Building a stronger business isn’t just about what you do—it’s about doing things in the right order.
Here’s your “this before that” playbook, one hard-hitting principle at a time:
- Don’t aggressively chase sales until you know you can make healthy margins on every deal.
- Don’t obsess over revenue growth until you’ve learned how to consistently deliver real value.
- Don’t prioritize winning new clients before you’ve hit your target levels of customer retention.
- Don’t ramp up marketing before you’ve nailed a clear, coherent business strategy.
- Don’t dump money into lead generation until you can close business at a solid, predictable rate.
- Don’t go wild hiring people before you’ve got the basics of your operation systemized.
- Don’t sit around waiting for an opening before you actively prospect for future team members.
- Don’t add a second location until the business itself is thoroughly systemized.
- Don’t franchise the business until you’ve proven a successful second location actually works.
- Don’t ask for referrals until you’ve built a solid cadre of genuinely satisfied customers.
- Don’t build a big team of employees until you’ve clearly defined your rules of the game.
- Don’t invest funds until you’re objectively evaluating ROI and ROT, not going on gut feel.
- Don’t aggressively sell into new markets until you understand why prospects haven’t bought yet.
- Don’t invest serious time into a sales prospect until you’ve properly qualified them.
- Don’t quit a well-conceived initiative until you’ve tried several different ways to execute it.
- Don’t blame an employee for a mistake until you’ve reviewed whether the process itself is flawed.
- Don’t go all-in on short-term mode until you’ve got a real exit strategy for the business.
- Don’t try to scale the business until you’ve established recurring, dependable market demand.
- Don’t launch a new offering until you’ve validated genuine market interest and demand.
- Don’t hire sales professionals until you have a solid value proposition and selling process in place.
- Don’t focus on becoming bigger until you’re clearly becoming stronger.
- Don’t change the way you do things until the metrics prove there’s a real need to change.