This advice is taken from John Rosling’s new book ‘The Secrets of the Seven Alchemists: A Blueprint for Business Success Taking You to £10 Million and Beyond’.

1. Have a complete review of your platform and make sure you are getting the fundamentals right. Monitoring and measurement is critical so that you can move on.

2. Review your diary for this month. Systematically colour-code each meeting, appointment or task in red, blue and black. What percentage of your time do you spend in each colour? Begin a functionality project – create an organisational structure and workflow in red, blue and black for the business that spreads responsibility better and frees you and your senior team from the current job to create time for you to innovate up that asset ladder.

3. Hold a strategic retreat this quarter devoted to the platform. Examine all the elements below benchmark with your senior team and work out how you can better systemise and monitor these and who will be responsible for each.

4. Start to develop a capacity plan which you can use as a daily management tool and a key monthly measurement of performance.

5. Examine your position and product. Are you absolutely clear of your position in the market? Can you articulate exactly what you are best in the world at and is everyone in the organisation, everything they do and everything you say consistent with this? Is your product absolutely the best it can be?

6. Make a commitment to truly understand your customers’ experience. Use your product, website, etc. Talk to your customers directly. Ask your people how they think you can improve.

7. Put together a servicing strategy for your customers. Think creatively about how you can delight them between sales. Involve them in the business as much as possible.

8. Focus on your management team. Continue to upskill yourself and your team. Ask them what further learning they would value. Consider having some education together as a team. Review your functionality and capacity plans to identify any developing skills gaps. Look at least two years ahead; do you have the team to get you to where you want to be? Hire early.

9. Look outside of your business. Make the time to read widely. Attend business talks and thought-leading events. Don’t get stuck in today.

10. Get valued. Seriously consider having your business formally valued and invest in a report that shows you specifically what you need to do to drive your asset strategy. We used Assay Advisory (www.assaycf.com) and it changed how we ran the business.