Early-stage startup founders and new business owners have a lot on their plates.
They deal with customers, hire and manage employees, and take care of administrative tasks.
In this hustle-bustle, they forget to pay attention to two really important things. One, how their brand shows up, and two, their own growth.
If you are a startup founder in a similar situation, you can work on these without hampering your day to day operations, by schedule 3 days in a month to focus on these, and couple of days once every quarter to focus on bigger tasks.
Start by scheduling a weekly stand up meeting with your co-founder and team members every Monday morning. If you are a solo founder and just starting out, you can schedule 10 minutes a day to review your personal and professional goals, before you start work for the day.
Schedule 3 days in a month, to work on growth, client relationships, and hiring.
As part of the growth initiatives, test out different growth strategies. See what channels work the best for generating leads. Once that is done look at your funnel and see how you are processing and responding to those leads and how you take those leads to the conversion stage.
Schedule monthly check-ins with important clients for the day you focus on ‘client relationships’.
If you running as a SaaS business or a business with a large number of customers, you can automate this part. Use client education as a reason for getting in touch with your clients.
Instead of (or in addition to) sending a newsletter to a client, send a short email about a new technology or trend that may impact them, or send them a link to a news item that may be relevant for them. The idea is to assure them that you are there for them.
Schedule one day a month to note the good work you did in the previous 30. Once a quarter, use your notes to create case studies of your work. Once done, send a short email to your clients with the new case study. This will show your work and also send a message to your clients that you are growing.
Once a year, rehaul your website to reflect your priorities, and to showcase new case studies, new customer relationships and any award you won.
Once a quarter, review the product or services that are bringing most profits to you. Use this to tweak your outreach efforts. Also, let go of difficult customers that eat into your profit margins. This will; free you to work on more important things that will help grow your business.
