Succeed!
Resources for Entrepreneurs
Read About One-On-One Business Advising with Douglas Hammel
Below
One-On-One Business Advising with
Douglas Hammel
Our mission at Douglas Hammel & Associates is to maximize your profits. We assist you in achieving this goal by providing high quality results-driven business advising services (counseling and consulting) using the Succeed! Method developed by Douglas Hammel over 30 years of business advising and organized in his book: Succeed! Your Essential Guide to Business Growth. We focus on adding our unique expertise to yours to increase your management skill, improve your decision making, and create maximum efficiency in your systems. We advise a wide variety of businesses, both large and small, in all phases of business development.
It is a given in today’s complex business world that no single manager can be expert in all skill areas. In a small business the owner typically has a high degree of technical skill but lacks general business management knowledge; in a larger business or one experiencing hardship or growth, managers lack the expertise in strategic planning and team building to efficiently and effectively solve problems and implement change.
The good news is that there are no “new” business problems. Every problem that has occurred or will occur in your business has occurred before many times in other businesses. But for every business manager there is a first time to solve each of these potential problems. The only question is: Will you solve them at the lowest cost in both time and resources? With our experience of serving over 3,000 clients since 1991, we can help you get to the core issues quickly and implement solutions with dynamic results.
The Succeed! Method creates a proven 16.8% profit margin increase in the first 6 months when you:
· Build Resources and Capabilities
· Maximize Cash Flow and Productivity
· Evaluate Your Market
· Set New Goals
· Develop New Systems
· Finance Alternatives
· Implement Strategy
This is the most effective sequence of activities that emerged from serving over 3,000 clients and completing 30 years of research.
Listen to Entrepreneurs:
“Before we enlisted the expertise of Douglas Hammel, Quick Quotes Scrapbook Company lacked some of the fundamental skills required to operate a successful business. We now have a treasure chest of financial, marketing, and production tools to help navigate the many pitfalls of owning and operating a business. The best part of reading Douglas Hammel is the thoughtful, objective insight that is brought to each section of this book, plus the genuine excitement in seeing us succeed as a company.”
─ Andy Millet, Director of Business Development, Quick Quotes
“Douglas is a wealth of knowledge that is critical for any entrepreneur to gain a better understanding of their business. He makes understanding the fundamentals of business financial health easy and the guidance he imparts has been essential in helping us grow, plan for the future, and weather numerous difficult situations. There are few people whose skillsets are more suited to helping small businesses grow and thrive than Douglas Hammel!"
─ Steve Moore, Director of Marketing, Camp N Car
“We have worked with many business advisors over the last 20 years, struggling to understand and utilize our cashflow sheets as well as other financials, until we met Douglas. His insight and clear communication explain the critical importance of these financial pieces in a way that we now understand. Douglas simplifies problem solving with methods that you will utilize in your business for years to come."
─ Jen & Barclay Calvert, Owners, East-West Apothecary
Read the Introduction to the book below.
One-on-one Business Advising is accomplished in-person in Jefferson County, WA and by Zoom in all other locations. Click CONTACT, above, to request an appointment.
Introduction to the Book
This book is for entrepreneurs already in business who want to maximize their profits and create exceptional results for themselves, their family, and their employees. You might be the owner of a service-based company bidding on one project at a time, an artist with creative product outputs, or a manufacturer with forty employees ready to create a new profit center, but you are not a large enterprise. You are like millions of Americans who chose to start a business because you have a technical skill or an interest in something you thought you could develop into a living, and like most entrepreneurs you left out the planning and opened your doors believing your enthusiasm would be enough. You gained a certain level of prosperity through hard work and determination but now face increasing difficulties and need effective methods for managing your effort.
You may have purchased this book because you feel these difficulties undermining your success but see no clear path to a stable future. You may find yourself in a crisis, a marginally profitable concern, or an expansion. If you’re in a crisis, you may be heavily in debt, short of cash, and losing customers to the competition; if you are in a marginally profitable period or an expansion, you may be uncertain what actions will assure success. The workshops and books entrepreneurs choose as a solution for their difficulties are usually business-planning guides that are well intentioned but present problem solving in absolutely the wrong order, an order that may slow the progress of your existing business.
Business-planning books assume you are not in business yet.
This book assumes you Are.
Once you start seeing customers, your methods must change, even if it’s your opening day.
With that in mind, SUCCEED!™ begins with measures designed to have an immediate and positive effect on your cashflows and then leads you step by step through efficient problem-solving activities and on to the long-term planning that will keep your company healthy. SUCCEED!™ is structured to improve the performance of any business; the sequence is the same for crisis management, profit improvement, recession recovery, or expansion and is a result of observing what works in the real world and improving on it with good, basic practices. If you are ready and willing to look closely at your business with the SUCCEED!™ approach, you should be able to make steady and significant progress and transform your firm into your personal vehicle for success.
This book has been developed to solve problems in a logical sequence. You may want to read the entire book without too much attention to detail, then go back to the beginning and start to make changes — and don’t skip around! The order is important.
Each Chapter in SUCCEED!™ is organized as follows:
An OUTLINE of SUBJECTS to get you oriented
ALL of Us, a highlighted real story included to illustrate entrepreneurs who have discovered challenges in an operating enterprise
HOW-TO INFORMATION to get you solving problems today
EXAMPLES from my advising experience to show you how other entrepreneurs used these methods to become more profitable
PRINCIPLE and WHY, highlighted boxes like the one below to help you remember valuable concepts
PRINCIPLE: If you have an existing business, Business-planning may harm your company.
WHY: Business-planning solves problems in the wrong sequence for an existing firm.
LEADERSHIP LESSONS placed throughout the text to build your skill and insight for managing your teams
TASK ASSIGNMENTS at the end of each section you will need to complete before moving on
Measured, steady progress is the key and remembering that you are not the only entrepreneur who wants to recover from your mistakes and maximize your profits; and it might be comforting to know that big business managers make the same mistakes entrepreneurs make, and for the same reason — lack of skill. The only difference is the size of the financial consequence. To improve your skill, you will need self-motivation and dedication to lead your organization and the people you employ. The transition to increased profit will be time consuming; but things will get better, and, at some point, you will be working smarter, not harder, and become the successful entrepreneur you want to be.
Stay focused, keep your spirits up, and get to work.
Best of luck,
Douglas J. Hammel, MBA
Business Development Specialist
Introduction to the Book
Spreadsheets for Free Download
Amortization
Breakeven
Cashflow - Simple
Cashflow - Units and Personnel
Differential Analysis
Markups and Margins
Open to Buy
Project Costing System
Retirement
"Author"