Leap! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business

Stephanie Chandler

• Publisher: Career Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781601630797
• eBook ISBN: 9781601637734
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Business Strategy

Business growth requires more than a business plan and a dream. You must utilize many tools and techniques to take your company to the next level. LEAP! 101 Ways to Grow Your Business is loaded with practical strategies that you can leverage based on your business-growth goals and the distinct needs of your company. LEAP! is divided into four sections: Leverage, Execute, Accelerate, Prosper; you will learn how to:

• — Develop a business growth action plan.
• — Automate your business.
• — Locate business capital.
• — Identify powerful marketing strategies.
• — Harness the power of the Internet.
• — Attract the media and gain valuable exposure.
• — Boost profits by innovating.
• — Protect your time so you can enjoy your life.
• —Also included are inspiring interviews with successful business owners who have made the LEAP to real business growth, along with advice from dozens of industry experts.

Whether you implement just a few strategies from this comprehensive guide or all of them, the results are sure to be extraordinary. Are you ready to LEAP?

Part One
Leverage
(Build a Machine)

CHAPTER 1
Establish a Launch Pad

“A goal without a plan is just a wish.”

—Antoine de Saint-Exupery

1 Get a Vision

Do you have a vision for your business? Can you picture where you want it to be in five, 10, or 20 years? If you’re like most business owners, there is a good chance that you’re a victim of one of the following:

You have been too busy running your business to stop and think about the Big Picture.

You had a vision for your company when you started, but you haven’t had time to think about that in ages.

You can’t see beyond the end of the month. because you’re too focused on trying to make the bills.

Vision? What’s that?

The beauty of establishing a vision for the future of your company is that it’s all yours. You can make it as big or as small as you want. That’s right—I said as small as you want. Some people don’t want the added responsibility of running a large company, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. What’s more important is that you figure that out early on because it will help shape your decisions in the long run.

Establishing your vision gives you a focal point that you can refer to whenever there are business planning considerations. If your goal is to expand into international markets, then you would probably want to put more focus into building your Web presence. If your plan is to stay local, a Web presence is still important, but how you administer that will be much different.

When considering your vision for your company, remove the potential obstacles. Your ultimate vision is the equivalent of a dream and the biggest goal you want to achieve.

If money were no object, what would your business look like? (You can figure out the money part later.) Are there new markets that you want to penetrate? Is there a service that you want to launch? Do you want to establish an international presence?

Spend some time thinking about your vision for your company. Consider the questions in the previous paragraph and how the end result would fit in to your lifestyle. Then commit your vision to paper. It might be as simple as a few sentences, or you might dig deeper and outline multiple goals and a time line for achieving them.

Athletes are known for using visualization as a tool. Michael Phelps was the U.S. team star of the 2008 Olympics and reportedly visualized winning the swimming competitions. When visualization meets preparation, anything is possible.

Create a Vision Board

A vision board is a visual representation of your goals for the future. These are typically comprised of pictures, words, and phrases clipped from magazines. You can even create multiple boards: one for business, one for family, and one for personal goals. Post your board(s) in your office or another place where you will see the images every day so you can focus on what you’re working toward.

Resources

Do you need help getting a vision? If you’re stuck, lack inspiration or you want to develop an entirely new outlook, here are some great books to help you find the answers.

• The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield

• The Passion Test: The Effortless Path to Discovering Your Life Purpose by Janet Attwood

• Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies by Michael Gerber

• The Secret (DVD or book version)

2 Reestablish Your Priorities

Running a business is one of the toughest challenges you can choose in life. In fact, it’s a lot like parenting. It places unexpected demands on your time and energy, requires nurturing and love, keeps you up at night, demands structure and discipline, teaches you valuable lessons about yourself, and, despite all of the long hours and hard work, it can be extremely rewarding.

Unfortunately, many business owners become so overwhelmed with the daily demands of running a business that they end up losing focus on the future. They want more for their business and their life, but they don’t take time to figure out how to get there.

Many of the business owners that I encounter are struggling with the three Biggest Business Demands (BBDs):

Time.

Money.

Effort.

I would bet that, when you started your entrepreneurial adventure, you underestimated how much time, money, and effort it would take. And odds are that you continue to struggle with BBDs on a daily basis. BBDs are the factors that lead to entrepreneur burnout and are at the heart of our excuses. Can you relate to these?

“I don’t have time to focus on the future; I’m just trying to get through today….”

“There aren’t enough hours in a day….”

“If only I had more money….”

“If I just work harder, I’ll make more money….”

“I’m so exhausted….”

“I feel guilty for not spending more time with my family….”

“It’s been a slow month. I don’t know if I can keep doing this. Maybe I should go get a job….”

Shifting From Overwhelmed to Overjoyed

I have personally been a victim of the BBDs. I have worked around the clock, complained about not having enough time, and gotten caught up in the self-imposed demands of running a business. Entrepreneurs tend to have Type-A personalities. We are overachievers to the 10th degree. We are perfectionists. We exhaust ourselves.

Eventually I realized that I had a choice to make: I could keep going at an insane, unhealthy pace and sacrifice time with the people who were most important in my life, or I could make some big changes.

What I learned was that building a successful business doesn’t have to equate to a 60-hour work week. When I took a step back to reevaluate, I realized that I had way too many balls in the air and many of them didn’t align with my goals. In fact, I was keeping myself so busy that I had lost sight of what my goals were in the first place.

Personal Priorities

No amount of success is worthwhile if you aren’t personally fulfilled. Although many of us derive a certain amount of satisfaction and even self-worth from our achievements, at the end of the day, you can’t hug your business. Your business can’t help you celebrate a milestone birthday or laugh with you over dinner.

Jenifer Landers, a personal development coach who specializes in working with artists and creative business owners, is also a single mom who shares custody of her 10-year-old daughter. “When Stella gets home from school at 2:30, I shut everything else down,” says Jenifer. “My goal is to give her my complete attention and to be fully present with her.”

In the summer when school is out, Stella occasionally gets to attend meetings with her mom. “She loves it, and I love that she’s learning what it’s like to be independent and do your own thing,” says Jenifer. “I get to teach her how to make her own choices and do what she wants with her life instead of just showing her the path to getting a job.”

To make up for her shortened workday, Jenifer often returns to working on her business after Stella goes to bed. “It’s completely worth it,” she adds. “I just work my schedule around her and put in extra time when Stella is asleep or with her dad. I’m so grateful for our time together. I just make it work.”

Try This

Do yourself a favor and make sure your personal priorities are in order. It might mean putting your spouse ahead of your monthly networking meeting. It might mean that you need to make time to find a life partner, connect with friends, or start a family. Maybe you need to define some boundaries around when you work and when you play or rediscover what it’s like to have fun!

Make a detailed list of the personal priorities and boundaries you want to set in your life. Items might include any or all of the following:

Institute a weekly date night with my spouse.

Have dinner with my family five nights each week.

Spend one-on-one time with each of my kids each week.

Schedule lunch with a friend once each week.

Work out three mornings each week.

Sign up for a dating service.

Read a novel.

Get a massage.

Take two vacations this year.

Pick up kids early on Fridays and spend the afternoon together.

Play golf once each month.

Sign up for tennis lessons.

Write my life story.

Write a book.

Stop working on weekends.

Whatever your personal priorities are, commit them to paper and develop a plan for bringing them to life. Though you will probably have to make some adjustments, I bet that you will find it far more rewarding both personally and professionally when you bring joy back into your life.

Resources

• Slowing Down to the Speed of Life: How to Create a Simpler, More Peaceful Life from the Inside Out by Richard Carlson and Joseph Bailey

• The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

3 Make Your Own Rules

So you have your own business and by now you have probably learned from a variety of sources how it is “supposed” to be done for your industry. Maybe you attended training sessions or participated in a certification progr...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part 1: Leverage: (Build a Machine)
• Part 2: Execute (Take Action)
• Part Three: Accelerate (Kick It Into High Gear)
• Part 4: Prosper (Maintain the Momentum)
• Index
• About the Author