Grow Your Business without Driving Yourself Crazy
Tools to tackle any barrier to growth, profitability, or ease of operation
Michael Van Horn
#3 in the series.
The bigger you get, the harder it can be to grow yet further. This is the “paradox of growth” for small businesses. It hits every kind of business: consultants and personal practitioners, professional service firms, retail stores, general contractors, small manufacturers. It hits fledgling businesses and long-established businesses, and businesses ranging in size from one person up to a hundred or more employees.
This workbook lays out an approach to tackle any barrier to growing your business with exercises to help you apply it to common situations.
Topics covered
Barriers.
What drives you crazy about growing your business? What gets in the way of achieving your long-term business objectives?
Your vision of business success.
Where are you going? How can you anchor yourself in your long-term goals to overcome your barriers?
Your “sweet spot" of success?
What do you love doing? What are you best at? What will people pay well for? Where do these three overlap for you?
Culture of growth.
How to shift from a culture of smallness to a culture of growth and profitability.
The Problem Solvent.
The five elements needed to overcome any barrier to growth.
Recapture your time.
Where you should focus your time and energy to pursue your long-term objectives. How to leverage your effort. How to leverage your creativity.
Work on yourself.
How do your management practices, habits, attitudes, and beliefs get in the way of achieving your objectives and overcoming your barriers to growth?
Get the best help & support.
What is the highest skilled person you could bring in to free you up to focus on tasks needed to grow your business? How can you help your people do a better job for you?
Skills and capabilities.
What skills do you need to upgrade to grow your company?
Systems and procedures.
Where does your growing business need better systems? How can you get the “secret knowledge” out of your head?
Workplace, equipment, materials.
What changes in your workplace, equipment, and materials will improve productivity and effectiveness and reduce stress and errors?
Tackle your top barrier.
Apply the Problem Solvent to your toughest challenges.
Warm up exercise
From the workbook
What drives you crazy about growing your business?
Do any of these apply to you?
You can’t find and keep good people
“I can’t find good people to hire.” “I’ll train a good person; then they quit and become my competitor.”
Only you can do the job
“No-one can do this job but me. I can do it so much faster and better than anyone else can. It takes more effort to manage my employees than to do the job myself."
You have a “culture of smallness”
As your company grows, outmoded systems and ways of doing business keep you from growing further.
Growth is costly
“Sure, our revenue has gone up, but the amount I take home has stayed the same, even shrunk.”
You have reached a plateau
You grew rapidly up to a certain level, then growth tailed off. No matter how hard you try, you just can’t break through.
You don’t know how to get there
You would like to grow, but it gets fuzzy and murky when you figure out what that actually means for you, or how to go about it.
You have no reality on getting there
You can’t envision yourself running a company as large as you say you want
Growth is dangerous, painful, unpleasant
“As we grow, I find I’ve become a manager and administrator. I don’t enjoy managing and I have less time to do the work I love.”