Now that we’ve looked at the need for assets, recognised the assets you already have, and identified how to maintain our assets, we have a few final questions:
What do I need to do as an entrepreneur?
How much can I do at once?
What happens as we scale?
What should be on my to-do list?
What books will help me on this journey?

What we need is a few key decisions and an action plan…

The Entrepreneur’s Role
“Advertising is a tricky business – you own nothing.
Your clients can leave at any time, and so can your staff.
Your assets go down the lift shaft every day.” – John Hegarty

Your role as an entrepreneur is to create, maintain and improve the value of your business’s assets.
That means turning your time and your team’s time into quantifiable assets that make money long after you leave the building.
Nobody is going to do it for you – you’re going to have to watch over the process and instil a culture of valuing assets.
You create an asset when you turn an idea into a blueprint, a vision into a brand, or when you buy other assets for a fair price.
You maintain an asset when you clean it or update its design, preventing decay from setting in.
You improve an asset when you learn from customers and use their insights to refine your products, services, content and methodologies.
The aim isn’t to do this as cheaply as possible, but as effectively as possible.
It’s fine to pay twice as much for top talent if they’re produce assets 5x more valuable as their counterparts.
If your cheap logo doesn’t win over your customers, it’s not an asset, it’s a wasted opportunity.

Strategy Is Sacrifice
A large part of strategy is choosing where to focus your limited resources for maximum effect.
This might be finding undervalued assets that you can improve, monopolizing an area where you’re already strong, or refusing to invest huge sums of money into games you can’t win.

Online banks don’t need branches or tellers, allowing them to scrap fees and offer higher interest rates on savings accounts.
They are able to create loyal fans by doubling down on their digital assets, which are much cheaper to maintain than physical assets.

Nespresso partners with third parties to create their pods and machines, allowing them to focus on their glamorous sales channels and marketing campaigns.
They can source coffee from all over the world and market it with a singular brand, since customers associate them with George Clooney rather than a particular country of origin.

Tech companies acquire startups as integrations – why spend so much time and money gambling on ideas when you can buy new products that are proven to delight users?
This is why Google bought Waze to improve Google Maps with real-time traffic, or why Facebook bought Face.com to help users tag their friends in photos.

Artists and comedians make specialised content for new social media platforms, where they can stand out and easily attract attention.
Most people forget that Lily Allen and Katy Perry both made their names on MySpace.
Each of them made their music freely available to post on your MySpace page, earning them thousands of new, appreciative fans.

George Lucas took a reduced fee to direct Star Wars in exchange for being able to keep the merchandising rights.
This wasn’t seen as having any value back in 1977, but Lucas partnered with Kenner to create an abundance of popular toys and action figures, eventually making him a billionaire.

Well Timed Growth
There are two things about cooking that I still find difficult:
Getting the outside and inside of the food to cook at the right pace, and to make sure all of the components of the meal are ready at the right time.
You don’t want your steak to be charred on the outside and raw in the middle, and you don’t want your side dishes going cold while your main finishes cooking.

Your business faces a similar challenge: how do you grow your customer facing and behind-the-scenes assets at the same pace?
A world class product won’t get very far without good sales channels.
A hyped up marketing campaign will fall flat if you don’t have the right team to deliver the goods.
A large factory can be held up by one bottleneck.

Robert Herjavec said “You want to invest after the sales come in; investing to support the sales, not ahead of the sales.”
It’s easier to bring in assets to serve hungry customers, rather than bringing in a team to round up some customers.
These things take time, so you’ll want to start interviewing for future team members and researching potential suppliers and partners months before you’ll need them.

Scale Changes Things
Making things at a small scale is not the same as a large scale.
There are different timelines, processes, staffing and considerations.
Creating products and services in bulk can be more cost effective, but requires more of a commitment, reduced flexibility and a higher breakeven point.
Creating products and services at a large scale is not just a bigger version of creating them at a small scale; think of Henry Ford’s production line where each person had one single task they refined to perfection.
As you grow, your business will be running on different timelines, using different processes, recruiting for more specialized roles, and your job as the CEO will feature a whole new set of decisions to make each day.
These changes make your business more cost effective, as Henry Ford discovered, but it requires more of a commitment, reduced flexibility and a higher breakeven point.
There’s a reason why the Model T was only offered in black.

You want assets that can be distributed online, without you being in the same room as your customers or team members.
They need to be well designed, so that they don’t require lots of explanation or hand-holding.
That’s what allows someone on the other side of the world to encounter your brand, understand how you can help them, and make a large purchase decision.
It’s also what allows your team to set up a new location and still maximise all of the wisdom and learned experience that makes everything run smoothly.

What To Do Next
My suggestion is to do three things right now.
Firstly, take stock of what you have.
•       What are assets?
•       Which are disproportionately valuable for your business?
•       Are you maintaining them well?
•       Can you be a great partner and offer your services to other businesses as extra revenue?

Secondly, let’s create a shortlist of the assets you need for the future.
You can even write them in the notes on your phone if you like, the important thing is to start brainstorming.
Once you’ve got a list of 20-30, plot them visually with value on one axis and cost on the other.
How valuable is this asset to your business?
How much will it cost to develop or acquire?
You’ll see them scattered into four main clusters.

•       How might you develop the high value, low cost assets this year?
•       How can you make a start on the high value high cost assets this year?
•       Can you drop the low value assets from your calendar and business?
•       Can a partner make this easier for you?
•       Do we need to learn a skill or hire a professional?
•       Where is our competitive advantage?
•       What trade offs can make us stronger overall?

Thirdly, let’s create an action plan for developing these assets.
We need four things:

A goal – to develop this asset within this timeframe
A leading indicator – how to measure the work that’s going into this asset
A lagging indicator – how to measure the new asset’s progress
A scoreboard – how you and your team measure progress and wins each week, keeping this front of mind throughout the year.

Good Books
There are three books I recommend reading next, either in print or as audiobooks.

24 Assets - Daniel Priestly argues that there are 24 distinct assets a business must develop in order to attract a high sale price, he goes on to explain each of them in detail

Built To Sell - John Worrilow uses a fable to describe what makes a business sellable

The Four Disciplines Of Execution – Sean Covey does a great job of teaching effective goalsetting and progress tracking, through a common-sense approach to measurement and action planning.