How do you distinguish between a good business and a successful one? For many small business owners it’s about growth. Growth can take many forms – increased sales and profit, additional products and services, more staff, bigger premises, etc.

What vision do you have for your business, and what’s stopping you from getting there?

For many of us, it’s the struggle of keeping on top of the day to day tasks that prevents us from expanding our businesses. “I can’t keep on top of what I’ve got to do now, so how am I meant to do more?

The day to day can really seem to get in the way of growing a successful business. Sometimes it’s a case of learning to let go of the unnecessary tasks that are holding you back – so you can free up your time and focus on the things that will make your business grow.

There are steps you can take to streamline your business and enable your business to grow

Take a moment to consider the reasons why you started your business. You know that you have the strengths to achieve this vision. Your core is your strengths and objectives combined. For example, I provide virtual assistance because I have great administrative skills, and I want to help business owners get more time back to do what they enjoy.

Anything you do around your strengths and aimed towards making your vision a reality are going to help your business grow. The problem lies when your business activities are overtaken by the mundane management tasks – admin, accounting, marketing, etc.

If you have a to-do list that you never seem to get to the bottom of – which of your core tasks are getting sacrificed?

We often push our growth tasks to the bottom of the list, and this usually means they seldom get done. Invoicing a current client might seem more important than trying to attract new ones, for example. But this could be the key reason why your business isn’t growing as it should.

Go through your tasks and establish those you enjoy, and those that will help your business grow. Lose the rest or outsource them if they’re essential.

Streamline
Once you’ve outsourced those time consuming and soul destroying tasks, you need to streamline what’s left. This will free up your time to take on more clients, and focus on growing your business. Have a read of my blog on business processes for some helpful advice on how to keep on top of those day to day jobs here.

Smarten Up
SMART goals seem to get thrown around a lot as a way of being more successful in business, but they really can help you see the wood for the trees. Setting yourself measurable goals that you can evaluate regularly can keep you on course for achieving your business vision.

That’s because evaluating your goals will help you figure out what is and isn’t working. Enabling you to focus more on what is working, is going to lead to success faster than wasting time on something else. It can be surprising which aspects of your business are performing the best, or have the potential to.

Conducting a SWOT analysis can help you figure out what’s holding your business back

It’s worth looking at your personal strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of your business, on a fairly regular basis. What was once a weakness could now be a strength – or it could still be holding you back. Anything that continues to be a weakness over a prolonged period of time is worth being outsourced to someone that finds it a strength.

Success isn’t always easy to achieve for small business owners, but there are ways you can focus your time and efforts to enable growth to happen. Outsourcing those mundane day to day tasks is a good start, so long as you use that additional time and focus wisely.