Rob and I have been coaching and mentoring business owners and leaders for nearly 18 years.
For 18 years, we’ve asked every one of those business owners and leaders one very simple question.
“How big do you want to grow your business?”
Can you guess the most common answer we’ve received?
It’s “I don’t know”.
Usually “I don’t know” is quickly followed up with “but we’re wanting to grow it by x% this year.”
Of course, our next question is “why do you want to grow it by x%?”
Again, the most common response is, “I don’t know”, followed by “I should because…”
Hence it is safe to say most business owners are putting themselves under an undue amount of stress, blood, sweat and tears, in an attempt to grow their business. Thwarted because they’re missing one very simple piece of information.
I remember when Rob and I started Kaibizzen, we had grandiose plans for our business. We wanted to take over the world. We were very passionate about making our own way, our own mark in the world (having come out of a franchise system) and by and large, we were very successful in our quest in the short term.
However, our quest left us very battle scarred and weary to the point where walking away was a very real option. To this day, though, I’m extremely grateful for our experience because it has enabled us to identify that missing piece of information. Once we found it, we ‘grew’ our business through finding other business owners who were just like us – working hard, but not seeing the returns they expected for all their efforts.
Oddly enough, finding that missing piece, enabled Rob and I to truly make our own mark in our own way and leave our own mark in the world. (Isn’t it strange we do end up getting to where we want to go but not necessarily in the way we thought we would).
The missing piece of information is, actually, nothing new AT ALL.
In my experience in business there is nothing new under the sun. Simon Sinek has written his book “Start with why” and subsequently “Find your why”. These books perfectly encapsulate the missing piece of information – having a why.
Why do you want to grow your business?
In my experience, personally and from working with business owners, the clearer we all are on why we want to grow our business, the far greater chance we have of actually achieving.
From my perspective there are 2 different forms of our why. I call them the why of our marketplace and my own why.
1. The why of our marketplace
Put simply, no business will survive and definitively will not grow if it is not meeting a need in the marketplace.
COVID19 has given so many businesses the opportunity to meet different needs to what they were meeting pre-COVID. There are many businesses who are now doing things differently to what they were doing before.
Many people are truly inspired and passionate about the needs they are meeting in the marketplace and therefore find it so much easier to do the how of their business, especially growing it.
2. My own why
At Kaibizzen our philosophy is that your business is the tool to give you the lifestyle that you truly want. We work with our clients we use a clearly defined process to determine their own why:
Once you know your own ‘Why’, you can accurately answer the question, “How big do you want to grow your business?”
In fact, not only will you know the answer, but you’ll also have the internal commitment to do what ever it takes to achieve it. As one of my mentors, T. Harv Eker says, “The stronger the ‘Why’, the easier the ‘how’. So if you’re tired of putting everything in to your business and getting back less than what you deserve, it’s time to reach out. We’re here to work alongside you, to achieve the business and lifestyle you’ve always wanted for yourself and your family.
What does it take to actually remove yourself from the day-to-day grind of business? Learn from our panel of Business Owners who've Been There, Done That.
