Step 3 - Growth

If you missed the other two steps, you can have a look at this article, to catch up: https://www.mydesigntomorrow.com/blog/empowering-female-entrepreuneurs  

For those of you who already read the other articles, let’s have a glance to what means growth and how do we achieve it?

As you know we are focusing on growth from the perspective of female entrepreneurs. I believe in their power to be leaders and raise above. But often we are either too emotional or not sentimental at all. Either we consider we are weak or we become men. The reality is, we can be strong, leaders and inspire others, whilst at the same time be feminine. Do you think the two don’t go together? Well…they do. You just need to find your own path, your authenticity. Discover when to be tough or to be soft, but most importantly with whom. I truly trust that once you discovered your inner strength even when you feel vulnerable you are actually strong and you touch other people.

So what are the elements for a genuine woman leader and how do you get them?

The answer is that you already have everything you need. All the ingredients and solutions are within yourself, you don’t have to look outside or to learn them by heart. What is necessary is to extract them from the inside. This is the role of a coach, to guide you to pull your knowledge, allow you to see yourself with fresh eyes, from different angles, and to understand what is stopping you from achieving your greatness.

Let us give you some more details about some ingredients we think are essential to achieve firm prosperity. They are as follows:  

There is no particular order in these concepts. You need them all.

1. Mindset

As we already discussed in the previous article on Step 1, this is the basis for everything that follows. You have to deal with your old unsupportive beliefs. Maybe you have done it in the past. This allowed you to reach a certain level. But if you are stuck, if you feel that you are constantly fighting with life, then definitely you are not on the right path. You are not following your heart. Take a step back and start reflecting again on all the concepts we described in our Online Training Empowering Mindset.

2. Strategy

As a leader you need to have a plan for your growth; you must know where you are going and think ahead. This is the role of a leader. You are opening the road for those coming after you. They will follow you because you have taken the time to reflect on the strategy, advantages, inconveniences, and risks. You have thought about all the viable opportunities and necessary improvements. You have a plan for the following 1, 5, and 10 years. You are thinking about the well-being of everyone around you and this will allow you to be called a leader.

3. Team

If you don’t have a team yet, this is most probably the reason you are not growing. You cannot build an empire by yourself. You absolutely don’t have the time, means, knowledge, and resources to do so. You need to surround yourself with people who share the same values as you do. Delegate your tasks to those you are trusting. Accept support when needed. Remember, people will trust you if you trust them, they will respect you if you respect them, they will admire you if you admire them, they will help you if you help them, they will acknowledge you as a leader if you acknowledge their value and they will care about you if you care about them. It is not a one-way path, you cannot just give them a salary and expect all the other things in return. Give what you require from others and you will obtain it.

4. Systems

Something that many business owners are not aware of is that in order to have free time and run a company you need systems in place. Make sure everything can be performed without you being present. So how do you achieve that? Here are a few things you should implement:

• Procedures: it refers to the documentation of all of your processes, to ensure consistency from our year to another, to ensure that your business works exactly the way you want it to work and that whenever you have found a solution that gives you the profit you expect, it should be repeated. 
• Governance: it is not by chance that big companies have a strongly defined governance with decision-making bodies and a well-established structure. In order to succeed, the ability to change the process must be limited to only a few people. If everyone introduces new ideas without a determined plan and strategy, you are up for a big failure.
• Expertise: if you want to save time, energy, and money you need to surround yourself by experts in different fields such as risk management, human resources, IT, communications, accounting, to name just a few.  
• Controls: This is for me one area I have been working in for 8 years. I cannot stress enough the importance of this field. People will make mistakes, they will not always comply with the procedures designed or even with the regulation, and this may cost you a lot of money. To avoid that, you need control functions. There are three levels of control: first performed by the hierarchy of the operational staff; second as an autonomous department who will ensure that the first level is correctly implemented; and, third which is independent of the other two and who should ensure that there are no flaws in the processes. You need a robust control system if you want to grow.
• IT infrastructure: something that will save you a bunch of money is having automation. You still need people, but whenever is possible, make sure you avoid manual mistakes by putting in place the right IT infrastructure. This may cost you some capital in the short term, but it will definitely gain you a lot in the long run.

As a leader, you will have the right mindset to inspire, the appropriate strategy to provide the direction, the proper systems to be profitable, and the ideal team to implement your dreams, whilst helping them develop theirs at the same time.

Access the Free Masterclass to Become Extraordinary: 

https://www.mydesigntomorrow.com/be-extraordinary

We grow together. 

Diana