# 4 Growing Your Business

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“If your business isn’t exactly doing well yet, you want to grow it, all you’re going to end up with is a larger, unsuccessful business”

Growth won’t fix your problems. You’ve got to fix the business first. If you want to grow your business, you’ve got to embark on a three-step process, start at the beginning and end at the end. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Successful growth is simple: if you know what your doing…

Episode 4 transcipt is available to download below…

SAM: Hi! This is Sam Polimeni and this is Sam’s Soapbox. I want to talk to you about growing your business. The amazing thing is a lot of clients have come to me in the past to say, “Sam, I want to grow my business.” But, looking at the business, we always seem to find that it isn’t trading that well or isn’t operating that well. So this is my big thing, if you’ve got a crap business and you want to grow it, all you’re going to end up with is a bigger crap business! Growth won’t fix most of those problems. You’ve got to fix the business first. I believe that if you want to grow your business, you’ve got to go through what I call the three-step process. And the first step of that process is you’ve got to get better. You’ve got to get on top of things. You’ve got to make your business a bit better.

I had a client a few years ago, who wanted to go grow his business quite significantly and basically, the business just wasn’t ready; it didn’t have the right financial processes in place, the systems were very poor, the management system was very poor, he was just running around, working obscene hours trying to keep it all afloat. In the end, he just couldn’t keep the whole thing together and it fell over. I don’t like my clients to go through that. So the first step, I believe, is you’ve got to get better.

As always, you’ve got to know your numbers. You’ve got to get on top of your financials, have a strong financial system. Get your financial system operating so you’re on top of the invoicing, you’re on top of your debt collection, you’re on top of your job management. You just got to get to know all your numbers and develop your systems so your business can cope with growth. Get your profit right. What’s the point of going into business if it’s not profitable? Growth won’t make it more profitable. You’ve got to grow your business profitably. You’ve got to get your pricing right. You want to get your people right. Can your own people cope with the growth or do you need to put in a little bit of a management structure to cope with the growth? Is your business efficient? Your business has got to have sustainable cash flow to grow.

So the first step is you just have to get better.

Once you’ve got better, you can go move to the second step. Now you should have some capacity. If you’ve got the right capacity because you’re focused on the right things, you’ve improved your business, now your business can grow! So what you want to now do is focus on the right things that will improve your efficiency even further and create more capacity from the existing resources. Now you’ve got some time to really look at improving your business.

By improving your business, you’re then going to create further capacity.

Once you’ve done this, the third step is to start to grow.
You’ve got some capacity, you’ve got some better systems, you’re now going to start focusing, and because you know your numbers, you can now start focusing on the right areas to grow your business, to go find the ideal customers to grow your business, to go work on the more profitable areas of your business. That’s what you should be focusing on doing. That’s what I believe should be the most effective three-step way to grow your business.

We teach the growth strategy to our clients in our workshops as well as in our plan to profit programs. Once our clients have gone and developed a good, strong business and they’re on top of things, their growth just gets out of control. And that’s what I want to achieve for my clients because the key thing, as a business owner, if you’re spending all your energy and effort on trying to keep your whole business afloat and trying to touch every single area in your business, your business just won’t grow, it’ll only grow to the level of your capacity

Your focus as a business owner, should be growing your business.

You should be the force behind the growth strategy in your business, and you should delegate every other single job out of your business, but you can’t delegate the growth strategy of the business. That’s your responsibility. This is Sam and look forward to hearing your success stories. Bye!

OUTRO: That was another episode of Sam’s Soapbox. If you’d like Sam grow your business into a multi-million dollar company that’s far less reliant on you, then call in (03) 9355 0500 or visit sampolimeni.com. or spsol.com.au

 Sam’s Soapbox – Episode 4 – click here to download and print transcript