Beth Haselhorst: Growing a business is challenging to be sure. And here to talk about some of the smart and not so smart ways to grow a business, is Tim Berry; successful business owner, author and consultant to companies such as Apple Computers. He’s the founder of Palo Alto Software which produces the nation’s leading business planning software and he’s delivered seminars on business planning for entrepreneurs in fifteen countries on four continents. We’re happy to have him with us today. Welcome to SBTV.com Tim.
Tim Berry: Thank you very much.
Beth Haselhorst: So what are some of the smart things people can do when growing their business.
Tim Berry: Really it’s about planning and I’m about planning. What you want to do is really use planning to filter the real opportunities from just ideas. So, there’s a whole world out there and it’s distracting sometimes, but some of those distractions are glinting gold and you want to follow them so there’s a real reason for sorting through and taking a moment, not forever, a moment to try and filter what we want to do and think through why and how.
Beth Haselhorst: Okay. What are some of the not so smart things people can do?
Tim Berry: Well, it’s interesting. There’s a paradox here, there’s a lot of paradox in business planning. It’s why we can’t do it by algorithm because it’s the management, it’s the real core of it to be able to distinguish between,”Here is a shiny new thing that’s worth following and changing and revising and correcting assumptions and moving towards. And over here is a shiny new thing that’s just distracting, and we’re never going to get anywhere if we keep following the next shiny new thing and never consistently following through to control our destiny which is our objectives.” The paradox there is sometimes it’s terrible to change course and sometimes you have to change course and only you, the business owner, will be able to distinguish when to change and when not to.
Beth Haselhorst: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve seen when it comes to growing a business?
Tim Berry: This interplay between consistently managing a long term strategy and knowing when to change. And I think if we had to talk about one biggest mistake, it’s not, you’re one of these changing the plan or not changing the plan. The biggest mistake is thinking that you’re finished at any point with a plan. The biggest mistake is the plan in the drawer. The biggest mistake no knowing that you always should be revealing your assumptions and your plan is like a math and a GPS that needs to be managed and steered and the course needs to be corrected. That’s the biggest.
Beth Haselhorst: Tim thanks for joining us today. Be sure to visit www.timberry.com to learn more about Tim’s book, his work and his blog. And you can find more segments with Tim Berry in the small business growth series here on SBTV.com, where small business is our only business.
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