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What does it mean to grow a healthy business?

Written by: Molly Gordon

Article Overview: Ask yourself these questions to reveal new possibilities for intention and action and see 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.

What does it mean to grow a healthy business?

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.

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Persistence gives live to small business. - While I was reading about the 10th year anniversary of google, I counted back 10 years and what I see was persistent. Every small business can grow big if we will be persistent. Persistent actually brings consistence. There is no business that cannot grow big if the owner will not be too haste to succeed. Hastiness has always been the bane of colapsed small business. Whatever you do as antergreneur keep at it and be innovative about it, you will soon be celebrating growth. To me, there is no business that cannot grow be if persistence is employed.
Re: Persistence gives live to small business. - [quote="topeyinka":160scfau]While I was reading about the 10th year anniversary of google, I counted back 10 years and what I see was persistent. Every small business can grow big if we will be persistent. Persistent actually brings consistence. There is no business that cannot grow big if the owner will not be too haste to succeed. Hastiness has always been the bane of colapsed small business. Whatever you do as antergreneur keep at it and be innovative about it, you will soon be celebrating growth. To me, there is no business that cannot grow be if persistence is employed.[/quote:160scfau] Thanks for the contributions am real informed better now!
Are you afraid to really GROW? - Now i'm not generalizing here.. ok maybe a little. I've recently been noticing a very strange trend with small business owners. Many of the business owners i've met with recently are afraid to really grow. They want to make more money and they want to improve, but when it comes down to it, they are scared of what those changes may or may not mean to their business. This fascintates me. Isn't the whole reason we've chosen to start a business mean we eventually want it to grow? Are they scared it will move too fast and get out of control? I'm curious to other's thoughts on this.
Re: Persistence gives live to small business. - [quote="topeyinka":vf3wc4t6]While I was reading about the 10th year anniversary of google, I counted back 10 years and what I see was persistent. Every small business can grow big if we will be persistent. Persistent actually brings consistence. There is no business that cannot grow big if the owner will not be too haste to succeed. Hastiness has always been the bane of colapsed small business. Whatever you do as antergreneur keep at it and be innovative about it, you will soon be celebrating growth. To me, there is no business that cannot grow be if persistence is employed.[/quote:vf3wc4t6] Hi topeyinka, Actually, you have started a good thread here. I have seen alot of people that have started good business but failed to continue due to lack of persistence. What my granny always taught then was that there is no business you want to do that has not been done before but what makes one to stand other fall is the persistent of the owners. She did give me examples of her mates that they did same business alike then but quit because they could not endure the heaps of the business, she said despite what she went through, she could scale through because she was persisited. Several times, my granny had given task in business to see if I would backed out. This training is keeping standing today that there is business that cannot grow big if we continue it through innovatives and persist to succeed. It is good to have ideas but you will not be persisted with your ideas, you might found out that ideas is not enough. Thank you. cheers!
Ideal professional services provider - Hi James, What I like in a professional service provider is that they go beyond their area of expertise to try to help your business grow. They try to introduce you to other clients or people in their network who might help you. If they come across an article that might be of interest to you, they send it. They give you suggestions for your business based on the other companies they have seen and worked with. My lawyer, financial advisor, and accountant are all great at helping me grow my business beyond providing their professional services (still working on my banker!). This is why I use them and I send many of my friends and associates to them.


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