3 Areas in your business to focus on to stay in business and grow

Being and staying in business requires 3 different areas of your business that you need to work on as a business owner.

You want to grow your business. You want to take your business to its next level. What should you spend your time and attention on?

Staying in and growing your business requires your attention in three different focus areas as a business owner.

Let's face it..As a business owner who wants to grow their business, just doing the doing (operating your business to serve your customers) won't help you.

Just serving your customers well is not going to cut it. Yes you will have happy clients, but you only have so many hours in a day.

As the business owner, your attention is needed in more and different areas if you want to grow your business or if you want to free yourself up from your business.

It is important to take time and focus on those activities that ONLY you can do.

Let’s dive into three areas of focus.

1. Current business and operations

The first area you should focus and work on is obviously your current business and operations: your current clients and offers, but also how you serve those clients and deliver these offers. Be sure to do this well so that your clients leave with a positive experience. They are your ambassadors.

Once you have set your business up for happy customers, start standardising, add structure and streamline it. You can start delegating and outsourcing different parts of your business operations to free yourself up for other activities. Don't make the mistake to continue doing everything in your business. Don’t just become the most hard working employee in your own business.

2. Continuous improvement of your current operations

The second area of focus is to stay relevant and competitive (ahead of competition) by continuous improvement of your current business. If you don’t improve, don't innovate, sooner or later someone will catch up or surpass you. If you do something better of more efficient than a current competitor (your competitive advantage), make sure you keep on investing in it, to make it even better.

Ask yourself, how can you serve your customer better or faster? How can you improve your customer experience? How can you make your operations more efficient? Listen, get feedback and process this feedback. Look around for new trends and innovative ideas, that can make your current business better and stand out. Take time to review and reflect on this regularly.

3. Your future business

The third area of focus you need to work on as a business owner is your future business. Continuous improvement will elevate your business, but to reach your next level in business, and your bigger vision, you need to work on your strategy to reach that next level too. This includes (re)defining or clarifying your vision and perhaps also your mission and purpose and your business model.

Setting the strategic direction of your business is something only you can do.

No employee or freelancer that you hire is able to do this for you.

Yes, of course a business coach, consultant or mentor can help you clarify, improve and implement, but they can’t determine the direction the way YOU envision it! This area also requires and deserves regular time and attention. Working on your strategy for the future is something you should thus work on on a continuous basis as well.

Look at your business from a distance

What type of business would you like to have or achieve? What would you like to achieve as a business owner? Do you want to expand, go global, set up a franchise business, or maybe work less, run your business more passively, set up another type of business, build your empire….? It doesn’t matter what it is, but make time for it. Too often small business owners get so caught up in the first area (i.e. current operations) that they are too busy to work on focus area 2, not to mention focus area 3, only to realise later, that they are or feel behind on their own goals in life and business.

So make sure to pay attention to all three areas!

Can you use some help? Want to bounce off ideas?

Has reading this made you realize that there are areas you haven't covered? Can you use a bit of help to streamline your business to get back time or help to craft your plan for your future business? If you can use a bit of help in either one of these focus areas, apply for a your free strategy session with me to see if and how I can help you. I do a limited number of free strategy sessions every month so you can get a taste of what it is like to work with me. You can apply here: xxxxx

I would love to learn more about you current and future business and you help you level up as a business owner, taking away doubts and obstacles and so that you can run you business with more focus, joy and freedom. Will we talk soon?

Cheers,

Categories: : Business Growth