Last week, I met with a small business owner who had recently become a client.
After the first couple of professional business coaching sessions conducted at his favorite coffee shop, I decided to take him up on his offer to have our next meeting at his office.
On the day of our business coaching program, I arrived at his place of business and as I approached the entrance, I noticed a noble attempt at landscaping the front walkway with an assortment of shrubs, rose bushes and other drought resistant ground cover.
As I stopped to admire his plant choices, I noticed that much of them were near death and the rose bushes had been over-pruned in an attempt to keep them from dying as well.
Nearby, the cracks in the sidewalks were thriving with nicely colored, fully bloomed weeds! It seemed that despite his desire to beautify his front walk, horticulture was not his area of expertise.
While he had obviously spent a lot time mulching, pruning and fertilizing his garden with disheartening results, the weeds were doing just fine with little or no attention.
Is you business like your landscaping? Do you spend lots of time, money and effort trying, unsuccessfully to grow your revenues, clients and profits? And despite your results, do you find yourself repeating the same process hoping for a 'bumper crop' on the next go-round! This kind of trial and error approach can waste precious time and resources while making you feel that you'll never get it right, no matter what you do.
Business growth can be difficult if you don't know the right approach to take.
It's like trying to replicate those huge, beautiful hanging baskets in the malls by filling a pot with a few drugstore plants and watering them when you think to do it.
Knowing what plants grow well together and selecting the amount of light, fertilizer and water all need to be considered if you expect your efforts to produce the kind of results that you would be truly proud of.
Cultivating growth in your business requires the same degree of understanding about the elements that produce growth.
Award winning gardens continually change as plants finish blooming, need to be pruned or replaces as the seasons dictate.
The goal of the landscaper is to work with the conditions around him/her to allow the plants to do what they do best.
As a business owner, knowing what you do best and what conditions surround your business are the fundamentals of deciding what approach to take to grow the business you have.
If you are serious about producing professional landscaping but don't have the expertise, you could learn from someone who does.
If time or interest in learning is the issue, you could hire someone to work the garden for you.
As a business owner, you have the same choices.
If your goal is to have a world-class business that produces growth and provides you, your family and your employees with the financial support or lifestyle you want, consider working with a small business coach or small business advisor to help you accomplish what you can't do on your own.
Don't continue to till the same ground and use the same feeding and watering techniques that have produced the same poor results.
Learn how to do it from a professional or get help from someone who has produced what you want over and over again.
The best part about creating beautiful landscaping is knowing what the garden will look like once you've done all the right things.
Wouldn't it be great to know that the business you created could turn out the same way!