It’s very rare that a business owner does not want to grow their business. Sure, some are resistant to growth as it scares them, but when I ask a business owner if they would like to double their profits over the next several years they always say “Yes.” That “Yes” involves growth. And yet so many business owners who want growth just can’t seem to push the needle forward, and their growth stalls out, or never happens. Over the years I have found lots of reasons that a business fails to grow, but when it comes down to it, there are 3 main reasons that a business fails to grow.

• You fail to paint a concise vision of your future business. I ask business owners who want to grow their business to describe what their future business looks like in 5 years, and the vast majority of time I get vague answers such as “I want to make more money” or “I want to have more employees on board.” Without a crystal-clear vision of where you want to take your business it becomes to easy to make decisions based on the moment instead of your future. Remember this fundamental concept; “If you don’t know where you are going, all roads will take you there.” I once had a client who wanted to grow to put together an organization chart of his future business in 5 years’ time. He had 14 employees at the time, and his future org chart had spots for 54 employees. Sure enough, 5 years later, he had 55 employees. Start putting together a clear and detailed description of your future business and share that with your employees so you can get them excited.
• You refuse to invest in an adequate amount of resources into Marketing.   More than likely, you have marketing going on right now, and it’s probably doing a decent job of bringing in new customers, patients, and clients. However, you very well may need to do a large-scale investment into your current marketing activities. Companies who don’t grow treat marketing as an expense and therefore will only spend the amount necessary to keep enough new leads and customers coming in to replace the customers you lose. If you are struggling to understand the concept of marketing as an investment instead of an expense, read Brad Sugars book Buying Customers. It will open your eyes on how to scale your marketing to achieve growth.
• You resist hiring additional people, and you don’t train your current team to be managers in the future.  This one comes down to hiring and developing people. You view growth as losing control, so you resist giving up control of your business to current and future employees, which then stems growth. Growth won’t happen without people, and people can be expensive. However, much like marketing, you must see your team members as an investment instead of an expense. What are you doing to develop your current team members to take on more responsibilities in the future? Have you looked at adding on additional staff even if in the short-term it may not seem necessary? 

Start looking at each of these 3 areas and assess which area is the weakest. Once you do that, identify what you need to do to move the needle in that area. Once you have momentum in that area, look at addressing the other 2 areas. Growth doesn’t happen overnight, but with foresight, an excellent plan, and an internal drive in yourself, you can achieve the kind of growth you’ve always wanted.

Kevin Wier

9/27/2022