Three Critical Actions
I’ve gotten a lot out of the book How to Grow Your Small Business.
I’m not ready to put it in the business book pantheon with The E-myth, Brain Audit, Disciplined Entrepreneurship, The Personal MBA, The Mom Test, and Essentialism, but I like it.
One of the more straightforward and useful tips is what Miller calls your “Critical Actions.” These come after you’ve defined your “Mission Statement” and “Key Characteristics” - basically why you exist and what the most important parts of your business are - and support those two big pillars of the business.
The goal is to come up with three things you can do each day that’ll meaningfully move the business towards your newly defined vision for it. As your business grows, new employees will take these same actions daily, too.
Here’s an example he gives for a bakery:
We offer a sample to everybody who comes in the front door
We check the expiration dates on all ingredients in the pantry
We clean our personal workspaces every hour on the hour
And for a solo entrepreneur working on an online learning platform:
I call every new customer and thank them for their order
I create one new Instagram post per day offering free value
I fill out my daily planner every morning and decide on what content I need to create that day
I’m not necessarily in love with these specific examples, but I love the practice. A daily ritual reinforces the importance, and, as you grow, creates the culture.
The three actions are a chance to define the type of company you’ll build. If you want a company that is customer forward, make sure the actions include reaching out to new and existing customers. If you want to be visible online, each day will be creating content. And on and on.
If you do those three every day, what type of business will naturally emerge?
Super straightforward one today, but I've been following my daily three Critical Actions (which took a while to nail down) for a few months, and I've been shocked with how useful it's been. Definitely worth trying.