Business refresh – advisory business in a changing world

This is a e-myth strategic objective for an advisory business

Strategic objective questions

What values do you want your company to live every day?

• Contributing to a just, equitable and sustainable society
• Focused on the hard problems
• Helping people achieve beyond their expectations
• Seeing and respecting each person (clients, staff and community) as the human being that they are

What experience do you want your customers to have?

I want to help people to build more things, think bigger and further out, stretch out, achieve beyond their expectations.

I want people to be able to say ‘I thought there was no way forward until I engaged Strabo Rivers’.

I want help people take the first step, the second step and more to where they want to be.

How should your business serve your life and the lives of your employees—and how does that ideal compare to what’s true today? 

The business operates as a self-sustaining game of ‘do it better than last time’.

That is how I operate and what I expect to deliver for my clients.

The current business organisation is all me.

I want to give the staff opportunities to build their own idea-driven career. Enable them to master their areas and then stretch out. Take risks to benefit our clients and contribute to our goals of a just, equitable and sustainable world while growing our company’s understanding of the goals.

I want to spend time building processes in the business that capture my experience and values so that other people can learn these things.

The goal is to build an organisation like this.

Focused questions

What kinds of products and services do you offer?

Strategic advisory and investment cases

What are your goals for annual sales, profitability, return on equity, number of employees, number of outlets, growth rates and so on?

Target retirement income ($)                         250,000

Annual investment return 5%

Retirement capital needed ($)                      5,000,000

Capital gains tax 25%

Target sale price ($)                      6,670,000

Analysis of the size of the firm is shown in the table below.

At an average of 1,500 billable hours per year, the firms needs 30 consultants.

This is likely to be a 3 office company – Brisbane, Sydney (Parramatta) and Melbourne

The growth rates to achieve an annual revenue of $10 million per year at year 10, 15 and 20 based on current sales is shown below.

What market areas does your business serve?

• Infrastructure development and management
• Investment management
• Investment research
• Corporate advisory

What is your ideal geographic coverage area (local, statewide, nationwide, global)?

East Coast of Australia (no Western Australia)

What does your ideal customer look like (age, income, family status, occupation, education, net worth, attitudes, key behaviors, etc.)?

The ideal customer will be developed in the next post.

What is your competitive advantage (price, quality, convenience, customer service, advertising, product features, responsiveness, fast delivery, appearance, market coverage, simplicity, reliability, durability, etc.)?

Quality – always searching of the nugget of gold

Responsiveness – always reply to client requests

Rapid delivery – move with intention and purpose

Deep multi-sector knowledge – know the limitations of our knowledge

Education-based approach – empower clients to move beyond us

What kinds of distinctive marketing methods will you use to define your brand?

Hard problems have a ‘gravity’ in that they affect everything around them.

We approach potential clients – outbound marketing – who will need our help.

Branding and marketing is memorable.

CRM and client approach process is highly developed.

We ‘know’ that a client has a problem before they do.

Draft strategic objective

Strabo Rivers is a principled, challenge-focused advisory firm contributing to a just, thriving and sustainable planet. The firm provides critical and rigorous advice to infrastructure developers, investment managers, investment research and corporates across the East Coast of Australia. We set the precedent in the market for taking on the hardest challenges and bringing leading global solutions to our client’s issues.

Actions

The actions arising from this advisory plan:

• Develop ideal customer
• Look at what parts of organisational chart can outsourced
• Build one profile/process for a position and advertise for it