Recently, I had an interesting conversation in the DM’s with a business owner. Even though she was stuck with her business growth, she said that she wasn’t interested in working with me because she really wanted to grow “the organic way.” I totally respect that I’m not for everyone, but for some reason that phrase stuck in my mind.

Later that day I realized why it stuck out to me! Organic growth is at the heart of my business growth strategy…but, like the person I was chatting with, I had to let go of some limiting beliefs around the GROWTH part of organic growth in order to experience gains in my business.

Until I let these three beliefs go, I was pretty stuck making $1500 a month, hoping I’d clear $20k a year, and working 50+ hours a week. Now, I work 32 hours a week, have weekends off, and am feeling pretty cozy with 5-figure months.

What is organic business growth?

All “organic” business growth means is that you’re growing by creating and building connections without unnatural accelerants. Much like planting a seed and then not using chemicals to enhance it’s growth, Your growth plan doesn’t include buying out businesses or followers and probably doesn’t include much in the way of paid advertising. (though I think paid advertising has it’s merits!)

3 common misconceptions about organic growth

Organic growth means doing everything yourself

Often people mistake doing everything yourself as organic growth. But in reality, doing everything yourself makes growth impossible after a certain point. The belief that you need to first learn and excel at each business task is exactly the thing that will prevent the growth you want. Yes that may be an organic approach, but it’s not the savviest organic approach.

Outsourcing is a sign of healthy business growth. Hopefully if you’re outsourcing, it is because you’re investing your time into activities that keep you in your zone of genius.

Organic Growth means ads are bad

Again...not the case. If you knew you paid $5 for each new client would that money spent be a no-brainer to you? That’s the kind of opportunity paid advertising can create when your messaging and targeting are dialed in. However...I view ads as a supplement to your growth, not the main source of it. Running ads isn’t a sign of failer and doesn’t mean you weren’t good enough to hack it without ads. Giving myself space to try things and learn what worked was far more helpful than labeling techniques before I even tried them.

Organic growth should happen when you’re so amazing that your audience blows up

I get it-you see a guru you’ve followed for years who’s audience went from 5k to 1 million and you now think that’s what you must do. Everyone’s got to find their “it factor” and then they’ll take off.

These words are hurting you: “take off,” “explode” “grow fast.” They’re putting pressure on you to do, be, or have something that you don’t. And honestly, all this idea of organic growth will do is create or deepen a scarcity based approach to business, driving away the success you might envision.

Here are 4 organic growth strategies that you may be rushing past.

These types of organic growth strategies will do a few important things for your business: keep you focused, grow your revenue, and most importantly, help you serve your beloved clients in the most powerful ways possible:

Hiring someone to manage your social media
Creating affiliates to talk about your brand.
Hiring someone to answer your emails
Copying and pasting responses that you frequently use

Ultimately, growing your business needs to have a few different parts-organic growth plans should be the center hub of how you’re growing your business, but don’t let misconceptions keep you from embracing the GROWTH part of organic growth.

What do you think? Did you have misconceptions about how to grow your business organically? Comment below and share