What does it mean to grow a healthy business?
What does it mean to grow a healthy business?
First, understand that growing revenues is a necessary but not sufficient aspect of growth. 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, 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 in small
business building 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 new growth. 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.
With your motives clearly in mind, take a look at how you are doing now. Measure how many clients you have, how much income you are earning, how much time you are spending delivering services, marketing, 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 your niche market - the sweet spot where you add the most value with the least struggle? 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.
Does this sound like a lot of work? It is, and it will repay your attention by revealing new possibilities for intention and action 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 business in a holistic, grounded, and integrated way.
* * *
Use Molly Gordon's Small Business Marketing Resource to cast a fresh eye on your business practices -- niche marketing, self promotion, marketing plan components and pricing strategies, and read her articles on work life balance to find ways to become more vibrant, more authentic, more engaged in your life as well as your work, effortlessly attracting business.
What does it mean to grow a healthy business - To learn more about this author, visit Molly Gordon's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
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 growth. 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, 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 in small
business building 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 new growth. 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.
With your motives clearly in mind, take a look at how you are doing now. Measure how many clients you have, how much income you are earning, how much time you are spending delivering services, marketing, 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 your niche market - the sweet spot where you add the most value with the least struggle? 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.
Does this sound like a lot of work? It is, and it will repay your attention by revealing new possibilities for intention and action 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 business in a holistic, grounded, and integrated way.
* * *
Use Molly Gordon's Small Business Marketing Resource to cast a fresh eye on your business practices -- niche marketing, self promotion, marketing plan components and pricing strategies, and read her articles on work life balance to find ways to become more vibrant, more authentic, more engaged in your life as well as your work, effortlessly attracting business.
What does it mean to grow a healthy business - To learn more about this author, visit Molly Gordon's Website.
Like this article? Share it with your friends
| |||
 |
No article feedback found. | ||
|
Leave Your Feedback | ||
|
|||
 Feeding Your Mind Outrageously Healthy Thoughts
| |||
| Do you want to feel happy and healthy today and every day? Then harness the power of your unconscious mind to create the outrageously healthly life you deserve and throw away those crazy diet and exercise plans for... |
|||
|
Create an Outrageously Healthy Environment at Home
| |||
| Would you like outrageous health to be the easy option? Then start creating a home environment that makes this easy and effortless...... |
|||
|
The Keys to Outrageous Healthiness
| |||
| How would you like to feel Outrageously Healthy every single day of your life? If you are living any life other than the Outrageously Healthy Life you deserve then read on. |
|||
|
What's Getting in Your way to feeling outrageously healthy Today?
| |||
| Wouldn't it be great to feel outrageously healthy today and everyday of your life? I bet the minute you read that question all kinds of thoughts flowed for you - "of course I do but..." So what came after the but? W... |
|||
|
Healthy Fear
| |||
 There really is "healthy fear." For example, it's very healthy to fear drinking before you drive. However, fear should not be allowed to run rampant through our lives so that it becomes such a devastating factor ... |
|||
| |||
Kim CastleWith nearly two decades in the advertising and design business, with clients like Domino's Pizza, General Motors, Direct TV, Pedigree, Wolfgang Puck, Higher Octave Music, Hollywood Celebrity Products, Disney, and Paramount, as well as thousands of entrepreneurs around the world define, structure, communicate, and position their business for greater profits, BrandU(R) co-creators Kim Castle and W. Vito Montone discovered that entrepreneurs could experience the same power that big brands command for a fraction of the cost with the world's only process-based results-drive Integral approach to business creation. BrandU(R) is helping entrepreneurs grow with the power of extreme clarity from idea...to brand...to market(TM) and helping one million entrepreneurs become successful and whole so that they can make a difference in the world. Are you one of them? If you want to experience clarity all the way to the bank(TM), get started now at http://www.brandu.com. - Visit Kim Castle's Website |
|||
David BarrDavid Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website |
|||
Jeff FosterWebBizIdeas.com is a Minneapolis website design company founded to help people start an internet business by providing them with website, business, and internet resources that help foster the growth of successful online businesses and develop innovative Internet business ideas. - Visit Jeff Foster's Website |
|||
Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
|||
Casey GollanCasey Gollan, Business Coaching & Mentoring Programs. Add $1 Million to $10 Million in the next 1 to 3 years. Since 1996 Casey has to added hundreds of millions of dollars to businesses. Watch a free video see client results Business Coaching website. - Visit Casey Gollan's Website |
|||
Bernard ReberBack in late 1992, MS Access hit the streets. About that time the company I managed needed new software to handle their growing client base and I decided to try this new product. I had little difficulty writing and adapting a database to suit us and discovered a hidden talent for programming. A business was born. With business studies and 25 years of management experience in three different countries under my belt, I could offer a unique combination of skills and my customers agreed. From these humble beginnings my software 'invoiceit' emerged in 1999 and has since been taken to 49 states (hello Wyoming, won't you join us?), all across Canada and more than 70 other countries. From the very beginning the program included cashbook accounting, the simplest form of keeping financial business records. The Dictionary.com defines 'cashbook' as "A 'book' in which to record money received and paid out". For 'book' substitute 'simple software' and that's what I'm about. Now I have published Simple Accounting, an inexpensive spreadsheet solution which even you can master. For just $14.95 it costs less than a takeout meal! More at http://www.scrambled-card.com/simple_accounting_main.htm - Visit Bernard Reber's Website |
|||
Dr. John OdaJohn Oda Ph.D NLP is a business peak performance expert, an author, and speaker frequently called upon to provide corporate training, workshops and seminars for many companies in the United States. He is an expert in coaching sales and business professionals in overcoming the behaviors and obstacles that may impede their sales results and affect their bottom line. Since 1995, John has created a speaking bureau such topics, which include: time management, sales training, human diversity, leadership programs and etc. He provides companies with a strategic plan to increase their bottom line by over 25 percent yearly. - Visit Dr. John Oda's Website |
|||
Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
|||
|
To learn more about the Evan Elite Author Program please contact us. | |||
 | |
 Molly Gordon (Visit Molly's Website) Molly Gordon, MCC, is a leading figure in busin ess coaching and person al growth coaching, writer, workshop leader, frequent presenter at live and virtual events worldwide, and an acknowledged expert on niche marketing. Visit her website to find valuable tips on self promotion and developing a small business marketing plan, and join 12,000 readers of her Authentic Promotion® ezine, an invaluable small business marketing resource, helping you grow your strong business while you feed your soul.
|  |
 |
| Shaboom - Life Could Be a Dream - Shaboom is our name and dreaming in all its manifestations is our work. Dreaming for the sake of innovation. Dreaming for the sake of beauty. Dreaming for the sake of meaning. Dreaming for the sake of life itself. Dreaming and living the dream of a life worth living, work worth doing. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
| Modeling the Masters: Learn the true secrets behind Walt Disney's business success factors & grow your company! Video produced by Phanta Media |
|
|
 |
| Have you written articles that would be of value to entrepreneurs? Become an expert on our site by publishing them! Expose yourself to a wide audience, drive more traffic to your website and get more sales! Click Here for details. |
 |
 | ||
 |
||
|
||
 |
||
|
| ||
|
|
|
Get advice & tips from famous business owners, new articles by entrepreneur experts, my latest website updates, & special sneak peaks at what's to come!
|
|
|
 |
 Tips For Less Stress Your Life Your Legacy Great Sales Fallacies Network More Effectively Sample Press Release |
|
 | ||
 |
The Top 10 Guy Kawasaki Posts
Best Posts for Entrepreneurs | |
 |
Top 50 Geek Business Blogs
Top 50 Geek Business Blogs | |
| ||
 |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
||||||||||||
