Leadership is essential for business growth, and a crucial part of that leadership is being able to step outside of your comfort zone. Change is unavoidable in the business world, and those who can embrace it and use it to their advantage will be one step ahead of their competitors. In this blog post, we’ll look at why it’s important for leaders to take risks and make changes, and how doing so can lead to successful business growth.
The Fear Factor
When you examine your business today, what stops you from expanding or investing in new opportunities? Is it the fear of learning new markets or taking your business outside of your hometown? Is it the idea of hiring and managing employees and integrating new systems? What about finding the capital to make these investments? For many business owners, the reason their business does not grow is even more straightforward — doing the same thing repeatedly is easier than trying new things. It takes a growth mindset to step out of that comfort zone and into unfamiliar territory.
Growth Never Takes Place In Your Comfort Zone
Learning from new experiences makes you a better business leader. If you never try anything new in business you’ll never learn, and as a result, your business will be less prepared to handle the changes that the market will inevitably throw your way. Leaders seek change within their industry and welcome opportunities to step outside of their comfort zone and try new things. Whether it’s incorporating new strategies, opening up to new markets, or integrating new systems, change is a requirement. It is only through taking your business to new places that you’ll develop the new skills needed to navigate those waters. But what if you make a mistake?
Mistakes Are Useful and Necessary for Growth.
The culture around real estate investing and entrepreneurship can sometimes center too much around the pursuit and celebration of success rather than the value of making mistakes. There is not a business owner or investor out there who has not attempted something and found out, sometimes in very costly ways, that it was a mistake. Through trying, and sometimes failing, many hard-won lessons are worked out in real and tangible ways. Mistakes will make an imprint on you that success never will. Whether it was the red flags you realized you missed, the ways your leadership was lacking, or the market conditions you didn’t consider, mistakes teach us something valuable and are useful and necessary for growth. Do not hold back from growth for fear of making a mistake. But is there a way to reduce the impact when we do make mistakes?
Learn to Make Mistakes Safely.
This is as simple as starting small in new endeavors or investing with educated partners in new-to-you opportunities. Rather than doing nothing for fear of failure, accept that some level of mistake-making is going to happen and you’ll be all the better for it. Cushion yourself from those mistakes by testing new markets and researching them deeply before going in full force. Give yourself a long runway to ramp up new plans and see what results you are getting as you slowly trickle out a new strategy. Diversify your investments so that if one project does not go as planned you still have many successful projects out there you can build on. These are not industry secrets. Have a common sense approach to growing your business and live a pattern of life where you are always educating yourself and making informed, intelligent decisions in your business.
