Traditionally, business owners and entrepreneurs have attempted to accelerate their business growth through time-honored methods such as marketing, planning, strategizing, budgeting, etc. While these external means are integral to the success of your business, they don't ensure its growth or sustainability. Yet, in spite of the facts, these approaches are perceived to be those of conventional wisdom. What if conventional wisdom is wrong?

As business owners frantically search for the magic elixir that will provide continuous growth, evidence of the source of that growth mounts. Research, experience, and common sense increasingly point to a direct correlation between a businesses' growth and its commitment to the internal growth and development of its owner as well as its employees.

Still, in the light of mounting evidence, business owners fail to implement the very ideas that will ensure their significant and sustainable growth. Why? Is it because many of the growth principles seem to fly in the face of conventional wisdom and dominant practice? Is it because what is being proposed isn't what everyone else is doing? Well, keep this thought in mind – rarely is "exceptional" success achieved by being "average" or "normal."

Growing your business from the inside out includes:

1. Create a values-based enterprise.
Many businesses are object-driven. They plan for and measure growth on results and money. It is this mandate that shapes as well as limits the business' ability to grow. Values are those rich qualities of "being" – the activities, interests, and nature to which one is irrevocably drawn. Personal values add energy to life, provide peace of mind, and make you (and your business) enticing to others. Growing a business based on personal values makes setting and achieving goals much easier, diminishes distractions, increases the value imparted to others, and provides greater fulfillment.

2. Travel the path of least resistance and effortless results.
Are you seduced by the belief that growth has to be hard, difficult, or require struggle if it is to occur? If a moratorium were declared on resisting, what would you have to change? Who would you need to become? What would you want to upgrade? Once you decide to grow your business the easier way, you will become less willing to tackle goals, projects, and/or clients that cause you to suffer.

3. Get your personal needs met.
Everyone understands physical needs such as food, shelter, and water. What about personal needs? Personal needs are what we must have to be ourselves. Some common personal needs are safety, to be accepted, to accomplish, to be right, to control, and/or to be cared for – to name a few. When personal needs are left unmet, they dominate one's life, waste precious time, and energy, attract needy people, and rob the day of its joy – all of which affect your ability to grow your business. By resolving to attain 100% personal needs satisfaction within the next 30 days, you will free up valuable time, become more creative and energetic, feel more confident, and discover precious resources within yourself previously hidden by unmet needs.

4. Overcome your strengths.
As the winds of change create business and/or economic uncertainty, many individuals are discovering that the skills that allowed them to succeed initially are now the cause of their derailment. The strength of a skill in one area can cause a failure to develop the complementary skills that foster ongoing growth and development. One cannot be assured that by turning up the volume on previous talents and expertise, more of the same results will be achieved. Better to focus on developing the most effective behaviors and skills that balance your existing strengths with the shifting business climate.

5. Accentuate your uniqueness.
Business messages are easily becoming lost in the congestion of today's advertising market. One enterprise is beginning to look very much like another. How do you differentiate yourself from the rest of the pack? By shining the spotlighting on "who" you are as a business owner, you will establish "what" it is that makes your business distinct. As a result, you generate a compelling reputation and build customer loyalty through the "pride of association." Never underestimate the power of your uniqueness in growing mind-share that ultimately leads to market-share.

6. Increase your personal capacity for growth.
Your business will only be as big as your personal capacity. In order to grow – and sustain – a bigger business, you must grow to be a bigger person. Become a zero-defect, toleration-free individual. Hold yourself to your best behavior. Rather than become an expert problem-solver, stop having problems by doing complete work. Step over nothing. Surrender to excellence in every area of your personal and professional life.

Making the connection between internal and external growth requires a willingness to cultivate the true source of success as well as the wisdom and courage to act on those insights. Growing business from the inside out allows you to use your creativity and magic in very powerful ways. Growth comes to those who have the audacity to travel this unique voyage. So, begin a new journey. Cross the river to the other bank where no one has traveled before and create a business that is distinctively yours.

©2002,2005 Synnovatia™..."Energetic growth strategies for business". Synnovatia™, pioneer of a proprietary approach to growing people, links business growth and expansion with personal development and evolution to achieve accelerated rates of personal and business growth and development Call today (800) 398-6428 or visit www.synnovatia.com