What if this is more in your control than perhaps you realise?
What if luck was nothing more than parallel growth of both the business and you – the business owner.
Developing clear commercial strategies with tangible outcomes is an art form that I have perfected after working with a multitude of companies over the last 30 years. From understanding how to develop new products to increasing revenue with current portfolios to strategic business development initiatives and cross-sector strategies.
But even with the clearest of plans and carefully resourced ideas, why is it that sometimes founders struggle to get the outcome they desire?
One of the biggest blocks holding back growth and success for many companies, is that the limitation may indeed be the business owner… without them even realising it! After working with hundreds of businesses as a coach and mentor, I started to realise that many business owners are dropping into a ‘safe space’ when making decisions on their business. This place where our brain likes to ‘keep us safe’, can be deep-rooted, based on past experiences, fear of the unknown and sometimes just plain old ‘this is the way we have always done things around here’. Change, uncertainty, and risk can all make us pull back. In fact, only 10% of people see obstacles as opportunities.
But the reality is that what got you here, won’t get you there. Fact is, we tend to live our lives on auto pilot and given 95% of our thoughts are repetitive, layer that with around 80% of them being negative – our default thinking mode is generally limiting what we believe is possible in our business. With around 6,000 thoughts per day, that’s a lot of negative thoughts happening on auto pilot. It’s not your fault. This is evolution. It’s our brain’s job to keep us safe but trying to grow a business from this place becomes impossible. And to be fair to business owners, it’s not through lack of trying, on a conscious level, business owners try and break through these barriers, with the best intentions.
But how quickly do self-help books turn to shelf-help, or the training that you attended was difficult to implement due to ‘doing the day job’? As business owners, our greatest challenge when it comes to personal growth is time, and what is needed is an effective method for growth that impacts how we show up in our business. And keeping up with what our business needs from us is often overlooked.
Every win, no matter how big or small is a moment in time. Achieving a milestone for business owners becomes a stake in the ground to aim even higher next time. It’s the nature of an entrepreneur to keep pushing the boundaries and keep wanting to go further. There is no end point. So, if there is no destination and choosing this path is really about the journey, then the real question is ‘did you grow’? If the adage ‘your business only grows to the level that you can handle’ is true, then personal growth is imperative.
For business owners that are looking to take their company to the next level, parallel growth of both the business and the owner is needed. This ensures that the business has clear objectives and plans on what it needs to achieve, and the business owner is clear on what the business needs from them. In this way, companies can grow, and business owner steps up from working in their business, to working on their business.
Written by Babita Devi, Managing Director of bStrategic. To build your skills as an entrepreneur, join our Skills Bootcamps