photo by Alan Cleaver

Business growth can be a scary proposition…obviously it’s better than business failure, but there are a whole set of fears centered around business growth and success that plague a lot of business owners.

When your business starts succeeding beyond where you’ve been for a while, you leave your comfort zone…you head into new territory (which is scary).  Maybe it’s a situation you haven’t faced before (also scary).  Maybe it will require you to do some things you haven’t had to do before…hire more people, find a new location, spend more money (on people, stuff, rent, etc.).  And maybe it will force you, as the business owner, to do things differently…not do as much hands on work and to do more strategic leadership and planning.

All of that can be scary stuff – but I would propose there’s a better way to look at it.

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photo by LaserGuided

As a business owner, there are all sorts of places where you can pick up great information.  This week if you were lucky enough to be at the Principal Connections monthly networking event – you would have picked up some great business tips from Jonathan Freiden and Seth Freiden – brothers and co-owners of the 3rd Generation company US Toy.

If you don’t know who these guys are or why you should care…US Toy has been around for 58 years as a local Kansas City based family owned business that’s grown substantially – especially in the last few years.  Considering that the average family owned business only stays in business for 24 years and only 30% make to a 2nd generation (only 10% to a 3rd generation) – these guys have clearly figured out quite a few things that we could all benefit from.

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   photo by Rhett Maxwell

When was the last time you took a few minutes…or better yet a few hours and really thought through what you wanted to get out of your business and what your exit strategy might be?  Have you looked at the end of the rainbow at all?

Even if you have no plans of selling or getting out in the foreseeable future, it’s still worthwhile to think about it in terms of someday…maybe 10 years, maybe 20 years…whatever that timeframe is, having a long term vision can only help you.

Anita Lieser – a broker with Apex Business Advisors just wrote a great article breaking down a very successful transaction.  I don’t know any of the details behind this particular deal, but there are several critical things you can take away from the article as you think about the long term outcome of your business.

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  photo by TheBusyBrain

It can be really tough to explain to people why they should spend their hard earned money with you rather than the competition.

As an example, let’s pretend that you have a catering company…and that your target market is the business crowd – larger groups that like a variety of hot and cold lunch opportunities, they need a cost effective, easy to use, reliable service.

How would you present yourself from a marketing perspective?

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  photo by smlp.co.uk

I had a crazy week this past week, a lot of late nights and not enough downtime…but it’s my fault due to poor planning.  It was the cumulative pile-up of too many things going on at once, all of them important, but not necessarily urgent (other than I had piled up too many commitments).

I forgot the lesson that not only is it alright to say ‘No’, it’s something I should consciously be doing all the time and doing more of!

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