How to Get Scrappy: Creative Strategies for Business Success

When the economy isn’t doing as well as you’d like, you lose a client or two, business takes a downturn, or you find new competition in your industry, it’s not always easy to keep the same mindset that you had when you first got started.

When you start a business, you’re bringing in $0 a month and you have no clients. All you have is an idea and the will to do whatever it takes for your business to succeed. When you’ve been in business for a couple years, you might start to feel the fatigue setting in of having to do the same thing over and over for the thousandth time with little to no appreciation.

When you feel like it’s getting more difficult to run your business, here are 3 things you can do to get yourself back on the right track, become more excited about your business, and overcome any obstacle in your way.

#1: Find More Ways to Help Your Customers

It’s easy to get stuck in operating and forget what makes everything run in the first place: helping your customers. Most businesses have some form of “company culture,” “company values,” or other set of guiding principles that are supposed to impact every part of what they do. Whether or not these values actually impact how they treat their customers and employees can be a significant sign about how much weight they give to other plans they make for their business. But that’s besides the point…

Every great business got big because they found more ways to help their customers than everyone expected from them to begin with. Amazon went from selling books online to delivering everything and the kitchen sink to your home in under 2 days. Apple went from making desktop computers to building the phones that we run our lives on. Costco went from serving only small businesses to using its warehouse model to provide discounted products to all shoppers.

Start yourself by asking these questions: Who am I serving? What ways could I serve them better? How could I expand who I’m serving? Is there another group that could benefit just as much if not more from what I’m doing than my current customers? How could I help my current customers more? What do they need that would be an extension of what I’m already giving them? How could I give them what they need faster? How could I make the products they’re getting from me even better?

A lot of entrepreneurs experience burnout because they forget that the most satisfying and important part of the job can be taking care of other people. Entrepreneurship, when done right, is the act of helping other people. A lot of stress can come from selling something that doesn’t benefit your customers as much as you say it does or trying to come across as more helpful than you actually are. Focus on taking care of your customers, and the rest will take care of itself.

#2: Do More Than Your Day-to-Day

Another area of burnout for entrepreneurs is getting stuck in the day-to-day operations of their business. You need to get X amount of orders out today, you need to respond to Y number of emails, and you need to reach back out Z number of prospects waiting in your inbox.

Operating your business can feel like a beatdown, which is why it’s so important to schedule time at least once a week to refocus what you’re doing to make sure you’re spending your time where it’s most needed. If you only focus on doing the day-to-day dirty work of operating your business, you’ll never have time to actually see bigger opportunities that your business could have if you thought outside the box.

What you’ll probably realize is that this is the kind of work that’s most exciting in your business. You just need to make sure that you’re spending more time implementing your new great ideas as you are coming up with them. Ideas without action are just ideas.

Write that email blast to your customer database talking about how you’re helping your recent customers. Run that marketing campaign. Shoot that funny video. Take the time to highlight your best projects on your website. Spend your lunches taking care of your team members. Ask them about what opportunities they see in the business. Step out of your comfort zone and go to conferences with other people in your industry. Look at your competitors. There’s no shame from learning from other people when the alternative is trying to reinvent the wheel every time you encounter a problem.

Plan out what the next 6 months, 12 months, and 5 years could look like for your business. Everyone works better when they have a goal they’re building towards. Nothing worth doing happens overnight.

#3: Make Your Health a Priority

And finally, take care of yourself! Getting scrappy will only take you so far if you don’t look after your physical and mental health. Take a day off. Read a good book. Go for a walk. Start a new gym membership. Try a new sport. Take a hike. Go on vacation for a couple days. Get in a good sleep routine. For your business to succeed, you need to be rested, calm, and capable of tackling whatever the day brings your way. And one of the best ways to be prepared for that is to make the right habits, stick to a diet that works for you, and get enough rest.

If you aren’t in the right headspace or physically capable of working long hours, your business sees the impact of that too! Create the energy you need, invest that energy into the right projects, be present and aware for your customers, and you’ll have everything you need to make your business thrive. Stay tuned for more resources and “think-outside-the-box” guides to help you run your business from our team here at MyCorporation or get in touch with us.