What is one thing that your gut told you to do at the beginning of growing your business but never trusted until recently?
To help you grow your business, we asked business leaders and entrepreneurs this question for their best advice. From investing in their business to building traffic with SEO, there are several things you may want to consider to grow your business in the future.
Here are nine things that your gut told you to do at the beginning of growing your business but never trusted until recently:
Invest in the Business
Analyzing Local Needs
Know What You Don’t Know
Select the Right Technology
Choose the Right People
Outsource to Grow
Be Prepared to Fail
Build Traffic With SEO
Find Your Inner Circle
Invest in the Business
I was too afraid of spending too much money on things that might increase the possibility of success. I have realized it is like a numbers game. Some investments will be great, others not, but if you don't make any investments, you don't get any great investments.
Henrik Jeppeson, Every Country in the World
Analyzing Local Needs
Assessing local needs can help build up a belief that you are bringing a valuable solution to customers. When it comes to healthcare, people don’t want to travel far and wide for procedures. Trust that the local needs of customers and patients can and will be met by your expertise. Demonstrate that expertise time and time again to ensure that your business can withstand the test of time.
Henry Babichenko, Eurodenture
Know What You Don’t Know
There are two kinds of knowledge: you know what you know, and you don’t know what you don’t know. It may sound like a no-brainer, but many entrepreneurs try to launch a startup immediately after college instead of spending a couple of years working at a larger company first. When you’re too busy focusing on what you do know, you can waste a lot of time trying to re-invent the wheel because you haven’t yet learned what you don’t know.
My biggest gut feeling has been to trust my instincts when I think I may need to learn more before jumping into a task, and understanding that I don’t know what I don’t know has been a surprisingly powerful tool while growing my business.
Guna Kakulapati, CureSkin
Select the Right Technology
As a digital marketing agency, it’s easy to go subscription crazy on SaaS tools. But, investments in the right technologies are critical to scaling essential areas of a business. Whether the technology is predictive text to improve typing productivity or a data-driven tool to produce the right customer insights, I’ve learned that selecting the right technology tools is vital to hire the right people. Invest in the right tech stack, and you’ll see substantial gains in areas like customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and profits.
Brett Farmiloe, Markitors
Choose the Right People
The people you decide to bring on your team should be thoroughly considered when you begin to grow your business. It may be tempting to hire friends or family members, but you should carefully consider each person’s background and experience before making a decision. With the right people on your team, your business will have the best chance of succeeding.
Than Merrill, Fortune Builders
Outsource to Grow
It took a long time for me to realize that I really couldn't do everything for my small business if I wanted it to grow in the way that I envisaged. Whether it was due to not trusting people or not wanting to spend money on (what I saw as being) "unnecessary things,” I hesitated for a long time to outsource any aspects of my business.
However, it got to the point where it simply wasn't growing as quickly as I'd hoped, and I could feel myself getting more stressed at what was involved in managing this business. Outsourcing aspects of my business were obvious, but I only recently gave this a try. It has, frankly, been a lifesaver. I'm able to achieve so much more in developing my business while leaving a lot of the day-to-day aspects to those I've hired to help out. I only wish I'd done this a lot sooner.
Anna Barker, Logical Dollar
Be Prepared to Fail
Failure is not always bad. Sometimes it is necessary. When I decided to start my business, I had a gut feeling that it wouldn't be smooth sailing and that it would take some time and plenty of mistakes before I would see the fruits of my labor. Yet, when things didn't go as planned, I grew frustrated and got discouraged.
Looking back, I now know that the times I failed were part of the process all along. Those moments when things got complicated and challenging helped me strengthen my strategic thinking. Now, I'm learning to think a step ahead to build some room into my decision-making to allow for mistakes to happen.
Nadya Ramos, Marketing Consultant
Build Traffic With SEO
When I started my online business, I believed in the "Field of Dreams" expression, "Build it and (they) will come." However, people didn't come to my website, and traffic suffered. Once I learned how to use a keyword tool to conduct keyword research to make sure there was interest in my content and that I could beat the online competition, my traffic rose. Keyword tools also help you do competitive analysis. Online businesses definitely need to appreciate the value of SEO and keyword research.
Janice Wald, Mostly Blogging Academy
Find Your Inner Circle
When I initially started this business, I had to learn who to trust and put around me, who I wanted in my inner circle. My whole journey was about empowering women, learning that women need women, and embracing the bond between us. The road is never smooth and it’s the people that surround us, that we place into our lives that will really mean the most to us in the end. Learning from those trusted friends, supporting them and them supporting me, was something that really opened up the journey and helped in growing my business.
Vanessa Molica, The Lash Professional
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