---
title: ✈️  Your business works like a plane
---

If these six distinct parts of your business don't work together in proportion, your business is likely to crash and burn.

| View this email in your browser Old Man Winter is a newsletter that shares valuable insights and actionable ideas to help entrepreneurs and small businesses survive the elements and grow their businesses.   If you enjoy this newsletter, please consider sharing it with others via: LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, or email. Don't want these awesome emails? Unsubscribe here.   Today's Topics: It's a Bird, it's a Plane: It's...your Business? Tweet, tweet: OMG! Jack used the "H" word! Masters of Scale: From $0 to a Gazillion   THE MILE HIGH CLUB How a business really works It may be hard to fathom, but many professionals don't really know what a business is or how one works.   A business is a for-profit entity that solves problems for paying customers. It thrives when its team members make good decisions.   Understanding how a business works helps you make good decisions and increases your economic value in the open market. It can also help you start your own business or run somebody else's.   No two businesses are exactly the same. However, all businesses share a few key components that, when understood by team members, helps businesses increase revenue and profits.   A business works like a plane In order for a plane to take off and fly, six distinct parts have to work together. If these parts don't work in proportion to each other, the plane will crash.   Cockpit personnel must establish and communicate the goals of the flight.   The wings must be big enough to create lift.   The right and left engines must produce enough thrust to move the plane forward.   The body must be light enough to be lifted by the engines and wings.   And last, but not least, the plane needs to have enough fuel to stay in the air. The Cockpit: Leadership   The cockpit is the part of a plane where data is transmitted and clearly communicated to ensure the plane flies stably.   The cockpit personnel, as it relates to your business, includes middle management, executive leadership, and/or board members.   Your business's leadership team is responsible for: clarifying and communicating the company's mission establishing key lead and lag measures managing and developing talent The Wings: Products and Services   The wings of a plane give it lift. They represent the products and services you sell.   Without profitable products and services, your business can't get off the ground.   The Right Engine: Marketing   A dual-engine plane can fly using only one of its engines, but when both engines are firing on all cylinders, the plane moves with greater thrust and lift.   The right engine of the plane represents your marketing team.   Your business's marketing efforts come first. Even before sales. Without marketing, your sales team will not have a clear message out in the marketplace that engages customers and backs up their sales efforts.   The Left Engine: Sales   A plane's wings won't create greater lift without some kind of engine selling your products and propelling the business forward.    The left engine of the plane represents your sales team.   Your business's sales efforts increase revenue so the business can grow and scale.   The Body: Overhead   The body is the largest part of the plane. It's also the whole point of the plane. It exists to solve the problem of getting people and cargo from one place to another.   The body of the plane represents your business's overhead, which includes salaries, benefits, rent, office supplies, etc.   Overhead exists to solve your customers' problem. In exchange for solving problems, team members get money, healthcare, and other benefits.    The Fuel Tank: Capital and Cash Flow   A plane without fuel will crash no matter how efficient its other parts are.   Fuel represents your business's cash flow.   When a business runs out of cash, it crashes and everyone onboard the body of the business loses their job.   The goal of every business should be to operate with a positive cash flow. It is the most important factor leading to a business's success.   How to keep your business flying   For starters, you must offer a profitable product or service that customers want.   Then, your marketing and sales efforts have to be strong enough to sell the product while focusing on keeping overhead light so your plane isn't bogged down.   Lastly, you must have enough cash to pay your bills.   Here are a few tips to help keep your business flying high: Resist adding costs that don't increase the bottom line. Costs can make the body of the plane too heavy and risk the entire body's job security. Make sure your products' profit margins are high enough to cover the overhead necessary to produce and sell them. Profit margins must be high enough for the product to cover the cost of itself and overhead, as well as provide job security for the entire team. Get weekly marketing and sales reports that reveal whether these efforts are performing effectively. Marketing and sales efforts must lead to revenue generation that offset the costs of overhead. They don't? Time for new marketing campaigns that do. Increase the efficiency of production, sales, and marketing. Just like a good plane engineer, business leaders make sure the activity-to-output ratios of the business's divisions are high so capital and cash flows go further. Like flying a plane, operating a business is no easy task. However, seeing both the whole and its parts allows you to better understand how to lead yourself and help others create and sustain a business that grows in revenue and profit.    As always, stay alert, stay educated, and most importantly, stay cool.   Have a great week!   Talk soon, Old Man Winter   Source: Business Made Simple   WHAT WE'RE READING 🤖 A Robot is Taking Plates Off of Servers' Workloads: Short order cook? Bartender? Janitor? Yes...and they never ask for a raise. But they also break down.   👀 Standard AI Launches New Autonomous Checkout Experience: The technology is able to accurately identify products picked by customers and bill them automatically.   🏭 It Would Cost $1 Trillion to Move Global Supply Chains Out of China: The long term gains of supply chain decoupling could be worth it though.   TWITTER TALK No, not the "H" word! Twitter and Square CEO Jack Dorsey posted this tweet last week and the twittersphere went ape sh!t.   The replies are both enlightening and downright scary.   Who knew "Hyperinflation" was such a bad word?   Masters of Scale is a podcast hosted by original PayPal Mafia member and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. In each episode, Reid theorizes with legendary leaders and shows how companies grow from zero to a gazillion.   Listen on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app here.   QUOTE OF THE DAY   PRODUCTS       PARTS       CONTACT You're subscribed to the Old Man Winter newsletter from Mr. Winter, Inc. Don't want these incredible emails anymore? Unsubscribe 800-327-3371 Mr. Winter, 8800 NW 77 CT, Medley, FL 33166, 800-327-3371 Manage preferences |
| --- |