What do I need to do next to grow my business?

What does a typical day look like for you in your business?

Do you spend a lot of time meeting with your clients or doing work for them?

Maybe most of your time goes to administrative tasks - answering emails or chasing down payments.

Or maybe your focus right now is on creating marketing content for your business.

Whatever your focus, how do you know if you are doing things that are going to move the needle forward and actually make a difference in your business? Watch this video to find out!

Listen to the audio:

What do I need to do next to grow my business?

What should I do next to move my business forward? This is a question that I get asked all the time. There is so much information out there telling you what you could be doing in your business or what you should be doing in your business. How do you sort through all of that noise and figure out what that thing is that you should be working on? What's going to help you get ahead and move forward and reach your business goals?

Use this roadmap to walk through your current goals, priorities, and business activities to make sure you are on the right track!

Keep it simple

The first thing I recommend is keeping it simple. When I talk to business owners and new clients of mine, one of the things that often comes up is that they have all of these ideas of things that they want to be doing. They've got to-do lists that are a mile long. They have all these different strategies that they want to implement, that they have heard from different experts out there on the internet.

The reality is, they usually want to do way too many things, and a lot of it may not be necessary.

The first step is to narrow down your focus on key areas that are actually going to make a difference to your business right now. This is not only going to save your sanity, it's going to make things so much easier and faster, so that you can actually start seeing results now.

As yourself this key question: "What are the activities or things or projects that I want to do in my business that are actually directly or indirectly going to generate revenue?"

Focus on revenue-generating tasks

At the end of the day, if you are focusing most of your time and attention on things that aren't making money, you're not helping your business grow.

For example, when I talk to people who want to bring new leads or new traffic into their business, they are often very focused on their social media and the content that they're putting out there.

Now, content is great. It can help you create a loyal audience, build your authority, and increase your brand recognition. But a lot of people that I talk to - myself included - do not get the majority of their leads and clients directly from social media. So if you're focusing most of your time on your content, you may not be getting a good return on your time investment. Maybe you need to focus your time somewhere else so that you can generate that revenue.

Maybe you are focused on creating a new offer, program, or online course. If so, make sure that you have some sort of market research or proof that this is something that people are actually going to buy before you put a lot of time and effort into creating it. There are no guarantees of success, but if you have some indications that this is something that people are looking for, it’s more likely that creating it is a good use of your time and attention.

I recommend focusing more than half your time on revenue-generating activities. This might include tasks that are a step removed from directly generating revenue. For example, you might be working on putting systems in place to handle an influx of new leads and clients. These systems don’t directly make money, but they are still a very important part of the process. Not every task is going to directly make money, but the goal is to be focused on those revenue activities and supporting them.

What is most urgent?

The next thing I encourage you to ask yourself is, "What is the most urgent need in my business right now?"

For example, if you are overwhelmed keeping up with your day to day tasks, maybe the most urgent need in your business right now is streamlining your tasks and putting some systems and automation in place.

If you are struggling with the amount of money you're making in your business right now, maybe you need to be focusing on finding new leads or creating some sort of new offer to catch people's attention.

Or if you are overwhelmed with the amount of work you have in your business right now, maybe what you need to focus on is either growing a team or shifting the types of services you offer (such as transitioning from 1:1 services to 1:many).

So, what is most urgent in your business right now? If you can fix that thing, you're going to be moving forward.

Map it out

The next step is to think about how you're actually going to get there. Don't think about the whole picture and get overwhelmed. Start by think about the first step.

So, if you are thinking about moving your one-on-one services to one-to-many services, what's the first thing that you need to do? Maybe it's think about what that one-to-many service might look like and brainstorm all your ideas so that you can narrow it down from there.

Start with your first step and then think about what the next step would be, and then the one after that. Rather than trying to think about how to get from point A to point Z all at once, work your way one by one through all the steps in the middle. This is going to help you come up with a plan to reach your goal.

You can do this on paper, in a word document, as a timeline in a project management software, as a to do list - the possibilities are endless! Pick something that works well for your brain and how you like to organize information. One method that I like for this is to put each step on a sticky note. This allows me to rearrange them until I find a process that works for me.

You could also consider starting at the end goal and working your way backward, rather than trying to start from the beginning.

What if I don’t know all the steps?

At this point, if you don't know all of the steps to get to your goal, you may want to reach out to somebody for some guidance or some support in getting there.

There are lots of people out there that you could talk to depending on the type of help that you're looking for. You may need a coach or a mentor. You may need somebody to help you put an action plan into place. You might need a new team member to help you implement everything.

It all depends on what your particular situation is.

I hope that this has helped you get some clarity on what you need to do next to move your business forward. If you have any questions, let me know down in the comments or feel free to reach out.