It's good to know what you have at your disposal. Because when you set a goal, you need to know what you have going for you. And you also need to know where you come up short. It tells us the resources we lack. It tells us what we need to get before we can actually go after our goals. Companies need to do the same thing. Very often. They have a large collection of people, machines, buildings and inventory that they can use to work towards their goals. And while most of the resources I listed for the company are tangible, like people, companies must consider their intangible resources. What are the intangible resources a company may have available to them? Perhaps they have a well known and trusted brand name. Maybe the company has a cool image that customers love. Perhaps the company has excellent credit. Or maybe the company is liked and trusted by important government officials. Like a person, no company has everything. And like a person companies can make the mistake of miscalculating their resources. We've all probably thought at some point we had a strength only to find that others were much better than us. Or perhaps we thought one of our strengths was really valuable only to later find out that no one really cared that we could do a handstand. It can be embarrassing when we discover that something we thought was a resource might actually be a weakness or a liability. In business. Being aware of your resources is vital in knowing what you have, and knowing what you need. It's critical to know that you have something special, something that could differentiate your company from the competition, or something that could be used to develop new products for reaching new customers. Knowing your resources is also vital in selling your company's potential investors. And in our cutthroat world, where the battle to get talented people to join your company gets more intense each day. Companies often attract employees by listing all the positive things the company has going for itself, basically by listing its most valuable resources. And as our world changes at such a rapid pace, a company will have a hard time staying competitive if they aren't aware of what they have, have been what they lack. Which of these Does your company have? Any one of these might be the thing, your company will need to get an edge. Any one of these might be the difference between being prepared to change or getting swallowed up by change. So let's first consider your goals. What do you want to do? Do you want to write a book? Start a tech company? Do you want to develop a video game? Now let's take stock of your resources? What are the resources you have at your disposal? What are the strange things you have that someone else might not have? What are your differentiators? Then ask yourself, what are the things you lack to achieve your goal? Okay, now it's time to get someone to believe in you. If you wanted me to invest in you, how would you try and sell me? Sure, having a good idea would be nice. But if you did have some valuable resources at your disposal, I'd probably feel a little nervous about investing in you to make that idea real resources. That's what makes you valuable. So you want to start business well, what kind of business I'm not talking about what you might make, sell or service. Instead, I'm talking about the ownership who will own and run your business. Let's go through some of the common forms of business ownership. Let's start with a sole proprietorship, one owner, with all of the management power, one owner that can claim all the profits. They carry all the risk and get all the rewards. But add more owners then we have a partnership. Each owner is a partner each shares in the profit. Do all partners run the firm, not necessarily a partner. That's actually in managing the firm is a general partner, a partner that invests money, but is otherwise not active in running the company. They're a limited partner. Perhaps a partnership wants to grow, but they need more cash to expand. The present owners can sell some of their shares in the company to investors. The company is now a corporation, those investors their stockholders. Therefore, they're the owners and they can easily sell their shares at any time. Corporations are legal entities in effect, they have legal rights just like a person, which means the corporation is responsible for anything that might go wrong. The investors at worst can only lose the value of their stock. But who runs the company? For a corporation? The owners, that is the stockholders they can elect a board of directors that board can choose the top executives in the company, but the Board of Directors cannot influence day to day activities in the company. What does this mean? Well, to a certain degree in a corporation, stockholders, own and managers manage. There are many other nuances in trying to choose the best ownership model for your organization. But hopefully, now you know some of the basics associated with the most common ownership models. And hopefully, you will be able to consider the important issues and ask the right questions as you move forward in developing your organization. What are the products you love to buy? The ones you love to shop for the ones you research electronic? Next cars, furniture, or maybe it's clothes. For people that love clothing, what makes money a great purchase what would make for a great shirt or dress? Perhaps it's the design of the clothing. What do you like classic, modern, outrageous, but to be truly great, it needs high quality fabrics. This is something you will want to wear again and again. And it'll lead to survive getting washed. Perhaps you value excellent workmanship, solid stitching, consistent sizing. Not all of us have an unlimited clothes budget, though. So the price will also be important to the customer. And the company needs to make a profit, so there'll be concerned with their costs. For some of us, we want something from a brand we trust or perhaps a brand that others will admire. So marketing and branding will be important. We can't visit every store online retailer, we don't visit every fashion block. So the clothing company has to get their clothing so that we can see it. So many things need to go around for us to find this one special article of clothing. And if they want us to buy from them again and again, they'll need to consistently satisfy us in all of these categories over and over again. It's no wonder that the most successful and progressive global companies value cross functional teams. So while you may expect luxury brands like Coach Chanel, Gucci, and Prada to be filled with dozens of great designers, our real business person understands that a successful company in an industry where creativity and innovation are required. A successful company needs cross functional teams, small, well managed teams made up of very different people with very different skills. So not only does a company like Chanel have great designers, but they also have people skilled in marketing, purchasing, manufacturing, finance, engineering, strategy, and probably a number of other areas. Each of those functional experts brings different skills, different problem solving techniques. Each is creative in their own way, each judges success in a different way. This is why companies like Apple, Nike and Lexus have such a long track record of success. Each of these companies values people that understand the importance of product quality, innovation, design, marketing, and of course, profit. As you consider your company. Its strengths its weaknesses. Consider the respect and attention paid to all the different functions in your company. Be sure your company gives a voice to a very group of leaders, they can see mistakes you wouldn't consider. They can also expose you to opportunities you would have never known about. Long term success takes a true commitment to cross functional teams. cost, quality, and speed are all related to company flexibility. For example, when you buy a car, you're given certain options vehicle color, leather or fabric interior, electronics navigation and media options, tire options, but they don't ask you the type of battery you want in your car. They don't ask you what kinds of spark plugs for your engine. They also don't ask what types of oil and antifreeze to use in your car. Why? Well, the company is trying to balance a number of things. They want to give you choices so the car feels special, so the car feels like it's yours. But they can't let you choose everything because offering the customer choices requires extra time extra inventory. And it's possible the customer really doesn't care. If the company offers you 10 different tire options for one car, they would probably need to carry inventory of all 10 tires, lots of inventory and low volumes, higher per unit prices from the supplier Plus, your workers now have to become more versatile. At the same time. When companies offer lots of options, customers might be willing to pay a premium to get exactly what they want. Also, when a company offers more options, it's possible to attract a wider market of customers. Now we have cars for people that like different colors for people that want luxurious leather interiors, and also for parents that would rather have cloth interiors that are easier to maintain. We also have a car that appeals to people that just want a car with basic stereo options, as well as families that want the very best media options for those long trips with the kids. So as your company develops new products and services, consider all of the possible options. Which options does the customer value most for each feature? How many options Will you need to offer? And are they willing to pay the premium for that option? Does that make your market bigger will offering that option deliver a profit at the same time? Which features are customers willing to accept a standard, standard features are easy to mass produce. If materials are needed, you can buy them in bulk for a good price. And fewer options might make it easier for a customer decide whether or not they want to purchase your product or service. The next time you go anywhere, a restaurant, a coffee shop, the post office, the grocery store, consider all the choices they let you make. Consider the ones they don't and then try and think about how the number of choices impacts their cost, their quality and their speed. In business, pretty much everything customers enjoy requires some materials. A great meal required delicious ingredients, a movie experience required comfortable seats. Even your massage was made better with fragrant nourishing oils. Companies must recognize that every material purchase is an opportunity to improve the product or service provided. Procurement and materials management are the segments of the company that suppliers, purchase the materials and then make sure that this inventory is stored and used effectively. If done right procurement and materials management can improve customer satisfaction, they can contribute to the company's profitability. And by partnering with reliable suppliers, they can help the company develop a stable supply chain that can be counted on to continuously deliver high quality products and services to the consumer to others straight these points. Let's use a cell phone as our example product. And actually, since we're buying parts for the cell phone, let's consider just one part of the cell phone the battery. What does our company need to think about? Let's first consider the consumer. What does the consumer expect. They want value, a long lasting battery at a reasonable price. They probably also want a battery that is safe, a small, lightweight battery that won't overheat. If this is what the customer values and if those are the things that we advertised, the battery in some way needs to fulfill the customer's expectations. A great battery helps make our phone better, a better phone will sell more units and thus our revenues go up. Now that we made the customers happy, let's remember that revenues alone won't bring us a profit. We need to consider our company's needs the company needs to control costs. While we're buying great batteries for our customers, we have to know what the total cost of purchasing these batteries will be. I'm not just talking about the per unit cost, you must consider the total cost of these batteries. The cost of storing batteries cost associated with theft and damage, the cost of negotiating and placing orders from battery companies and don't forget that someone needs to pay for the delivery of those batteries. So if keeping costs low is important to your company, you will need to remember, inventory costs include the cost to buy hold and order inventory. That brings us to the final party involved in our battery purchase the supplier. The battery supplier will ultimately dictate battery cost and the quality of the battery. But they also impact our cell phone company in other ways. If they can fill orders quickly, we can keep low inventory levels. Even if run out of stock, it won't take long to get a new shipment. For that kind of service though, we'll probably have to pay a higher price. On the other hand, a slower supplier may have lower per unit prices. But we'll need to carry more inventory since we have to place orders early just to be sure they'll be able to fill them before we run out of batteries. This takes care of our battery needs today. But how about the next generation of cell phones. We'll need stronger batteries that fit in our new phone design. And we still need to control our costs. In modern business suppliers our business partners when we sell more phones, they sell more batteries. On the other hand, if they make batteries better, we may sell more phones. Because of this suppliers and innovative manufacturers must work together to understand the customer develop new technologies and also to develop manufacturing and logistics strategies. Whether your company is buying cell phone batteries, tomatoes, theater seats or even massage oils. It needs to consider the customer the supplier and our company as you had Back to work today. Ask yourself these simple questions. Are the customers happy with the materials they buy? Or use? Do we consider our supplier partner? Our suppliers involved in helping us develop better products and services? And do we consider the cost of holding inventory? Or just the cost of purchasing? If your answer to any of those questions is no, you're likely missing an opportunity to maximize your company's potential. Look around you look at your stuff. How is your stuff made? Which items were made well, and which items were not which companies do you always trust to make good stuff, your favorite car clothing and electronics companies, they can only stay your favorites if they can deliver high quality goods over a long period of time. Good Manufacturing and quality control are vital components of building a global brand that customers are loyal to. So let's take a look at some of the primary issues manufacturing managers think about every day. And let's use a car company as our example. So once they have a design for a car, they need to know the demand. How many cars will be needed each month? Perhaps it's a brand new model. So we might not sell too many the first year. But forecasts tell us sales will grow significantly next year. So just how big should our facility be? Remember, a facility that's too big will be a waste of money.