Picture this: you’ve created a new business, and things are starting to gain traction… you’ve got some clients, maybe you’ve created a product, and you’re marketing your buns off.
From the outside your business is growing at a great pace, and you’re happy with your progress.
But on the inside of your business, it’s a complete mess.
You don’t have any processes, you’re constantly in catch-up mode, and it feels like you can’t keep up with your business.
Congratulations, you’ve just entered the awkward phase of growing a business. It happens to all of us, and today’s Off The Charts tip is going to help you move beyond this tricky stage.
Are you ready, here is the key that might have been missing: balancing your roots and branches.
Business Growth: Keep It Balanced
In business, your branches are all of the things that you do to market your business, interface with clients, and generally “be out in the world”. It could be your marketing emails, networking, or making videos… most of the stuff that we generally consider to be business.
On the other hand, your roots are the things in your business that are necessary but sometimes ignored because other people can’t see them.
These are things like setting up your legal entity, doing your book keeping, creating systems to automate and streamline tasks, hiring and managing a team, and all the “behind the scenes” stuff that gets left at the bottom of your todo lists.
But just like with a tree, you wouldn’t expect the tree to keep growing branches, if it didn’t have strong roots to match and hold itself up.
So my homework for you today is to take a step back, and look at your business as if it were a tree.
Are your roots and branches balanced?
Is one part of your business outpacing another? It’s totally okay to have strong roots, but if you don’t have any branches then you’re likely not bringing in the revenue.
I see this sometimes with clients who want to spend all of their time polishing stuff, but never hitting publish…
And if your external “branches” are going gangbusters, make sure to tend to your roots too, or you’ll run into some scalability issues.
You can also think of this as the teeter-tauter of your business. Sometimes you’re putting weight and focus on one side and sometimes on the other side of your business.
While a teeter tauter could be totally still in the middle, chances are that you’ll have times where you’re really leaning in one direction and then in the other, as your business grows.
What Phase of Business Growth Are You In…
I’d love to know what this exercise brought up for you.
Leave a comment below and tell us: do you have a strong external focus or internal focus in your business right now?
Which one needs your attention next?
