Power of 72

DOUBLE YOUR BUSINESS
 
What if you could engineer an approach to systematically double your business in a short period of time - say 7 months?
 
This week we focus on just how to do that!  
 
“If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. 

As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work.”
Thomas J. Watson - Founder of IBM
 
Power of 72
The Power of 72 is a quick way to calculate how long it will take to double your money if it is invested at a particular interest rate. It is all about the power of time and compounding interest. You take the interest rate you expect to earn and divide it into 72.  Therefore, if you expect a return of 6%, divide 72/ 6 = 12, which means it will take 12 years to double your money.
 
So now let’s talk about the relevant application to doubling your business.

Double Your Business in Six Months
If you want to double your business, then use the Power of 72 to set the stage.  For example, you can fairly easily increase the results of any component of your business by 15% - right? 
 
So use the Power of 72 - divide 72 by 15 and you get 5 rounded up.  This means that if you identify 5 components that impact your bottom line, then increase their output each 15%, the the Power of 72 tells you that you will have doubled your business bottom line as soon as you have increased each of those 5 components by 15% each.
 
So what are some business components that could fit into this list of 5 to be increased by 15%?  Well, here are a few —
 
increase leads, increase conversion rate of turning leads into customers, increase size of transaction value, increase number of customers, increase number of referrals, increase frequency of purchases, increase duration that a customer stays with you, increase the backend sales, increase the upsell sales, increase the cross-sell sales — are you getting the idea?
 
For the next couple days, we will look at five of these and look in more detail at how to improve them 15%.  In the meantime, look at your own business and decide how to apply the Power of 72 to double your business — do you want to do 6 things 12% better, 5 @ 14.4%, 4 @ 15.5%, 3 @ 24%.
 
Doubling your business does not need to be complicated or take a long time.  Why not commit
to doubling your profits in 2008 — you still have 7 months left — plenty of time!
 
“An individual cannot know what he is ’til he has made himself real by action.”

DAILY PRAYER  
Father, help us to look differently at how simple and fast a doubling of our business profits could happen.  Reveal the components to focus on and give us the discipline to persevere. Thank you for the business that we have, and the opportunity to serve more people in a more effective and profitable manner.  In Jesus name, Amen.
 
Look at your business - decide now to double it in 2008. Together we can develop the conceptual plan of how to do that - in the next couple of days!
 
Grace and peace multiplied to you.