Fearing Growth

This time, next year, we'll be millionaires .... in the UK, you almost certainly recognise that from Only Fools and Horses, the British comedy about the wannabe businessman Derek Trotter and his brother, Rodney. They had a big dream of finding that one business idea that would finally make the money and success they wanted. It is a state of mind that many founders have, at least to some extent - their idea of their potential is beyond where they currently are and they know they can do better.

And yet, when that success finally comes - it can be just as scary as the failure you have along the way.

Running a business has a lot of challenges and times when you wonder if it is all worth it - but one of the biggest challenges is how you handle the fact that it is working. Imposter Syndrome can take over, and someone who has devoted their life to their business concept suddenly thinks it could be done better by literally anyone but them. And they don't trust the success will last - they see it as a mirage they are seeing, down to long hours, too much caffeine and increasing stress levels.

Everything has been so hard up until this point, why would it suddenly get better?

You don't trust the rollercoaster won't swing back downward, and so you don't want to risk enjoying the ride.

If you are finding your business is taking off, or you have hit momentum that is in opposition to what you have experienced before (or what you see happening to people around you), how can you trust it is real?

The key is proof - create metrics that show your progress is real, but also create metrics that, if triggered, will give you more than enough time to change course before any type of decline starts.

Your success will be due to your hard work, and the context of the marketing being ready for you - but what you do with that moment, when the stars align, is the real challenge of entrepreneurship that we need to understand more.

Don't Shy Away From Opportunity

I have spoken to a number of businesses in the last week, and it seems that they are all experiencing the same strange phenomena - they are losing clients because they are generating too much business for them!

None of these businesses are connected apart from the obvious fact that they are really good at what they do.

Yet, even so, when they are doing exactly what they are being asked to deliver - they are losing business.

Why is this?

The reality is that there is tonnes of advice online about how to grow your business - sales, marketing, growth hacks, how to get 100s of leads from one email - you have probably seen it all.

But nobody asks the question - what if it works?

The other side of generating sales and business is how you deliver it. In all cases, a quick look at the customers cancelling their agreements was because they weren't ready to deal with the increased growth and couldn't see a way to expand quick enough - so they stayed where they were.

Why would they do that? Two main reasons:

• They didn't really expect it to happen. So much of your money will get sucked into marketing and sales with no obvious benefit gained, that they just assume the same is true here. Their marketing strategy was more a roll of the dice than actually believing that the results were achievable.
• They don't feel able to handle a bigger business. This is more common than you would think. When you think of your business, you may have a size in mind - number of employees, size of your buildings or offices, even the number of customers you work with. When given the opportunity to go past that, you have to expand your mindset to show you could handle more - and that's scary.

The answer is of course, a strategy for growth. Not just a big view of where you are five years from now - although that is important. But a bigger view of how to get there. Strategy here would be recognising the trigger points of when you need to grow and have an action plan to implement as you hit each one.

Oh and keep working with these amazing companies. You are going to need them even more.

Adviser In Your Pocket is my very new and shiny subscriber platform! It replaces the original subscription of a session plus access, and is now a host of online resources for you to learn how to think, feel and act like a business owner and includes being able to talk with me directly if you need more specific advice for your business! And instead of it costing as much, the monthly subscription starts at just ￡5 for content access only!

If you join today, you will also be able to join our first live session, where I'm going to take the group through How to deal with being ghosted in business - it happens to all of us but it feels tricky to navigate as a founder. The live session is at 1pm on Tuesday 27th February and will be exclusive to the Adviser In Your Pocket Interactive subscribers, our ￡15 subscription level. Make sure you don't miss out!

There is new content being added all of the time, and the plan is for it to transfer to a mobile platform sometime in 2024, so it is a great time to join and let me know your feedback - if you had an award-winning, international adviser and speaker with over 25 years of business experience in some of the biggest organisations in the UK and beyond - what would you want from them?)

Register here: Adviser In Your Pocket

Organising A Retreat or A Revolution? The Founders' Retreat

I want to take you away from your business and get you to think about your business in somewhere with only limited wifi.

I'll be taking a small (and I mean small) group of founders away from it all to go deep, deep, deep into their business design for the rest of the year and beyond.

We are talking:

• Mindset
• Business Models
• Operating Models
• Productivity Hacks
• Negotiation Hacks

And a 100 day plan that will have you slipping out at the end of the second day because you just can't wait another 24 hours to start it.

Except I would hang around, as the last day is when it all comes together and we strategise a group campaign that means that everyone who was there will be forever tied to one another's success.

I'm taking the first cohort in July to a beautiful country house in Hertfordshire, UK and I want founders who are truly ready to take this to the next level.

If you want more information, then join the waiting list.

But you'd better be ready.

Till Next Week!