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By Stefania Aulicino

How do you drive value in your business? Is it planned or spontaneous?
Opportunistic or predicable?

Entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for new profit-making opportunities.
But is your process Re-active or Pro-active?

98% are entrepreneurs are REACTIVE.
What do you think the growth of a Reactive Entrepreneur looks like?
Yes, reactive Entrepreneurs:
• take any client that is willing to work with them to feed their organization so they struggle with commodity prices in an ever increasing world
• can’t attract top talent so growth is exhausting
• these Entrepreneurs are chronically short of cash
This reactive growth like this is more risky than the Optimum Growth Strategy which is proactive.

Yet only 2% of Entrepreneurs are PROACTIVE about focusing on their Optimum Growth Strategy
What do you think the growth of Proactive Entrepreneurs looks like?
Yep, Proactive Entrepreneurs:
• Have their choice of the right clients who happily pay premium prices
• attracts top notch talent to implement their vision
• are a magnet for cash
These proactive E are energized by pursing their Passion and their growth is FAST, PROFITABLE and SAFE.

To shift from REACTIVE growth to PROACTIVE growth,
You must be laser focused on DRIVING VALUE, unique to you building on your PASSION
Proactive business builders are value drivers who have figured out HOW to leverage their passion in a predicable manner.

It helps to have RULES to drive value so you don’t get scattered and dilute your value with inconsistent opportunities. Rules that keep you aligned with your Optimum Growth Strategy.

Proactive Business Builders benefit from a TOOL I call a VALUE DRIVING plan.

Just like investors who manage their own money in the stock market will write out personal rules and follow an INVESTING Plan, Proactive business builders can write out personal rules and follow a VALUE DRIVING plan.

To get you thinking about what a VALUE DRIVING plan might look like for YOU,
Let’s see what we can learn from an Investor’s INVESTING PLAN

An Investing plan typically has these key elements
• Definition of success
• Watch list, Entry and Exit guidelines
• portfolio risk allocation
• and a check in routine
Let me share an investing Plan for a stock investor an example of how YOU we can create a Value-Driving plan for your company.

An investing plan starts with a
DEFINITION OF SUCCESS
Protect, Preserve and Grow my Capital.
I will gauge my Stock performance against the S&P index

WATCH LIST
I will compare alternative STOCK opportunities against the S&P index
I will use fundamental and technical analysis to select STOCK candidates

ENTRY GUIDELINES
Initial entry: stocks must be outperforming and S&P on the comparison chart
Add to the position: When stock is trending up

EXIT GUIDELINES
Reduce ¼ of the position triggered by any of the following:
When the intermediate trend of the Stock changes
When most recent support is broken by 1%
When performance falls below the S&P comparison
When we get too overweight in any STOCK
All 4 triggers means I will eliminate the position

An Investor’s Investing plan will also include: Portfolio Risk allocation (i.e. 70% stocks, 20% bonds, 10% cash) and ROUTINE.

Now let’s apply the concept of a written n investing plan for you as a PROACTIVE Business Builder to predictably drive value for your company.

As you think about your company, consider rules like these:
DEFINITION of SUCCESS
• Pursue my Optimum Growth Strategy to achieve the highest return with the lowers risk, building on my passion and unique value-driving skills.
• document my PASSION in a Corporate Resume in the universal language of business- dollars and cents so my team understands our Optimum Growth Strategy and how success is defined for our company
• I will gauge my performance based on how fast we are moving the promise of the future into the present evidenced by growing profitability margins over the prior year on higher revenue levels.

If you don’t articulate for yourself what the definition of success for your company is, you surely won’t be very efficient about arriving there.

WATCH LIST
• Prioritize a list of critical relationships to help me implement my Optimum Grown Strategy: not just clients, but vendors, employees, trusted advisors, outsourced resources, funding sources and the like.

Funny how we know planning is powerful, but instead of being proactive, we often wing important relationships in a reactive way

ENTRY GUIDELINES
• Enter relationships only when a prospect evidences they value our company’s unique and proprietary approach.

Imagine the time waste avoidance if you religiously applied a rule like that across the board in your company.

EXIT GUIDELINE
Reduce our concentration by 25% with any current relationship when they:
1. slow down innovation in their marketplace
2. don’t keep up with technology efficiencies for their own business
3. revenue growth declines for a protracted period
4. lose money without responding to update their business model

These are the kind of tell tale signs we all know, but by keeping so much in our head rather than reduced to RULES that help us make unemotional decisions, we don’t act. How much easier this is- as a written and regularly revised RULE!

PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
• Never be hostage to any single source- not a customer, vendor or funding source.

How much pain would this simple rule eliminate!

ROUTINE
• Annually convene a Team Discovery Meeting to update my Corporate Resume with input from all those responsible for driving growth and profit in the company.
• revise this Value-Driving Plan for consistency with our Corporate Resume

Of all the meetings you schedule in a year, how valuable might the team discovery meeting be for you and your team?

Rules like these that will prevent you from falling into a typical entrepreneurial reactive mode

Now you can flesh out this template with greater detail to make it a real Value driving Plan unique to you to ensure you are a PROACTIVE business builder: Rules like these can prevent you from falling into a typical entrepreneurial reactive mode.

Before you leave, hope you will let me know how you think a Value Driving Plan like this, with RULES to help you take action to reduce the emotion of decision –making, could boost your confidence to build your business by pursuing your passion —in any economic environment.

Stefania Aulicino, president of CapitalLinkUSA ensures business owns get cash to keep control of a bigger, more profitable company, faster, safer than they ever thought possible- in any economy. Become a magnet for non equity and equity sources to fuel your growth. Explore our tools, solutions and consulting options tailored for different growth stages and different budgets: www.CashAndControl.com