What’s your business growth plan? Getting purposeful with growth and education

Let’s get purposeful with growth and education.

So what does this mean?

I want to talk to you about this because when we are OBMs, a lot of what we invest our time and energy into is what then feeds through to the business and how it grows.

Because of the nature of what we do, a lot of our growth comes from our knowledge and our education. So we have to uplevel ourselves and what we understand, what we know, what we can do, what we can’t do, all those things, to be able to grow the business based on that knowledge.

“We’re not, manufacturing a product where if we invest in new machinery, then we’re going to create efficiency.”

We’re going to create more profitability, or we’re going to be able to expand. We’re offering services and so as much as we can systemise the way we do things, it won’t have the same impact on growth as when we’re upskilling ourselves in what we know or the way we do what we do.

 

This episode shares:  

• You’re not a hobby, you’re a business: A business, from the get-go, the things that you do and invest your time and money into need to have a profit plan at the end.
• Businesses need to be nurtured and steered: Businesses don’t just grow without effort.
• Professional or Personal development (PD): PD without purpose is a cost, and PD with purpose is a necessity.
• Choose wisely and Improve: Work with coaches, courses, consultants and communities. Create tactical learning opportunity, a community expansion opportunity and a business growth learning opportunity.
• The learning buckets: Consider a tactical learning opportunity, a community expansion opportunity and a business growth learning opportunity.
• Perspective: The only way to see what is good inside, is to get the outside eyes, the outside perception with people who are strong enough to be honest.
• Standing Still: Standing still is going backwards because of the missed opportunity cost.

You’re not a hobby, you’re a business

What’s the difference between a hobby and a business?

When  start a new hobby, I buy all the bits because it’s exciting and it’s fun and then I might take one class on how to do whatever it is. Let’s say I’m learning to crochet. I go and take a crochet class and then I have my crochet hook and I have some wool and then I buy more wool and I buy patterns and all those things and it’s fun. Then I start to play.

There is no pressure when this is a hobby. It’s just when I feel like it, how I want it to develop. Maybe I might decide to sell a scarf or two. But this is not a business model. This is a hobby.  I’ve learnt some things. I’ve put into practice the skills that I’ve learnt and then I’ve created something.

Potentially, I’ve sold something. The profitable likelihood is highly unlikely.

If you’re a business, from the get-go, the things that you do and invest your time and money into need to have a profit plan at the end.

When we’re a business, everything we invest our time and our money into needs to have a profit plan at the end.

Tip💡:  If you’re running a business make a plan to get it profitable.

Businesses need to be nurtured and steered

 

When we’re a business, everything we invest our time and our money into needs to have a profit plan at the end. Your business will not grow unless you set your intention for it to grow and with that becomes a plan. Businesses don’t just grow without effort. As much as some people might say, oh I just did a thing and then it just went from there and it grew and then it did this and then it did that and I just was like okay. That’s not true. Ever. Because there is always a person on the other end making decisions and following choices and pathways. They might have opportunities that drop into their lap. But it’s still their choice on which opportunities to take and how to navigate that.

When you have a business, if it’s not going to just grow on its own and it’s not going to just move the trajectory without you being involved. It needs to be nurtured and steered. This leads me to my main question, who is steering yours? Just like when we have little kids when we have children, every child needs to be nurtured in all different ways and every child needs to have people who know what they’re doing around them to help set them up and grow and develop for the rest of their lives. Sometimes we don’t have all the answers. Just because you’ve had this child doesn’t mean you all of a sudden know everything about everything to do with kids, illness, sport, education.

We nurture them, but we don’t have all of the skills that we need and so what we do is we find people who have them. We get doctors involved. We get sleep consultants. We get tutors. We get teachers. There are all of these people that we reach out to and we use to help us nurture and steer these children so that they have the best growth opportunities and in that same way, we need to do it for our business. 

Tip💡: Your business will not grow unless you set your intention for it to grow and that becomes a plan.

 

Professional or personal development (PD)

 

You will hear a lot from many people to stop spending on PD, stop spending on professional development, stop spending on personal development, stop buying courses, and stop buying memberships. You don’t need it. You’re wasting your money. You’re wasting your time.

I’m going to have a little bit of an unpopular opinion right now and say, all of that is rubbish. Keep spending.

In my opinion, there is a cost to a business when you do PD and you invest in something without completion. When you do PD without purpose, that’s where things get messy.

When you just randomly buy things, invest your time, or, do the first module and not the rest, or go to one call and not the rest, or you’ve just bought it because it’s landed in your inbox and it looks fun, that is a cost to your business. It is not a wise money choice. But stopping spending on PD is not going to solve your growth problems. It is going to hinder your growth plans.

What you need to be doing is spending on PD with purpose. I think that that is a necessity to growing your business. 

Tip💡: Invest in PD with purpose.

 

Choose wisely and improve

 

If you’re working with a coach, a course, if you’re getting consultants in, if you’re joining communities, think about why you’re doing it and choose wisely, but do it.

It’s a way that we keep ourselves safe and we think if we don’t spend, we don’t spend there’s less risk, but also there’s traps that come with that. In my business, I am never, never not learning something. I always have something on the go, at least one thing and usually, if I’m honest, I’ve got about three things on the go at one time.

Now, don’t freak out. I’m not one of those people that just does the, oh, I’ve got all these things and I’m not really doing any of them. I never want to be that person. But I have different reasons that I learn different things. Even if money is tight and I’m nervous and I’m thinking, can I really afford this? Or this is going to be a bit of a stretch.

I never want to be the asset in my business that stunts the growth of that business instead of being the driver of that growth. I want to drive it and if my own insecurities, fears, and wanting to know what it’s going to look like on the other end and if this is going to work or not going to work, is going to get in the way of that.

 

The learning buckets

 

To be an asset in my business I need to change my mindset around the desire to drive it. I need to put in some structure and some framework in what will make it feel easier for me to keep growing and not hindering. So looking at my three things, I have a little bit of a bucket approach when it comes to what I’m learning. So usually if I look back at all the things I’ve spent my money on and my time in.

I noticed that there are three buckets:

1 *The first one is a tactical one, so I’ll have a tactical learning opportunity, which usually might be, it might be a tool, it might be a new way to do marketing. Might be just improving my general skills as an OBM, something that I’m going to tactically use every day. Something that’s going to, I can add to my toolkit and then use for clients. These are the tactical things. Usually I’m learning something like that and these things can be free or they can be paid. They don’t necessarily have to be paid for it to be worth your time.

2 *The second one is a community expansion opportunity. So I will sign up to different communities or memberships or networking things where I am getting to know more people, expanding my network, being around the people that I want to connect with, that potentially I want to work with, and I will invest money in that, and I will invest time in that, getting to know these people.

3 *The last one is a business growth opportunity. This is where I recognise that I don’t know it all. And sometimes the things that I need to know to grow my business, I can’t find on Google because I don’t struggle with tactics. Anything you can Google and there’s a step-by-step here, go do this method, try it this way, I can do all that.

But what I can’t do is see the things I can’t see that are holding me back.

Tip💡:  Create structure and framework to make your choice feel easier.

 

Perspective

When I invest in a business growth opportunity, like a coaching program or a mastermind or someone who is working alongside me to show me those things, to help unstick me, to say the hard things when I need to hear the hard things and to help me move when I feel like I can’t, they also will see all the things that are so good about me and my business that I don’t necessarily see. That’s something that we miss a lot of the time and that affirmation sometimes is all you need to keep growing, to recognise you are doing the right thing and you’re doing it well. Because we don’t give ourselves enough credit, especially if we can’t see it.

The only way to see it is to get the outside eyes, the outside perception with people who are strong enough to be honest and then for you to be strong enough to listen, because that’s the other thing. People will try and help or people can try and guide, but if you’re not willing to put yourself on the line a little bit and recognise that this person, whatever they say, is purely to help you, then you’re going to stay in the same position and there’s no point in you spending money there.

So with each of these buckets and these opportunities, I always have a purpose. I want to go in and I want to know why I’m signing up to this thing and what I want to get from it.

Tip💡:  Consider the outside perception with people who are strong enough to be honest and then be strong enough to listen.

 

The hamster wheel

Sometimes I just want to make more connections, which means that I’m going to have to dedicate time as well as money to interacting with people and starting to build real relationships.

I look at it and don’t just see it as a transaction of cash going out. I want to see the ROI and the ROI doesn’t necessarily mean dollars back in, but it is whatever I’ve set the objective as in the first place.

The trap here is that some of the time we will hold on to our cash and we feel safer that way. We’re not taking any risk. But the problem is, when we do that, we’re standing still. If we’re not moving forward, we’re standing still, but in my opinion, standing still is going backwards because of the missed opportunity cost.

If you had what you needed to move forward, you would be growing from today. Every step forward is a growth action. But the amount of time that you stop and you stay still, you’ve lost all that time. You cannot get it back. It is impossible. I have been looking for time machines for my entire life.

I still have not got one. If you’re standing still, you’re not going anywhere, and you’re just on that hamster wheel. And if you’re on that hamster wheel, why? Unless your business is absolutely everything that you’ve ever wanted it to be, and you’re happy. And you feel like this is going to be consistent in how it all operates, and if the market changes, you’re still fine, if you lose a client, you’re still fine, if you have to do the same thing day in, day out, and not learn new things, then you’re happy, great, stay still as long as you want, but, if that’s not the case, standing still is not a good plan, at least not for an extended period of time.

Sometimes we need to stand still to take a breath and make a decision. That’s fine, but don’t live there. We’re either going forward or we’re going backwards. When we look at this feeling of, oh, I don’t know what to do here, and I don’t know what to spend my money on, or I feel too scared, to invest if I can’t see that revenue coming in directly back off it or quickly, what do we do?

I always look at what the opportunity is and what I can do to make the most of that opportunity. So years ago, I was getting frustrated because I couldn’t connect with the type of people that I wanted to connect with. I couldn’t find them. And then somebody said to me, there’s a lot of these people in this certain program.

So I thought, ah, okay, what is this program and had a look and did all of that. And it was worked out to be three and a half thousand dollars Australian. And then you get access to the community ongoing. And so at that time, I didn’t really need the program, but I wanted access to that community. And I looked at it and there was a payment plan and it went for 12 months.

So it meant that, okay, I was going to pay 350 a month and that felt scary for me at the time. Really scary. But what I knew was if I couldn’t make more connections and I couldn’t expand my network and get in front of these people and get out of this frustration, that I was going to be standing in the same place that I was then a year later, and I did not want that. I put my big girl pants on and got brave and signed up. And you know what? I found the money. So I wanted the result enough that when I looked at that opportunity and went, what do I do here? I found the money to pay for it and I created ways to get the money to pay for it because I knew that was one thing I needed to work through to keep this business flowing.

It worked. I had to challenge my own thoughts, I had to challenge my feelings, I had to make a decision that might seem risky, but really it was calculated. Because risky was standing still and doing nothing about it, and not being willing to back myself and what I wanted for this business.

Tip💡: Stand still – take a breath and make a decision. But don’t live there.

And… that’s a wrap!

This is how we can speed up our project. We’re being clever about our pieces and we’re putting things in the right way, with the right resources, in the right timing.

So that then we can pull it off and still pull it off just as easily. It’s not going to make it harder if you’re saying to Ben, Hey Ben, I need you to go and do this task while we’re waiting for the other task to finish. And then you go and talk to Sue and you say, Hey Sue, I need you to do this other task while we’re waiting for that other task to finish. All you’ve done is set two things going at the same time to give them a head start and to get them turned around and completed so that when we have everything we need, we move to the next phase.

It means that then we’re not starting and stopping as we get each bit. So, that’s it! That is as hard as it gets. Like when you are looking at mapping out a timeline that is accurate, easy, and that has a high level of completion, this is how you do it. Six steps. Simple. It’s when we start to overthink and complicate it too much that then it gets unruly and mistakes get made and we feel stressed and things don’t go to plan.

But if we can just move through each step and keep things quite calm, you’ll end up with a really solid plan. So I hope that you found this helpful.

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