This week at Incredible One Enterprises, we are celebrating 10 years in business. I am really excited about it.
When I left my full-time job in corporate America to pursue entrepreneurship, I have to be honest, I wasn’t sure where my next paycheck would come from and I wasn’t prepared for how hard I would have to work. I have always been a big dreamer – my name even means “the secret place where dreamers go to dream.” And although I had a dream, I questioned whether or not I could actually live my dream.
Sound familiar?
After leaving corporate and starting my Mary Kay business, I was unstoppable. But the passion for it soon began to wane and I grew weary. Once I decided to send my pink Cadillac back, I wasn’t sure if entrepreneurship was for me. Mary Kay had been successful but it was such a hustle and grind. It never stopped and if I slowed down, so did my results. I didn’t know how long I could sustain the hard drive that the business demanded.
And the thought of starting a brand new business, creating a new brand and being able to turn it into something incredible (pun intended) had me a little shook.
But I persisted. And I did so by focusing on doing the next thing I knew to do. Eventually, my confidence increased and so did my value. I hired coaches, read voraciously and before I knew it, I had turned my dream into a viable business with employees.
Over the last 10 years, I have worked with more than one thousand entrepreneurs and business owners directly and more than 10 times that it you count the audiences I’ve spoken to and those who’ve attended my own live training events.
And here’s what I know for sure:
Growing a business comes down to these seven things:
1. Mindset – without the right mindset, one that is focused more on growth than on the excuses that keep us from growing is the first and most important ingredient in being successful in business. You’ve heard the adage – you can do everything wrong with the right mindset and win. And there’s a lot of truth to it. Part of the reason I’ve started teaching about mindset is because truthfully there is no way around it if you want consistent results. If you’re plague by fear, limiting or self-sabotaging beliefs or if you can’t uncover the reason why you’re not where you want to be, there’s probably a mindset issue involved.
2. Brand Messaging – taking the time to break messaging down into it’s own category first and foremost is a disruption. Most business people lump it all together as “marketing.” But here’s the thing: messaging will determine IF your message ever gets seen. So you need a strong, powerful SPICE problem and SPICE outcome in order to demonstrate that you have a compelling message that makes it clear to prospects that you can help them. When you base your message on the SPICE problem and outcome you offer, you’ll start to rise above the noise.
3. Marketing – only after you’ve gotten known for a powerful message should you start disseminating it. Marketing is the act of deploying a powerful message through the right avenues to be seen by your most ideal prospects. Because there are more than 50 ways you could be marketing, I know all too well how the “moving Parts of marketing” trip business owners up and keep them from getting the traction they need to grow their businesses.
4. Sales – nothing happens until someone sells something and if you haven’t been able to master the sales management process including the sales conversation your business will only not grow, it will die. There’s both mapping your sales management system and mastering the right sales conversation (this depends on if you work B to C or B to B.)
5. Operations – with out an infrastructure and the right systems you’ll work way too hard in your business. Not only do systems make success predictable, they position you for support and scale in your business. The way I see it, there are 7 systems every business needs to fully optimize and position itself for scale and profit.
6. Talent – if you’re the only one in your business, your income will always be limited. And building a team to support you and help you to expand your brand doesn’t have to be as hard as you think. Building the right team is the only differentiator you really have from your competitors so you have to choose wisely.
7. Leadership and Legacy – Once you have your own team, you’ll need to step up your leadership plans so that you can lead them effectively so that they grow while your company grows. And, it’s around this time that (if you haven’t already) you should be thinking about your legacy – what you’re leaving your family and the indelible mark you’re leaving on the world. The more people on your team, the more important it is to think of your legacy.
In my expert opinion, these 7 will be the success of or demise of your business. To help you galvanize a solid plan with actionable and consistent steps to take, I created the Grow Your Business Tool Kit. I think that success leaves clues and this tool kit is a culmination of 10 years of success in my own business. Every tip and strategy is actively being used in my business today. They work for me, so I know that they will work for you. Regardless of where you are in the business growth cycle, this tool kit is a great check up to make sure that you’re doing the right things to move your business forward. And because it’s my anniversary, I want to share it with you so I removed any barriers to your desire to get access. Check it out now.
