When it comes to growing your business, there are a million different ways to do it. From Facebook ads, to traditional marketing, to social media campaigns and everything in between. But how do you attract people to your message and your business without seeming shady and overly promotional?
Let’s get one thing straight, there’s no growth in your comfort zone. If you’re comfortable with social media campaigns and that’s all you’re doing to grow your business, is your business really growing? It’s definitely scary moving from your space of comfort out into the great unknown to grow your business. But clarity comes with action, and fear and discomfort will never go away. Once you hit a goal, start planning a new one! Even if the feat of not being able to achieve that goal creeps in, keep pushing and keep moving forward.
Why planning is key
While growing your business and making money is all great and good, moving out of your comfort zone and taking action is truly where to start in making those plans. When you’re starting your business, it takes planning and research, and most of all execution. You can make all of the best plans in the world, but if there is no execution on those plans your business will ultimately fail.
Even if you are still in the planning and research stage of your business try to move one step towards execution each day. Actively realize your dreams. Some ways to move toward execution are reaching out to a potential client, creating a sales page, posting on social media, or whatever fits your business.
What is an execution plan?
An execution plan is much different than a to-do list. With a to-do list, things can pile up and get out of control and overwhelming very quickly. To-do lists usually don’t come with deadlines and it’s full of things that make you seem busy in your business, but don’t actually move your business forward.
Execution plans are tasks that need to be done, big or small, with a strict deadline and detailed explanations of each item. For example, “I’m going to take 30 minutes today to update my LinkedIn profile, but then I am done and need to move on” or, “Create and send newsletter from 12:00 until 1:00, and then I am done and need to move on.” Be sure to break goals down into smaller milestones, and break the milestones down into action steps.
Remember the why!
Always remember why you are starting and building your own business. Even if you have to go back to the why of individual goals that move your business forward. How does that goal fit into the bigger picture? Do this not just to re-evaluate whether you are on track, but also to continue to motivate yourself to keep moving forward.
In business, everyone is at a different stage. Some people might just be beginning, and others might be on the road to making millions. Either way, planning is key, and clarity always comes with taking action.