If you want your business to start growing both in size and profitability, you need to start thinking strategically about these 4 areas:
1) Team 

No successful business has ever become successful without the right people in place to build and drive the business forwards. 

Ability is great, but without the right attitude and the right cultural fit with you and your business the technical skills of new employees are irrelevant. You’ve heard the saying ‘an apple rots from the inside out’, right? Well, the same applies to your business, you bring in one employee that isnt’t a good fit with the rest of your company and watch the chaos that unfolds. 

You start to lose the employees you really want to keep, your stress levels go up, you know you have to deal with the problem but don’t. It can take years to rebuild a team once you finally get around to dealing with the problem so save yourself the stress and the heartache and deal with it now. 

Every business owner I have ever spoken to can relate to this issue.

HIRE SLOW, FIRE FAST. 

If somebody is a bad fit for your business, they will be equally as unhappy as they make you and the rest of the team feel, so do the right thing and let them go. Everybody will benefit from it, including the employee that is causing the problems. 

When recruiting, take your time. If you need to fill a position within your team, remember, you have got this far without someone so another week, 2 weeks or even month to get the right person is not a big deal. 

If you have interviewed everyone that applied and haven’t found the right person, re write the advert and make it appeal to the type of person you know you need. Recruitment and marketing are the same thing, you are trying to get the person you want to do the thing you want. In this case it is join your team rather than buy your service, but the psychology behind the process is identical.

In the case of recruitment, ‘good enough’ is not good enough!!

2. Clients

Who is your ideal client? 

I can guarantee your answer is not anybody that’ll buy from me! 

With the marketplace becoming flooded with ‘experts’ and in a world where social media presence is now key to nearly all business-to-business relationships, it is important to be able to differentiate yourself to the competition. 

The best way to do this is to find yourself a niche. But what is a niche and why do I need one? 

A niche is ‘a specialized segment of the market for a particular kind of product or service’.

You need a niche because it makes it easier to relate to you ideal client in a more meaningful way which will result in forging better long term professional relationships. It also means it is easier to find the right marketing platforms for your business. 

The last time I counted, I identified 74 different ways to market your business…. 74!!!!! It is impossible to utilise all of those and get any other work done, so how do you choose? Simple, you niche. Once you’ve found your niche, you can identify where your ideal clients ‘hang out’ and you can target your marketing far more effectively than if you try to appeal to the masses. 

3. Perseverance

‘When the going get’s tough’……… you know the words! And I bet your singing it in your head right now, 

I know I am! 

You’re welcome! 

Business is never plain sailing, things go wrong. But what do you do when that happens?

Do you give up, walk away and never try it again, or do you take stock, figure out why it went wrong and try something different? 

If you want to see your company grow, you will need to know how to fail fast and fail right.

If you learn how to do this, you will dramatically speed up your success in business! 

There is a fantastic story about the struggles of Sylvester Stallone and his struggles when he was starting out in Hollywood. If ever there was a story that made me realise the importance of never giving up this is it. It’s a bit long for this article so click on the button below to have a quick read.

What will you choose to do when the going gets tough?