Free Business Growth Strategies
The goal of this article is to share business growth strategies that are free. Business owners can get massive growth in their company quickly by taking action on the strategies found here. The strategies are simple and effective and can be started today. Business growth starts with opening your mind to ideas that you may have never considered or may not be in your comfort zone. Change your mindset, and the growth of your business will start to happen immediately.
Requirement for Massive Growth
The first requirement for massive growth is a clear vision of where you want to take the business. It can be revenue, profit, or some other metric component of growth. Regardless of where the business is currently, your vision should be bold. Your vision should border on unachievable, but possible with a solid plan. You need a bigger vision if you share your vision with people who believe you can do it beyond being kind.
Getting Help
The first strategy is to get advisors to help you create business growth in your company. Advisors can help you plan and execute your vision. I’m sure you have shared your knowledge with others simply because you were asked. Knowledgeable people enjoy sharing their experiences if they are approached the right way. You need advisors because most of us don’t possess all the knowledge and experience to do great things alone.
Finding Advisors To Help You
A great way to find advisors is at trade associations. Professionals in your industry, circle of friends, relatives, and colleagues are other places to locate advisors. Use social media sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and other sites where people with knowledge and thought leaders are. Be sure to compensate them in some way to show your appreciation. The compensation need not be financial. Saying thank you and showing appreciation goes a long way. Public acknowledgment on social media, networking events, or any place your community is present. Tokens of appreciation like gift certificates, lunch, tickets to a ball game, or any nice gesture goes a long way. Use your imagination and take the time to find out what your advisors like, after all, they will be a key to your success.
Don’t Reinvent The Wheel
The key to this strategy is the avoidance of solving problems that have already been solved. The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, considers Nikola Tesla a personal hero and not a stretch to say an advisor as Nikola Tesla’s work creating induction motor technology made the Tesla Automobile possible. Nikola Tesla died in 1943, but Elon used him as an advisor to build Tesla Motors. Elon Musk didn’t waste time solving the problem of electric propulsion, he used a 100-year-old solution and added innovation to make the Tesla Model S. Motor Trend Car of the year a massive publicly traded company.
Virtual Board Members
Your Board of Advisors should be people you can access, but there are instances where you need specialized experience that you can’t access other than through the person’s past work. Any person or body of work that you can draw from can be considered for your board. Nikola’s published works on induction motors were enough to build the Tesla Model S.
Meeting With Your Board
Establishing a board of advisors shouldn’t be difficult. It can take on any form that allows regular meetings and benefit from the board’s experience. It can be formal, following protocols and keeping minutes, or informal. Be flexible and make it easy for your board to participate. Consider using technology to meet online, by phone, etc. Remember, they are doing you a huge favor, so it shouldn’t be burdensome on them.
Mastermind Groups
Ben Franklin established a mastermind group in 1727. A mastermind group is a group organized around mutual improvement. Napolean Hill also used it in his classic book “Think and Grow Rich.” He describes a Mastermind Group as “the coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people, who work toward a definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony.” Mastermind groups offer mutual accountability, brainstorming, and constructive criticism, and everyone in the group is invested in helping each other.
Conferences
Live instruction and immersion into your field are advantageous because you can access instructors and peers from whom you can learn. You may seek board members at the conference or use the event as an advisory session for your board. There are lists of conferences organized by category so you can find dates and times for the conferences in your industry. 10 Times Events is another resource for finding conferences to attend.
Coaching
A consistent, ongoing relationship where the coach helps to implement new skills and assist in achieving your goals. The coach maintains objectivity and uses a formalized system to get you functioning at a higher level. There is the cost usually associated with coaching, but it’s money well spent if you achieve your goals.
Mentors
Everyone entrepreneur should have a mentor. It doesn’t have to be formal, and you can have several mentors. Multiple mentors can cover a wide range of expertise that may be required for business growth. You can have a mentor and never let that person know they are mentoring you. If they are up for a formal relationship, that is great, but if you can have non-formal mentors without titles or structure.
Score
The non-profit association Score (Senior Core of Retired Executives) comprises 11,000 volunteers dedicated to helping businesses achieve their goals through education and mentoring. The volunteers have a broad mix of senior executive and small business experience. Score can be a sounding board for ideas, finding solutions, and help avoid costly mistakes. Score is also helpful in expanding your network quickly. It has been widely quoted that your network and net worth are related.
Chamber of Commerce
Your local chamber is a great place to network with local business people. Get to know the business people in the chamber and contribute to the organization and its people. The chamber is a place to help grow your business and could also be a great place to recruit for your board.
“When you establish a destination by defining what you want, then take physical action by making choices that move you towards that destination, the possibility for success is limitless, and arrival at the destination is inevitable.” Steve Maraboli.
Creating an Advisory Board
Every business will benefit from an advisory board. It can be formal or informal. The advisory board should have regular meetings in person or virtually. Frequency and agenda can be structured or flexible depending on the goals of the advisory board and the board members. There should be free sharing of information, including financials. You may choose to limit some information you deem sensitive. For example, you may share profit numbers but not sales numbers or vice versa. You may share gross profit numbers but not line items. You may divulge new customer acquisitions, web traffic, or whatever is a meaningful measurement. The board meetings should be planned to share information with board members that have a material impact on the company. The results can’t be good if the members don’t have good information. You may even want to sign a non-disclosure agreement if you have any concerns about misusing the information you share.
Board Meeting Preparation
Formal or informal advisory boards require preparation before every meeting. Everyone’s time is valuable, and you want to be productive in the shortest amount of time, even if it is an unstructured event. Any information should be shared before the meeting so board members can review the information beforehand. Board meetings should have an agenda that includes the biggest challenge in executing your vision. The meeting’s goal is to create actions to overcome obstacles preventing the fulfillment of the vision.
Bold Vision Have Setbacks
Any bold vision has points where things don’t work or are in jeopardy of failing. Setbacks should be expected and learned from. Setbacks have to be taken for what it is: An event that needs to be analyzed and tried again with a new approach based on lessons learned. Look at setbacks as a bug in a computer program. You may need to re-write the code dozens of times before the program runs as it should. All of the greats have failed a lot more than the average person. Entrepreneurs with vision aren’t average people, so they embrace failure and keep moving to solutions.
Accountability to Your Success
The strategies included in this article are meant to help you create and execute your best ideas for business growth. Ideas that seemed brilliant when confined to your thoughts may not survive the journey to the written page. The strategies outlined here are collaborative. You should choose to have people around you that have experiences and skills that you don’t. Your ideas will have the benefit of experience and skills that you lack.
Exponential Growth
The process of sharing your ideas with knowledgeable colleagues, mentors, board members, advisors, etc., will be your engine for massive business growth and innovation. Your experience and skills will increase exponentially by involving others with your vision.