Facing uncertainty can be challenging – being a business owner facing uncertainty is tougher.
Red Direction helps you [fast track and] grow your business – authentically, pragmatically, and resiliently.
Starting the conversation…
Get the best practices to use a present retreat to actively engage weekly with your growth strategy.
Host: Jess Dewell
What You Will Hear:
Business performance is a management skill.
What growth strategy is.
How we use growth strategy and the way we define it here.
Present Retreat defined and how to use it.
Protect time for your present retreat.
Write down the growth strategy in place, the growth strategy we can have, and our skills to carry it forward.
When skills are undermined by the stories we tell ourselves.
Consider are the skills needed ones I want to develop more or acquire.
Live Audience Question: How is “prioritizing time” different from time management?
Use your head brain, heart brain, and gut-brain.
Audience Question: What is it that helps you recognize your strengths, is it necessary to have someone or is there a way to acknowledge strengths on our own, and in that case how?
What we prioritize is what we value. What we value is how we work.
Live Audience Question: I have too many things on my plate, and taking 4 hours or even 2 to just think is mission impossible. I know it's important if I want to grow my business but I don't know where to start.
How you show up in your role.
Live Audience Question: Jess, you talked about checking in with others for a reality check. Can you describe an ideal support system?
Time to invest in your growth strategy each week.
Be ok messing up when building a new skill or a new process.
It’s BOLD to engage with your growth strategy in a Present Retreat each week.
Audience Question: Have you ever experienced a setback because of your approach to time, and how you prioritize it?
Notable and Quotable:
Jess Dewell 4:29
And a “Present Retreat” is taking time out of a regular day to be able to look at things that are different. I will not schedule meetings during my retreat. I will not take a phone call during my retreat. I will show up. I will think about growth strategy. I will understand what needle has moved and does it align with what we're doing this year? Does it align with our longer-term goals for diversification, product addition or customer acquisition?
Jess Dewell 16:24
Consider some of your constraints. Consider your industry. Consider your competitors. What can you be doing? And make it so you know, because now you know what you are, and what you could. We now have a gap analysis to prioritize from.
Jess Dewell 16:54
Part of a “Present Retreat” is not only looking at the business and becoming separate from ourselves, but it's also understanding who we are. How we show up, What we bring to the table. Because when we do good work, and we develop the skills that we have, and we acquire new skills that we want, we know there's a period of learning. And it might be scary. And we might feel like we don't know very much. And we may hold ourselves back. And a “Present Retreat” not only allows you to recognize that, and honor it, and build on that going forward, it also allows us to recognize the skills maybe we're discounting, and willing to have somebody helped me learn that piece. It's a very important part of a “Present Retreat.”
Jess Dewell 26:19
Where are the places that we get the best ideas? We get the best ideas on the toilet, in the shower, when we're driving, and we're not talking to anybody? Well, a “Present Retreat” is creating a time that allows our brains to know, and look forward to, having the space to come up with additional great ideas. So we're training our brain in a new way. We're using our head brain, our heart brain and our gut brain to show up and evaluate things in a different way.
Jess Dewell 44:18
In your growth strategy, look at your client lifecycle. How long does it take for somebody to begin to work with you, or buy your product? And once they do work with you, how long are they working with you? And what are the ways that you can extend the time that they work with you? And when it is time, and there's a natural conclusion that occurs with each client or customer, what is the next step on their path? And if you don't provide it, where do they go? Who do you send them to? And is there some sort of a strategic partnership that could occur at that moment in time to allow the best service to be provided to customers and allow you and me to do what we do best in our companies.
Jess Dewell 45:58
Of executives, managers, directors, people in charge of some sort of budgetary line item or line items, spent an average of around an hour per month thinking about their growth strategies, and evaluating opportunities against it. And deciding what's important now to give us our immediate growth goals, but also an immediate opportunity to plant seeds that we don't even know what's going to come up in the end. It's bold to spend an hour a week It's bolder to spend four hours a week.
Resources:
Who’s in Charge of Your Growth Strategy
Neuroscience and the Three Brains of Leadership
More Growth Requires More Commitment
Tags:
business growth, performance, reflection, executive soft skills, decision making, choice, growth strategy, awareness