This Year 500,000 New Businesses Will Start
And 400,000 Will Fail

Ten Reasons Why Businesses Fail

1. Inadequate accounting records
2. Disregarding or misinterpreting financial records
3. Not controlling costs
4. Inviting fraud through poor internal control
5. Failing to aggressively sell
6. Insufficient working capital
7. Not carrying adequate and appropriate insurance
8. Failing to adequately train and develop employees
9. Improper strategic planning
10. Not seeking advice or professional help when necessary

ORIT's 10 Rules for Growing Your Business

1. Create a strategic plan for growing your business.
Establish benchmarks for performance, and hold your managers accountable for the numbers.

2. Don't wait for annual reviews to make adjustments to your business plan. Markets don't wait for annual planning reviews, nor should you.

3. Every business owner must make a personal transformation from technical expert to master strategist for the enterprise.

4. Adopt the 3 cardinal principles of business growth: Drive the numbers higher today; drive the numbers higher tomorrow; and drive the numbers higher this week. If you focus on growing your business in the short term, you won't have to worry about growth over the long run.

5. Develop a financial and operational reporting system that allows you to track all your critical numbers. If you don't measure it, you can't manage it.

6. Hold a daily management "huddle" with all department heads to go over the numbers and make adjustments to daily action plans.

7. Control your costs when growing your business by budgeting percentages rather than dollars.

8. Identify all the key people who are driving your business and create incentives for each of them to grow your business for you.

9. Throw out the old management model you started your business with and create a new one. Innovation in management systems is the key to out-distancing your competitors in the race to the top.

10.Growing a business is like competing in a championship sport. Play the game the way a championship athlete plays:
Play to win instead of playing not to lose . . . and enjoy the game.

3 Transformations Every Business Owner Must Make To Join the Ranks of the Best Managed and Most Profitable Companies in Business Today

1. You must transform yourself from "technical expert" to "master strategist."


2. You must transform yourself from a "gut" decision-maker to a "fact-based" decision-maker. The key to success in business is to manage by fact rather than expediency:

	Gather information;
	Weigh the costs and benefits;
	Assess the risk

3. You must transform the business from a partnership model to a functional responsibility decision-making model.

The person with functional responsibility must make all the decisions within his/her area of responsibility.

Owners/Partners should be involved only when the risks are high.

What is the Best Business Decision?
Should you focus on increasing your sales or reducing your costs to increase your profits by $1,000?

The following table will help you answer this question.

A. What is your profit percentage?
B. What amount of incremental sales is needed to increase profits by $1,000?
C. What amount of cost reduction is required to increase profits by $1,000?

A	B	C
Net Profit	% Required Sales Increase Required	Cost Reduction
15	$6,667	$1,000
12	$8,333	$1,000
10	$10,000	$1,000
8	$12,500	$1,000
6	$16,667	$1,000
5	$20,000	$1,000
4	$25,000	$1,000
3	$33,333	$1,000
2	$50,000	$1,000
1	$100,000	$1,000