entrecode Blog

THE ENTRECODE BLOG

How to grow your business the entrepreneurial way

Job one is to get a strategy for growth.  This is not a financial forecast or budget, it is the DNA of the business.  You need to address the key strategic questions:

  1. What business are we in?
  2. Where will we be in five years time?
  3. What are our core values?
  4. What markets and products will we focus on?
  5. What competencies do we need to develop?

Addressing these critical questions sets the business up for growing successfully.  In order to grow you need to let go of the parts of your job others could do in order to focus on the strategic priorities.  Some entrepreneurs find this difficult, they want to be ‘Jack of all trades’.  Don’t make this mistake!

In order to feel confident in letting go you need to invest in talented people.  The rule is complimentary values to you, different skills.  Hire people who are good at what you are not.  Obvious, but entrepreneurs often make the mistake of hiring in their own image, people like me, and that limits your growth potential.

Entrepreneurs create new growth opportunities by either selling more of what they have to existing customers (penetration) or developing new markets or products.  They use the process of finding customer problems, solving them and then selling the solution, the new product, to everybody else.

Finally, entrepreneurs invest time and resource in working ON the business as well as IN the business in order to improve its efficiency, service levels, productivity or general performance.  They marshall the resources and build their capacity to grow.

Follow these entrepreneurial principles and fly!