Small Business Talk
The Podcast to Grow your Business Faster
Business Growth in Any Market with Donna Bates
Show Notes
Background
Donna Bates is a Strategic Growth Planner, whose talents have been refined over 25+ year corporate career, and opened her own Strategic Planning Consultancy in 2010. As a ‘Legacy Leader’ she’s mentored many talented people across a wide spectrum of industry. Her passion is creating excellence by doing what she loves.
Donna has a gift of finding order in chaos, structuring businesses to achieve their strategic vision delivering results through a strong organisational and marketing tempo. She’s worked with some of Australia’s influential corporations, including News Limited, Department of Defence and the Royal Automobile Clubs of Australia, delivering results launching innovative projects, e.g. setting up Australia’s first Collaborative Contact Centre for News Limited.
She is the Co-founder and Managing Director of The Lab Factory Collaborative Space, the Company Secretary for Bendigo Bank (Rockingham Community Financial Services Limited), and is an Executive Committee member of the Rockingham Kwinana Chamber of Commerce.
Donna does what comes naturally to her; she’s a strategic catalyst…assisting businesses to find ways that proactively move them to achieve massive growth momentum.
Stick to your own game
If you’re thinking of pivoting or changing your business, it is common to be worried about how to continue to grow your business while doing so. It’s easier said than done but avoid looking left and right and just stick to your own game and playing your own game. Focus on looking at opportunities that are before you and how you personally, in your business, can shift and use the expertise and opportunities within your businesses to grow. You don’t need to be an entrepreneur to be able to shift and change your business, just stay the course, be consistent and thorough in what you’re doing to move forward.
Be innovative
Businesses need be innovative by looking for ways to do things differently. Many businesses look at other industries and see what they can bring from that industry into their industry. Look at different ways of distribution channels too. Some of the greatest innovations have come about as customers want a product and the businesses entrepreneurial spirit has found a way around any obstacles to still get that product into their customers hands. It doesn’t matter if you’re a big firm, if you’re a small company or a solo entrepreneur, you must look at your market and look for other opportunities available to you and it might even be partnering with someone else. If you’ve got the same audience as another businesses, but you’re not competing, then it might be a case of their product going out to your audiences to add value or vice versa.
Have a business interruption recovery plan
Be realistic about what can you do at a particular time. Draw a line in the sand to saying, “What do we do best? Where do we need to be in five years? What do we want to do too?” There is always going to be something that comes up and it’s how we deal with that. Have a business interruption recovery plan as well as having a strategic plan. You need to have these backups that in the event of something going wrong, your business interruption recovery plan can be put in place to pivot your business so there is no loss of continuity. It allows businesses to think proactively rather than reactively in a crisis.
Take time out to re-assess your business
Take time throughout your year to really assess what’s happening in your business, what’s happening in your family, where is it you want to go? If you don’t have family, then looking at where do I want to be in my life? Re-assess and reset every year to that point and then saying, “Am I getting further to or further away from my growth goal?” Create a plan so that if you get offered an opportunity you can assess if taking on that opportunity will get you closer or further away from your original growth plan. Be conscious of what opportunities to let go and what opportunities to grab, hold on to and keep moving forward. It’s being able to say no sometimes in those environments.
