Entrepreneur Bio: Sam Walton

By Franklin Skribbit


Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx was born into a major entrepreneurial family. His legacy and innovation have left him as a legend for entrepreneurs trying to make it in the business. There are hundreds of things that we can learn from his life but here are some ones that will help you build your business.

While increased sales certainly compose the goals and accomplishments of every successful business, for small business owners especially the reliance upon increased sales to generate more profits can not only be faulty logic but likewise an outright a business killer.

Fred wasn't afraid of getting training from the best. He went off to the Marine Corps in order to understand some of the best delivery procedures in the world. Everything he did was with that vision of an eventual overnight commercial delivery service to the world. He knew it was possible and he wasn't going to let anyone tell him he wasn't. When you are getting trained though, it takes patience and persistence in order to get to you end-all goal.

The profit margins, or the total profit gained off of every sale of a product or service, for a business can be increased in a number of ways without having to tamper with the existing structure of the business model. This means that small companies can begin to make more profits without having to change existing models for gaining new customers, without increasing sales, without changing current implemented systems, without hiring or firing more staff, and without altering overhead costs.

While each of the above components of the business model may indeed need improvement and continued evolution as the company grows, the fiscal foundation that these improvements can be made upon can be built by increased profits from extended profit margins. The steps to increasing profit margins can be broken into x simple steps.

The first step is to truly understand what one's gross profit margins are, or how much money is being brought in on every sale. Calculating all the expenses with the total cost of each service or product offered will give an accurate calculation of one's gross profit margin; but such costs as overhead and employee costs do not figure into the profit margin so exclude these and similar expenses for now as the goal is to increase the profit margin itself and not a total balancing of the bookkeeping.

What happened was that there were a number of strikes at UPS that opened the door for FedEx to take on the surplus of packages needing to be shipped. This meant that employees had to work almost twice as much as they were before. With the investment and loyalty that was in place due to great management strategies, FedEx grew almost overnight.

Another step to increase profit margins that may be difficult for some small business owners to initiate is to increase the prices on products or services.

Whatever level of management or business you are at, make sure you apply some of these great skills that Fred had. You will be sure to see a huge amount of growth and unity. Most of all, you will see your employees take on challenges in a much more innovative way.




About the Author: