Your business has a performance gap, the difference between where you are now and where you want to be.
But don’t worry. Dan Murphy, CEO and founder of The Growth Coach, a business coaching franchise, says you’re not alone. He believes every business — and every person — has a performance gap.
The biggest driver of that gap, Murphy told a Chesterfield Chamber of Commerce breakfast Thursday, is the failure of businesses to face hard truths and deal with reality. It’s driven by a failure of people to leave their comfort zones.
“That’s where personal and business growth or breakthroughs happen: outside your comfort zone,” he said.
Murphy has lived the small-business experience and taken The Growth Coach brand from a small company to a nationally recognized franchise. The Growth Coach has been tabbed as one of the nation’s top franchises by Entrepreneur in each of the past eight years.
When a business or career stalls, Murphy said, the most common reason is a person’s inability to slow down, take stock and get away from the daily “chaos and complexity of your office.”
“If you stay too busy in the trenches of your business, you miss so many opportunities for growth,” he said. “So many people are doing the wrong work on a daily basis.”
But a business can also stall when the owner or leader decides she has a “great” business; saying the company is “great” shows the person is getting complacent and settling into a comfort zone.
Looking at your business for flaws and problems is tough, Murphy admits. He said it’s easy for a business owner to put the self-evaluation and analysis aside, telling himself there are more important day-to-day issues.
“Gap analysis can be painful, but without doing it, you won’t move the needle in your business,” he said.
And doing this analysis can require something business owners struggle with: sitting still and thinking. That means putting aside the cell phone, e-mail, sales orders and other day-to-day issues. It means taking time to step away from the business to spend time thinking about other things, like your family or non-business interests.
“If you can’t leave the business for two weeks and return with it still at the same level of profitability and success, you’re not running a business,” Murphy said.
That may not be possible right upon launch, but the business can’t grow to its full potential unless the owner can “find a way to be unimportant to the daily operations,” Murphy said.
Stepping back from those daily operations should free up time for the thinking needed to run the business. It should allow a business owner to ask herself questions about operations, strategy and growth. It should allow him to spend more time finding his business’ gaps and working to close them.
The key, Murphy said, is creating lists of actions to improve the company, and then following through.
“There’s a big difference between liking $100, wanting $100 and taking action to get $100,” Murphy said, alluding to the start of his presentation, when he held up a crisp $100 bill and asked folks if they wanted it or would like it. Finally a participant walked to the front of the room and plucked the bill from Murphy’s hand. He got to keep the money.
“Small-business owners kid themselves, because they have lots of good intentions,” Murphy said. “But they don’t follow up on those intentions with actions.”