Working on the Business Archives – Page 3 of 3

24 Oct 2011

Start Your Engine of Growth

By Doug Wagner|2017-05-31T12:26:32-06:00October 24th, 2011|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Manifast, Working on the Business|Tags: Brand Strategy, business advice, business growth, business strategy, business success, Engine of Growth, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Eric Ries, Lean Startup, Manifast, Marketing Strategy, SaaS, Software, Startup, Sticky Engine of Growth, Working on the Business|

We are in the midst of launching our new Manifast product. In fact we are committing to launching our MVP in November 2011. This has gotten me to thinking about marketing, sales and most importantly our revenue model. Do we have our engine of growth defined?

In “The Lean Startup” Eric Ries talks about three engines of growth for startups:

The Sticky Engine of Growth (customer retention (churn) is key)
The Viral […]

Are You Working on the Business?

By Doug Wagner|2017-05-24T13:03:07-06:00July 19th, 2011|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Working on the Business|Tags: business, business advice, business growth, business strategy, business success, Dysfunctional Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, leadership, small business, small business owner, strategy, success, Working on the Business|

What does working on the business really mean?

As a business owner (or entrepreneur) you spend a lot of time working to build your business. You are:

Finding new customers,
Keeping existing customers happy,
Providing your product or service to customers,
Hiring good people,
Retaining your employees,
Keeping on top of the finances,
Putting out fires,
And generally growing your business.

And many business owners can generate a lot of revenue and even profit doing the above. They may even significantly grow their businesses.

So isn’t that […]

Business Strategy: What Do You Really Want to Optimize?

By Doug Wagner|2017-06-21T15:53:41-06:00February 21st, 2010|Categories: Business Strategy, Doug's Blog, Leadership|Tags: business, business growth, Business Optimization, Business Performance, business strategy, business success, Clients, Customers, entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, innovation, Selling Your Business, small business, small business owner, strategy, Working on the Business|

Before you spend resources on improving your business performance, it is best to know where you want to go. This means getting clear on your business strategy.

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Improving Business Performance

There are two main ways of improving business performance:

Optimization – Making things better, best practices, incremental improvements,
Innovation – Doing different things, doing things differently, leaping past the competition.

It is easy to think there is a magic bullet for optimizing your business’s performance. […]