance with regulations and laws.

Without formal internal controls, you and your fellow Directors will never know if the information about your business is accurate, reliable, or up-to-date. Worse, a lack of internal control systems means you’re putting your company’s future in peril.

The essential elements of an internal control system

There are five key elements in a good internal control system:

1. Separation of duties
2. Authorisation
3. Documentation
4. Supervision
5. Reconciliation

If you’d like to find out more about internal systems, you can download a free report by clicking here.

Remember, without both preventative and detective internal controls, your company is extremely vulnerable.

The benefits of having strong internal systems are obvious: putting the right systems in place allows you to see the business from a much clearer vantage point. Decisions to grow the business can be made in the knowledge that the underlying model is scalable and robust.

But it’s not enough to create internal controls: they need to be regularly reviewed to ensure they are keeping pace with the company’s growth. Pressure to create, develop and innovate means that old systems can quickly become redundant and need rethinking and rebuilding. This is really one of the biggest headaches a business owner faces.

If you’re like many business owners, it can be difficult to know where to start or to assess whether the controls you do have are as effective and as efficient as they should be. You need the help of someone with the experience and expertise to carry out such work. In other words, you need a Finance Director (FD) or CFO.

But as an SME, you probably don’t have the resources or the need to employ a full-time FD. So what can you do? You can try to manage the entire process on your own. Or, you can make it easy on yourself by hiring a part-time FD to manage the entire process for you.

The part-time FD or CFO will help you to create the necessary controls framework in your business. Meanwhile, you can get on with what you do best. You can watch a 3-minute video here which explains the part-time FD/CFO model.

The FD Centre will provide you with a world-class FD or CFO with ‘big business experience’ for a fraction of the cost of a full-time FD. It’s the business equivalent of having an Olympic coach to help your business thrive.

To get started, just book your free one-to-one call with one of our internal control specialists—just click here now.

 

Want an easy way to outsmart your competitors and dominate your market? One that doesn’t involve an investment of time or funds in social media, Google AdWords, email marketing, SEO, or any of the usual suspects.

Nor will you have to employ a swathe of graduates from Oxford, Cambridge, or Harvard to carry this one out on your behalf.

And it’s one that will give your organisation a distinct and profitable advantage over the majority of SMEs, no matter your industry or specialty.

So what is it?

Well, you may be surprised to discover that it’s the oh-so-humble business plan. Yes, that often derided document can indeed give your company a distinct competitive advantage over the rest of your market. (If you’d like to find out more about how to create and use an effective business plan/implementation timetable as a working document to keep your business on track to achieving your desired objectives, you can download a free report now by clicking here.)

Our experience, and just about every survey you read, shows that SMEs who have and use a business plan are consistently more successful and more profitable than those that don’t. A survey commissioned by business and finance software provider Exact, for example, found companies with a business plan were consistently more profitable (70%) than those that did not (52%).

So why don’t all SMEs have a business plan, one that details the company’s operating and financial targets, its strategic direction, and tactics? Apparently, many don’t consider it necessary. Or their entrepreneurial owners like to keep everything ‘in their head’. That’s probably fine for a start-up but fatal for a growing company.

There are so many benefits to having and using a well-constructed business plan. It will help you and your management team to:

• Clarify objectives and develop suitable strategies
• Understand your market
• Identify and overcome internal and external threats
• Seize opportunities
• Organise the company
• Raise external funding
• Obtain raw materials
• Develop new products or services
• Generate sales
• Comply with regulations, define job duties, etc.

There’s a catch, however. While having a business plan is mission-critical, creating it can be arduous, which is probably why so few SMEs have one.

After all, thinking through objectives and likely outcomes which may occur many years down the line is, by nature, challenging. But it is the hard work up front that makes for lighter work down the road as all of our team of part-time FDs will attest to.

It’s the case that most CEOs and MDs just don’t have the time to spend on quality strategic thinking and to document and communicate that thinking in a way that allows the whole business to buy into the vision.

Likewise, they don’t have the time and specialist knowledge to manage such a business plan.

That’s unfortunate because a business plan provides CEOs, MDs, and management with an ability to foresee threats and opportunities and course-correct when necessary.

Not spending quality time on strategic planning usually leads to a chaotic working environment. Opportunities get missed. Threats aren’t identified until it is too late. Small wonder that our clients often talk about ‘not feeling in control’ and ‘not really knowing what is coming around the next corner.

Business planning and getting it right brings a real sense of clarity and direction to a business – this is where an experienced FD or CFO can make a significant contribution. They can help you to create and manage a highly effective implementation timetable.

FDs often possess a different albeit complementary set of skills to CEOs/MDs. What’s more, they can act as devil’s advocates to ask the right questions and help to steer the company in the right direction. Meanwhile, you can get on with what you do best. This 3-minute video explains the part-time FD/CFO model in a little more detail.

Now, if you’re like many SMEs, you probably don’t have the resources or the need to employ a full-time FD. So what can you do? You can try to manage the entire process on your own. Or, you can make it easy on yourself and your management team by hiring a part-time FD to manage the entire process for you.

The FD Centre will provide you with a world-class FD or CFO with ‘big business experience’ for a fraction of the cost of a full-time FD. It’s the business equivalent of having an Olympic coach to help your business thrive.

To get started, just book your free one-to-one call with one of our business planning experts today—just click here now.

The Olympic Games allows top athletes the chance to compete against the best in the world and gives TV audiences the opportunity to watch non-stop sports for three weeks, but it’s usually an economic disaster for the city that hosts the event.

The fact that host cities are left with a few oversized stadiums (so-called ‘legacy projects’) and mountainous debts once the 17-day sporting extravaganza is over shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Only the insanely optimistic continue to ignore decades of research that show hosting the Olympic Games rarely improves a city’s economy. Despite the promises of politicians, the costs are usually far higher than projections and the revenues far lower.

And contrary to what is promised, tourist numbers don’t go through the roof even during the Olympic Games. Take the 2000 Summer Olympic Games in Sydney, for example. They were expected to attract 132,000 tourists. Instead, just 97,000 arrived, reported the Globe and Mail’s International Affairs columnist Doug Saunders. Tourists who weren’t interested in the Olympic Games cancelled or delayed their visits for fear of crowds, he said. And instead of the eight to 10 million tourists a year who were forecast to visit Sydney in the years immediately following the Olympics, a steady 2.5 million visitors a year turned up.

Likewise, international investors don’t beat a path to a city’s boardrooms just because the host city has a new 30,000-seat stadium or a better bike path.

Yes, hosting the Olympic Games might put the city on the ‘world map’ for a few weeks but that comes at a cost of billions. An entertaining YouTube video that goes viral will do much the same these days at a fraction of the cost.

Even bidding for the honour of being chosen to be a host country is an almost guaranteed way of losing millions of taxpayer dollars. Chicago, for instance, reportedly spent $100 million on its campaign to host the 2016 summer games. It obviously lost out to Rio De Janeiro.

Now just because you have no plans whatsoever to host a sporting event or even to take part in one doesn’t mean you’re exempt from the risk of bankruptcy. That’s because bankrupting your own company is far easier than you might think. And unlike the people who lead the bids to host the Olympic Games, you can bankrupt your business in a matter of months rather than years—if you really put your mind to it! All you really need to do is manage your cash flow poorly. That’s enough to rock the foundations of even the most profitable business.

If you don’t find and fix the cause of the cash flow problem in your business and then put systems in place to manage it more efficiently, your company is at a very grave risk of following all those ailing Olympic Games’ host cities into the red. You can grab a free report on how to improve your cash flow position immediately, by just clicking here.

The stark truth is without cash, your business will be unable to meet its payroll obligations, be more likely to default on payments to suppliers and creditors, and in the worse case, be forced to cease trading.

You might think you’re immune from danger because your business is experiencing a high level of growth, but you’re wrong: expansion can exacerbate the problems caused by poor cash flow management.

Cash really is the oxygen on which every business depends. Without a steady supply of it, your business cannot survive.

That applies even if your company is profitable. Business consultant Bill McGuiness says, “The sad fact is that the majority of failing firms are profitable as they enter bankruptcy.”

Essentially, your cash flow problems are likely to be the result of one or more of the following:

• Poor collection from debtors
• Your fixed costs are too high
• Your prices are too low
• Your sales are too low
• You’re giving customers too generous payment terms
• You’re overtrading
• You’re holding too much old stock

Just as an athlete can’t ignore an injury, you can’t overlook your cash flow problem. Like a dodgy knee, it won’t get better on its own. In fact, it will get far worse. Fortunately, there’s a quick and easy way to resolve the problem: hire a part-time Finance Director (FD) or CFO.

The FD Centre will provide you with a world-class FD or CFO with ‘big business experience’ for a fraction of the cost of a full-time FD. It’s the business equivalent of having an Olympic coach at your beck and call. You can watch a 3-minute video here which explains the part-time FD/CFO model.

Your part-time FD will identify and address all the immediate threats to your business and then prevent cash flow problems from recurring.

Your FD will encourage you to use regular cash flow forecasts so you know how much cash is going to be needed in the coming months. It means you’ll know in advance if you’re likely to face a cash shortfall and can make arrangements for extra borrowing, or take other appropriate action.

Having the right cash flow management processes in place and being able to spot peaks and troughs in trading to improve cash flow is one of the most critical components of any finance function.

Put an end to your cash flow problems now by calling the FD Centre today. To book your free one-to-one call with one of our part-time FDs, just click here now.

People might have laughed when twin brothers Alan and Gerry Keery first said they needed to raise £60,000 to open a cafe that would only offer breakfast cereals but thanks to the widespread publicity they garnered from their appeal on the crowdfunding site, Indiegogo, they were able to raise the funds they needed.

Although the funds didn’t come from the Indiegogo platform, the news of Keery’s plan did attract the interest of outside investors who found it hugely palatable. That meant the brothers were then able to open the first Cereal Killer Cafe.

It has since become one of the most popular cafes in East London. The brothers are now offering international licensing on their website as well as their own recipe book. A second cafe has opened in North London, and a third is planned for Dubai.

But the Cereal Killer Cafe is far from being the oddest idea for crowdfunding. That honour might belong to the amateur scientists known as ‘3 Stags’ who wanted to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the British sci-fi TV series ‘Dr. Who’ by launching a Tardis satellite. (To the uninitiated, the Tardis is a telephone box-shaped time machine and spacecraft in which the lead character travels through time and space.)

The project apparently captured the imagination of the people on the crowdfunding Kickstarter platform because they pledged a staggering $88,880—way above the 3 Stags’ original goal of $33,000. Incidentally, it’s important to know that many crowdfunding platforms operate an all-or-nothing funding model. In other words, if you reach your goal, you get the money, and if you don’t hit the target, everybody gets their money back.

As oddball as the Tardis satellite story is, don’t be fooled: raising money to finance projects and businesses from a large number of people via online platforms is becoming increasingly mainstream.

So much so that it’s now a recognised source of funding for some heavyweight SMEs. Take Cruise Automation, a producer of autonomous vehicle technology, as an example. In April this year, it became the first equity crowdfunded company to achieve a $1 billion exit having been acquired by General Motors.

Before the GM acquisition, the San Francisco-based company had raised about $18 million in venture capital, but it’s Series A and Series B funding each included $100,000 from syndicates put together via crowdfunding platform AngelList, according to Dan Primack of ‘Fortune’ magazine.

There are three common types of crowdfunding: peer-to-peer, equity and rewards crowdfunding.

• Peer to Peer Lending. The people pledging funds lend you or your company money with the understanding it’ll be repaid with interest.
• Equity Crowdfunding. You sell a stake in your business to a number of investors in return for investment.
• Rewards-based crowdfunding. People donate to a project or business with the understanding at a later stage they’ll receive a non-financial reward such as goods or services in exchange for their contribution.

Crowdfunding is just one of many ways to provide your company with the growth of working capital you need. If you’d like to explore all the non-traditional or alternative funding options, you can download a free report by clicking here.

As you know, funding is often the catalyst for taking your business to the next level. Provided you find the right partner, the funding can make a huge difference to your business.

If you’re like most business owners, getting the funds is more important than the detail of how to get hold of them! That’s fine if your company has a full-time Finance Director (FD) or CFO since he or she will normally manage the process on your behalf to ensure you get the right funding for your immediate and long-term needs. But as an SME, you probably don’t have a full-time FD. So what can you do? You can try to manage the entire process on your own. Or, you can make it easy on yourself by hiring a part-time FD to manage the entire process for you.

You can watch a 3-minute video here which explains the part-time FD/CFO model.

The part-time FD or CFO will manage everything from determining your immediate and long-term objectives to finding the right kind of funding partner for the business. Meanwhile, you can get on with what you do best.

The FD Centre will provide you with a world-class FD or CFO with ‘big business experience’ for a fraction of the cost of a full-time FD. It’s the business equivalent of having an Olympic coach at your beck and call.

To discover your alternative funding options, book your free one-to-one call with one of our funding specialists—just click here now.

At an age when they should (or we just wish they would) hang up their leather trousers and retire disgracefully, more and more ancient rockers are embarking on yet another tour.

This year alone, the Rolling Stones (of course!), Madonna, The Who, Neil Young, Rod Stewart, Pearl Jam, Queen, and even Ringo Starr are performing on stages around the globe. Given that many of them are nearing or way past grandparent-age, you might wonder why they’re still bothering so many years after their first taste of fame.

The performers will say it’s because they love it and that they ‘don’t want to let the fans down.’ But there’s another hard-nosed reason to get their weary old bones back on the tour bus. And it’s this: touring boosts their profits in a way that digital music sales and royalties can no longer do.

Digital music generates very little return. Peter Tschmuck, a professor at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna told Business Insider’s Rob Wile that the return on investment from selling a digital copy of a song is 12% compared with about 36% for CDs. That’s before the revenue is shared between various titleholders.

“With digital music so freely and widely available, hardly anyone makes money off sales or royalties these days,” reported Mike Rowell in an article for Forbes and Zocalopublicsquare.org.

“Often, these bands seem to approach nostalgic tours as the most expedient way to make bank; choice seats for top acts—Fleetwood Mac, Elton John, the Rolling Stones, and Stevie Wonder—can run in the hundreds of dollars,” he said.

Top concert draws can take home 35% of the night’s gate sales and up to 50% of the money made from merchandise sales sold at the show, according to Forbes’ journalist, Peter Kafka. Their record labels are likely to receive none of that.

That means the stars—including Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, The Who, and Roger Waters—of what has been billed as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ mega-concert this October are likely to receive a whopping payout for their performances. Tickets for the concerts (taking place over two weekends) were snapped up within hours of going on sale and topped a hefty $150 million, according to Billboard sources. Think how many downloads those artists would have to sell to get anywhere near that kind of money!

Singing aside, what can you learn from the likes of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards when it comes to your business?

To focus on the part of your business that brings the most profits. The Rolling Stones could have retired decades ago and waited for the income from album sales and royalties to trickle in. Instead, they made the decision to continue to tour and have generated many millions as a result. In just under three years, for example, the band’s overall concert grosses topped $401 million, according to Billboard.

If you would like to read our brand new report on how companies can greatly increase their profit through detailed analysis of the numbers you can do so by clicking here.

The following story illustrates why it makes sense to focus on the most profitable part of your business. A major US direct marketing company with over $1 billion in annual sales recently reviewed its database to determine where its profits were coming from, B2B or B2C. At that time, 50% of its sales were to consumers and 50% to businesses. I was shocked to discover that the profits on the business sales were 500% better than those to consumers. Most consumer sales weren’t even profitable even though they represented the majority of customers, transactions, and expenses.

The decision was made to focus on B2B sales. It required a significant turnaround in the business: at that time, the company employed 500 people taking inbound calls from customers and only 100 people making outbound calls to businesses.

The change took two years. By the end of that period, 95% of its sales were to businesses and only 5% to consumers. Sales flourished. They had been growing at 21% before the turnaround but by the end of the two years averaged 50%. Profit growth was equally dramatic.

So what can you do to boost your profits besides cutting costs? For a start, identify your most profitable customers and then do everything possible to increase sales to that segment of your business. Focus on attracting more customers like them.

Fortunately, it’s not something you have to do alone. A part-time Finance Director (FD) or CFO will help you to accomplish a more profitable company with less stress and hassle than if you were to try to do it on your own. You can watch our 3-minute video here which explains the part-time FD/CFO model.

Make it easy on yourself: book your free one-to-one call with one of our part-time FDs now to learn how your company can become more profitable. Just click here now.