A few years ago we started focusing on our break-evennumber. We identified that number as the amount of new/newrevenue we would need on a daily basis to hit our growthgoal. We anticipated our residual income would be flat, butfactored in the loss of any large accounts that occurred on aweekly basis. We tracked this daily and every person in thecompany knew if we were hitting goal.

So how do you determine your break-even number? First,analyze your revenues. Are you a $1.2 million revenuefirm? Excellent: your monthly number is $100,000, yourweekly is $25,000, and your daily number is $5,000. Trackingyour daily orders or transactions using most software solutions isan easy task these days. Set up a procedure that at 3:30 p.m. eachday sends the “number” to everybody in the company to know howyour company is doing.

That's step one, but we took it one step further. Because ourrevenues are flat from year to year, we wanted to focus on a growthgoal of 12 percent. We took our annual revenue times a 1.12factor and then broke down our 12 percent growth over a 12-monthperiod. I would track the financials on a monthly basisto ensure that we were on track in a “big picture” way, but Iempowered one young man in our company to tally our daily sales andreport “our number.”

People want to be on a winning team. Many business ownershide the financials from everyone for fear that they might want araise or, God forbid, know how much the owner is making. I'vealways been very open with our financials with our staff. Whenwe're doing well, they know it; when things are getting tight, wetalk about it.

Since 1996, we have been a small, profitable company withrevenues starting at $250,000 and today hover around $2million. I think one of our keys to slow and steady growth hasbeen keeping our staff educated about our financial status.

There is a great book by Jack Stack about a concept called“gainsharing” (“A Stake in the Outcome: Building a Culture of Ownership for theLong-Term Success of Your Business”).

It's an amazing story with a happy ending that has turned into anational movement.

The basic concept is that if you need certain revenue to manageyour company and earn a profit of 10 percent, you candetermine what that number is. Every dollar generated overthat target should be shared with all employees. You can playwith the percentage of company take vs. employee take, butultimately, if you make a dollar more than you need, Stackrecommends pushing the money back to the employees.

I have a friend that ran this complete system in his company,the employees became empowered, he opened up another location inHolland (the country, not the city) and they are doing some amazingthings.

Business is a game. Figure out your breakeven number, leteveryone know what it is and start having some fun!