Back to School for Your Business
August 25th, 2021 // 3:39 pm @ Scott Manning
Last week, we talked about three very important principles of success and differentiation of the best businesses in order to maximize opportunity and create value with your customers. I would consider these basic fundamentals to a strong and healthy business.
They are the equivalent of going ‘back to school’ on your business to make sure you aren’t missing important principles that lead to your success.
They say “school is never out for the pro” and since it’s back to school around the country I thought I’d give you my checklist of things you should be doing to prepare, grow, and succeed in life and in business.
Reading books and not just business books and certainly not just pleasure books, books of all kinds. These keep your mind refresh. I always say you can never learn enough on your own in just one lifetime to be successful, you need to leverage the knowledge and experience of other people. Read books.
Hone your skills on some specific part of your business. Anyone who is serious about their business continues to study by buying, reading, enrolling into courses and trainings at least a few times a year. They dedicate themselves to becoming exceptional or enhancing their own ability. This is a great practice that allows you to focus on and improve a key area of your life or business.
Try new growth and marketing strategies. I like for people to do this every single month where you do at least one new thing in your business. You never know when you will come across something that trumps all others. Treat your business like a chemistry lab, always experimenting to see what works.
Give your customers, patients, and client something new to experience. Your customers want to be surprised and excited about being your customer and you want to give them reasons to pay attention. Show up and be different in everything you do.
Expand your marketing funnel and follow-up. It’s kind of like subjects in school, especially math, you learn one thing before the next. Well you have to have one part of your marketing funnel in place before the next part. Most people stop and it gets stale, or they just give up on their list and leads. Don’t. Add another step, try a new media, or add in a promotion to nurture your list.
Search for a new tool, technology, or method to that will save you time, increase profitability, or expand your offering. In school, with each passing grade, kids need new equipment to keep up; whether that’s a calculator, compass, or laptop. Your business is the same way – you need to be constantly evolving and looking for the next advantage.
Go after a “stretch goal”, and I’d go further than that, go after something that makes you go out of your comfort zone. Listen, if you are not getting a little nervous in your effort to find new success in your business, you aren’t being bold enough or thinking big enough.
Personally, you need to challenge yourself and feel challenged. Put a little pressure on yourself and see what happens. You’ll survive and you’ll progress a heck of a lot more. It will spark momentum in your achievements and one thing leading to bigger things when you push yourself.
Okay, my favorite for the end…
Take a vacation. Oh yes, that’s part of back to school, actually it ought to be part of your quarterly plan. Recharging your mind and body by completely getting away from everything and everyone will free up space to see more clearly and move with more decisive action.
This week I’m hosting our Annual Private Doctor’s Retreat that combines a lot of all of this together into one. It’s the most productive vacation they could ever take and the big difference between people that make leaps and breakthroughs in their businesses every year and those that stay stuck for years on end is this… no dedicated time to look at the future vision and then design a plan to create forced progress.
When you are an adult you have to take yourself to school because no one is going to put any growth opportunities on a schedule for you. You’ve got to schedule for yourself.
Which brings me to the one that ties all of these together… get out your calendar for the rest of the year and schedule all of these items. Organize, write them down, allocate when and what so you can make a plan to keep you on track. Schedule your success and you’ll enjoy the rewards it’ll bring.
Next week, we’ll jump back into our discussion around why businesses do things that sabotage their goals. One big reason is because they stop going back to school and forge the basics that got them here in the first place.
We’ll dive into all of this next week. Stay tuned.
Category : Blog
