5 Steps Entrepreneurs Can Take To Accelerate Their Business

31 May 5 Steps Entrepreneurs Can Take To Accelerate Their Business

Being an entrepreneur means wearing multiple hats each day – flexing your creative muscles so you can respond to a wide array of issues and responsibilities at a moments notice, all while innovating for tomorrow. It is invigorating and exhausting. Once bitten by the entrepreneurial  bug, there is no other way of “working”, and so you drive and strive to grow and improve. Here are 5 Steps over 5 Weeks you can take to get your business and team on track and growing forward,

Week one – Celebrate! If you are going to make the future brighter, you need to give yourself a pat on the back for all you’ve accomplished up until now. So often we forget to take stock of the little wins along the way. For the first week take a moment to find all the successes from the past year and celebrate them. Be sure to congratulate your team for those jobs well done too! While you’re at, you probably got there with the help of vendors, advisors and other colleagues – let them know that you appreciate them too. Gratitude is very important, and should never be under-estimated in future success.

Week two – Critical Self-evaluation. If you are going to improve you need to review what went wrong and understand why. This type of honest post-mortem evaluation can be painful, and humbling. Accept the lessons of the failure so you can correct them for the future. Recognize if you or your company needs to learn new skills, hire an expert in a certain area, or maybe walk away from certain types of work. Ego may be the death of more businesses than anyone has ever cared to acknowledge.

Week three – The New Plan. This is where the rubber meets the road. You must spend the time to create a detailed and specific plan for the year ahead with 3 or 4 clear objectives. More than that, and you’ll never get them all done. Each objective (which needs to be specific and measurable, with a deadline) should have specific tactics around it. Let everyone know what you are going after and when. Write this down and hang it up where everyone in the company can see it.

Week four – Build your tribe and gather resources. Think about a squirrel that gathers acorns for the winter. You need to be gathering your own acorns to help you build for the future year. Your acorns are people who have knowledge, or networks, or talent. Create a strong foundation of advisors who can support you for your next stage of growth.

Week five – Declutter. This is the last step, mostly because for many it is the hardest. You need to be critical and see what is around you that gets in the way. If it doesn’t support your plan or give you momentum, you need to let it go.

With this 5-week process you are ready to step on the gas and start accelerating your business today. Are you ready to move the needle and bring your vision to reality?