How To Have Sustainable Growth & September Roundup!
/Many of us started our business out of a need to solve a problem or a passion for a skill set that we have. I started my business to use my background in accounting and administration to help service-based entrepreneurs create & sustain a business that they love so they can create the lifestyle of their dreams. I am a one-woman shop and look forward to growing my business but I want to do it smart.
According to a joint study shared on Entrepreneur.com, “Roughly two-thirds of the fastest-growing startups end up failing. Research from California State University also showed that companies that had fast revenue growth performed worse, long-term than their slow-growing counterparts.”
I am sure these business owners had the best of intentions and were super-excited to scale their business to increase revenue and jumped right in. We can learn from their mistakes by applying the 5 steps below as we move along the business scaling journey.
Step One
Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals. I shared in a previous blog post that SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Step Two
Take time to do market research on your industry and the competition to gain a better understanding of your competitive advantage or threats.
Step Three
Know your numbers. It is super important to understand where your business stands financially so that you can make good decisions. Additionally, creating a detailed business budget and financial projections are also must-haves in your business toolkit.
Step Four
Create efficiencies in your daily operations and use technology to reduce labor on repetitive tasks.
Step Five
Provide excellent customer service to your customers and ask for their feedback to improve your services.
There are many more things to consider when you are thinking about scaling your business. If you take your time and give some thought to the steps above you will be miles ahead of your competition as we sail out of the month of September. As usual, this month went by fast. People say that time flies when you are having fun so that must be true.
I truly enjoyed kissing summer goodbye and moving forward into the fall season. I hope you had a fantastic summer season and were able to get some things accomplished. This month I talked about 3 Ways To Create Measurable Goals and How Busy Entrepreneurs Can Continue To Learn New Things. If you have time for a few quick reads check them out and remember the tortoise won the race.
Keep IT Sunny~