Growth Demonstrated

"You have to hold yourself accountable for everything – the good and the bad...There is no such thing as luck...Everything that happens (or doesn't happen) in your business is the result of your work or lack thereof."- Rob Cuesta, Extreme Business Coach

If you are running a start-up, you want growth.  If you are leading a project, you want to be able to say that the project demonstrated some form of accomplishment.  Pastors and ministry leaders are constantly trying to figure out if what they are doing on a regular basis is leading to growth within the church or the ministry.  When you go out into the field, you measure your calls versus your sells.  For evangelism, you measure your return on effort by the number of people you attract to a community event or the number of people who accept Christ at the event.  In business and ministry, we are constantly tracking activity.

Growth is not something that is easily accomplished. There are some things that you can do to grow your business, and there are some things that you have to do in order to grow your business, too.  It depends on what you seek to grow and what it takes to grow.  Part of what helps one point towards growth is the ability to analyze historical data. Such an ability allows one to identify benchmarks and road blocks based upon historical performance.  No matter what direction things may go, whether up or down, such new data gets compared to previous data.  With your data in tow, you can make an honest and earnest appeal to your corporate stakeholders or your congregation members, even your core group of supporters and volunteers.

You demonstrate your growth with numbers.  Use percentages and ratios.  Compare recent years to past years.  Track and measure gradual changes.  We don't always get that drastic change at the turn of a dime.  Keep track of trends as you go along the way.   Build your own business reporting system or work from n established model. Speak to other professionals in your field who have more experience than you or who may have a vastly different experience from you.  Identify how to work on reaching your numbers and have a means or method for reporting your numbers.

Sites for Christian Writers

Here is a simple post for Christian writers.  I am just listing a few sites for Christian writers to explore and possibly post some of their work.  There are numerous ways to use these sites.  Look for the opportunities for writers on them. Godspeed!

www.faithwriters.com
www.christianstoryteller.com
www.biblemaster.com
www.sermoncentral.com
www.christianaudio.com
www.ebibleteacher.com

If you know of some more sites for Christian writers, please feel free to add through the "Comments" section. 

Scale Down to Start Up

"People often say that motivation doesn't last. Well, neither does bathing – that's why we recommend it daily."- Zig Ziglar

Starting up a business may require you to scale down your big dream.




Don't read into that.  I did not say it may require you to drop or dump your dream entirely.  I just said you may need to scale it down at the start to get things started.


You may need to slice it up into manageable pieces, so that you can get things set up and in place to advance to new levels, stages and phases.  I tend to favor a modular approach when I work with clients on programmatic funding or business planning, identifying phases where new components, services or features can be added based upon the state of the core business.  There it is.  I seem to have have given it away, but that should be the focus; your core business.  Scale things down to the core.  Get things down to the bare essentials and build from there.

I think Avon does an excellent job at providing a business model based on a similar cocnept.  You may like fashion or cosmetics, even costume jewelry.  Avon isn't trying to get you to open a kiosk at the mall or storefront on Main Street.  The company provides each "Avon lady" with the essentials to the catalogs and ordering forms as well as support that allow her to experience success on a small scale and grow from there.  It is obvious that Avon's core business is beauty products, not blue jeans or handbags.

Start out small, while continuing to think and dream big.  Post photos, sketches and anything else related to your dream above your PC's monitor, on your car's dashboard and taped to the fridge.  Keep it visible, but be sure to set things in order first. 

 

Don't get tripped up that you haven't accomplished or achieved the full dream yet.  Just get started. Get started right.  Get started doing the core business of your dream and build from there.