What Business Are You Actually Building?

<p>Subscribe to receive weekly emails https://aurik.com/businessbuilders/Follow on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavlophitidis/You can buy a good business, protect the team, keep the factory running and still put its future at risk if you never decide what business you are actually building.In this Business Builders episode, I work with two operators who completed a management buyout of a manufacturing business.They preserved the team, brands, manufacturing capability and customer relationships they inherited.But preserving a business is one job. Choosing what it must become next is another.The business has two possible growth models.• It can lean into contract manufacturing, winning a small number of large customers and using the factory for higher-volume production.• Or it can build its own brands, choosing specific customer segments and developing a repeatable sales engine around them.Both models can work. But they demand different customers, sales conversations and capabilities.We chose the second path. That means choosing the customer segment the business wants to own, turning one senior expert&#39;s technical selling knowledge into a repeatable playbook, and using contract manufacturing as supporting volume rather than allowing a few large customers to determine the future.The principle is simple:If you want the freedom of your own brand, you need a sales system as deliberate as the factory behind it.This week, ask yourself whether you are still running the model that got you here because it feels responsible to protect it, or whether you have clearly chosen the model that can take you where you want to go.Responsibility is not only preserving what works, sometimes it means making the choice that allows the business to outgrow its past.Subscribe to Business Builders for practical, operator-level insights on business growth, positioning, sales systems, leadership and building an Asset of Value™.Chapters00:00 Ownership is only the beginning00:37 From employees to business owners01:16 Preserving the business vs choosing its future01:52 Where the growth constraint sits02:28 Two very different growth models03:14 Why they chose to build their own brands03:48 Three actions to build the sales engine04:32 Are you protecting the past?#BusinessBuilders #BusinessGrowth #Manufacturing #SalesStrategy #BusinessStrategy #Leadership #PavloPhitidis</p>