Toowoomba Business Advisors and Accountants

Why us?

Team

Ambrosiussen Accountants & Advisors is an industry leader in the financial and business strategy field with a strong reputation for empowering small businesses within the region. Offering more than the average accountancy firm, Ambrosiussen Accountants & Advisors offer a range of financial, strategic and business improvement services, assisting clients to reach their financial goals and achieve sustainable business growth. Read More

Starting up, Surviving and Thriving

One of the great attributes of being an Aussie, and especially a Queenslander, is that we are prepared to have a go. This could be partly why in Australia we have almost two million small businesses employing under twenty people. Of those businesses, only 44% will survive four years. Perhaps you recently made the big step or have been thinking about it for sometime. What do you need to do to improve the odds to not only survive, but have your business thrive and still be around in twenty years?

To start with, you need to get the foundations right. Have you ever watched a tall building go up? They take ages on the foundations and you see nothing, then it seems in next to no time this tall building is up. The same applies to your business. If you take the time to get the basics and foundations of your business right, it will be able to stand the test of time and the storms that will assail it. Here's the foundations you need.

The Importance of a Good Strategy

They were trapped in the bay. The 74 gun Turkish ship was in front of them and the Turks had cannons blocking the channel exit from the Bay. Capt. Hornblower in his small 22 gun sailing ship was not going to surrender quietly. He studied his charts and worked out a strategy of escape. With the moon appearing, the tide turning and with the well trained sailors who could turn the ship about in confined spaces they amazingly slipped past the guns to safety. In their little ship was a fortune in gold and silver bullion they had recovered from the bottom of the bay.

Strategy gets you focused on what is important. Fighting the Turks was not important, but getting the gold back to England was. The problem for small business owners is that the urgent issues, like the Turkish cannons that are always in your face are not necessarily the important ones. You often cannot ignore the urgent issues, but if that is all you are dealing with you are going nowhere. You are staying in the bay.

Good strategy, in addition to knowing where you want to go, deals in realism. It does not ignore the Turkish cannons, the rocks and confined spaces. It looks at forces driving change in your industry. It evaluates your strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and threats. By seriously considering these issues your plans become much more than wishful thinking and much more likely to be successful.

What are your Early Warning Signals?

Imagine if your car did not have an oil light or a temperature gauge. If it overheated the first thing you’d see is steam coming from under your bonnet. The next thing there would be a horrible noise from the engine and then the car would come to a grinding halt. The gauges in your car give you an early warning that something is wrong and needs attention. Ignore the early warning signals and you are in big trouble.

The same applies to your business. Many businesses do not even have warning gauges, let alone monitoring them to make sure everything is on track. Warning gauges are leading indicators or leading key performance indicators (KPI’s). In simple terms they are important measures that let you know early- on how key aspects of your business are performing. For example while tracking sales is important it is not a leading indicator. If sales are down it is like steam coming from under your bonnet. It could take months for sales to pick back up again, and in those months your business will continue to struggle.