What Obstacle To Business Growth?

So, now that we’re into the last week of September, how’s that plan to grow your business coming along?

Still on track to hit those growth goals you set back in January?

What’s that you say…you’ve been so busy running your business that you haven’t had the time to attend to any of that business growth stuff?

Or maybe it’s not so much a time issue as lacking the know-how and other resources to effectively grow your business.

Fair enough…after all, business growth is not automatic.

And since business growth is not automatic, things happen to get in the way of growing your business to where you want it.

Obstacles to Business Growth

At the risk of oversimplifying the issue, there are two kinds of obstacles to growing a business.

Internal factors are those elements that relate in one way or another to you and how you run your business.

Typically these factors are considerations such as not enough time, know-how or other resources.?

And like it or not, these are elements over which you have total control.??

As appealing as it maybe to point the finger of blame at someone else for these issues, these are factors fall within your area of responsibility as the owner of your business.

But that’s not to say that you can’t ask for and receive help in addressing business growth issues.

External factors are those circumstances and considerations beyond your control.

Certainly you can’t control whatever conditions exist in your market or the nature of your competition.

Notwithstanding the reality that these factors are beyond your control, you can … and most definitely should … control your response to these factors.??

But just become you work on your own, these is no requirement that develop your response to external factors alone.?

If you need help in figuring out how to address external factors that impact the growth of your business, you can just ask.

What Obstacles?

Based on almost 50 years’ experience in and with service businesses, I have come to the belief that most, if not all internal obstacles not so much factual as they are limiting beliefs.

In case the term limiting belief is new to you, a limiting belief is?a thought or state of mind that you think is the absolute truth and stops you from doing certain things.

Take for example, the issue of being too busy running your business to attend to business growth.

From the limiting belief perspective this would mean that you think it’s absolutely true that your being very busy stops you from growing your business.

In my mind, this statement raises a number of questions:

• What are you busy doing?
• If growth is one of your business goals, how is your busy-ness contributing to your business growth?
• If growth is one of your business goals, what low priority activities can you stop doing in order to give more attention to a higher priority activity such as growing your business?

Digging a little deeper, is it possible that by thinking it’s absolutely true that you are too busy to grow your business gives you a reason for not growing your business?

Certainly there is a common expectation that all businesses should grow.?

But for whatever reason, whether recognized and known or otherwise, maybe you really don’t want to get involved in the growth process.

That’s the insidious effect of limiting beliefs: sometimes there are things that we really don’t want to do, but for whatever reason, our brains make up reasons (aka excuses) why we can’t do them.

And again for reasons unknown, our brains accept these reasons as the absolute truth, often without conscious consideration.

The end result is that very often despite the best of intention and efforts we don’t achieve the results that we say we want because our limiting beliefs in one form or another are holding us back, handicapping our personal journeys to success.?

Trust me…I know the experience--oh so well.

Just as being too busy to grow your business might be a limiting belief, the lack of know-how and resources might also be ideas perceived as absolute truths.?

And as such they might also be obstacles to your business growth.

If your business growth plan has stalled … or not even gotten off the ground … maybe we should talk.