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Zusammenfassung von How to Grow Your Small Business

Name: How to Grow Your Small Business
Rating: 4.7 (98 reviews)
Author: Donald Miller

Donald Miller

A 6-Part Strategy to Help Your Business Take Off

4.7 (98 Bewertungen)

16 Min.

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Kleine Unternehmen Erfolg Unternehmertum Marketing Vertrieb Führung

Inhaltsübersicht

How to Grow Your Small Business
in 7 Kernaussagen verstehen

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Kernaussage 1 von 7

What’s in it for me? Your Small Business Flight Plan.

The key to Donald Miller’s small business success is a model plane sitting in his office. Looking back, it seems difficult to believe that Don’s marketing business, StoryBrand, was struggling. He had clients. The company was growing. But Don had found that he was spending more time putting out fires than doing what he actually loved: Creating content for his customers.

45% of small businesses fail within the first five years. Often the biggest problems actually happen when you’re trying to expand.

Let’s say your business is going well. You have a product that customers love. Demand is up, but you know you need to grow to make the most of it. So, you hire a few people. Maybe you sink money into advertising. You over-invest in resources, getting ready for more growth. Soon, your overheads are high, but somehow your customer service is down. Clients are upset. You, like Don, are running around putting out fires instead of doing the thing that made your business successful in the first place.

This is the problem Don was thinking about when he spotted the model plane on his shelf. He picked it up and turned it over in his hands a few times. There are six parts, he realized, that are essential for a plane to take off and complete a journey safely.

Your business is an airplane.

Let me explain.

The cockpit is your leadership team, steering the plane where it needs to go. The wings are your product, creating lift for your business. The two engines, which represent your marketing and sales, propel your business forward and contribute to that lift. The body of the plane is your overhead and operational costs. And fueling it all is your cashflow.

The metaphor of the plane helped Don to develop an intuition for making decisions and building narratives to guide his company's growth. Over the course of this Blink, we’re going to develop a Small Business Flight Plan to help your small business take off safely.

Your Cockpit - Leadership

Before a plane even takes off, the pilot knows where and when it’s meant to land. The cockpit of your small business is your leadership team, and you, like a pilot, should know where you want to end up. For a business, this means writing your Mission Statement.

Most Mission Statements are too vague. They end up plastered on a company’s website and forgotten. To be useful, your mission statement should be an actual mission, inviting your team into a story where they are a key character.

There are three components to a mission statement. The first is the goal itself. In a story, it’s always clear early on what needs to be accomplished. The dragon needs to be slayed, the thief caught, the villain stopped. You should set out three measurable economic goals that your team can rally around. Be specific. Specific goals give your team a clear objective, and lends your mission some traction.

Then, your mission statement should include a deadline. People are sometimes nervous to include fixed dates, but deadlines create urgency in your team. Ideally, the timeline shouldn’t be longer than two years.

Finally, your mission statement should include a purpose. This gives your mission stakes, and your team a reason why they should care in the first place.

Let’s look at an example for a newspaper.

“We will increase our subscriber base by 30 thousand, the number of advertisers by 30 percent, and our average client investment to $21 thousand within two years. Because good journalism can change the country.”

Notice the three parts to this mission statement: The three measurable goals, the timeline, and the purpose. Once you’ve written your mission statement, you should try to use it as often as possible. Put it on the wall. Read it at meetings. When your mission statement changes, mark the event with fanfare.

So, now your team knows where the plane is going. Let’s look at how to get there.

Your Right Engine - Marketing

A lot of business owners believe that successful marketing is all about how a brand looks. Don’s found this isn’t true. Just as stories can motivate your team, storytelling is the key to capturing your customer’s attention.

Invite your customer to be the hero of their own story. Your product might be the magic sword that kills the dragon, but it’s only useful when it’s in the hero’s hand. Start by working out what essential problem your customer has, and how your product is the perfect tool they need to solve it.

Your Left Engine - Sales

A lot of people hate to have sales conversations. Maybe you feel like you’re being pushy or manipulative. But if you want people to buy your product, you’ll need to advocate for it. The sales pitch makes up the left engine of your plane.

The easiest way to avoid feeling manipulative in a sales pitch is easy: don’t manipulate people. The goal is not to convince someone to buy something they don’t want. In fact, as a small business owner, dissatisfied customers are the last thing you need. When talking to someone in a sales setting, first, check they actually are your target audience.

Your Wings - Product

Okay. We’ve talked about how to sell our products. Let’s take a step back. When engineers are designing a plane, the wings are tested in wind tunnels before they’re ready to fly. You don’t want to build a whole plane just to see if the wings give you any lift.

As you grow your business, you’ll need to evaluate and optimize your product offerings.

Your Body - Overhead and Operations

Every overhead cost for your business adds weight to the body of your plane. If the plane's too heavy, it’s going to crash.

For most businesses, the biggest overhead is probably your labor.

The Fuel - Cashflow

Every part of your small business is powered by the same fuel: cash. There’s a reason we call it the financial bottom line. Still, if you’ve been following the Flight Plan so far, you should begin to make some money.

The last topic we’re going to cover is how you should manage your cashflow.

Final Summary

Watching your small business grow and take off can be an incredible experience, but it’s difficult to make decisions that support that growth. You shouldn’t need to compromise on quality or service. Following this Small Business Flight Plan will help you stay in the air whatever the weather.

Don’t feel pressured to do everything that we’ve covered all at once. Working through your Flight Plan can take time, and you should do it in whatever order makes sense to you. Even small improvements can make a huge difference.

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Worum geht es in How to Grow Your Small Business?

How to Grow Your Small Business (2023) is your six-step flight plan to guide your business as it takes off. When Don Miller started to take his business to the next level, he realized no-one had written a reliable, step-by-step playbook for growth. Since then, his small home content business has expanded into a $20 million dollar company, so he wrote the book he wished he’d had.

Wer How to Grow Your Small Business lesen sollte

Small Business Owners
Entrepreneurs
Anyone who spends too much time putting out fires in their business

Über den Autor

Donald Miller is an author, a public speaker, and the CEO of his company, StoryBrand. He’s written many books across topics on business, spirituality, and family, including New York Times bestsellers Blue Like Jazz (2003), and Building a StoryBrand (2017). He is also the host of the Business Made Simple podcast.

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