Which Business Structure is Right for Me?

The business structure determines how your company is owned, operated, and taxed. There are many different business structures to choose from, depending on many factors, such as your business goals, the number of owners, and the amount of liability you are willing to assume.

Which Business Structure is Right for Me?
Photo by Anders Jildén / Unsplash

If you're a business owner seeking to improve your company's performance, transform a loss-making venture into a profitable one, or simply accelerate the pace and scope of your business, this article provides guidance on how to achieve these goals. A 7-step framework is outlined below that can help you revitalize your business. The first step is to take a deep dive into your current operations and identify areas that need improvement. Once you've identified these areas, you can then create a plan to address them. The second step is to streamline your processes and systems. This involves identifying bottlenecks and inefficiencies and finding ways to eliminate them. The third step is to analyze your competition and determine what they're doing better than you. This will help you identify areas where you need to improve. The fourth step is to develop a clear and compelling value proposition that sets you apart from your competitors. The fifth step is to focus on your core competencies and outsource non-core activities. The sixth step is to leverage technology to automate and streamline your operations. Finally, the seventh step is to measure your progress and adjust your strategy as needed. By following this 7-step framework, you can enhance the efficiency and productivity of your business and achieve your desired outcomes.

1. Write down your goal statement

As an individual or company, setting specific and achievable goals within a period of one to six months is key to success. It's important to focus on short-term goals rather than long-term ones, as they are generally more effective. When creating your goal, be sure to include what you will do and when you will do it, whether it's for your company, department, or yourself as an employee. Many people tend to spend too much time dreaming without taking action, which can cause them to miss important opportunities. Remember, you have limitless potential, so don't limit yourself. Aim high and reach for the stars!

2. Potential Difficulty

Have you ever found yourself struggling to achieve the objectives you set out to accomplish in step 1 of your plan? If so, it could be due to the perceived hurdles you anticipate encountering while working towards that goal. It's essential to take a moment in step 2 of the process to identify and write down all of the possible challenges that may arise, as this will help you prepare and overcome them with ease. By being aware of these potential obstacles in advance, you'll be better equipped to stay on track and accomplish your goals successfully.

3. Potential Possibility

It's important to remember that every challenge can be overcome with the right approach. With that in mind, take the time to carefully document the unique solutions for each difficulty that was identified in step 2. By being specific and detailed in your approach, you'll be better equipped to tackle each issue head-on and come out on top.

4.Transforming Possibilities into Habits: The Key to Creating Success Rituals

Once you've identified potential opportunities, it's crucial to turn them into daily habits or established rules. These habits will help you stay on track towards achieving your goals, even when you face mood swings or setbacks.

Sharing these rituals with your team and encouraging them to follow through can benefit everyone. It's essential to convert every possibility into a ritual to ensure success. For instance, if the possibility is to exercise in the morning, the ritual could be "6 am to 7 am is the exercise time."

5. Measure the Success (here, ritual and result of ritual is measured)

To evaluate the effectiveness of your rituals, it's important to measure both the ritual itself and its outcomes. Start by measuring each ritual individually. The success of a ritual can be determined by the effort score and the result score. For instance, if you manage a sales team, the ritual could be the number of calls made per day, while the measure of success could be the total number of minutes spent talking on those calls. To help your team members improve, you can assign an expected effort and result score for each ritual.

6. Review Step 4 and 5

Please take a moment to review steps 4 and 5, which involve analyzing effort scores and result scores. As an example, let's consider the scores of sales employees:

Effort Score:

Expected Score (number of calls to be made) Actual Score Review
50 calls per day 40 calls per day 80% achieved
50 calls per day 60 calls per day 120% achieved

Result Score:

Expected Score (amount of revenue to be generated) Actual Score Review
$100,000 $80,000 80% achieved
$100,000 $120,000 120% achieved

It's also possible to assess an employee's effort and result scores on a scale of 1-10. This review process should be conducted weekly and can be used to generate MIS reports for your company. By tracking the effort and result scores of each employee, you'll be able to determine which team members deserve recognition, rewards, or bonuses. Additionally, this data will provide insights into which products are performing well and which regions are experiencing growth. It's important to review this data regularly, as failure to do so could hinder your team's progress and prevent you from achieving desired outcomes.

7. Improvement cycle (Action Plan)

As part of the improvement cycle action plan, it is recommended that you conduct a weekly review every Monday. During the review, you should evaluate three things - what went well, what went wrong, and what can be improved. "What went well" and "what went wrong" should pertain to the previous week, while "what could be improved" should be focused on the upcoming week, from Monday to Saturday.

To improve your company, you should follow these steps: repeat what went well in the previous week, and improve what went wrong. This process can help your organization reach the next level in 3-6 months. You can begin by reviewing revenue-linked departments, followed by supporting departments.

It's important to prioritize revenue generation and cost reduction. Small companies can consider creating more revenue streams while simultaneously reducing costs. Use this framework to increase revenue streams.

By implementing the PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) model, you can establish what needs to be improved each week by sitting down with your team and discussing the areas of focus. Plan the improvements, implement them, check their success, and improve them further. This will bring positive changes to your company over time.

How to bring improvements using the 7-step framework?

If you want to bring improvements using the 7-step framework, you should implement it department-wise every Monday. You can allocate 30 minutes to 2 hours for each department. When reaching the "what could be improved" part of the framework, you may have to go back to step 4, the success rituals, to create new rituals for the required improvements.

For instance, if you created a ritual of eating only salads and soups to lose weight and saw no change in your weight after a week, you would need to re-evaluate your ritual. You might realize that you were consuming more butter in soups and more cream and mayonnaise in salads, which increased your calorie intake. Thus, you would need to change your possibility and ritual.

The "what could be improved" part helps you identify issues in the different steps of the framework and make necessary changes. If you're not increasing revenue after implementing the framework successfully, you can move to step 2, possible difficulty, to determine the cause. For instance, you might realize that the team's conversion quality is poor because they had no proper training. The difficulty is that you can't provide training.

To address this issue, you can write down the possibility of doing one hour of training every day as a success ritual. You can watch Dr. Vivek Bindra's videos and other relevant YouTube videos in the morning with your team. After a week, you can measure the team's success by taking their tests and reviewing their work.

If the revenue still hasn't increased, you can go back to the improvement cycle and identify the difficulty. For instance, you might realize that the team is entering fake data. The issue here is the issue of will. To solve this issue, you can make motivational videos, correct incentive issues, and assess the manager's behavior with the team. If the manager has behavioral issues, you can provide them with training.

By using this framework, you can increase your speed, scale, process, and performance. It can even help you convert a loss-making company into a profit-making one.