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From the Desk of a Business Coach: Growing a Small Business - Grow to ThriveTip! Some of the end results of business coaching include achieving a better balance between work and home, a deeper comprehension of how to meet one's goals in both, increased efficiency, and improved time management. A thriving business needs to grow or it stagnates and may even fail. But what does it mean to grow a healthy business? First, understand that growing revenues is a necessary but not sufficient aspect of growing a small business. Thinking of growth exclusively in terms of revenue is like dumping fertilizer on a garden without watering or weeding it. Inevitably, the crop dies. Second, growth is iterative. The process is repeated over and over again. In this sense there is no first or last step. Still, you can posit a starting point for growing your small business, a platform from which you begin and to which you return to measure your progress, assess your direction, and refine your vision. One way to posit a meaningful starting point for growing your small business is to assess current reality and how it differs from what you intend to create. What are you experiencing now? What is working? Where are you dissatisfied? Look at both external, measurable factors such as sales, prospects, productivity, and experiential and qualitative factors such as engagement, enthusiasm, creativity. Examine your motives for wanting your small business to grow. Are you dissatisfied with current reality? Do you sense that something new wants to come into being? Are you feeling impelled by a creative drive? By boredom? Fear? Competition? Envy? List your motives without censoring them so that you can understand what is really true for you. Every motive is an expression of a sort of worldview. If you repress or misstate your motives, you are the prisoner of their worldview and unable to examine the underlying beliefs. Some of these underlying beliefs may seriously hinder growing your small business.
With your motives clearly in mind, take a look at how your small business is doing now. Measure how many clients you have, how much income you are earning, how much time you are spending delivering services, refining your niche marketing strategies, and administering your business. Review feedback from clients and look at what others in your field are doing that you admire. Talk to your employees, or rather, listen to them. What is the turnover rate? How happy are they? How engaged? Look at how much you enjoying your work. What aspects of it bring the most joy? What sorts of clients or customers seem to benefit most from what you do and who you are? Where is the sweet spot where you add the most value with the least struggle -- your unique niche market? What are the key intangible sources of energy and inspiration? Again, ask your employees the same questions. As you gather the qualitative and quantitative data about your business, reflect on the circumstances and choices that shaped these results. What were your goals six months or a year ago? What personal and professional factors have been at play since your last business assessment? What forces in the marketplace affected your decisions and your results? What were your aspirations and assumptions? Notice how current reality correlates with thinking, beliefs, practices, and intentions that were in place three, six, or nine months ago. Tip! When you sit down for your first meeting with your new business coach, be prepared! Have certain goals set in how you want your company to grow, how you would like to manage your personnel, advertising and communication, marketing, and how to improve your investment rating. Does this sound like a lot of work? It is, and it will repay your attention by revealing new possibilities for growing your small business and by showing you where you can let go of outmoded policies, procedures, and attitudes. By regularly reviewing what you have and what you want, you generate a healthy structural tension -- a tension that can impel you to grow your small business in a holistic, grounded, and integrated way. Molly Gordon, MCC, is an internationally recognized business coach, writer, workshop leader, frequent presenter at live and virtual events worldwide, and an acknowledged expert on niche marketing. Join 12,000 readers of Molly's Authentic Promotion® ezine, and receive a free 31-page guide on effective self promotion. |
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