The Business Triangle – Business Fixer Podcast 002

In This Episode You Will Discover

About The Business Fixer Podcast

Hosted by Haroon Rashid, the Business Fixer podcast is for any business owner who wants to know how to get from A to B in the simplest possible way. This business podcast is full of business tips including leadership, sales, marketing, finance, culture and much more. Does something need fixing in your business? Don’t know where to begin with your startup, grow or turn around your business? Whether you’re a startup, established business or a multimillion-pound business, the Business Fixer podcast will help you understand where you are, clearly define where you want to be and guide you on the road to get there.

SHOW NOTES

The Business Triangle

Getting Things Done – David Allen

TRANSCRIPTION

Hey, sports fans, and welcome to the Business Fixer podcast. I am your host Haroon Rashid, and this is episode two. All around something called the Business Triangle. You know, I’m really excited because I have used this business triangle for over 10 years now. And I’ve used it to help people with their startups, high growth companies, and yes, even business turnarounds.

It’s not that hard to really get your head around. And I think that this is going to be a really simple idea that you can implement straightaway in your business. So what is the business triangle? Well, I have, uh, been taught this a long time ago and somebody said to me that, you know, Haroon it doesn’t matter what business you have, whether it is a small cake shop on the corner, or whether it’s a huge giant like Apple, every single business can be boiled down to three key areas and he drew me a triangle.

Now, if you’re on the blog or the website, you can go to businessfixer.co.uk, search for this blog post. And you’ll have the image of the business triangle in the show notes. Uh, but if you are just listening, then I just want you to imagine a triangle. And this is what this person drew for me. And he said that the three areas that you have in any business is as follows finance operations. Sales and marketing sales and marketing is combined by the way into one.

And he said, whether you’re a cake shop, you’re going to need all these three. At least if you’re Apple, you’re gonna at least need all these three. So it doesn’t matter who you are. Whoever’s listening to this podcast. Your business can be boiled down to those three key areas. And over the last 10 years, whether it’s been helping people start up their business, Grow that business, or even turn around that business, guess where I started. Yep. It was the business triangle. And I always found as well that, um, the, the areas or the issues with the business that I was working with, uh, it could actually be boiled down to one or more of those areas.

As long as you get all three of those areas working. You should be fine. Everything kind of falls into place. So this is what we would call our classes, high altitude thinking, you know, this is a really, uh, up to kind of taking this from David Allen, getting things done, which is a fantastic book. Again, we’ll put those in the show notes for you, but he talks about going 10,000 feet and looking at things from a different perspective.

So let’s illustrate this point. And why it’s relevant to the triangles. So I want you to imagine that you’re going on a five mile walk in the countryside. Okay. You’re on a five mile walk in the countryside and you are starting in the middle of a Valley at zero feet above sea level. You could probably see, you know, a part of the road until it veers off into the distance. You can see some cattle on the left-hand side. You can see a car passing. You, you can see a few people, you might see a few trees and a stone wall, et cetera, et cetera. But remember you’re going on a five mile walk. Your destination is five miles away, but you can’t see it.

So you decide to go up one of the hills because you don’t know what’s the easiest way to get there. You got one of the Hills to get a better view of the landscape. You climb the hill to a fairly high altitude and you look out now, you’re looking at the same things as you were before, you know, the trees, the cattles, the walls, et cetera. But now they look really small, almost insignificant from this height.

They seem this way, because now you can see a lot more. You are now, you now have a higher altitude. Those things that were there at zero feet are still there, but when you’re higher up. You can see a lot more and they kind of seem pale in comparison, even better. You can see the roads that lead the quickest way there.

So looking at your business with the lens of the business triangle, you’re able to see things from a different perspective, you’re going 10,000 feet, a little bit higher, but you’re looking down at the business and saying, right, what if, what are the key things I need to do in the finance area? And those things will most likely be like, okay, do we actually understand the numbers? Do we actually have financial goals for each financial statement? Is there commerciality in the finance department? Do we have enough money? Do, is there a lack of cash or a lack of financing?

Well, what about operations? Maybe there’s no clear structure in your organization. Maybe it’s very flat as a structure. Maybe there’s no accountability. Maybe people are busy fools. And I’m sorry to say that, but maybe people are getting busy doing the wrong things. Maybe the communications aren’t great. Maybe you’re having meetings for the sake of having meetings. Maybe you’re not having the right kind of meetings and on and on it goes, and of course.

Sales and marketing. Well, you know, it might be that sales and marketing are working against each other rather than on the same page. Maybe their, their coms are not that strong. Maybe deadlines getting missed. Maybe there’s no clear sales tracker. Maybe there’s no marketing plan, whatever it is. But as you can see, we’re looking down on the business, using the triangle and we’re asking the right questions now, and that is really what we want to do.

So as long as you look at your business from a high altitude, you will ensure that you’re asking the right questions and you can get the right results.

So that’s it for episode two, I hope that’s given you a little bit of a steer, a little bit of a different frame to view your business. Oh, you can always check us out on businessfixer.co.uk. Check out the blog, check us out on all the podcasts channels. Wherever you get your podcasts. And I’ll see you next time, sports fans.