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Most textbook business planning is unsuited to the realities of small business. 

Expecting detailed financial projections in 3 to 5 year's time is totally unrealistic when a small business can barely see 6 months ahead.

Instead of planning methods developed for large and fairly stable big businesses, we have developed a flexible, low workload, business planning system for small business.

It is based around a financial quarter GamePlan where you decide what to achieve in this quarter.  Generally, a small business can see three months ahead and have some hope of projecting financial data.

Each quarterly Gameplan has a built in StrategyTree which identifies the 4-6 Critical Success Factors (CSF) that must be addressed for the GamePlan Destination to be achieved.  Things like key staff and required revenue.  Then the several Necessary Conditions for that CSF to work are identified and factored in

We then show how to prioritize these Necessary Conditions so you move quickly and thoroughly to the GamePlan Destination for this quarter.

Next quarter, you look at the current realities and develop a new GamePlan to suit.

This is simple, fast and structured planning that suits the realities of small business.

Video on Realistic Small Business Planning
Business Planning Resources
Transcript on Realistic Small Business Planning Podcast

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Just like an iceberg only shows 1/8th of its mass above water, your accounts have many more things they can tell you if you go looking.

But many analysis tools assume a fair degree of experience and management and accounting training.  That's not common with small business owners.

So 12Faces has developed several tools that can give useful insights to your accounts but are easy to use and understand.

For example, we have tools for;
1. working out how much to increase your prices to counteract the costs of inflation in wages and inputs to your business - a Gross Margin Ratio analysis

2. building a 'model' of the economics of your business that then lets you plug in a proposed change to e.g. prices, revenue or wages to see  the impact on bottom line profit.  Then you can play with "what if " scenarios in your model to find what works best.  We call this ChangeBoard because it measures the impact of change

3. conventional accounts are a mass of numbers and it is hard to make a great deal of sense of them.  Our TrendBoard shows your changes over time in your accounts as graphs.  Then you only have to work on the principal "up sloping trends are good and down sloping are bad" to quickly find any trends that might impact on your business.

Don't wait for your annual tax accounts to see how you turned out for the year.  Take control of your future profits with the 12Faces Business Analytics tool kit.


Transcript of Business Analytics Nugget podcast

Youtube: Business Analytics Nugget video

More information on Business Analytics for Small Business

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It is often hard for business Founders to "brainstorm" business issues with others.

• Friends and family may not have much business management experience.  
• It might not be appropriate to discuss some topics with staff.  
• Professional advisors can be helpful with their specific skill area but maybe less so with whole-of-business issues like business planning.  And they can be expensive.

12Faces fills this gap with three services.  

First there is our wealth of useful articles and our training packages.  

Second, our Business Diagnostics System helps you identify solutions to problems you feed in.  Both of these are like virtual Business Coaches. 

We also have a third service of 1-to-1 live Business Coaching. You use this on an hourly basis with no fixed period or obligation to continue.

Transcript: Business Coaching for Small Business Transcript

Youtube: Business Coaching for Small Business Video 

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Up to 1 in 5 businesses are failing at any point in time.
This is a sad loss of time, money and effort and generates a lot of stress on business' owners.

With small businesses, the owner is generally good in the area of their professional skills but may lack business management experience. Every manager that ever there was started in this position.

12Faces has assembled a DIY and self-paced business training to help business owners with their turnaround. We call it Turnaround90 or T90 for short. 

Specialist advisors will generally only offer advice in their particular area.  This might not cover your main problems and so diverts you from the most important fixes.  It can also be expensive at a time when money may be short.

Turnaround90 covers the 12 aspects of your business (hence our business name 12Faces) that all need to be minimally operational for your business to be stable and turnaround.  That covers revenue, operations, admin systems and people management.

If you struggle at some point, we have optional business mentoring support available on request on an hourly basis.

Youtube: 90 Day Turnaround for Failing Business Video

Transcript: 90 Day Turnaround for Failing Business Nugget Transcript

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Local Services Businesses are those that draw customers from a few towns or suburbs around the business's office location. 
Examples include building trades like plumbers, health professionals like dentists and professional services like lawyers and accountants.

These business face different major issues when growing from Solopreneur though Micro Business (1-4 staff) to Small Business (5-19) staff. 

This video introduces the typical issues at each size step and headcount.

Especially early on, these are critical as up to 50% of startups fail in the first year.  That means a personal blow and a loss of money and time for the Founder.  A sad outcome for 'having a go'.

The 12Faces Mission is your Sustainable Business Success.  We have many resources catalogued by growth stage that will reduce the stress from each grow stage and the new issues each introduces.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/13GsxiLPz7I
Transcript:  https://www.12faces.business/growing-local-service-business-various-headcount-nid48/

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Every business operator faces nagging problems from time to time that might be challenging to think of how to solve them.

Many managers are professionally trained in their operational area but less experienced with the management side of a business.  Small business owners  in particular have to be good at every aspect of managing their business operation.

It can be hard to get useful feedback from your professional advisors and business networks.  And some things you might not be able to discuss with friends and family.

12Faces has developed a Business Diagnostic Funnel System.
You start with a gut feeling about the problem and then drop down through several stages in the funnel; getting more and more specific about the possible solutions to the problem as you go.

Eventually, you end up with a proposed Solution to your problem.  You can read more about that on the 12Faces. business website (https://www.12faces.business) and search on the topic in Google.

Transcript:  https://www.12faces.business/business-diagnostics-reduce-stress-nid47/

Youtube: https://youtu.be/Btah9Wa2iKE

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Most business owners and managers have nagging issues in their business that they are not sure how to resolve; so they tend to just stay there and build up.

The 12Faces Business Diagnostics system is a user-friendly way to narrow down the problem and arrive at possible solutions.

This is just what a doctor does when you visit.

At the start, you just pick the option that seems to best express the nature of the problem.  You click on that and drop into a second set of more specific options related to the first chosen one.  You choose the best in the second layer and drop into a third layer; and so on.

Eventually, you arrive at a plausible reason for the problem and can request our Solutions page to help you see how to remedy the problem.

It's quite quick and should present possible solutions in under 30 minutes of  your time.

Youtube video:  https://youtu.be/71Af8s9lY74
Transcript: https://www.12faces.business/introducing-business-diagnostics-nid46/

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Anyone who might become your client moves through several stages in what has become known as the Buyer's Journey.  Your marketing needs to cover each stage so that you get the best outcome from your marketing.
We say the stages are; 

• Awareness - thinking about starting to buy
• Consideration - choosing what product to buy
• Deciding - what supplier offers the best arrangements
• Retention - after the initial purchase, you want to keep the new client for as long as possible and,
• Advocacy - getting reviews and other social proof from your customers to be used as a marketing asset in the early stages of the Buyer's Journey

Youtube: https://youtu.be/Y9egXRwglT0

Transcript: https://www.12faces.business/tracking-the-buyers-journey-nugget-nid45/

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Many businesses draw customers from a catchment area around their location.
 
Example business include building trades, health professionals, lawyers, architects.

This podcast introduces Local Area Marketing as part of a series on how to grow this type of business. 

The Local Area Marketing series covers ways of boosting sales in your catchment area systematically and with long lasting success.  Local SEO is covered in detail in the series.

Youtube: https://youtu.be/NUw-lls6BIs

Transcript: https://www.12faces.business/local-area-marketing-blog/

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The Mission of 12Faces is your Sustainable Business Success!  This podcast introduces our approach to your Success and how to make that Success Sustainable.  ID31

Read More: https://www.12faces.business/nugget-31-sustainable-business-success-transcript/