How To Leverage Your Time And Resources For Explosive Growth In Business
About fifty percent of all business startups fail within the first five years. Do I have your attention yet? If you are reading this article, you must be looking to create growth and stability in your entrepreneurial pursuits, no matter what year you and your business are in.
There is no tried and true pathway to success--the road to business stability takes several forms as business owners learn to adapt or fail. One of the critical errors in judgment that new business owners make is thinking that they can do the majority of the work themselves.
While this may work when your operation is still small, you will inevitably reach a point where the demand for your amazing products and services is greater than what you are able to provide in a timely and efficient manner. In these early stages of building a business, customer service and satisfaction are essential to being able to form a loyal client base. If you are losing business because you are unable to fill orders or respond to customers quickly, you will find your business disintegrating, and you’ll be shaking your head in frustration, wondering what happened.
We all start with a passion for the products, ideas, and services that we desire to create for the good of mankind. Keeping that passion ignited as you perform day to day functions of your business will motivate you to keep moving forward, especially when things get difficult or challenging. In order to create sustainable and manageable growth, however, you’ll need to employ a few other strategies so that you are poised and primed for success.
I want explosive growth. Do I need to make massive changes when I’m just starting out?
Many business owners adopt the notion that in order to see BIG growth, they need to employ BIG changes. This is not necessarily true. If you learn to leverage certain aspects of your business operations and maximize their effectiveness, you will soon see that small and consistent changes are even more impactful than big business moves.
Millions of things are competing for our attention when running a business. Putting your focus on small picture things that others could easily complete for you instead of focusing on your long-term growth strategies is a common mistake that small business owners make. Finding key people and organizations to do some of the daily grind operations consistently well will free you up to make more significant decisions that will not only impact you, but those who work for you.
Let’s do this!
Just what are the strategies that you should employ to achieve explosive growth in your business? What have you done to move yourself in that direction already? What are you willing to do to change and adapt to your new goals? Most importantly, what are you willing to take your own hands off of and trust to others so that you can focus on some of the big picture items?
Most companies with exponential growth in the first five years of business experienced a steep learning curve--realizing quite quickly what the focus of expansion should be, and what pitfalls and traps to avoid while moving forward. Adaptation and change are essential to business success; as the owner, you must model this and be willing to create systems that sustain and support themselves while your efforts focus on expansion and stability. How can we “let go” of some of the desire for control that led us to entrepreneurship in the first place, and embrace the concept of teamwork when building an empire?
Automation
We’re not asking you to run out and buy a bunch of robots to assemble your product, but we are asking you to take a good hard look at operations, both physical and virtual, and determine what functions can be automated to make your business run more smoothly.
Creating systems of automated support that can function without your intervention will allow you to work smarter, not harder. Examples of systems that can easily be automated include email marketing campaigns, text blast promotions, social media postings, automated responses to common questions, and even customer service phone calls that point to specific solutions. While you’ll want to keep informed as to how these automated systems are impacting your bottom line, you’ll be surprised at how much more time you’ll find in your day just by freeing yourself of these smaller responsibilities. Guess what? There is most likely some automated software out there to assess the effectiveness of automated systems. How would it feel to assess your automations automatically?
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is simply hiring a trusted outside source or individual to manage an aspect of your business. Outsourcing has a number of benefits, which include:
Adding additional expertise to an area of your business that you may be lacking
Access to additional specialized equipment or facilities that you would like to use, but not necessarily purchase
Contracting seasonal work or work for specific periods of time where demand is excessive and the need to employ additional services is necessary
Sporadic work where there is no need to hire full-time employees
Work that would require full-time employees that would end up being too expensive; in this case, it would be more efficient to outsource.
When it becomes necessary to minimize overhead cost in order to maximize profit, companies turn to outsourcing to fill this need. It frees up valuable time and energy of key leaders in your business to focus on core values rather than on non-core work. In addition, outsourcing brings in a level of expertise to certain activities that you and your employees might know little about. This reduces the cost and time that you would need to invest in additional training to keep employees up to speed.
Optimizing
Day to day management and long-term goal setting for your business can always be improved, no longer how long you’ve been in the biz. Improving the efficiency and impact of your business requires that you have all the resources in place to handle growth when it comes your way.
Using a solid strategy to improve your business is going to result in long-term gains, provided that you affix your nose to the grindstone and put some consistent systems in place that will optimize its function. Here are some things to consider when optimizing your business for growth and expansion:
Think “lean.” Continue to streamline the process by which you deliver products and services to your customers, including any effort that is required on your end to create and deliver, while adding value and customer service that results in repeat business time and time again. By implementing best business practices that add value and eliminating operations that don’t, a company makes its overall operations more efficient.
Think “quality.” Reducing the concepts of waste and rework and seek to improve results, save money, and create a unique and desirable customer experience that people will seek out.
Think “forecasting.” In order to run more efficiently, a company must not only predict what demand will be, but they also must be able to provide the supply. Many companies find themselves with demands that are too great for what they are able to supply, or worse yet, warehouses full of inventory that is not selling simply because their products and services are not in demand. Investing some time and energy on forecasting, market research, and making predictions pertinent to projected sales will ensure that you strike a healthy balance between expenditures, sales, and revenue.
Think “assessment.” In setting yourself up to weather the changes in the market, you must be willing to continually look at all aspects of your business, assessing their effectiveness, their quality, and the necessity of their use in building your growing empire. If something is working, do more of the same. If something is no longer working, either change it or throw it out. Keeping an objective point of view when making these changes will ensure that you continue making decisions that are in the best interests of the business and those who have worked with you to achieve your success.
Looking to expand? We can help you!
How are you leveraging your time, resources, and talents to make the most of your business? Do you have the knowledge and expertise that are needed to maximize systems, or do you find yourself stressed out with endless “to do” lists that keep getting longer and longer as your business picks up? Do you fear that, at some point, your business and your dream will outgrow YOU?
We can help! Our passion is creating streamlined businesses and top notch marketing strategies to ensure your continued success. With our customized optimization and marketing packages, we allow you to take your hands off the steering wheel and breathe for a bit. Don’t have time to assess your online footprint and SEO data? We do that, and we do it better than anyone else. Let us help you create the business of your dreams using our state of the art technologies and industry insider secrets that drive you straight to Google’s first-page results list! Contact www.maxgroupbusiness.com today to create exponential growth!