Any type of growth is hard. It’s hard to grow and not lose who you are – physically, personally and in your business. No matter what, there’s always going to be something you leave behind.

When you were a child, you left behind your short stature and your nose-picking (did you leave that behind?) to grow taller and become an adult. But when you grew up, you kept part of you – maybe it was your mom’s nose or your humorous personality. Sure, you changed, but you were still you.

In your business, things are more fluid, you don’t have permanent fixtures that remain by default, like your mom’s nose does. It can be a much harder process to grow your business, leave the baby stuff behind, but keep your core intact.

So that’s what we’re diving into – how to grow and keep your core intact. It’s actually a simple process, but we tend to ignore it when we’re growing our businesses. It’s essential, though, if we want to keep our core intact.

How to still be you and grow:

• Assess your core:
  • What are your businesses core strengths? Why do your customers keep coming back? What makes your business unique? What brings in the most revenue?
• Find the superfluous and bottlenecks:
  • What could you leave behind and few would notice (i.e. processes, products, etc.)? What feels like it’s holding you back?
• After you’ve done steps 1 & 2, make a plan to intentionally protect and pour into the core while you cut/fix the superfluous and bottlenecks. Then follow your plan and adjust as needed.

But what does this look like practically?

Say you run a bakery and your sales are growing so fast, it’s hard to keep up. The bakery’s tagline is “Fresh. Local. Handmade.” You bake everyday, multiple times a day so everything is fresh. You use only local ingredients and you deliver locally. You make every item by hand. Your best seller is your blueberry oatmeal bars. Customers are happy with the quality, which you attribute to the items being fresh. Your customers love that you use only local ingredients and that you have local delivery. You’ve gotten good WOM advertising because of your local delivery. This is your core. Some things haven’t been working great – a gluten free line hasn’t been selling, expanding delivery to further counties hasn’t been promising and your inventory system can’t keep up. You’ve also spent money on advertising space in a local publication that hasn’t yielded a solid return. These are your superfluous and bottleneck items and.

From this assessment, you should be able to create a logical plan that helps you keep your core intact as you grow. This means you should continue to focus on fresh and local and protect and grow those strengths. However, no one seems to notice or care that items are handmade. You’ve been looking into a machine that can make your oatmeal bars in less time, for less labor, which would help you meet market needs. Since you’ve assessed your core and know what you need to protect, you can more clearly make that decisions.

When businesses grow, they move toward chaos. It takes intentional persistence to ensure your business’s core stays intact while it grows. If you commit to protect your business’s core as it grows, you’ll likely find that you still have the essential parts intact, just like you still had your mom’s nose after you went through puberty.

Image info: Original image by John French.

About the Author: Lindsey Tolino comes alongside artisans, craftsman and people monetizing their passions to help them create healthy businesses. She shares her heart at ToBusinessOwners.com. Follow her on Twitter @LindseyTolino or connect with her on Google+.

Your business is not your home.

Your home, with all its aesthetics and function, is largely to serve you and those you live with. If you like a piece of art, you buy it and hang it in your house and enjoy it. If you want a newer refrigerator in your kitchen, you buy one to replace your old one.

But your business is not your home. It’s primary purpose is not to serve you. Your business exists to serve others. That’s not to say that you can’t spend money in your business on things you like, you can – but that shouldn’t be your priority. Your priority should be to serve customers and employees with your business spending.

Serving others with your business spending isn’t only the right and most fulfilling thing to do, it’s also the wisest. Spending your business funds only on what you want, and not on what serves others best, is foolish.

Case in point:

Last year, Reader’s Digest published a short article on the National Guard’s sponsorship of Nascar. The article explained how the National Guard spent $136 million over 5 years on the sponsorship, but only yielded 20 potential recruits, with none joining. Missouri senator Claire McCaskill was cited as saying that the issue was due to marketing to the wrong demographic as most race-car fans are from 35 to 54 years old, but the National Guard seeks 18-to-24-year-olds.

It’s hard to understand why the National Guard initially decided to sponsor Nascar, since the demographics were so dissonant. But it’s clear from that case that we can’t make marketing spending decisions based solely on what we want or what we think would be cool.

In order to get the highest ROI for our marketing funds, we need to spend on what best serves our customers. We know this. But we also know how tempting it is to spend on putting our business names on something shiny, even if it doesn’t best serve our customers.

To run great businesses, we must sacrifice our desires to better serve others. We all have limited resources. The businesses that use every last resource to sustainably serve others well will be the businesses that succeed.

So let’s not worry about spending our marketing dollars on what we like. Let’s examine the best ways to reach out to and serve our customers with those funds. After all, we’re not in business to serve ourselves. We can use our homes for that. We’re in business to serve others.

Image info: Original, royalty-free photo from Kaboompics.

About the Author: Lindsey Tolino comes alongside artisans, craftsman and people monetizing their passions to help them create healthy businesses. She shares her heart at ToBusinessOwners.com. Follow her on Twitter @LindseyTolino or connect with her on Google+.

You can be entrepreneurial in many ways and through many venues. However, most of them revolve around seeing a new opportunity, taking it, and seeing it through, even if it’s difficult.

A movie I watched a few weeks ago, McFarland USA, exemplified this. Have you watched it?

In it, Jim White (played by Kevin Costner) loses two football coaching jobs, the most recent at McFarland high school. McFarland is shown as a poor, Mexican-American town. Though he lost his coaching job, Jim stays at McFarland, working as a PE teacher. In PE, he notices how fast some of the students can run. He observes them further and finds that they run to and from school and working in the fields. He even follows one student, without his permission, to clock his speed (which ends up being around a 5 minute mile).

Jim then works to create a cross-country team, despite his lack of cross-country coaching experience. He works through various obstacles – principal’s permission, lack of interest and parental permission – to put the team together and see it through.

In the movie, Jim saw an opportunity, a significant strength, in the school and capitalized on it. He embodied entrepreneurship – and not just for his own benefit. His entrepreneurial skills benefited his players as well, with many of his runners receiving scholarships to college, which they may have not received otherwise.

I often think of entrepreneurship as a numbers game. I think of it as comparing the cost of an opportunity with its potential income. I think of it as taking an opportunity so I can make money off of it. Yet I love how McFarland turned that on its head.

Our entrepreneurship doesn’t have to serve us alone. We can be entrepreneurial for those around us. We don’t need to be all about ourselves. We know this, but sometimes we need a reminder.

I know I do. I sometimes get caught up in looking out for me and living much smaller than I should. I miss too many of opportunities to use my observations and skills to benefit others. And here’s the clincher – I’m pretty sure I’d be better off personally if I always used my entrepreneurial skills to serve others rather than to serve myself.

I mean, isn’t customer service a tenet of great business? Plus, I’ve been far more satisfied when I’ve used my skills primarily to serve others rather than to make money.

So, when we notice an opportunity that will serve others, maybe even more than it will serve us – let’s use it, let’s take it, let’s do it.

Because the most beautiful life we can create is one in which we use our skills, including our entrepreneurial ones, to benefit others. It truly is better to give than to receive.

Image info: Original image by Stefania Bonacasa.

About the Author: Lindsey Tolino comes alongside artisans, craftsman and people monetizing their passions to help them create healthy businesses. She shares her heart at ToBusinessOwners.com. Follow her on Twitter @LindseyTolino or connect with her on Google+.