7 Tips to Successfully Grow Your Business

Like many business owners, I wasn't born to be an
entrepreneur, I never planned on running a business,
and I most assuredly had no experience in successfully
growing one. However, over the course of my nearly 21
years of business ownership, I have learned a few
things that have helped keep the bumps and bruises to
a minimum while maintaining double-digit growth year
over year. Regardless of the industry you are in, you
can be highly successful if you live by these very
simple ideologies:
1. Know what you do and what you don't do.
Some of the best advice I learned early on was don't
try to be all things to all people, because it typically
means you are not very good at any one thing. As such,
I believe that it is a mistake to take on far-reaching
service offerings, develop products outside your comfort
zone or expand outside of your target markets just to
make a few extra bucks. When you do that, you
jeopardize your true strength to focus on what you may
not be successful at and create undo pressures for your
team, your budgets, and your company as a whole.
2. Stay focused on the prize.
We have always tried to be very strategic in our
approach to growth. We set three year business plans,
track against those plans, and modify them when
necessary. I believe that if you don't set goals you have
no way of measuring yourself, your team and your
company against some pre-determined objectives.
When everyone understands in a very crystal clear way
what the overall goals of the organization are, it allows
everyone to rally together and take pride in successfully
accomplishing them.
3. Remember that people work for people, not
companies.
It is rare when a business can successfully operate and
grow without talented people. In fact, we often talk
about our people being the only asset we have to sell
and we are always looking for ways to improve our
culture, our benefits, and the reasons why employees
would want to keep working for us. I believe that many
companies forget that true loyalty comes when
employees believe that the organization and its
leadership team care about them personally and
professionally. This ultimately results in long-tenured
employees, which has a very real and direct effect on
company growth.
4. Running a business well is different than being good
at a trade or profession .
I have often said that just because someone is good in
PR, it doesn't mean they will be good at running a PR
agency. The same is true for any profession. Growing a
successful business is all about having a good business
mind, combined with a strong skillset in your particular
area of expertise. The behind-the-scenes side of
business--such as process, people management, billing
and operations--are critical to business success. I have
seen a number of very smart people get into business
only to ultimately fail because they didn't look at their
business through the lens of operational success, and
instead focused solely on being good at their
profession.
5. Passion is contagious.
When you love what you do it shows to the people
surrounding you every day in the office, facility or
production plant. Showing excitement and enthusiasm
cannot be underscored enough in terms of how it
relates to your team working harder, being more
focused, and ultimately more successful at their job.
This translates to a better end-product. The opposite
can be said for someone who is an unhappy person,
leads through negative motivation, creates a challenging
work environment or frankly doesn't love what they do.
6. Challenge yourself to always keep improving .
Technology is changing the world we live in every day.
In order to stay relevant, it is important to innovate,
regardless of your industry, as well as want to get
better. This could mean new programs, new thinking or
new processes. I believe that you are either moving
forward or you are becoming obsolete. At Formula, we
are constantly looking at our way of doing things and
looking for ways to improve our end product, improve
our client relations skills, and become more efficient at
what we do, which ultimately drives greater profitability.
7. Forget the "Build it and they will come" mentality .
During a challenging economy, many brands look at
marketing as an expense and therefore try to cut it from
the budget. However, the marketplace is littered with
good ideas that lacked the marketing support to gain
traction or they were launched with the ideology of "our
product is so great, that consumers will flock to it."
Consumers are incredibly discerning about their money;
as a result, they generally buy products that they have
either sampled or have been referred to them.
Therefore, make sure that marketing is completely
aligned with product innovation and roll-out to ensure
that when the product is ready for retail consumption
strong consideration has been given to how the product
will be marketed.
Unfortunately, there is no guarantee for business
success. It takes a combination of right brain strategic
logic and left brain creative thinking to ensure that a
brand or business is successful. However, the
aforementioned recommendations will help alleviate
some of the common pitfalls that many businesses face
as they look to gain traction and acceptance.