Rudy Miick notes, “Making money, being profitable, is a value it’s not the reason for being. It is a value and we need to be profitable. It is unbelievable how few companies, regardless of industry, will actually have a value system that says, ‘Hey we’re fiscally healthy, we’re something more than just profitable.’ Very few companies have that value and so consequently they plod along and they are profitable and maybe they’re not.”
Increased cash flow is a “main route” to profitability. One way to move into improved cash flow is to find ways to utilize existing assets in new ways. In “part one” we covered ways to make your building, factory, offices, or other workspace yield more. In part two we will consider other avenues.
In addition to your location, is there a way to get extra service from equipment? Can your delivery van, kitchen equipment, cleaning equipment, be rented to someone else when you are not using it? As Rudy puts it, “Part of a robust ghost kitchen is ‘Oh there’s this equipment here and Rudy owns the equipment, but I only use it five hours a day, so could I rent my equipment another 8 hours to Ariel and another 8 hours to Joe Blow and end up creating income 24 hours a day?”
If you have expertise in an area it may be possible to use it to expand your horizons. Can you expand your business, what you do in one location, by duplicating it in another? Rudy says, “For example, in the resort industry, if I have winter resorts in the Northern Hemisphere, could I do winter resorts in the Southern Hemisphere? So that I’ve got 12 months of cash flow?” It can be difficult to be profitable with a business that is only viable for a certain season.
Some businesses are seasonal in nature because of links to holidays. In which case it is worthwhile to consider: Are there ways to expand what I do to a different season? Can my resort do “off season” events? Rudy says, “If I do something in the holidays of Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, whatever the holidays are in the fall season, what could I be doing in the summer so that I’m building out cash flow 12 months out of the year?” Can my Christmas tree farm also produce pumpkins and a corn maze for Halloween? If I can’t produce fruits for a summer fruit stand can, I rent my location to someone else to sell their summer produce or crafts?
If you rent, sell or repair equipment, can you give lessons in how to use it? If you can’t, can you hire someone who can? Zoom and YouTube cannot replace the value of hands-on instruction for things like playing a musical instrument, learning to scuba dive, painting (both art and houses), or training someone who lacks computer literacy to negotiate Zoom and YouTube.
Creative thinking is as important in business as it is in the arts. Reimagining how to utilize what you already have is an excellent way to increase cash flow and profitability.
