Recognising The Assets You've Already Been Building

In the first part of this series, we looked at the importance of assets - the money machines that create revenue for your business.
When you develop your assets, you give yourself the ability to go on holiday and even sell the business one day in the future - since it no longer needs you to be present in order to serve customers.
This way of thinking might be new to you, but it’s not an optional luxury.
Your business needs to be creating assets, now and in the future, in order for it to succeed.
If you don’t, then you end up with bottlenecks, dependencies and a constant pressure to keep selling.
You’ll end up spinning your wheels and re-creating the same work over and over again.
It feels like you’re being lean, but in the long run it costs you.

Strong assets don’t need to be expensive, in fact you already have the beginnings of some incredible assets in your business today.
In this post we’ll begin to recognise those assets, and the best starting point is with your digital assets…

Digital Assets
Some industries still use a lot of physical assets, but for most small businesses the golden opportunities are digital.

•       It might be the channels they develop, like a website, Instagram page or YouTube channel.

•       It might be content like podcasts, photos, videos and PDFs.

•       It might be the data they collect or the contacts they’ve made, allowing them to reach an audience who are enthusiastic to hear from them in the future.

•       It might be the training manuals and intellectual property you own, which turn new recruits into powerful team members.

•       It might also include the systems and processes you have in place, which allow you to deliver great results faster and cheaper than your competitors.

•       It might be your brand and your reputation, the trust and benefit of the doubt that customers give you when you go to launch a new offer or begin a new partnership.

Digital assets are cheap to start creating, but they only have worth when they’re combined with something of value.
They need to be made with care and diligence. If you mindlessly churn out content, it won’t change the fortunes of your business.
It’s easy to overlook these assets, because they live in your head or on your hard drive – out of sight, out of mind.

Benefits Of Digital Assets
There’s a lot to love about digital assets:

•       You’re not bidding against other companies to buy them, and they’re generally getting cheaper.

•       They’re easy to scale up; you can get your assets in front of 10x more people with a few clicks and a small outlay.

•       They’re easy to update; it’s faster to redo your website than to renovate a series of retail stores.

•       You can measure your engagement; the number of people who click, read, share and interact with your content.

•       It’s easy to run short and cheap tests, learning about what works without risking too much money.

•       They’re easy to repurpose; Gary V is a great example of someone who uses his keynote presentations as a source of podcasts, videos, articles and soundbites.

•       The internet is full of advice on how to make them more effective, such as creating good videos, taking nice photos, compressing files and structuring a landing page.

Valuing A Brand

“Brand: Is not a logo, not what it looks like when I look at your product.
A Brand is a shortcut, it’s a shortcut for all the expectations I have for what you’re about to do for me.
It’s a shortcut for trust, for promises, for conversations.
A brand that’s worth something, is worth something either because you can sell more of it, or make more of a profit for each one you sell.
That’s it.
If you can’t sell more, or can’t get a premium, you don’t have a brand.
Cause people aren’t showing up investing their emotion in what it is you sell.”
- Seth Godin

Everyone has a brand, but not all brands are worth anything.
In a lot of industries, the person with the superior product loses to the person with the superior brand.
This often comes as a shock to new entrepreneurs, but it’s because customers seek certainty over potential performance.
Value is in the eye of your customer, even if 99.99% of the broader population have no idea about what you stand for.
A valuable brand has meaning to a very specific group of people, the decision makers who become your profitable customers.
Brand assets help you build an audience – and therefore fans – as well as customers, becoming the only provider they will consider in the future

Valuing A Reputation
“Personal branding is about managing your name - even if you don’t own a business - in a world of misinformation, disinformation, and semi-permanent Google records. 
Going on a date? Chances are that your “blind” date has Googled your name. 
Going to a job interview? Ditto.”
- Tim Ferriss

The goodwill of a business makes up a decent portion of its value.
When a business builds a large collection of loyal advocates, it increases its chances of attracting new customers while retaining their original fans.
For example, if you run a popular restaurant with a lucrative group of fans and then sell the business, the contract will probably insist that you don’t open up another restaurant within 5km.
This is to prevent the founder from setting up shop next door, dragging all their customers with them.
Reputations take years to build, and moments to destroy.
Online review sites magnify customer critiques, and a few poorly handled complaints can tarnish your reputation in a very public forum.
If your reputation drives your customer acquisition, it’s worth taking time to maintain that image.

Valuing Systems
Systems make your team stronger – saving time and setting up each member to deliver their best work.
These might be systems for reaching customers, arranging events, delivering a service, following up after a sale, or creating a second location that works as well as the original.
One of the most important systems to document is the customer journey; the process of enticing new people to your business, giving them something valuable, and creating an experience that makes them excited to return in the future.
Customer journeys are supported by checklists, which ensure that all the necessary steps are covered in every sale.
This is how a hotel provides a personalized experience for each guest, or how an online retailer makes every parcel feel like a special unboxing experience.

Another asset is a method book that describes how each member of the team should approach their work. For example, consultants create new workshops all the time, but how do they ensure the new content fits with their existing repertoire?
A method book describes how new content should be designed, without going into patronizing and restrictive detail.
Systems like these are what enable businesses like McDonalds to take a dim 15 year old and help them make the same delicious French fry as every other store in the world.

Now that you’re seeing the assets that have already begun to take shape in your business, the next part of this series will look at ways of defending and improving them…