How do I grow my business?
A question that many business owners and entrepreneurs have asked themselves is – How do I grow my business? Usually at 3am when they wake up thinking about cash flow!
This question needs to be taken apart and divided into three elements:
Firstly, you need to know exactly where you are now in your business growth journey.
Secondly, you need to know where you want to go with your business.
Thirdly, you need a plan of how to get there.
If you’ve got all three of those nailed and you’re working on delivering the last two every day, then quite frankly you can probably stop reading right now and continue what you’re doing.
If, however, you have not considered any of these elements, then it’s time to grab a piece of paper and a pen and get thinking and then writing.
Where Do We Start?
The first thing we do at Tricres is finding out where you are now. This is the plain, sometimes ugly truth of where the business is at. You will have a financial record of where you’re at and let’s hope it’s in profit or at least breaking even. Or at the worst, in research and development with a healthy projection of revenues and profits ahead of you.
The next pieces of information are often overlooked by business owners because they spend too much time on the financials. You absolutely need to know where you are financially. But do not make the mistake of only focusing on that aspect of your business. The money you make or are projected to make is only ever the outcome of the decisions you make about the way your business is run and where you’re heading. The money is the topping on the cake, it’s not the cake itself.
Cake analogies to one side, Tricres have developed a neat questionnaire to help you pinpoint precisely where you are on your business journey.
We call it the Growth Accelerator Audit. When you go through the questions and audit your business, you will be able to clearly identify the areas to work on in order to accelerate your growth.
Here it is. We recommend taking the full course (available on Fuel My Business) for the full picture.
Now How Do I Grow My Business?
Once you know where you are right now, it’s a great deal easier to work out where you’d like to be heading. Heading on your way to growing your business.
A bit like an aeroplane without a set destination, your business must have a clear vision of where it’s heading. Without that clear vision, when the wind blows and the storms come it will be blown off course and won’t be able to get back on track. Just like an aeroplane, your vision for your business is similar to autopilot. Set the course to where you’re heading and when the storms do come, you will be able to easily get back on track.
Apparently, aeroplanes spend most of their time off-course and the autopilot makes constant adjustments to keep the plane on the right flight path. As you run a business, you absolutely know that your business is knocked off track daily. So having this vision (autopilot) set is a great way to keep going in the right direction.
A tiny note. When there’s a dirty great big hurricane, make sure you re-set the autopilot to avoid it. If the landscape, economy, law or something changes to dramatically impact your vision, then for goodness sake, change it to suit the new conditions.
You might be wondering how you set a clear vision for your business? Some people are lucky enough to have this from day one. When we started Tricres, we didn’t do anything until we’d got our vision nailed. Some businesses need to think about this as they trade. Either because it’s something they’ve never thought of or because the landscape has changed so dramatically they need a re-think.
Whichever way, we’ve got courses dedicated to this. They’re called The Horizon Model and Culture as a Foundation for Growth
Back to accelerating growth…
To re-cap: You now know where you are because you’ve completed the Growth Accelerator Audit. You now know where you’re going because you have a clear Vision.
You will have noticed that neither of these things are two minutes jobs. Both require time, attention and thought to get it right for your business. This is also an important point to make – this is about YOUR business, not your neighbour’s business, your competitor’s business or anyone else’s business. This stuff is unique to you and your business so forget what everyone else is doing for the time being. Focus on the thing you control i.e. your business.
If you have a senior management team or board, then you need to get them involved in these activities. It’s no use you coming up with all the ideas yourself and expecting everyone else just to ‘buy into’ them. You must engage with the people who make decisions and take responsibility and accountability in your business. This allows them to feel ownership over the Vision and are committed to delivering it.
Get the Right Strategies in Place
Finally, you need strategies to get you there.
Happily, Tricres have designed a course and a model for that too. It can be quite daunting to sit down with a blank sheet of paper or blank screen and be expected to write a strategy from scratch. It’s easier when you’ve got last year’s strategy to build upon. But if you’re a young business or you’ve never done this before, it can seem like quite a large mountain to climb.
Fear not, our Habits and Housekeeping model walks you through this task and makes it feel like a stroll in the park.
Ok, so it’s not quite as easy as a stroll in the park. But our course holds your hand as you write the strategies and gives you a structure to work with and build upon.
We also give you the areas of your business where you’re going to need strategies and why it’s important. More of that in the next blog.
The partners at Tricres want you to succeed. We want you to learn from our hard work, the mistakes we’ve made and the success we’ve achieved for ourselves and our clients. The very purpose of our existence is to make it happen for you. So use what we’ve created for your benefit and for the benefit of those people associated with your business. You’ll be glad you did.
Happy accelerating people. You’re doing a great job in building wealth for yourself and those around you. Keep sharing the product or service you offer to as many people as possible for the right price and you’ll find your wealth grow.
