About 6 months ago, I did a real survey of my business.  A Business Spring Clean is what I like to call it and I typically do one every year.  The purpose of the spring clean is to take an assessment of where I am and align with where I would like to go.

During this inventory, I take a deep dive into all the numbers and the income I am currently making versus how much I have going out (think mid-year profit and loss statement).  I also look at how much I have made since inception, and take a snapshot of  how much I am projected to make in the present year, so 2015 for this year.

My most recent deep dive left me slightly disappointed. I was a little off target with my projections for 2015, and while inception income had more than grown I knew there was a lot more I could be doing.

The beauty of entrepreneurship is you can grow and expand your capacity for business at any time.  The only way to truly grow in any area of your life however, is to first take a true register of what’s not working and why.

After all:

doing what you've always done

 

I realized that in order to hit those target goals the business had to bloom. There was a bit of work that had to be done on my part to broaden my current income base.

As a result, I came up with some pretty creative ways to diversify my revenue share and client base and well, I thought I would share them with you. Just because you all are so amazingly awesome!

So, here it is:  4 Simple Ways to Grow and Expand your Business.

1. Diversify– Diversifying is an excellent growth strategy because it allows you to have multiple streams of income.  Furthermore, diversifying can help to fill seasonal voids, increase income variance, and help you reach a larger audience.
You can diversify your business by offering

  • Virtual courses
  • Workshops and Trainings
  • Sell complimentary products and services
  • Become a paid speaker or columnist
2. Target other Markets – There are most likely alternative markets that you are not serving. Think about the markets that are alignment with your business but may not necessarily serve as competition. All of the outliers for example.   If you are an event planner, you maybe able to align with joining markets in a specific event area like weddings, corporate functions, or conferences.  You could offer discounts to those associations as they bring you new clients. The goal here is all about enlarging your target audience.
3. Expand to the Internet – Ok, on this one I am assuming that your business is not online and by online I mean has a viable website and uses social media to grow sales.
In 2002, Bill Gates said there were 2 kinds of businesses, the ones that are online and the ones that are dead. It’s 2015 so if you don’t use the internet to grow your business well it’s pretty much dead.  Take full advantage of the billions of people that are online by creating advertising opportunities to sale products and services daily.
4. License your Product – This one is big, so many companies have products and services that are a great fit for licensing. Licensing is a low-cost and effective way to broaden your companies income. You can receive upfront monies or royalties for the continued sales or licensure of your products and services.  This is great for companies who are interested in franchising but aren’t quite ready to take the big leap. Of course you want to check with a great attorney first to sort out all the details.These are just a few ideas I came up with to assist me in reaching higher heights within my company. I encourage you to set aside some time to seek out opportunities to cultivate and enlarge your company. Depending on what you come up with you could see IMMEDIATE revenue gains in your company!