It’s the leader’s job to chart the direction of the business. However, even with a clear vision, selecting the right goals can be challenging and overwhelming, especially when there are more options and opportunities than resources. Without specific goals, you and your team will struggle to focus and maximize the return on your efforts.
Tracking progress often feels just as confusing. Even the most profit-minded leaders sometimes question if they’re headed in the right direction and wonder if what they’re doing is working.
For the past few years, the challenges we’ve seen as a society have only made setting goals and tracking progress harder. In this episode, LZ and I interview entrepreneur, best-selling author, and investor of ABC Network’s Shark Tank, Daymond John, about taking control of your game by setting goals and tracking progress for your business.
Here are some takeaways he shared:
1. Negotiation is a soft skill we use daily to live with our families and work with our teams.
However, most people don’t consider themselves to be strong negotiators. There are four steps to negotiating in life, and as you repeat these steps, you’re negotiating power becomes stronger:
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- Building influence with a reputation.
- Communicating what you stand for.
- Negotiating deals that benefit both parties.
- Nurturing relationships with people you meet and work with.
2. In addition to profit, measure the progress of your business by its scalability, which Daymond defines as 'the ability to grow.'
Daymond typically looks at how little the organization has to spend to produce its current results, the current processes ability to be replicated to further growth, and the awareness of the organization of the customers’ needs.
There are three ways to interact with your customers to grow: acquire a new one, upsell a current one or make them buy more frequently.
3. Education is the x-factor for every business leader.
Daymond emphasized the reality that we’ll make mistakes. However, our ability to learn and grow will be the best-determining factor in how far we go. There’s a new challenge at every stage of our journey, and the only thing consistent will bring to those experiences is ourselves.
To ensure we’re ready, we must continually invest in ourselves through podcasts, books, online courses, peers, and mentors.
Constantly educate yourself on what your competition is doing, where the market is going, what you haven’t done already and where you need to be stronger.
As leaders, your business will only grow as far as you do. If you limit your growth and education, you’ll limit your organization's ability to grow. You must insist on investing in yourself — and finding a mentor is a great start. It’s the best gift you can give to your company.