One year on, fictitious health supplement business Nectarmin is facing growing pains. In the final of a three-part series on starting a company, Deloitte advises on its best strategies to grow.
Small business owners are a courageous lot. They work long hours and put significant amounts of capital at
risk - often using their own houses as security for borrowings.
Why do they do it?
Ultimately to create wealth for themselves, their family or their shareholders.
But although that's the goal, many business owners fail to keep focused on the areas of the business that create the most wealth.
Deloitte Growth Solutions partner Greg Anderson says that typically, small business owners get so caught up working "in" the business they don't take enough time to step back and work "on" the business.
"People work really hard and, at the end of the day, they're tired and they come back the next day and do the same thing as the day before," he says.
"They need to break that cycle and look at it as if it was a business they were not involved in themselves - and keep doing that self-review regularly."
Sometimes, an independent, expert view can help put things in perspective.
That's the point Nectarmin has reached.
It has launched its energy drinks and tablets to health stores and supermarkets nationwide.
With the products retailing for $3.50 (drink) and $34.95 (50 tablets), analysis has shown it needs to sell 7065 drinks or 443 packets of tablets each month to break even.
In the past year, it has been following a marketing strategy from Deloitte which has included product endorsement by a celebrity, targeted advertising in health magazines, product promotion at retail outlets and a customer referral reward programme.
It has also had an approach from a distributor in Australia asking for the rights for the product.
What it needs to do is identify the key areas that make the most money for the business and nurture those to maximise profits in the year ahead.
Deloitte's Growth Solutions team has come up with a diagram to help Nectarmin do this.
