the challenge and opportunity of growing your business

by Julie Keyes, RFN Academy Instructor

At the best of times, growing a business is difficult and leading a small business can be more stressful than other things society typically deems challenging – raising children, maintaining healthy relationships or finding work/life balance, for example. Nowadays, thanks to COVID-19, being a business owner is about as stressful as it gets. Since the pandemic started, small business owners report their daily worry and daily stress have increased by 59% and 36%, respectively.

So many business owners have good ideas but have difficulties scaling their companies for growth. The few that do succeed, do so with unmatched focus, discipline and unconventional thinking. Although it takes more than just this to achieve success in business, especially nowadays, there are five essential principles you can begin implementing right away as you begin your journey toward growing your business:

1. Timing is Everything

The timing of your product or service must be right in the marketplace. You will need to choose to either wait for the market to catch up (requiring the resources to survive during that period, and accepting the risk of emerging competition), or you’ll need to adjust your offering to something more palatable to the market’s current readiness.

Smaller businesses have the advantage of being able to make choices and implement changes without the exhaustive process and conflicting points of view that slow down major corporations. You need to anticipate your market and customers’ needs and constantly innovate to stay ahead. This requires agile leadership, resilience and a willingness to fail—and recognize that failure quickly enough to adapt and move forward.

2. Brand, Brand, Brand

Today’s economy requires business leaders to create positive memories for customers and partners, or customers will turn to a competitor in search of a better experience. If you want to create a scalable business, you have to understand just how crucial it is to build brand equity. The emotional attachment that links customers to your product, as opposed to any other, translates into sustainable growth.

Here are some basic rules to connect, shape, influence, and lead with your brand:

• Choose your target audience. The surest road to product failure is to try to be all things to all people.

• Connect with the public. Your objective is to make your audience feel an emotional attachment to your brand.

• Inspire and influence your audience. An inspirational brand message is far more influential than one that just highlights product feature functions.

• Reinforce the brand image within your company. Make sure employees at every level of your organization work and behave in a way that reinforces your brand image.

3. Scale Your Sales

Creating a unique product and a unique brand isn’t enough. It takes repeatable sales processes to create a scalable business. It is one thing to sign up a few customers; it is another thing entirely to identify, design and implement repeatable sales and customer delivery processes. You’ve created a repeatable and scalable sales model when:

• You can add new hires at the same productivity level as yourself or your sales leader.

• You can increase the sources of your customer leads on a consistent basis.

• Your sales conversion rate and revenue can be consistently forecasted.

• Your cost to acquire a new customer is significantly less than the amount you can earn from that customer over time.

• Your customers get the right product in the right place at the right time.

A repeatable sales model builds the platform to scale. Like the search for product/market fit, it can take major experimentation/R&D to find a repeatable and scalable sales model.

4. Embrace Technology

If a small business can identify a genuine need, technology likely exists to fulfill that need both locally and globally. There are few barriers to entry in an age where anyone with a wireless connection can cheaply and quickly access the enabling technologies needed to execute their business model. It comes down to creating the right operating blueprint that connects the dots between your business model and the application of accessible technologies.

A recent report from Wilmington Trust found nearly one third of business owners increased their investment in technology solutions (e.g., e-commerce, social media, digital advertising, updating technology equipment/infrastructure, etc.) during the pandemic and nearly 60% of small business owners who did so are seeing tangible benefits.

5. De-Stress for Success

Since the start of the pandemic, concepts like “burnout” and “languishing” have become increasingly familiar to employees and employers alike. In a time when the stressors can be relentless, it can feel impossible as an owner to create a culture of wellbeing that puts people and their mental health first. But just because it’s hard, doesn’t mean it can’t be done. If you (or your employees) are not happy, healthy and motivated, you can’t create a business model that provides a positive market experience.

Take time to explore what leaves you feeling mentally and physically well. Ask yourself when recently you’ve felt at your best. Was it engaging in hobbies or activities or spending time with family? Whatever it is, make time in your busy schedule for them, even if you don’t believe you have the time to spare. Investing in your own health will increase your chances of long-term success.

When it comes to addressing the needs of employees, ask them about what they need to feel supported, motivated and purposeful at work. Then invest in researching how to meet these needs in ways that are also beneficial for your business. Remember, good retention strategy = higher enterprise value. For ideas of where to start, click here.