Jelly beans

Count your beans!

What really counts in business?”

I recently read how the Chairman of advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi tells his corporate bean counters that employee and customer loyalty grows not from reason, but from the heart.

He says: “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

He uses the quote above, which is attributed to Albert Einstein who also said, “Don’t believe every quote you read on the internet, because I totally didn’t say that.” It’s actually from a 1963 paper by sociologist William Bruce Cameron.

What I was reading really annoyed me.

This is why …..

I’d just spent some time talking to a guy who had closed his business, making eight people redundant. He was devastated and couldn’t understand how it happened. He had lots of work, his employees were good at what they did, and his customers loved him.

But he wasn’t making enough profit.

The more work he got the quicker he lost money. His first words to me were: “I wish I’d understood more about how to run a business.”

People don’t start businesses to look at profit margins and pricing but the ones that learn about this aspect of business quickly are the ones that are most likely to succeed.

This kind of story isn’t unusual but its heartbreaking. His hopes and dreams had disappeared along with his life savings and he felt he’d let everyone down.

It’s true that not everything that can be counted counts. But that doesn’t mean we can ignore the fact that a lot of the skill of running and growing a business is about figuring out what needs to be counted and bloody well counting it.

If you’d like to learn some simple strategies with no b/s to make sure your business works contact me  

I’ll supply the jelly beans …

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  1. […] profitability: Focus on your most profitable activities Get your pricing right The discount myth Count your beans Just search for other posts about profit and pricing on this […]

  2. […] out why this blog post really annoyed […]

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