Whether you’re a solo-entrepreneur working off your kitchen table, a well-established small business, or something even bigger, the time will come where you’ll be ready to grow your small business. Whether it’s adding new products or services, hiring your first employees, or expanding into new geographic territory, growing your business beyond its humble beginnings is an exciting and scary step.
But how do you do it successfully? Authentically? And retaining the parts of your business that you love?
When you are getting ready to expand, it’s easy to let the excitement carry you away while simultaneously letting the fear hold you back. What do I mean by that?
Let’s use the example of a solo-entrepreneur hiring your first employee. You can be excited about:
- this step in your business being a sign of growth and success
- not feeling alone in your work anymore as you begin to build a team
- handing off some of the work you are doing that you don’t love to someone who does love to do those jobs
You can also be afraid of:
- letting go of the control of getting things done on your timeline and in the way you like to do them
- hiring someone who isn’t a good fit
- wasting money and time on someone who doesn’t have the skills to do the work you need them to do
In the midst of the excitement and fear, it can be easy to charge ahead without first pausing to anchor yourself into your capacity as the leader of your business, think strategically, and develop a plan that will increase the likelihood of your expansion being a positive experience that achieves your development goal.
When you charge ahead without doing some key planning, it can lead to encountering some or all of those fears because your decisions and actions weren’t rooted in a solid foundation.
Planning Successful Growth for Your Small Business
To root your planned growth into a solid foundation, you need to be clear about your:
- business purpose, vision & values: being clear about and clearly communicating who you are, what you are setting out to accomplish in the world, and the values that your business is built on helps you to engage with the right people to accomplish growth and work with them to grow in a way that feels authentic and retains what you love about your work
- leadership philosophy: being clear about your leadership philosophy (what you expect, what you believe and value as a leader, how you operate and how you want others to operate) helps to build trust and confidence in your team, allows resources to be used more effectively, and can help to nourish a culture of leadership as you grow your business
- purpose for expanding: being clear about why you are making this move and how it supports your business purpose, vision & values will help you to make sure that there is a clear reason for your development goal, rather than it being a good idea but not actually a good idea for your business
- clear plan for how to make your development goal happen: breaking down the skills and capacities needed and the process you believe you will follow to achieve your goal can help to execute it more efficiently and with greater likelihood of success
These steps are rooted in the Medicine Wheel Tool© and the Service Delivery Model© of the Genuine Contact program. Using these tools helps you to create a solid operating matrix for your business and a clear plan for growth.
Whether you are one of the thousands of people who have been trained in working with these tools or are newly learning about the way we work, as a small business owner you can use these tools to create your unique plan for growth.
We’re offering a free training next week on how to do just that. I’ll be walking you through the key elements needed to create a plan for growth that is rooted in the core essence of your business, designed to develop a plan that will aid you in ensuring the plan is authentic and retains the core essence of your work, even as you grow.
>> LEARN MORE & REGISTER for this free training program.
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