5 Things Most People Don't Tell You About Growing Your Business

There are many things I wish somebody would have told me before I started growing my business. 

Specifically, I wish somebody would have laid down some hard truths about what it takes to grow a business because I would have achieved more success.

By more success, I mean that I would have:

• Grown my business sooner
• Experienced fewer pitfalls along the way
• Felt more satisfied

That said, I’m sharing 5 things most people don’t tell you about what it really takes to grow your business. Additionally, I’m also sharing why most people don’t tell you the truth and the consequences of being misled by others.

Most entrepreneurs aren’t being told the truth about growing their businesses. As somebody who has been there before, I’m setting the record straight.

Why Most People Don’t Tell You the Truth About Growing Your Business

Most people won’t tell you the truth about growing your business.

By most people, I’m talking about:

• Online business gurus and mentees
• The people in your inner business circle
• Your friends

And by the “truth” about growing your business, I’m talking about what it really takes to grow a successful business for the long term!

Don’t believe it? Here’s why most people, even those who have achieved success themselves, won’t tell you the truth...

People Want You to Think That Growing a Successful Business Is Complex

Business growth is S.I.M.P.L.E. Seriously, it’s a simple matter of making more sales in less time.

However, simplicity isn’t very exciting. Moreover, whenever you tell somebody that something is simple, it doesn’t arouse a lot of emotion.

Despite the fact that achieving growth is simple, people online, particularly influential business gurus, want you to believe that growth is complicated!

They want you to believe that growth is complicated because when you believe it is complicated, you’re more inclined to lean on them for advice. More specifically, you’re more likely to open your wallet and give them money so that they can tell you how to navigate the supposedly complex nature of business growth.

Just think about it: How many advertisements do you see on a regular basis trying to convince you that something so simple, such as taking your business to the next level, is complex and that you need their product or service to navigate the complexity?

When You Think Business Growth Is Complex, THEY Win

Whenever an influential business figure successfully convinces you that business is complicated, THEY win!

They’ve successfully sold you a lie that growth is complicated and that you need them in order to be successful.

As I said and will say many times over again, growing a business is the farthest thing from complicated! Challenging, yes, but not complicated.

Once you start following these business influencers or so-called business leaders and their advice, you might achieve some success in the short-term, but it won’t come without a lot of long-term consequences.

We Place Information and Credentials Above Actual Results

People LOVE shiny, special-looking credentials! Whenever something is shiny and unique looking, we tend to give it merit.

For example, whenever we see somebody with a diploma from a prestigious university or a huge social media platform following, we tend to assume that there is merit to what they have to say.

However, somebody can be extremely loud, noisy, and generate a lot of attention but only add more chaos to the already chaotic world.

We tend to do this same thing when it comes to business growth: We think that the most popular business school training or mentorship from the world’s most-followed business influencer is the magic sauce we need to grow.

To make matters worse, those in our inner circle often reinforce the alluring magic of shiny credentials.

Unfortunately for us, the allure of shininess overpowers the actual results a person or program produces.

Our Friends Are Often the Least Likely to Tell the Truth

Here’s a hard fact for you: Your friends are some of the LEAST LIKELY people to tell you the truth, including your friends within the business world.

Why?

Friendships fulfill our innate human desires to feel accepted within a group. To be accepted within a group, we need to agree with the other members of the group. Unless we agree, tension and eventually chaos breaks loose.

For this reason, your friends often won’t often tell you the hard truths you need to hear about growing your business!

For example, you might ask a friend for input on your business model, but they won’t tell you their real opinion because they don’t want to create tension. It’s not that they’re a bad friend, it’s just that they don’t want to disrupt the comforting status quo.

I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have friends! However, I am saying that you need to tread carefully whenever you ask a fellow entrepreneur friend for honest advice and input.

Here’s Happens When You Don’t Know the Truth About Growth

Here’s what happens to entrepreneurs and their businesses when they don’t know the truth about growing those businesses.

More specifically, this is what happens when they buy into the most pervasive falsehoods of business growth, particularly that it’s a complex process!

Hint: It doesn’t end well.

Your Growth Strategy Gets Complex

First and most importantly, the biggest and most common lie people will tell you about growing your existing business or starting a new business is that it’s a complex process.

Like I said above, people will tell you that growth is complex so that you lean on them for advice (and so that you buy their products or services)!

Because you believe that achieving growth is complex, you inevitably develop a complex growth strategy that only makes it more challenging to achieve growth!

Suddenly with an unnecessarily complex strategy, you’re even more confused than when you first started!

You Get Lost In the Weeds

Thanks to your unnecessarily complex strategy, you start to feel stuck in the weeds.

By stuck in the weeds, I mean that you feel lost and don’t know what it’ll take to grow your business.

Not only that, but you’re being pulled in countless directions at once. One minute you’re working on your marketing strategy, and the next you’re making subpar cold calls to potential customers.

Moreover, you’re showing up to work every day but the moment you sit down at your desk you say, “Dang, I really don’t know what I’m doing.”

Instead of Growing, You Plateau or Go Backwards

At this point, thanks to showing up to work every day not knowing what to do, you stop taking targeted action.

Without action, your business either plateaus or experiences negative growth!

By plateau, I mean that you stop making additional sales from week to week despite your new growth strategy.

And by negative growth, I mean that you start making fewer sales from week to week.

The worst part is that you might feel as if you’re working harder than ever, but the truth is that you’re just spinning your wheels but going nowhere.

Suddenly, You’re Miserable and Back to Square 1

So, you believed the lie that business growth is complex, resultantly developed a complex growth strategy, got stuck in the weeds, and started to plateau or even grow backwards.

At this point, you’re feeling miserable and defeated.

You thought you were doing the right thing for your business, but now you’re starting to realize something went wrong!

Whenever this happens to entrepreneurs, they usually blame all the wrong factors. For example, they’ll tell themselves that they weren’t working hard enough, were targeting the wrong target audience, or didn’t understand their customer base enough.

However, what really went wrong is that they believed all the falsehoods about business growth, particularly that it’s complex!

In the end, the hard-working entrepreneur is back to square one, probably doomed to repeat the cycle again.

Here Are 5 Things Most People Don’t Tell You About Business Growth

These are 5 hard truths about business growth that most people won’t tell you. 

Each of them I’ve learned from growing my own businesses and working with hundreds of other successful entrepreneurs over the years.

I wish I knew these things earlier on, because they could have helped me grow my business more in less time!

1. Sales Growth Is the Single-Most Important Factor to Business Growth

I will continue to say this until you unlearn the falsehood that business growth is complex: Business growth is a SIMPLE matter of making more sales in less time! Unless you increase sales, you can’t grow.

It doesn’t matter what kind of business growth you’re after–whether it’s developing new products, expanding your target market to include more potential customers, or increasing your cash flow so that you can finally hire more salespeople, it all comes down to sales growth!

Sales growth = more money in your pocket = more opportunities to reinvest that money and grow more.

In fact, almost all of your business needs can be solved with sales growth.

Most people won’t tell you this straightforward truth because they want you to believe growth is complex so that you buy their solutions. However, this is nothing more than a scheme to get you to buy unnecessary products and services.

Before you even think about reworking your marketing plan, forming new partnerships, or any other pain point you think you might have, focus on sales growth!

2. Fear Holds You Back More Than Any Bad Business Plans Ever Will

At the end of the day, fear is the single most common factor that holds business owners back from growth and, quite frankly, success of any kind.

Why?

Because fear impedes action. When you’re afraid to do something you’ll come up with millions of excuses to not take action.

For example, you might realize that it’s important to reach out to your current customers for feedback but the thought of getting honest feedback paralyzes you. As a result, you don’t get the feedback you need to improve your sales process and grow your business.

Unfortunately, most business owners spend 100% of their time focusing on business development and 0% of their time focusing on personal development. 

As a result, they never learn how to manage their fears. Eventually, those fears stop them from taking the initiatives that would help their business grow.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business owner or run a Fortune 500 Company, you’re still prone to the same fears associated with running a growing business!

That said, EVERY business owner should prioritize their own personal development and learning how to manage fear unless they want it to overcome them AND their business.

3. New Customers WILL NOT Be Interested In What You Have to Say

The word “deserve” gets thrown around a lot these days. People will say things like, “I deserve success” or “My business deserves to grow.”

However, what makes you think that your potential customers think that you deserve them and their money? What makes you think that they’re putting you up on some sort of pedestal?

The truth is they aren’t thinking about you and what you deserve, rather, they’re thinking about themselves and what their own needs are!

That said, I’m here to tell you that potential customers will not be interested in what you have to say or sell unless you give them a reason to care.

Nobody cared about the iPhone until Steve Jobs created so much urgency around his products that everybody suddenly felt compelled to buy his product. Not only that, they felt satisfied buying his products.

I’m here to tell you that you don’t deserve anything unless you give first! It’s like I always say, there is no such thing as something for nothing.

Hone in on the unique value your business creates that no other business does! Then, focus on sharing that value with as many people as you can.

You don’t deserve to receive anything unless you give first.

4. Unless You Delegate, Business Growth Is Impossible

There’s a lot of people out there who will try to tell you that you can “do it all” without any stress as if you’re superhuman.

However, this is nothing but a ploy to make you feel good so that you like and listen to them.

The hard truth is that you CAN’T do it all. At least, you can’t do it all at the same time without dropping the ball!

For example, you can’t be totally focused on making sales calls, becoming a digital marketing expert, and developing a new podcast all at once WITHOUT eventually having to drop one of your plates.

Because of this, you’ve got to be ready to delegate. You’ve got to find people to join your team who will help put the other pieces of the puzzle together.

You can either try to do everything yourself and eventually drop it all at once, or you can choose to delegate to prevent dropping anything altogether.

5. If You Want Success, You MUST Start Growing Now

How often do you think to yourself, ‘I’m going to take my time’ or ‘There’s no need to rush because I have all the time in the world’?

Yeah, those are nice sentiments, but they’re far from reality.

The hard truth about life is that you don’t know if you have time. You might think that tomorrow is the perfect day to get started, but what if tomorrow doesn’t come?

Unfortunately in an effort to make you feel good, most people will reinforce the idea that you have all the time in the world to do what you want and achieve your goals.

However, these people live in a fantasy, not reality.

I’m here to tell you that if you want to achieve growth, you must start NOW. Instead of waiting for circumstances to be perfect (which, they’ll never be perfect), get going immediately!

The longer you put off getting started, the less success you’ll have in the long run.

It’s ALWAYS better to start before you think you’re ready than it is to wait around for the supposedly “right” circumstances.

Bottom Line: What Most People Don’t Tell You About Business Growth

Don’t give in to the falsities that I once did! Instead, take insights from someone who has grown several successful businesses and has worked with countless other CEOs over the years.

Lastly, keep in mind that if the things most people told others about business growth were true, then there would be many more successful entrepreneurs out there.