Donald Miller - How to Grow Your Small Business: A 6-Step Plan to Help Your Business Take Off

Also by Donald Miller

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2023 Donald Miller

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ISBN 978-1-4002-2805-8 (eBook)

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Epub Edition FEBRUARY 2023 9781400228058

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Dedicated to small business owners everywhere

A full 25 percent of small businesses fail within the first year. Forty-five percent of small businesses fail within five years, and 65 percent fail within ten years. There are 33 million small businesses in America alone. Those businesses employ tens of millions more people than just the owners. Millions of peoples dreams live or die based on the success of small business. In my view, small business is too big to fail. I wrote this book so yours wont.

Contents

If you need a small-business growth plan that will help you build a reliable, profitable operation, my hope is that youre holding it in your hand. These are the six frameworks and playbooks that have helped thousands of small-business owners build businesses that work. If youve ever felt as though youre managing chaos as you grow your small business, this book is for you.

Small-business owners live close to the bone. In small business, if you dont know how to make money, your business will die. Unlike large corporations, small-business owners do not have massive budgets that allow for mistakes or inefficiencies.

Still, the feeling that you are always diving for dollars can get exhausting. Sometimes small-business owners envy the relative security of larger businesses that perform like money-printing machines. Where do large corporations have small businesses beat? They have them beat in their systems and processes.

What small-business owners need, then, is a simple system of frameworks and playbooks that optimize their businesses for growth. Small-business owners need a way to create predictability and reliability in their day-to-day operations.

The Small Business Flight Plan at the back of this book will help you optimize your business for revenue and profit. The Flight Plan is an operations manual and a growth plan all in one. This book will walk you through the creation of your flight plan.

How to Grow Your Small Business is written in hindsight. These are the six frameworks and playbooks that helped me take my business from four employees to thirty while increasing our revenue fourfold in just six years. And our revenue wasnt the only thing that got better. Our profit percentage increased. The quality of our products improved. Our customer base expanded. And our team morale shot up. It turns out team members and customers alike appreciate working with a well-run organization.

Whether you operate your business by yourself or have one hundred employees or more, you will find this book useful.

Use How to Grow Your Small Business to create a growth plan that works. And dont forget to enjoy the journey. Growing a business is supposed to be fun, and when you install the frameworks and playbooks explained in this book, it will be. Enjoy the process.

Y ears ago, a friend gave me the best business advice Ive ever received. His advice was so concise it rang in my head like a bell for the next five years.

Bill had scaled his fathers company into the billions and with that money bought and sold several more companies that succeeded as well. Bill knew what it took to run a business, and he knew what it took to grow one.

We were standing in my driveway after having talked for an hour or so. Wed talked about where my business was and where it could go. The future was limitless, yet I could tell there was something Bill didnt want to say. Hed been nothing but encouraging in the years Id known him, but this time it was obvious he had some constructive criticism. I asked point blank what he was thinking.

He stood silently for a moment, measuring his thoughts. Don, he finally said, lowering his head and taking off his glasses. You need to professionalize your operation.

Thats your problem. He continued. Until you professionalize your operation, its potential is limited. The amount of money you make and your ability to have a positive impact on the world will be limited.

Id never heard the term professionalize your operation before, but it rang true. My business revolved too much around me, and nobody (including me) knew exactly what they were supposed to do to make it grow. We had a vision, for sure, but wed not built the reliable, predictable systems that would allow us to execute that vision.

What Bill saw, and what I now know, is that even though we were succeeding as a company, we were climbing straight into the s-curve that haunts most small businesses.

Can You Avoid the Dreaded S-Curve?

Every successful business has come face-to-face with the s-curve. The s-curve follows a specific patternthe business begins to grow, which is a great thing, and then a dreadful series of events that could make or break a company is put into action.

Imagine a business puttering quietly alongthe first part of the s-curve. Then, their products begin to sell. Demand might even soar. Its magic. The business begins to grow. Customers like the product and they start telling their friends. Everything is great, right? All the business owners problems seem to be behind them.