Five Ways to Grow Your Business to the Next Level

As a former boys’ basketball coach, I taught my players the Give & Go play, where teamwork allows for a higher chance of scoring. This concept can be applied to business, where collaboration can lead to more significant achievements than going solo. If you're looking to grow your business but feel stuck, follow these five steps to achieve your goals.

Inspect Your Business Today

Just like how a driver needs to know their starting point to reach their destination, you need to know where your business stands right now to chart a path for growth. Take a financial perspective by reviewing your revenue, expenses, profit, balance sheet, and cash flow. Ensure that your financials are in good shape by hiring someone to clean up and maintain them monthly. Tidy financials are necessary for making informed decisions in today's ever-changing world.

Perform a SWOT analysis to assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and potential threats. Understanding your weaknesses and why you're strong in certain areas can help you capitalize on opportunities for growth while avoiding potential obstacles.

Determine Your 1-, 3-, and 5-Year Goals

Visualize where you want your business to be in one, three, and five years. Establish SMART (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-bound) goals. For instance, suppose you aim to increase revenue by 30% in 2023. In that case, you need to understand your current revenue, anticipate any potential losses, and determine the amount of new business required each month to achieve that 30% growth target.

Build a Team

Investing in a team may seem expensive as a small business owner. However, outsourcing services like a fractional CFO, HR consultant, IT, or marketing agency can significantly reduce operating costs while providing the expertise needed to achieve your five-year goal.

Over-Communicate

As companies grow, communication becomes more challenging, necessitating a process. According to Patrick Lencioni's "The Advantage," organizations must have four disciplines to communicate effectively:

1. Build a cohesive leadership
2. Create clarity
3. Over communicate clarity
4. Reinforce clarity

Since clarity is essential, make sure everyone knows what they need to do to succeed and meet the company's goals.

Empower

Empowerment means giving employees the authority and responsibility to grow, be accountable, and take ownership of their roles. John Maxwell's "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" emphasizes the importance of empowering employees, as great leaders encourage others to reach their full potential. Though you may be tempted to do things yourself because you're faster or can't trust others, start by giving employees more autonomy. Inspect their work and correct it if necessary, but don't give up. Once they've taken ownership and perform their role well, you can focus on other things valuable to the company's growth.

Making Business Growth Into Reality

Follow these five steps to help grow your business:

1. Assess your current position to determine your next steps
2. Visualize where you want to be in one, three, and five years and create SMART goals
3. Invest in a team by outsourcing services to reduce costs
4. Over communicate goals and expectations to ensure everyone is on the same page
5. Empower employees to grow and take ownership

Remember, sometimes you must give the ball away so that you can be free to run toward the basket and score.

If you’re looking for help getting you in position to layup your goals, consider contacting us at Bender CFO Services so that we can set you up for success and growth.