Seeking new revenue? Stuck for ideas? Looking at your business the same way through the same lens each day can prohibit you from seeing new opportunities. How can you leverage the skills, talents and resources that your business has into new revenue? How can you grow your top line without shrinking your bottom line. Need a simple way to leverage your business into new revenue? The key is leverage.
I believe a business is either growing or getting closer to being out of business. There is no middle ground.
Dylan Gallagher
I think entrepreneurs that have run their business for a number of years lose perspective when it comes to considering new opportunities. New opportunities tend to take the form of “doing more of the same” but at a larger scale. There is nothing wrong with that approach but there is another approach that entrepreneurs may want to consider if “doing more of the same” doesn’t get them excited about growth. I believe a business is either growing or getting closer to being out of business. There is no middle ground. The only question is: how can your business grow and how can you get excited about pursuing growth?
The latest move by Travis Kalanick, who was a founder in Uber and then left Uber over a series of challenges and problems, provides insight into a growth strategy that I believe gets overlooked by entrepreneurs. Keep in mind that Travis was the CEO of a company that took the skills and talents of people as well as resources such as cars and combined them to provide people with an alternative mode of transportation. Click a button and a ride shows up. It was revolutionary and was the beginning of a new era of businesses that provide on demand services. Having left Uber and taken some time off, Travis is back with a new business. CloudKitchens. The premise of the idea is that restaraunts can have an offsite-location to make meals that their customers have ordered through the numerous on-demand services that people are taking advantage of. For customers that are not going into a restaurant but want the items from the menu, CloudKitchens can help those restaurants meet the demand by providing them with a fully equipped kitchen location that is meant to make food and have it picked up. Given the on-demand business experience that Travis has, he is leveraging his experience and skills into CloudKitchens and will most likely see success in a much shorter period of time than Uber took while demonstrates once again that leveraging existing skills, talents and resources can be the most efficient way to find new income.
In your business right now there are people and resources being used to deliver a product or service to paying customers. Finding a growth opportunity that doesn’t require a major investment may be as simple as evaluating the people and resources your business has access to and figuring out how to leverage them into new opportunities. That may include incremental products and services that compliment your core products and services or it may involve solving a new problem for your customers that uses the same process your business has now.
