Grow your business faster

Four bad mentalities to avoid in order to thrive.

Ok, so you wish your business could grow faster. You have tried everything you can think of on every aspect of your brand but business just seems to stagnate at that level.

So, what now? Well, the truth is that you are probably looking in the wrong area. Many business owners tend to focus on external factors when, instead, it is the internal factors that truly affect how much and how fast your business grows.

In particular, the greatest internal factors that hinder business growth are the detrimental mentalities that business owners like us tend to impose on ourselves.

That said, since these mentalities are generally self-created, it means that we can actively avoid them if we know exactly what these mentalities are.

Here is a list of the four worst mentalities that you must avoid if you want your business growth to be stronger and faster.

 

Bad mentality one: Having a perfect plan and sticking with it

A lot of people think that their business and marketing plans must be “perfect” before they proceed and believe that adhering to it will eventually lead to success.

Unfortunately, the hard truth is that there really is no such thing as a “perfect” plan. On the most basic level, what products we plan to provide and what our customers want are never going to be 100% compatible.

As such, doggedly adhering to a pre-conceived “perfect” plan is suicidal because it will prevent you from identifying and making the improvements necessary to grow your business.

In avoiding this, I believe that one of the best ways is to conduct a suitable degree of market research, formulate a plan based on these insights and then launch your business offering on this highly educated guess.

You must then be ready to observe the reactions of your customer’s to your product and leave suitable leeway for you to tweak your offering until you have the best version available.

Only with these minor but constant improvements will you be able to have the business growth you desire.

That said, a more proactive and prudent idea is to not invest a lot of your money in building a “perfect” product. Conversely, create a scaled-down version of it and test it in your market. Following that, only invest your money to grow it when a suitable number of customers are willing to pay you for it.

 

Bad mentality two: Operations must be ready

One disturbing trend that I have noticed over the years is that business owners, especially the ones who have received classical training in multinational corporations, tend to believe that all operations must be battened down and well-defined before any promotional work is done.

The problem with this mentality is that as much as operations are essential to the functioning of a company, it really does very little in terms of bringing in the profits needed to run and grow business.

The best way to void this mentality is to actively pursue marketing while only maintaining a basic team. With that, only proceed with full operations when there is a sharp uptake of your product or your market shows visible demand for your offering.

In this sense, you can stretch your business dollar by avoiding expenditure on operational staff and infrastructure until you really need it.

 

Bad Mentality three: I must do everything myself

One truly detrimental mentality that I seek to weed out when I am coaching my students is the notion that they must be involved in every aspect of their business.

This mentality is insane at best because as the boss, your job is to manage the company, not to actually do the work yourself.

The core issue here is that of trust. Many business owners tend to be afraid to trust others to get the job done. Worse still, are some that deeply fear that their business secrets will be compromised if they let others handle certain aspects of the company.

This mentality is inherently illogical because as the boss, you are still just one person with a finite amount of time and energy that cannot be spread too thinly over every aspect of you company because it hinders you from doing your main job of growing your business.

To avoid this, you must recognise that successful business owners are the ones who willingly leverage the skills, talents and resources of internal personnel and external contacts to grow their business faster.

For example, when I started out in Internet marketing, I set up a music site directing students to violin teachers. With no violin teachers of my own, not enough time to find them, and quite honestly, not enough ability to teach, I used joint ventures with violin schools to kick-start my business by leveraging their staff and expertise.

Bad mentality four: I am the best person for everything

This is an extension of my previous point. One of the worst mentalities to have is to believe that you are the best person for every job in your company.

Many business owners think that as bosses, their business will grind to a halt if they are not deeply-involved in every aspect of their operations. What they don’t realise is that this inflated sense of self-importance is what prevents them from creating and executing the campaigns, activities and strategies needed to propel business growth.

As a boss, it is essential that you recognise there are always people who are better at specific roles and functions than you are. With this, you must also recognise that your role is to focus on the tasks that will grow your business and profits.

After years of helping business owners and companies overcome these bad mentalities, I know that growing your business while avoiding the mental habits that are holding you back is attainable. That said, perhaps one of the most important core mentalities to ensure this is to be willing to learn and improve.

However, I understand that being constantly vigilant of yourself and the nuances affecting your business is difficult at best. So, another necessary mentality is to be willing to seek help from experienced business mentors who can evaluate and guide you towards greater success.

 

Pam Siow is the founder of the Internet Biz Owners Club. Pam leads a rapidly expanding company of expert business coaches geared towards helping companies step into the future. Find out more at InternetBizOwnersClub.Com.