Accelerate Business Growth for Caring Business Owners

There’s no such thing as overnight success. Behind every victory is hard work, sweat, and sometimes even tears. But there are ways to accelerate business growth.

Let me tell you the story of Alexander Wang…

When he was 19 years old, he dropped out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology with no tangible plan. He wasn’t sure what startup he would create.

And then, he had a lightbulb moment.

At the time, companies wanted to integrate machine learning, but most didn’t have the tools or resources that Big Tech did for their in-house AI projects.

That’s when Wang hit upon the idea for Scale, which makes AI infrastructure for developers to build from.

Within less than 6 years, he has now been listed as the youngest self-made billionaire at 25 years old.

His net worth is estimated to be $1 billion. His San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company, Scale AI is valued at more than $7.3 billion.

Business Lesson on How to Accelerate Growth

Truth be told, there is no such thing as overnight success. Some just get there faster than others. Your goal should be to accelerate business growth and expedite the process while managing your expectations.

Remember, being rich is not the only form of success. But it sure opens up the doors to many other things that we deem as success.

And if there’s anything I’ve learnt in the past couple of years, it’s that you have to make it personal to succeed.

Our 7 Steps to Accelerate Business Growth

1. Goals
2. Routine
3. Mentorship
4. Boundaries
5. Money
6. Lessons
7. Learning

The First Step to Accelerate Business Growth – Goals

We can’t know where we are going unless we know where we are coming from.

If we want to succeed faster, we need to have a vision of what that success looks like, and we need to go after it, daily!

I’m a huge fan of SMART goals 

Specific

Your goals have to be specific. As a business owner, this is the time for you to discover what exactly you want. Break it down as much as possible such that a lay man looking at it will be able to understand fully without probing further.

This will give you focus and clarity to chase after it. Anyone reading it should understand what will be done and who will do it.

Measurable

Measurable goals are quantifiable. If it’s about increasing your sales, make it tangible. How much do you want to make when the goal is achieved?

Measuring your goals makes it possible for you to track them and monitor your progress. It makes you stay focussed with deadlines.

Achievable

There’s no limit to dreaming, you can be as wild as possible. But when it comes to setting goals, they have to be achievable.

This means having goals that are actually realistic. You have to be able to envision the success within a specific time frame. There’s no point in making big goals if you aren’t going to be able to work towards them.

Relevant

Have you ever found yourself wanting something just because your mate has it? We probably all have. Relevant goals are those that make sense to you.

They have to be in line with your objectives. They have to align with your values and beliefs. Otherwise, you probably won’t have the motivation to go after them.

Time-bound

A goal has to be time-bound. Otherwise, you’ll not see the need in waking up every morning to chase after it.

Break the goal down into smaller chunks. Yes, you want to be a billionaire someday. But what are you doing today, this week, this month, this quarter, and this year, to get to that goal?

You can read more about SMART goals here

The Second Step to Accelerate Business Growth – Routine

Have you read the book Atomic Habits? It’s a great book to give you fresh perspective on forming new habits and building a good routine.This is essential in accelerating your business growth.

One of my favorite quotes from the entire book is that “If successful people and unsuccessful people share the same goals, then the goal cannot be what differentiates the winners from the losers.”

There has to be more to it. And I’ll tell you what it is…consistency and hard work.

Outside ideas knows that there are many ways to do this:

• Making use of to do lists
• Have a default diary
• Set small goals
• Track your progress

Make Use of To-Do Lists

To build a routine, you need a schedule. 

And when it comes to small business owners, your routine might look different every day. The solution is to start every new day with a to do list.

Review your lists every day and see what’s working and what’s not. And by the end of it, you’ll probably be able to tweak and see the best time to perform certain tasks.

Have a Default Diary

A default diary is a calendar of your week that blocks time that is pre assigned to particular tasks that you need to do.

It will help you to ensure that you see through tasks to the end and prioritise accordingly.

You can read more about how to create a default diary here.

Set Small Goals

Setting small goals will help you achieve a routine. Your goal could be to send 5 proposals in a week. That would mean waking up early in the morning to start executing your tasks.

Set these small goals to guide you and help you to push you to build a routine.

Track your Progress

Building a new habit isn’t the easiest thing to do.

You have to fight with your mind. You have to wake up in the morning, against all forces, because ultimately you know it’ll be good for you.

So track your progress to see how well,/badly you’re doing. Adjust accordingly until your schedule works for you and not just you for it.

The Third Step to Accelerate Business Growth – Mentorship

I’ve learnt the hard way that having access to people who have been there and done it is with its weight in gold and I personally have 2 coaches. Life is hard, more so because most of us don’t exactly have a blueprint for success. We go around trying and failing and trying again, which in itself is not a bad thing.

However, I can guarantee you that if you surround yourself with people who have been through similar challenges to yours, life becomes a whole lot easier. Having a mentor is like having a compass when you get lost in the forest. They guide you in the right direction and steer you towards the right actions.

Having a mentor or support group can benefit you in many ways, and can absolutely help you find success faster than if you had no guidance.

The Fourth Step To Accelerate Business Growth – Boundaries

I’m becoming much better at saying no. It’s been another hard learnt lesson but it’s certainly proving to be a better strategy for me. Herbert Bayard Swope said, “I can’t give you a surefire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: Try to please everybody all the time.”

Setting boundaries is probably one of the hardest things, but once you learn how to, it becomes a breeze..

What’s the link between saying no and succeeding faster?

Without setting essential boundaries, we get into a pattern of over-extending ourselves and getting nothing in return.

Warren Buffet said that “the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.”

The two ways to set boundaries are:

• Visualise and know your limits
• Communicate your boundaries

Visualise and Know Your Limits

You can’t set boundaries without first knowing them. You need to visualise them and even write them down if possible.

It could be that you don’t pick your phone during certain hours of the day. Or, it could be a boundary specifically with your clients – maybe that if they cancel at the last minute, you have to charge them fully.

Whatever the case, the first step is to clearly know and understand your own boundaries.

Communicate your Boundaries

Once you know your limit, the next step is to communicate those boundaries to other people.

Don’t be scared to turn down clients whose needs aren’t in alignment with yours. Don’t be scared to communicate your boundaries and expectations, even with your employees. By doing so, your chances of success automatically increase.

The Fifth Step to Accelerate Business Growth – Money

Have you ever heard the saying, “Money goes where money flows?”

Depending on your upbringing, you’ve probably realised that people handle money differently.

But if you are going to be successful, you have to get it right with money, and be smart about it.

It’s really hard to become rich, but what’s even harder is maintaining that status.

If you want to accelerate your business growth, you need two things:

• Educate Yourself About Money

How much knowledge do you have on how money works?

Being a small business owner means that you have to handle money, sometimes entirely by yourself.

Such knowledge doesn’t come automatically. You need to acquaint yourself with the knowledge.

Take up courses that will teach you how to handle money both as a business owner and in your personal life. You can also read books and articles on the same. In doing so you’ll be much more likely to succeed

• Execute What You’ve Learnt

It’s no use having all this information at your fingertips if you won’t put it to practice.

Executing what you’ve learnt about money will need discipline and consistency. You might need to try and fail a few times before you finally get the gist of it.

Which brings me to the next step to accelerate business growth – success.

The Sixth Step to Accelerate Business Growth – Mistakes

It doesn’t matter how much you fail, you only need to succeed once! And mistakes are part of life.

Every failure is a lesson.

I think that oftentimes we’re scared of making mistakes because it feels like a reflection of who we are, when in essence, it’s impossible to not make mistakes.

In fact, mistakes are simply opportunities for improvement. So, what can you learn from that client who you didn’t manage to sign up? What can you learn from all the money you lost because of having unclear payment policies?

If you can list down all the failures and corresponding lessons from them, it’ll be much much easier to succeed.

These are the two ways of dealing with mistakes:

• Fix them
• Change your perspective

Fix the Mistakes

“If you sit in 5HIT for too long, you start smelling like it.”

A harsh reality, but it’s true.

Instead of dwelling on the issue, find solutions. And if you look closely enough, you can almost always find a solution to your problems. Focus your energy on that, instead of the mistakes you made.

Change your Perspective

All mistakes are simply lessons.

Because the chances are you won’t repeat them. You’ll probably be more attentive. You’ll probably counter check your work before publishing it.

So, a shift in perspective from seeing every mistake as a failure to a lesson will help to accelerate your business growth.

Change your perspective, pick up the pieces and move on.

The Seventh Step to Accelerate Business Growth – Learning

Isn’t it funny how we all at one point, imagined that learning stops when we finish school. How wrong we were..

Learning NEVER stops. At least, it shouldn’t.

No human being has infinite knowledge, meaning you can never exhaust all that there is to know.

How beautiful is that?

In the world we live in, you barely need any money to learn. So many free online courses, and books with a vast amount of knowledge.

We literally have no excuse, and it’s never been easier to succeed faster.

Here are 3 ways to keep learning:

• Find relevant courses
• Read the right books
• Attend webinars and workshops

1. Find Relevant Courses

The best thing about our world today is that you can learn almost everything from the comfort of your home.

All you need is good internet, a comfortable seat, and some discipline.

Whatever field you are in, there are definitely free online courses that you can take up.

You can acquaint yourself with these sites for some of these courses

• Coursera
• Google Digital garage
• Hubspot Academy
• Alison

1. Read the Right Books

If you are a small business owner, you most likely have some gaps in your knowledge.

It could be in sales, marketing, accounting, law, or even administration.

“When you stop learning, you start dying.”

Make sure that you’re, at any point in time, learning something new.

And before you know it, you’ll be highly skilled and marketable in all that you do.

2. Attend Webinars and Workshops

Depending on where you live and what field you are in, there are probably webinars and workshops that could be highly useful for you.

You may find this by acquainting yourself with like minded individuals on social media.

You can even join relevant groups to your field, and it’s likely that you’’ll come across a webinar that you can learn from.

Lastly, find out who the gurus are in your industry and ‘stalk’ their websites. They will likely have previously saved webinars that are useful for you.

Steps to Accelerate Business Growth – Our Summary

I’m sure that we would all like to speed up success and get it all in a heartbeat, but that’s just not how life works. It’s a process.

The beauty is that there is so much to learn and experience in the journey to success.

Still if you want to speed up your success, the 7 things you need to look into are:

1. Goals
2. Routine
3. Mentorship
4. Boundaries
5. Money
6. Mistakes
7. Learning

We believe that even though success is not a linear upward curve, there are ways to get there faster. We’ve worked with business owners who have started off very small and grew to big, thriving businesses.

We’re always up for a chat. If you would like to talk about success more, get in touch. Outside ideas are on a mission to help people and businesses grow. We have a range of support that can help you.