This year’s National Small Business Week is set to take place May 12-16th and will feature a variety of events aiming to educate and inspire cutting-edge entrepreneurs. Unfortunately, if you’re like most small business owners, you may not have the luxury of dropping everything and jet setting to one of the SBA’s five select host cities. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t capitalize on the energy!
There are plenty of small business insights and improvements you can make right now- and those mentioned below won’t ever require you to step inside of a convention center. Read on to discover 3 Ways to Win Small Business Week and learn about the ground-floor moves that can position your business for outstanding growth.
The Id, The Ego and The Entrepreneur
Most entrepreneurs tend to boast Type-A personalities. This natural inclination to be ambitious, focused, proactive, and ok, a bit of a workaholic, is probably a huge reason as to why you were able to successfully get your business off the ground and running…it’s also probably the reason why your hair is falling out.
This may seem like a quirky activity, but forcing yourself to sit down and write a job description for your role within your own company can actually be very freeing. Limiting yourself to no more than two bullet points, describe your contributions in the ideal way you’d like to present them to the outside world. Then, let the reality of your situation settle in. How many activities and responsibilities did you purposely leave out? Which parts of your description are you currently not living up to?
With this activity in place, make an effort to be mindful of all of your movements throughout the next few days, so mindful in fact- that you write things down. In the same way a dieter can realize where their calories are being spent and wasted- writing down your every activity for a few days can provide the same “aha” insight into your schedule.
Where are your major buckets of time being spent? Ask this question to a group of entrepreneurs and many of them wouldn’t have a clue- don’t be a member of this group; instead, take the initiative to stop, step back and look the big picture. With a little extra effort you can move forward with the focus to spend those limited-24 hours in a day as effectively as possible.
Take Off Your Marketing Blindfold
Every entrepreneur knows that they need to market their products and services in order to boost sales and create brand awareness, and many are aware of the variety of avenues available to get there. However, from tweets to posts, ads to events, the depth of the marketing world can easily leave you in the dark. Luckily, drafting a marketing flow chart can focus your efforts down to approachable and manageable steps. And don’t worry- it’s a lot more fun than it sounds…
Step One: Establish a Goal
For the sake of an example, we’ll define a marketing goal as: Increase visits to my website.
Step Two: Define two strategies that will help you achieve this goal. Moving forward with our example, we’ll define two strategies that will increase visits to your website:
Grow my email list
Capitalize on social media
Step Three: Define three tactics that will help you accomplish each strategy and by default, your goal. This will end up making your flow chart look something like this:
I will grow my email list by (1) implementing a guest book on my website where people can sign in, (2) reaching out to strategic partners and combining email lists and (3) attending XYZ events to collect contacts.
I will capitalize on social media by (1) offering a promotional code to Twitter followers, (2) offering to do a guest blog post on an industry-specific site and (3) interacting with my audience online through relevant and quality link sharing.
By now you can see how a marketing flow chart can assist you in streamlining your efforts and making goals seem entirely more tangible. As your business continues to grow and your ambitions grow even bigger, come back to “tacking down” activities like this, which will remind you of your ability to accomplish great things for your business, one manageable step at a time.
Hug Your Finances and Squeeze Em’ Tight
Ambitious entrepreneurs will always keep the potential for growth on their radars, yet regardless of how determined you are or how stellar your offering is, keeping a tight grip on orderly finances can and will make or break your future.
If you listen to only one bit of advice throughout this article, you’re urged to make organizing your financial house it. Whether it’s QuickBooks or a simple point of sale, the personal efficiency of your system directly relates to your ability to access and grow your capital.
In the end, the immense power you hold over your business’s future can be intimidating; however the opportunity to improve things for the better is yours for the taking.
While you can dive into all of the suggestions made here, it’s essential to prioritize your goals. Pouring shallow effort into multiple causes won’t be worth the frazzled headaches. Instead, take on one improvement at a time for more solid, quality results that, who knows- could turn you into next year’s National Small Business Person of the Year.
What other advice would you like to get in order to help grow your small business?