Why Your Business Isn’t Growing – Part 1
Hi guys, Diane here. I’m in San Francisco for the next couple of weeks and I’ve been getting this question a lot: “Why isn’t my business growing?”
“Why am I not where I want to be?” – or other variations of the question. It usually revolves around wanting to be in X place or making X dollars in revenue but I can’t seem to get any traction. “I’m trying all of these things and I’m not sure if they’re working or if they will work.”
So these are all variations of questions that I’ve received and these shortcomings all stem from one of two different reasons, the first of which we’ll be covering here.
Why isn’t my business growing?
The first reason your business is probably not growing is that you don’t have clarity: a lack of clarity on what you’re trying to accomplish and build. This is the key reason that I often see not just my higher-level clients, but also business owners across the board. There is a distinct lack of clarity in what the end goal should look like.
And, if you don’t know what you want to build, you won’t know where to go. It’s impossible to plan the steps that are going to get you there as well. So, you end up wasting a lot of time doing things that are not going to get you closer to your goal.
Then, you end up doing contradictory things and end up… not where you’d like to be. Your projects turn out unsatisfactory because you don’t have a clear idea of what you are working towards.
That’s the number one reason I see a lot of business owners – across all levels of success – having trouble getting traction when they launch new products or create a new business line.
This is also the same problem I see with a lot of business owners who are just getting started. They struggle to ramp up because there is no clarity in what they’re trying to do, what they’re trying to accomplish, where they’re going, who they’re serving.
You have to ask yourself: what’s your product? What is the offer and who is the target? These are all things that you need to know to have some level of clarity.
You don’t need to know ALL of those things right now in clear detail… but there are a few things that you do need to know with some certainty.
The three key questions
Here are three key questions:
- Who is your ideal client?
- What is the offer? (In other words: what are you putting out there?)
- And lastly, where are you ultimately trying to go within your business?
If you are not clear on anything other than these three questions, you’ll gain traction because you’ll be able to plan consistently around what you’re going to do to achieve these metrics.
So how do you get clarity, right? There are several different ways, but it usually just comes down to sitting down, thinking about it, and putting it on paper. You can journal or you can talk it through with a coach or friend.
You could also look at other self-help resources, include business building guides and books, the business planning matrix that the Google team put out, or a business model canvas. There’s a lot of different resources for you to be able to do this. And it depends on how you like to work: what is your learning style? What is your creative style?
How do you get things out of your head and onto paper or your tablet or word document? There are a lot of different outlets for this and it depends on what kind of person you are, but the important part is to start building out some clarity around the goals in your business.
Remember – what are you driving towards? Who’s your ideal client? What is the offer? Knowing those things with certainty will help you progress faster, will allow you to get traction, and will keep you from spinning your wheels, wasting time, money, and resources.
If you’re not getting traction or are second-guessing your decisions – or even if you’re not sure you have the right plan – drop me a comment below. I would love to hear from you. I’d be happy to provide resources on how to progress forward, because chances are, you might not be very clear on where you’re trying to go or you’re not very consistent about it – this is what I’ll be covering next time around.
So just let me know if this is where you’re at with your business. Drop me a line and let me help you.
Until next time, this is Diane.
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