It’s become a bit of a cliche to say how much the past three years has changed in the workplace. Of course, everyone knows the impact COVID-19 has had on remote and async work following the mass lay-offs and The Great Resignation in 2020 to 2022. But the past three years or so has also drastically increased the number of small businesses across Canada and the U.S. According to a recent survey on the Guidance Financial website, 28% of those who made “the leap” from corporate worker to business owner in 2023 did so to become their own boss. But, of course, not all of those small businesses thrived, let alone survived their first few years. To find out the reasons for businesses not growing, we asked expert in the field Belinda Aramide.
And, naturally, she did not disappoint!
Finding Balance with Your Growing Business
Now a Sales and Business Coach, in 2018, Aramide was herself one of the aforementioned many who have recently left behind corporate jobs to become their own bosses.
In a recent interview with us here at Workwolf, she said, “I was using LinkedIn to get attention for the company I was working for. I was sharing different tips and tricks and I was connecting with decision-makers and eventually I thought, ‘Well, if I can do this for a company, I guess I can do it for myself.'”
Now, on top of being a Chief Brand Officer for a leadership certification company, she helps entrepreneurs scale their businesses with the knowledge she has gained over her years of experience doing so with her own company. Specifically, she teaches companies how to leverage their LinkedIn platforms to get the most out of their online presence and share their messages/products/services with their audiences.
And, of course, over the years, her conversations with her clients has evolved to be about so much more than just LinkedIn. They’ve further became about how LinkedIn fits into their business, and perhaps more crucially, how the business fits into their life. After all, a very common challenge Aramide sees often with entrepreneurs is finding balance with their work and life matters.
Even she herself had, upon starting her business, been consumed by her work. But eventually, she says, “I didn’t want my life to revolve around my business, I wanted my business to be a part of my life.”
Now, she helps her clients find the same balance with their own work and personal lives. And this, she notes, is key not just for preventing burnout, but also for supporting and growing one’s business, too.
The Top 3 Most Common Reasons Your Business Is Not Growing
Over her years of consulting, Aramide has seen time and again where small business owners/entrepreneurs struggle with their organizations. And you, too, might be falling into the same patterns Aramide’s clients are.
1. You have too broad a target audience
As counterintuitive as it seems, selling to more focused and therefore fewer patients can actually help you increase sales.
“Everyone thinks they can sell to everybody,” Aramide says. “And while technically true, it’s a little bit easier to define your message when you get clear on who you’re selling to.”
So, if you find your audience is too broad, consider the following: how do I get a little more specific on who I am trying to sell my product/service to? Who specifically would benefit from my business? What is the advantage of reaching out to this audience over others?
2. You’re not optimizing how you’re selling
On a similar note, Aramide says many businesses struggle to grow because they aren’t optimizing how what they’re selling is being sold.
Knowing what differentiates your organization or product/service, then, can help you find the right pathways for finding the right clientele. For this, Aramide suggests asking yourself what it is about your product/service that will make someone decide to invest in your product/service.
3. You haven’t found a balanced way to do the above
Even though you as the owner and/or founder of your organization will naturally want to, as Belinda notes, eventually, you simply cannot do everything on your own. And ultimately, you should not. (Founder dependence is very dangerous for small businesses!)
She says, “When you finally grow to a point of the business where you have enough revenue to bring someone on, it’s because you’re doing all the things. And hiring someone is one of the most important and nerve-wracking experiences ever because you want to bring the right person in, you want to make sure you’re hiring for the right skill sets, hiring for the right position at that particular time…”
That is, you need to be sure that you’re hiring someone you can trust with what has become something so close and important to you. You need to be able to start finding ways of hiring people that allows you to trust them—trust that they will help your business grow and thrive, even in crises like we’ve seen in the past few years.
(For more on finding out how you can make sure your employees do indeed have the potential to thrive in their respective positions, see our blogs on Packfinder and equitable hiring here.
How a Business Consultant Measures Success
When asked how Aramide considers her work in sales and business coaching successful, she easily responded by asking the following two very decisive questions.
1. Are people doing the things that I suggest they do in order to get the movement that they want?
When asking this question, Aramide is specifically thinking of clients whose actions are not reflecting the plan she had suggested for better business practices. And when this happens, she notes, it happens for a reason.
Occasionally, the steps were too complicated, or sometimes, the steps need to be smaller. Nevertheless, whatever the business practice may be, the most important question always remains: “are people doing the things they need to do to move the needle forward?”
2. Are they seeing a return in their investments?
Of course, Aramide wants her clients to succeed! She wants to see great strides in their business’s growth and development, even if this is not a linear growth trajectory.
So, ultimately, here, she just wants to know that her clients are getting additional revenue from having worked with her. As well, she also considers not solely increasing revenue, but rather shifting the way in which they make revenue.
“For me,” she says, “I like to know that my clients are making more money or the way they are making money is more aligned.” Either way, however, she wants to see tangible growth in the company so as to show her clients that hiring her is worth it!
Summary:
Photo courtesy of Belinda Aramide
After meeting with Sales and Business Coach Belinda Aramide, we conclude that the most common reasons a business is not growing are: 1. the target audience is too broad, 2. your sales approach is not optimal, and 3. you’re not balancing your business’s growth with the previous two points. As a small business owner/entrepreneur, your responsibilities will change dramatically over time, but being adaptable and being able to trust the employees you hire to work with you will be key to helping your business grow.
Special thanks to Belinda Aramide for the expert advice in this article. For more information on how to grow your business or to hire Belinda as a consultant, visit claimyourspace.co.
