book.chapter Adopt the correct mindset and grasp the broad overview

To progress from operating a small, fully booked business, it's crucial to first comprehend the methods and reasons for your desired growth. You must possess enough self-awareness to identify necessary changes and the readiness to implement them. Understanding the four key elements for expanding a business and the nine strategies to achieve this is also essential. Primarily, you must have the desire to grow. Before embarking on the journey of building a larger, superior business, it's important to grasp the blueprint of your future success. You're likely already familiar with working "in" your business and may have a fair idea of how to work "on" your business. However, to grow, you must balance working "on" your business while continuing to work "in" it, which will undoubtedly require significant effort. Before diving in, take a moment to reflect and ask yourself some critical questions. It's logical to assume that growth will necessitate a change in approach. You'll need to innovate, which can take various forms in this context: Do you wish to offload or delegate mundane tasks to dedicate more time to clients you genuinely enjoy working with? Do you aspire to automate your business to free up most of your time for other pursuits? Do you desire to have someone handle all the minor irritations that arise? Do you aim to significantly expand your business, serve more clients, open several new locations, and generally elevate your business to the next level? Or do you simply want to reap the profits you anticipate will naturally flow from a much larger business venture? There are multiple ways to grow your business, just as there are numerous reasons why you might want to move beyond operating a small, fully booked business. That's perfectly fine, but initiate the process by contemplating what exactly you hope to gain from the overall growth process. Any required steps will mean additional work for you. You're likely already swamped, so there better be a substantial reward at the end of this journey if you're going to add more tasks to your already packed schedule. Be absolutely certain you have a clear vision of what you're aiming to achieve. While bigger isn't always better, there are two general growth scenarios to choose from: If you're already working with clients you genuinely like and are satisfied with your income, you might want to grow simply by extending what you're currently doing. For you, job satisfaction doesn't necessitate managing a large staff, heading a high-profile business poised for a public listing, or spending time in the office fretting over managerial tasks. Instead, thinking big means you are fully self-expressed doing the work you love. If your primary goal is to significantly increase your income and the idea of managing a large, promising company excites you, then you're likely aiming to build something entirely new from scratch. Your new business will need to be scalable – meaning it will generate revenue and grow exponentially even without your direct involvement. You're ambitious and want to serve 10- or 100-times more clients than you currently have, so new and larger systems will be necessary. This is a completely different challenge than a gradual increase. You feel prepared to transition to the major leagues. Both of these growth paths are perfectly acceptable ways to move beyond operating a small business that is already fully booked. Deciding which of these two paths to take is the challenging part, and you're the only one who can make that decision. Both strategies will work, but not simultaneously. The actions you take to progress down one of these paths will make it nearly impossible to traverse the other. This is a crossroads you need to approach with a clear mind. Both of these growth strategies also necessitate that you have a solid mental foundation in place before you begin. "Your attitude, your disposition, your perspective, your mood (whatever you want to call it) about the future is a crucial factor in your success. What's inside – your inner resources – is as important as money, people, and all the other tangible resources you'll need to grow your business. You will not build a bigger, better business if you are not in the right mood. What am I working towards in this business? Why am I pursuing this goal? There are no absolute right answers to those questions. We each have different ambitions that drive us. But your answers to those questions will need to be top of mind as you move through this process. In fact, being able to sustain the right attitude may be the most important part in why you will succeed. I really mean that". – Michael Port "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them." – Albert Einstein How can you grow? What new business architecture will be required? Why do you want to grow? What's in it for you that makes all the effort worthwhile? How and why Growth You can build something which is entirely new and which will be much bigger. You can grow by extending and expanding your current business operation. The right mental attitude for success has three elements: To innovate and build your business, you need to be curious – you need to have an ongoing appetite to figure out new things. You need to be ambitious – otherwise you won't have the mental energy to bring to bear on trying new and hopefully better things. You must be creative – because creativity expands ambition. Until you're feeling creative, problems will look insurmountable. You need to come up with new ways to get what's needed done. Whether you're choosing to maintain the scale of your existing business or building something new and bigger from the ground up, keep in mind there are four criteria which can be used to evaluate success in business: Profitability – your business must be highly profitable with significant margins available to share with everyone who is involved in the supply chain. Scalability – the business must be able to be run by employees or independent contractors you train rather than requiring your ongoing hands-on involvement. Excellence – the business must operate in a line of business where you have great personal strengths and where you can make a substantial contribution to the creation of value. Leverage – the business must be able to expand without requiring more time from you. In fact, as the business grows, you must have the option to work less and earn more if you so choose. There are nine generic structural building blocks which can be used to create a successful business: 1. Franchising – take a system which has been proven to work and clone it to expand into new markets. A good franchise is almost like buying a business-in-a-box inasmuch as it will have well thought out structures and systems in place. Franchises are quick-start business opportunities because the franchiser has hopefully already worked out the problems and developed solutions. 2. Licensing – where a company takes what works and sells the right to use that specific intellectual property in other markets, other locations or other contexts. As for a franchise, you would anticipate the licensor has worked through any problems and figured out what works. It's common for licensors to sell more than one license for a specified territory whereas franchises tend to be more exclusive. Licensors do not generally specify the business structure which must be used by the licensee. 3. Train-the-trainer – where you teach others how to provide the same services you are already providing. In order to do this, there must be some proprietary element or insider know-how at the center of the service you provide your current clients. Otherwise, there will be little incentive for others to pay to have you teach them. 4. Branding – where you buy out your competitors, change their business names to your own or otherwise start related businesses. Branding allows you to establish new lines of revenue, to move into additional locations and to sell goods through alternative channels of distribution. 5. Develop and sell intellectual property – perhaps take a typical service and turn it into a mosaic of different information products and programs. Or develop an online tool for doing something which can be sold to other companies already active in your industry. 6. Full-service – meaning take a small or one-person operation which provides one primary service for clients and then expand to become a one-stop shop which meets all of your client’s needs. This is what happens when a fitness trainer starts offering a complete range of health and wellness services. Or when a marketing firm starts offering other business and administrative services as well. If your customers rely on a number of firms to get things done, they may be good candidates for a full-service approach. 7. Network marketing – a hybrid combination of direct marketing and franchising. Network marketing is sometimes referred to as multilevel marketing and is the business model where you pay a commission to other people to sell your products or services. Sophisticated network marketing arrangements have multiple levels of compensation paid on the results generated. 8. Social networking – in either online or offline format. These are gathering places where like-minded individuals can interact, swap leads, connect and collaborate. Strategic alliances are a form of social networking. The essence is that others will drive business your way in exchange for you doing the same for them. 9. Coming up with superior products – also known as "the better mousetrap" approach. If you can come up with a business structure that offers a superior or innovative way to deliver any of the services people want, you'll do fine. Obviously, not all of these nine business building blocks will be available to you all of the time and in every imaginable situation.