Many business owners look to grow their business by maybe $50,000 or a $100,000 each year. Say 10-20% a year.  That is of course if they have the opportunity to grow their business. Maybe surviving is about as good as it gets for some.

Perhaps you are working on your plan to achieve your growth targets  for this year and you’re seeing some good results?

Or maybe you aren’t quite getting the results that you had set out to achieve?

If you’re struggling with your goals or if you’re progressing well, my question is; are you thinking big enough?

Think Bigger

The trouble with goals is that you never know if it’s the right target to be chasing or not.

16th Century artist and sculptor, Michelangelo said it best…

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark”

Sometimes achieving a bigger target takes no more effort than achieving a lower target.

Let me demonstrate with an example:

At the end of 2013 I worked with a finance team to reduce it’s month end processing and reporting times.

The team regularly took anywhere between 1-2 weeks to achieve it’s month end close.

So the team had set itself the target to reduce the close time to 3 days, a massive reduction and asked me to help them achieve it.

Whilst a 3 day month end close is certainly respectable, it’s not world class.

The best of the best can achieve month end close times in less than a day.

So I challenged the team to become world class and close their accounts in 1 day.

Whilst many were sceptical that they could achieve this. I asked them to be open minded.

So we held a workshop. And you know what, after 4 hours, the plan was agreed, actions were assigned and a few days later they closed their month end in 1 day.

No More Effort To Achieve Bigger Results

The fact of the matter is that exactly the same amount of effort is required to plan for a 1 day close as a 3 day close.

So regardless of whether you believe you can do something or not. Think about what the best possible outcome could be and aim for that.

Adding a Zero

When I talk to business owners about how much they want to grow their business and like the business owners at the start of this post, they usually have modest requirements. When they talk about wanting to grow their business they usually talk about adding an extra $50-100k a year.

So I ask them to add an extra zero to the amount that number.

So, instead of  $50k or $100k, by adding a zero it becomes $500k or a cool $1m

Why?

Because as Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, once said:

“What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”

When you think that you can only grow your business $50-$100k then that becomes your reality that serves as an obstacle to achieving what you want.  This is known as a limiting belief.

Limiting Beliefs

A limiting belief is a belief that is a deeply held conscious or subconscious level that serves as obstacle to achieving what you want. For example, say you want to have a six pack stomach, but something inside tells you that you’re fat, this results in you giving up and falling for consolation in the ice cream tub, which in turn prevents you reaching your goal.

So by adding a zero to the number you set out to achieve forces you to think about your business in a completely different way.

10 x Bigger

Because to be 10 times bigger, there’s no way that you can continue doing what you’re doing now. Because if doing what you’re doing would get you 10 times the results, then you’d be enjoying the benefits now.

When you start thinking about your business  in a different light you’ll start to see new possibilities. When you see new possibilities, you’ll start overcoming your limiting beliefs about your business.

Of course, just because you believe something doesn’t make it happen. You have to take action.

But the truth of the matter is that there is often no more effort required to grow a business 10 times than there is to grow a business by 10-20%.

And what’s the worst that could happen if you don’t achieve the 10 times goal?

Chances are you’ll probably make a lot more than the goal you started out with.

As Donald Trump would say:

“I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.”

So my advice is start thinking bigger. 10 times bigger, in every aspect of your business