Global Reach Starts with Solving a Real Problem
Global reach is no longer reserved for large corporations with enormous marketing budgets and offices around the world. Today, a business can begin in a spare bedroom, serve a local community, and eventually share its expertise with customers and professionals across the globe.
The key often starts with something simple: solving a problem. For entrepreneurs, some of the best opportunities for growth are already hiding inside the challenges they face every day. A time-consuming process, a training gap, or an unmet customer need can become the foundation for an entirely new product, service, or revenue stream.
On Episode #34 of the PinLeader Podcast, Matt Janowicki, founder and president of ACE Appliance Service, explained how he experienced this firsthand. As his company grew, training new technicians required significant time and resources. Instead of accepting that challenge as simply part of doing business, he began looking for another solution.
“You have to look at your industry, in my opinion, and find out what is needed in the industry,” Janowicki says. “What can you do to help?”
That mindset led to the development of a large library of appliance repair training videos. What began as a way to better train employees eventually became a resource used by technicians, companies, manufacturers, and do-it-yourself consumers well beyond the business’s original geographic market.
The lesson applies to nearly every industry: your expertise can extend farther than your physical location.
Digital content provides businesses with an opportunity to teach, demonstrate, answer questions, and build credibility with people they may never meet face-to-face. And entrepreneurs do not need an expensive production studio to begin. Janowicki advises business owners to “start off small and work your way forward,” noting that today’s smartphones and platforms like YouTube have dramatically lowered the barrier to creating useful content.
But reaching more people is only part of sustainable growth. Entrepreneurs must also remain willing to listen and evolve.
Janowicki credits employees with generating many of the ideas that have helped his company grow. “Listen to your employees all the time and have constant communication with your employees,” he advises. Creating opportunities for employees to contribute ideas not only improves operations; it helps build a culture where people feel invested in the organization’s success.
Global reach does not necessarily begin with a plan to become global. It can begin by paying attention to one problem, finding a better way to solve it, and then asking how that solution might help someone else.
What knowledge, solution, or expertise already inside your organization could reach, and help, far more people than it does today?
Presented by ROAR Productions, The PinLeader™ Podcast is an interview format show hosted by Mays and Associates, Ltd. President & CEO Dr. Shanda Gore, that provides effective tips to those who are currently leaders or have a desire to become leaders. A new episode is released every Wednesday.
