Break Out Of Your Comfort Zone

“Do one thing that scares you every day.”

This quote, attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, epitomizes the concept of breaking out of your comfort zone.

Inside your comfort zone, you’re safe . . . and you’re comfortable.  But you’re also treading water, not growing personally, and you’re probably not growing your company.  You can get away with that for a while, maybe for a long while, but the odds are great that your company will soon begin to go backward, not forward.

As a small business entrepreneur, you know that your first priority is to keep the business on the “straight and narrow”, with your nose to the grindstone, paying attention to everything that needs to be done to keep the doors open – all of the clichés that you already know about.  What you might not recognize, though, is that doing this, day in and day out when you’re first starting up, might get you into a rut – a rut that means you’re muddled in a comfort zone that leads to complacency.

I can’t stress it enough – a good entrepreneur (and by that I mean one who is successful) comes up with a dozen new ideas a day.  Each idea shouldn’t be of an earth-shaking or bet-the-company level.  But they should be ideas to kick around in your head throughout the day, and maybe by the end of the day (or week), one really good idea will filter out that makes sense – one that you can pounce on.

To be good, the ideas should focus on ways you can market outside the box, how to jazz up your current marketing ideas, how to generate more buzz around your products and services, how to broaden your potential customer base, or how to tweak a current product to get a bit more mileage from it, or how to manage and better run your company.

Most importantly, the ideas should be ways for you to escape your comfort zone . . . ideas that help you lead the company in new ways.

So, what are some ideas for operating outside your comfort zone?

1. Rid yourself of the notion that you alone know what’s best for all aspects of your company. Sure, you’re the one who founded it and came up with the initial start-up ideas, but other people in the company also have a vested interest in seeing it succeed – and their ideas can be invaluable for identifying new ways to do things.  You don’t have to follow all of these ideas, but listening to them and thinking them through can lead to new successes.
2. Force yourself to learn new things. Committing to do something in your business process that you’ve never done before forces you to learn new things, or to learn how to do things in a new way.  For example, if you feel uncomfortable being “the face” of your company – maybe you don’t like standing in front of potential customers talking up your product(s) – set up a bunch of venues where you have to do exactly that.
3. Identify areas where you’re adamant things have to be done as you’ve always dictated, and then force yourself to think through them a second time to develop alternatives that might work even better. This could be a process area with your product manufacturing, product marketing, or in setting product pricing, product distribution, or any number of aspects around your company.
4. Brainstorm (within a company group) for new and different marketing ideas, and when one or more are strongly backed by others, but not by you, explore them more thoroughly to determine if they do, indeed, have merit. It could lead to exciting new ways that potential customers see your products, or to convince existing customers to buy more of your products.  Maybe it will lead to an entirely new category of customer for your products, or with small tweaking a whole new way that your product can be used.
5. Identify new ways and venues for customers to learn about and experience your products. If your company is a small craft brewery and you’ve always highlighted your products at sampling tables set up at small trade conventions, consider hosting a donated in-house tasting session once a month as a way for several local companies to have one-late-afternoon-a-week employee get-togethers.
6. Identify ways you can leap ahead of your competition. Just matching everything your competition does might be easy, but finding ways to jump ahead of them are not easy, and they might not fall within your comfort zone.
7. In areas of the company where you (and your ideas) always dominate, force yourself to seek out alternative ideas or methods – not always giving in to them, but always giving them a good vetting to determine if there might be some value in them.
8. If you don’t like schmoozing with your potential customers or alliance partners, force yourself to create situations where this is necessary. This not only widens your business network, but it can also strengthen your confidence to use these situations as powerful marketing venues.
9. If there are trade show/convention venues that focus in your business area, get involved in them, maybe volunteering for a speaking slot, or other platforms where you can get in front of potential buyers or customers.
10. If you’re camera shy, make it a point to star in a company video, and once it’s completed (and assuming it’s good), promote it to the fullest extent possible. Getting a broader face on your company is one of the best marketing techniques you can find.
11. Toot your own horn.  This may be something you feel very uncomfortable about, but as a small business you almost certainly don’t have a public relations staff or outside consultant.  So if you don’t toot your own horn, no one else will.  Brainstorm ways that you can be covered in the local press, or mentioned in trade journals, or favorable mentions in the news.  If potential customers don’t know about your company, it’s unlikely they’ll flock to purchase what you have to sell.

None of these ideas are intended to break the bank.  Rather, they are small, but crucial steps you can take to grow your business.  The more of these ideas you take on, the easier they will become, and before you know it, operating outside of your comfort zone will actually become your comfort zone.  At that point, your company could be well on the road to success.