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To Grow your business can be daunting. When the initial excitements has died down, just keeping yourself on tip top shape mentally can be quite frustrating and energy sapping. I know, because I have been to that road before. And I can only speak for my experience.
Simple and seemingly harmless mistakes can bite you really hard after the dust settles. But with a focused smart approach combine with the right support, things you have set forward in the beginning slowly will unveil for you.
Today, I am going to write some life tips to help grow your business. Things that I have kept in my heart, not only in business and work, but more so with family.
As in life in general, to grow your business eats up your time and resources, as well as your physical, mental, and emotional fortitude. To say quite frankly, there is no divide really, between the two. The ebb and flow of your business growth is as much as your life goes.
Someone said this very powerful line,
Your business grows where your attention goes.
#1 life tip to grow your business. Surround yourself with the right support and smart approach.
To help grow your business, it is of utmost importance that you are able to gather great people around you to lend you support when the wind beats down on your business. Accept it or not, there is no perfect situation in business and in life in general. So, go and get good people around you. And if I may add,
…stay away from people that does not provide value to you as a businessman.
This is where most people lack early on in their business career and in life. Especially people who are self-sufficient, those who love to be left alone to themselves. Because they could not see the need to have someone mentoring them, so they want to do things by their lonesome. The great thing about mentors is that you learn valuable lessons not only in their triumph but more so from their mistakes.
#2 life tip to grow your business. Have a deep understanding of your product and business
Grow your insights into the market where you operate. Expanding your knowledge base about your product is one of the many important keys to help you grow your business. Not just because you love your product or your company, everybody does. But because you have other people who competes with you.
Research your competition. See what they are doing and what activity they are into then add in your insight into the information you have gathered. In business and in life, imitation is normal. In fact, we humans learn effectively by imitation.
#3 life tip to grow your business. Plan for the long haul
Be in it for the long term. The hardest part of doing business is to persist through the difficulties and to be dedicated for years! I had great business ideas 20 years ago, ideas that I started but gave up after a year. And I often wonder, “what if I persisted in it for 20 years?”. While conjuring up of ideas is cute, persisting through the years is hard and dirty work.
It’s like a marriage. You can’t be in it only in good times? right? You have to anticipate the long, winded, and bumpy road ahead!
Because
the great stories can only be told after going through the fiercest storms!
Set up milestones for yourself and knock them off one by one.
#4 life tip to grow your business. Put up strategies to mitigate any obvious risks to your weaknesses.
There is a Chinese ancient book called “The Book of Changes” that I really love. I have read it once, online. What is great about it is that it offers strategies to fight a strong enemy using one’s seemingly inferior circumstances. These strategies really makes impact on your bottom line – meaning your weakness and turns it around to be a strength. Most people would almost instantly avoid talking about weaknesses. But forget to acknowledge that our weaknesses are us. It is not just a part of us, it is us. And the best way to deal with it is to put strategies around it to mitigate the negative impact it will have the obvious risks. Crying over it will not help.
Think about the possible risk and opportunities surrounding you and your business.
#5 life tip to grow your business. Build structure and focus
Organizational structure is the chain of hierarchy, which divides entire employees of an organization based on their level, roles, and responsibilities. It defines the clarity in between employees to report whom and also employees are aware of what the employer expects from them so that they can deliver their best to meet the expectations. It reduces the rate of confusion and organization runs in a smooth manner.
Building structure does not only pertains to personnel organization, it also points to the “How” of your company. How do things get done in different segment of your day to day operation? What set you apart from your competitors in how you do things and staying on that level for as long as you can. That is what defines a focus and growing business structure.
stick to your founding principles
#6 life tip for your business. Put in the time!
Here is quick response from a successful internet marketer on how much time he spent before earning substantial income.
“It took 2 years. One year to build the audience. Another year to start monetizing and eventually replace my full-time income.”
Putting in the time is basically earning money to provide for yourself or your family. Making money is what enables me to enjoy life. It is what provides me with freedoms like being able to work from home, or anywhere else for that matter.
How much time?
To grow your business, put in at least 2-3 years of your life establishing your business.
#7 life tip to grow your business. Have a uniting theme across your business.
I have seen people many times before who just could not focus on one thing or one theme. They keep changing their business model from one idea to another, and after a decade, still has nothing to show for it.
#8 life tip to grow your business. Have values to stand for
What do you stand for? What is it that you care most in life. Honesty? Trust? Money above anything else? To grow your business, you have got to have something to hold on to. Something solid to stand on! You cannot just go out there and do business without knowing who you are and what you stand for. Because, business is as much as adding value to others as value to yourself. You can’t do it any other way.
It is when you add value to others, that your business is valuable.
Values does not just happen, it is honed in years and in challenges. Business values often are reflections of the founding person. Work your values and principles early on.
#9 life tip to for growing your business. Turn values into tangible activities for customers
One of the best tangible activities that customers experiences with businesses is over-delivery. Going above and beyond what is expected of your business. We believer in the importance of first impressions, but more importantly believe that knowing that every contact you do with customers is a chance to make an impression – you have got to make it positive.
Another good example of tangible activities for customers is the support you give to your employees. If your employee fail, it is you who fail. Customers acknowledge this as a positive experience when they know your support for your employees is unparalleled. Who wouldn’t?
While it would be ideal to attend to everything right away, some things need attention immediately, others can be handled over time. Do you know the difference? It’s not a guessing game, you learn what’s key knowing your values and turning them into tangible activities.
#10 life tip to grow your business. Genuinely care for customers
Business who genuinely care for the their customers share stark similarities when it comes to customer support. They are obsessed with providing quality and fast customer service. They also make customer service readily accessible and easy to access. And they are intentional in knowing who their customers are – sometimes borderline persistently annoying. When they see that a customer is loyal, they immediately reward them. Because they know that they themselves have been a customers one way or another. That’s a great way to genuinely care for your customers and grow your business consequently.
How many times have we gone into a certain website and feels like there is nobody there to help us? You use the contact us form, but over a week and still email in your inbox. I just did. The other week I was surfing the internet for shredding machines and there is this website that was on the first page of google search. I clicked on it, and start to look around. And as I would normally do, I check out the contact us form and send an email before I went back to google search. It’s been more than a week now and still nothing on my inbox. Well, that’s another missed opportunities to make a sale.
#11 life tip for growing your business. Invest in your people/team
Investing in your employees maybe the smartest thing you will ever do to grow your business. When you do that for your company team, you are actually investing for your company’s future.
Richard Branson put it best: Customers come second, employees first. It’s a philosophy that brings unexpected benefits to both the company and its clients. …$7 trillion in lost productivity the world over every year! Unfortunately the bad news doesn’t stop there. The true cost of replacing employees can be twice their base salaries depending on their wage, role and experience. The cost of replacing high performers who often deliver 400 percent more in productivity than their average counterpart can be higher still.
trust them with responsibilities
Here is another one,
Many companies do not take employee training seriously. Just having a rulebook rarely suffices to help employees understand the nuances of their job. An IBM study revealed that employees who do not feel they are developing in a company are 12 times more likely to leave it. Many times companies see employee training as an expense rather than investment and end up paying dearly in terms of low productivity and high turnover.
Trust your team with responsibilities. Trust is critical for the success of any business. It makes working together possible. Some says, trust is the fertile soil that nurtures a team’s ideas and goals. Without it, it’s like farming in the desert. Imagine how that’s going to result into.
You don’t trust your employees, and they will not trust you.
It’s a symbiotic relationship between people of any strata. We can’t exist together without it. That is why there is war in the world because of trust and the lack of it. Same thing with family and in growing your business. Trust your own people with responsibilities!
No organization can succeed for long without trust. It’s not easy to build, but it will have the most powerful long-term impact on your company.
Additional resources:
Double Your Sales with Customer Loyalty Programs
3 Simple Tools You Can Start Using To Get More Sales from Repeat Customers
Reward Your Customers with thirtybees Ecommerce Referral Program
In conclusion:
Growing your business can be daunting. It eats up your time and resources, as well as your physical, mental, and emotional fortitude. These life tips will provide you a working model on how to grow your business successfully and start right with your ecommerce business.
