The prospect of expanding your business can be daunting. Whether you desire to increase your business reach, add products or services, hire employees for the first time, or take the leap to turn your side-hustle into your dream career, it can be challenging to imagine getting from where you are now to where you want to be.
Business is essentially a creative journey – and your business is as unique as you are – so it’s important to stay true to yourself and your creative vision whilst still being able to implement the practical elements needed for your business to successfully grow.
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Right Riches For You facilitator, Canan Bekdik shares her 3 top tips for creating profitable business growth in a way that works for you and your business:
Be willing to let your business outgrow you
One of the biggest obstacles to easily expanding your business can actually be you! Especially if you are used to controlling and handling every facet and detail of the business. If you want to grow, at some point you are going to have to let your business get bigger than you, which means allowing others contribute to it. We all know you can do it all yourself – but you don’t have to, and your business will actually benefit if you don’t. If you added other people or systems to handle parts of the business you don’t enjoy as much, would your business grow a lot faster with a lot less stress? (Hint: the answer is Yes!)
What elements of the business do you not like so much that you could get another person or system to handle? It could be as simple as hiring someone to create graphics, using an application or program that streamlines your social media, or hiring a virtual assistant for two hours a week to answer emails and organize your schedule.
Get intimate with your business financials
Are you aware of the exact running costs of your business? Does your business currently generate enough revenue to cover them and more? Particularly in the start-up phase (and often long after) we can see ourselves as the financial source of the business, rather than giving the business the job of creating its own revenue. If you find that you are constantly topping up the business account, or personally investing in it to keep it running, look at your costs and how much more your business would need to make to run itself and/or begin to make a larger profit. Then get creative! Ask yourself daily: what could you add to your business that would create more revenue? What other potential income streams could be explored to create more money?
Business should be an adventure!
Having an adventure in business doesn’t mean that you have to take insane risks and just hope it will work out. It means you get to be innovative, creative in your unique way – and realizing that there are no right or wrong choices, just what works for you and your business. It is being ready and willing to use your particular creative capacities to change, move, alter and add to your business, even if it means going against what others say is the right or normal way to do business. No one ever made a change in the world by doing the same as everyone else, and the same applies in your business.
If you allowed your business to be an adventure at every phase, what would you choose? What directions would you explore?
An adventure is looking at what kind of journey you would like to have, knowing where you want to go, and then be willing to take whatever steps are necessary to get there – no matter how surprising, unpredictable or “out of the box” they might be.
Business growth is not a linear trajectory. The business world is in a constant state of change, so you must embrace the adventure of adding, changing and innovating with business in order for it to grow. Be willing to add people and systems to your business, be innovative and creative in your creation of income and revenue, and stay open and adventurous in how you achieve your long term vision, and you will have all the key ingredients you need to successfully grow your business – and have a lot of fun in the process!
