7 Steps to Grow Your Business (When Growing Your Business Seems Impossible…)

Starting a business can be hard. Growing your business once you have started it can be even harder. Sometimes it can seem downright impossible.

Once you are knee-deep in your business, you can get overwhelmed pretty fast. You start to feel like you have neither time nor energy to get the important things done, or get ahead, or actually live the better life you are struggling to build. Soon you feel like you’re drowning in a sea of your own making…

When you’re in that place, it’s easy to doubt yourself and wonder whether you can sustain your work/life schedule. It’s easy to doubt whether you have what it takes to “make it.” And it’s easy to think about giving up.

Before you pack it all in (or resign yourself to a life of stress and overwhelm), you should try one simple thing first: 

Reevaluate the choices you are making every day regarding
what actions you do and don’t take.

Every moment of every day you have a choice of what actions you take. Make smart choices, and you can achieve a great deal with less time and stress than you thought possible. Make poor choices, and you can find yourself working longer and harder to achieve less and less.

Below are 7 steps you can take to improve the quality of the choices you make and the actions you take. Use the list as a guideline to evaluate both your current and future activities, and business might not seem so impossible after all:

1) Know What Your Goals Are

In my experience, most business owners waste a tremendous amount of time by not clearly thinking through the answers to two questions:

1. “What are my goals with this business?”
2. “What are the key activities that will help me achieve those goals as efficiently as possible?”

Let’s start with the first one…

What are your goals for your business? Do you want to make a lot of money doing what you love? Do you want to build a business that you can sell off for a million dollars? Do you want to have control of your schedule so you can spend time with loved ones? Do you have a mission to change the world?

It doesn’t matter much to me what your goal is; what matters is that you have actually thought about it in some detail.

Don’t skip this step as “too obvious.” Dig deep and get to the real truth about why you are doing what you are doing. All future decisions and actions will build off of that.

For more information on Knowing What Your Goals Are:

• Smart Ass Success! (Free E-book)
• Mining Your Gold! (Audio Product)
• Monday Motivation – 10 Signs You May Not Be Doing What You Really Want
• The “Goldilocks Test” for Effective Goal Setting

2) Identify the Key Activities that will Let You Achieve Those Goals as Efficiently as Possible

After you identify your overall goal, you can address the second question: “What are the key activities that will help me achieve those goals as efficiently as possible?”

This may sound crazy, but many business owners throw themselves into tasks that they think they should be doing without ever evaluating whether those activities are generating any results. This leads to “working and longer and harder but achieving less and less” syndrome.

For small business owners, key activities generally fall into two categories:

1. Activities that involve creating and/or delivering your product or service.
2. Activities that generate more business.

It’s easy to assess whether an activity falls into category 1. Either it’s about your product or service or it’s not.

Things get trickier with category 2. It’s easy to think you’re being productive when you engage in “marketing activities.” However, it’s worth taking a closer look:

• Has cold calling generated you any business?
• Are any leads coming in off your blog?
• Have you closed any deals from all those networking events you’ve attended/
• And so on…

This is not to say any of those ideas are bad. However, if you have been engaging in those activities for a while and have achieved no results, then either:

• Your chosen activity is not well-suited to get you the results you want.
• There is a flaw in your implementation of that activity.

It really could be either of those two. You’ll need to figure out which one it is and what to do about it.

This step may take a bit of time, as you’ll need to analyze what you are doing and figure out what might be better, more efficient ways of achieving the results you want. Stick with it though, because once you figure out this step, the rest gets much easier.

For more information on Identifying Key Activities:

• 6 Reasons Why Your Priorities Get All Screwed Up
• The Mighty Mighty Decision Matrix

(Don’t take too long on this step, because the next step is…)

3) Make Fast (but Informed) Decisions

Business owners (especially ones who have not yet started, but are preparing to start) waste a tremendous amount of time and energy avoiding making a decision. They spend far too long analyzing, hemming and hawing, and going back and forth (you know – the closer they get to making a decision, the better the other options start to look…)

If you want to free up time and energy, then get better at making decisions. Of course you’ll want to take some time to analyze and think things through, but once you have done that, make the best decision you can and move on. This is what the most productive people do. And the least stressed. And the most successful.

When it comes to growing your business, here are a few choices that get avoided:

• What target market to go after.
• Which one of the many products and services I offer should I focus on.
• What marketing strategies to choose.
• What design I should go with for my website/logo/business card.
• And so on…

If you find yourself spending a lot of time avoiding making a decision, then it’s probably because you are trying to figure out what the 100% right option is. Here’s a tip that should help you immensely:

There is no 100% right option.

Well, there might be, but if there was, your decision would be a no-brainer and you wouldn’t be avoiding making the decision.

You will make far more progress in your business by making a choice and running with it, seeing how it works out, and then changing and adjusting as needed.

For more information on Making Fast Informed Decisions:

• How To Make Better Faster Decisions and Be Happier With Them
• Why “Yes, And!” Matters to You

4) Cut Out Everything that is Not a Key Activity

If your business makes you feel overwhelmed, than chances are you need to cut out some things that, when you really look at them, don’t matter.

This one sounds obvious, and it is, but it’s also one of the hardest ones for people to implement. This is for a few reasons:

• Lack of Clarity. If you are unclear on your goals and what your key activities are, then you will have trouble deciding which of your current activities are high-value and which are low-value.
• Fear of Personal Pain. Cutting low-value activities out of your life can lead to pain. Others may be sad, angry, or feel hurt. You may have to drop some mindless but fun activities. You may be forced to do some less pleasant thing that your business needs you to do.
• The Sunk-Cost Fallacy. If you have spent a lot of time on a particular tactic, strategy, or relationship, you may be reluctant to cut it out because you’ll feel like you “wasted all that time.” You know what’s a bigger waste? Sticking with a poor tactic, strategy, or relationship.
• Fear of Missing Out. Sometimes it’s hard to let go because on some level you believe that the activity you are attached to will eventually pay off. It might. But if it hasn’t yet, and if you’ve identified higher value uses of your time, then you’re better off cutting it. You can always reevaluate and go back later.

While all of these reasons are understandable, none of them are compelling enough to keep you from achieving your goals (or at least, they shouldn’t be compelling enough).

You don’t have to dump everything all at once. But if you feel like you have no time and energy, I would highly recommend you start trimming ASAP. Get clear on your goals and key activities, and start cutting out the rest. Your time, energy, and results will quickly improve.

For more information on Cutting Out Everything That is not a Key Activity

• Monday Motivation: Hack Away at the Unessential!
• Monday Motivation: The Importance of Knowing Your “Number One Most Important Thing”

5) Take Immediate and Consistent Action

Procrastination sucks. Believe me, I know.

It’s easy to put off taking important action and focus on lower level, less critical stuff.

Of course, nothing happens until you take action. And ultimately, you’re going to have to take action on the important stuff (or just watch life pass you by).

If you want to grow your business, then you must do two things:

1. Take action to clear your plate as quickly as possible of the lower level stuff you need to get done
2. Take action on the key activities that you identified in step #1. It’s amazing how easy it is, once you created time for what matters, to not take action. 

Note: Don’t let “clearing your plate” take up so much time that you are back to wasting time on low-priority work. Your key activities are the things that are going to build your business. Take consistent action on them and youll grow your business with a lot less wasted time and energy.

If you struggle with taking action, here are a few techniques you can use to get yourself moving:

• Shrink the Task. Don’t “write the full proposal,” just “write the introduction.”
• Commit to Starting. Don’t get focused on finishing. Rather, get obsessed with starting. If you start enough times, finishing will take care of itself.
• Timebox. Give yourself a fixed amount of time to work that is small enough that you will stick to it. 10 minutes of action is better than 5 hours of procrastination.
• Reward Yourself. It’s easy to procrastinate with big tasks when the reward seems far away. Create milestones to regularly reward yourself for progress and action, not just end results.

For more information on Taking Immediate and Consistent Action:

• 7 Ways to Beat, Avoid, or Make the Most of Procrastination!
• 5 Ways to Become Astonishingly Awesome at Finishing Projects

6) Be Outstanding in Your Key Activities (and Passable in Everything Else)

Not ready to fully cut things out of your life? Then at least come to terms with doing a less than perfect job on the activities that don’t really matter.

You can waste a tremendous amount of time trying to make everything perfect. Even if you are not a perfectionist, you may find yourself spending a lot of unnecessary time moving things from good to great that would have been perfectly acceptable at just “ok.”

I’m not saying half-assing it is a great business strategy. However, if you’re ever overwhelmed and feel like you just don’t have enough time to get to the really important things, take a look at how focused you get on the really unimportant things. Some people, once they get started on a project, get sucked in and automatically default to giving it 100%.

This is a great character trait IF you have the time and energy to do so. If so, great (and stop complaining). If not, then settle for less on some of the less important stuff.

For more information on Being Outstanding in Your Key Activities and Settling on the Rest:

• 3 Ways to Stop “Getting Ready to Get Ready!”
• Wanna Get Good at Something?

7) Make Doing Your Key Activities Automatic

Pop Quick Hotshot: Did you brush your teeth this morning? Do you brush your teeth every morning, fairly automatically, without thinking about it?

The answer is most likely “yes” (If for you it’s “no,” well, then, let’s not sit next to each other on a long flight…). That’s because brushing your teeth has become a habit. You have automated your behavior to brush your teeth first thing in the morning.

In a similar way, your success will be effortless once you automate the behaviors that lead to business growth. For example:

• Great sales people know that their success is based on the number of prospects they see. So they make it a habit to see a certain number of people a week.
• Great writers know that their success is based on creative output. So they make it a habit to write a certain number of words or for a certain amount of time, every day.
• Great networkers know that their success comes from the relationships they create and build, so they automatically start conversations with and genuinely try to help everyone they meet.

When I say, “your success will become effortless,” it’s easy to pass it off as standard motivational mumbo-jumbo. “Success is never easy!”

You’re right, it’s not. And to be honest, it takes a tremendous amount of work and effort to make a behavior automatic. That’s why most people never achieve it, or just stumble into it when they find work that matches their already existing habits.

For you, once you have identified what the key activities are that will grow your business, develop a plan to make those activities automatic.

Here are three techniques you can use to “automate” your high value behaviors:

• Take small steps. Building a new habit is hard! Don’t try to eat the whole elephant at once. Break large activities down into a series of habits you can build up over time.
• Create Rituals. One of the reasons I brush my teeth every day is that it’s tied into a ritual. I wake up, go to the bathroom, and then brush my teeth. Every day. It’s so habitual that sometimes, if for whatever reason I need to use the bathroom twice in the morning, I accidentally brush my teeth twice. You can create similar rituals for your own key activities. Tie your high-value behavior to when you wake up, or when you first sit down at your desk. This will go a long way to making it automatic.
• Build in Accountability. When you are first building a habit, you may find it immensely helpful to have some way – or someone – to hold yourself accountable. Basically, you need someone to kick your ass if you miss your habit. This could be a friend, family member, business partner, boss, or an outside coach or consultant. This will force you to stay on track towards building your habit.

For more information on Making Your Key Activities Automatic:

• How to Build a New Habit – 6 Lessons from the Trenches
• The Power of Less (Book by Leo Babauta – Amazon Affiliate Link)
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business (Book by Charles Duhigg – Amazon Affiliate Link)
• Success Secret: Get Yourself a “Yes, And” Buddy!

To paraphrase what I said at the start of this post, starting or growing a business can be hard. And yes, building a successful business will take time, energy, and effort. However, if you use the 7 steps above, you will accelerate your success, reduce your stress, and turn your seemingly impossible dream of building your business into a reality.

Additional Resources

Want more help? Here are two great additional resources you should check out now!

Avish’s One-On-One Mentoring Program

If you want (or need) some in-depth, customized, one-on-one advice, guidance, and feedback on how to build YOUR specific business (with less time, energy, and stress) then Avish’s Mentoring program is just the thing for you. Over the course of 3 months, Avish will work with you to help you gain clarity, identify your big picture goals and key activities, and help you create a plan and stay on track to achieve your goals.

Click here for more info and to sign-up now!

Smart Ass Success Audio Series

The program consists of seven one-hour audio interviews (in MP3 form) with seven different experts and covers every aspect of the process of figuring out what you want, creating a plan to get it, implementing that plan effectively, dealing with obstacles, and staying motivated the whole way! This is an awesome program with a ton of immediately applicable info!

Click here for more info and to get your copy now!

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