How to Engineer Business Growth, More Wealth, and Better Health

As an engineer, I believe there are concrete processes that can be followed to grow in every aspect of your life. This can be anything from your business to your personal financial goals to your own fitness and health.

The key is to figure out what those systems are and then implement them in a way that fits your life. Everything that works for someone else may not work for you, but there are plenty of keys that you can learn from.

The goal of this article is to provide a framework that will help you grow and succeed at anything that you want in your life.

So, What Exactly is Growth?

We talk about growth a good amount here on Growth Launcher, but what is it really?

Growth is defined as the process of increasing in size, value, or importance.

When applied to business, it is growing your number of customers and increasing revenue and profit. In your personal life, growth is reflected in less debt, increased net worth, and better health.

If we are not growing, we are either staying stagnant or shrinking. Neither one of those sound too appealing when we think about different aspects of our life.

Having your bank account stay the same year over year should not be your goal. Losing significant fitness, mobility, and health as you age doesn’t sound too attractive, either.

Engineering a Solution to Growth

I come from an engineering background with a master’s in biomedical engineering. I only mention that to explain some of my mindset to coming up with a repeatable process for growth in anything.

Engineers tend to be creative problem solvers that also are able to think logically to design and implement systems. Those same skills can be used to improve anything that you want.

For example, let’s say you own a small local business that has seen a drop off in sales recently. By using the process we are about to outline, you’ll be able to identify the problem causing the drop off and implement a fix.

While you do this, you’ll be using some basic engineering principles to think critically and cut through all the extra B.S. around you.

This process will help you get actual results to take your business to the next level, improve your health, or create financial freedom.

Ready to get started? Let’s jump into the specific steps of the process.

Identify the Overall Problem or Goal

The first step of the process is to determine WHAT you would like to grow or improve. This is the big-picture issue that you want to focus on or the goal you want to achieve.

In this step, start by identifying an overall goal that you would like to focus on. This can be something a little more open-ended and probably isn’t defined very well.

An example of an overall goal could be “to increase the profit of my business”.

Pretty generic but a good starting point. It describes what you’re feeling deep in your gut, which is my company isn’t making enough money.

Action Item: Think about what you want to achieve over the next few months to a year. Write it down in a place that you can see it daily.

Create SMART Goals

Next, we are going to take that overall goal and turn it into a SMART goal.

SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-Based. By using these parameters, we’ll be able to create a more concrete goal.

Specific	A specific goal means that it is focused on something that is tangible and real. There should be a specific outcome from achieving the goal so that it is not too vague or confusing to complete.
Measurable	A measurable goal is something that can be tracked using data and has clear definitions of success. If you can’t measure it, it will be very difficult to determine if you met your goal and how to improve.
Attainable	While your goals should be challenging to get you outside of your comfort zone, they also need to be achievable. Make sure that your goal is something that could be possible with the resources available.
Relevant	A relevant goal means that it is something that has value to you and your organization. Focus on something that will actually help your overall mission and is relevant to what you’re trying to do.
Time-Based	A time-based goal is one that has a set start and end date. By setting a due date, you’ll be better able to challenge yourself to meet the goal and measure progress at that point.

As we can see, using the SMART attributes helps to develop less-ambiguous goals that can be measured and achieved. It is also completely fine to create several SMART goals from your overall goal that each focus on a more specific aspect.

For example:

• The overall goal is “to increase the profit of my business”.
• The SMART goal is to “decrease customer churn rate by 5% over the next 6 months”.

Decreasing churn rate is a specific aspect that will lead to greater profitability. It is something that is measurable and a goal of 5% is within reach based on previous company performance. By setting a time limit of six months, it is time-constrained and sets a limit on how long you should work on it.

Action Item: Take your overall goal and break it apart using the SMART framework. Write down 2 or 3 specific goals that you would like to attack and then select your top one to focus on first.

Research & Learn New Skills (or Hire the Right People)

Now that you have your SMART goal you want to focus on, your first instinct is probably to jump right in to start working on it. I applaud the enthusiasm but I encourage you to take stock of your current skills and knowledge.

Take a few minutes to truly ask yourself if you have all of the tools and knowledge needed to achieve your goal. Many times, you’ll realize that you probably do not have all the answers at the moment.

This means that it is time to do some research. Engineers know that there are new inventions, ideas, and methods constantly being produced. It only makes sense to use that knowledge in your own work.

This means jumping online and searching Google for articles, blogs, and videos related to the topic of your goal. Seek out any books and ask other professionals in the field about their thoughts.

One of the biggest tools you can have is to continue learning and expanding your knowledge.

Learn from Successful People

There is no sense in struggling when you can model your solution off other people who already have been successful. If there is an existing solution, use that whenever possible so that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

This applies to software, tools, and techniques that have been proven to work. Instead of trying to build your own custom software as a startup business, you might determine that you can do everything using an Excel spreadsheet.

Of course, there are times when you can’t do everything yourself. If you’re running a business, take advantage of your employees collective knowledge.

If you’re looking to decrease churn rates, assign it to the people most knowledgeable in customer service and satisfaction. And, support them by providing further education and the right tools to be able to meet your goals.

Action Item: Determine which aspects of your SMART goal you need to research to be fully knowledgeable on the topic. Search for new ideas, tools, and information pertaining to your goal and save that in one place to easily reference it in the future.

Measure Everything and Use Data to Make Decisions

Engineers love data. And measuring things.

As Peter Drucker said, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”.

Measurement is essential for achieving your growth goals. It not only gives you a benchmark of where you are, but helps to make decisions along the way and tells you if you were successful.

Without data and numerical information, you’re stuck making decisions based on emotions and your gut. Sometimes you might get it right, but you’re probably choosing the wrong path more often than not.

Let’s say you are trying to lose 10 pounds in 2 months. Obviously, knowing your weight throughout those 2 months is the most important information you can have. If your weight starts to plateau after dropping a few pounds, you can start to see how to tweak your routine to get better results.

Get Creative with What You Measure

I also encourage you to seek out other, more creative ways to use data to solve your problems. In addition to your weight, you might also track the amount of sleep you get, how much water you drink daily, and your resting heart rate.

Combining all that data together with your current weight, you’ll have a much better picture of your current health. That will give you more information to help make the right decisions.

Action Item: Determine which data points are available to track throughout the time period selected for your goal. Collect your starting point data and write it down in a place that can be easily referenced and tracked over time. Hint – Excel spreadsheets are a great way to do this quickly!

Reverse Engineer the Solution

At this point, you have identified your problem, determine which specific aspect you want to focus on, have learned more about potential solutions, and have measurable data.

The next step is to implement a solution in the form of a process to get you real results. But, how do you determine what will work for you?

One way of doing this is to reverse engineer the solution from either your problem or a successful competitor.

Learn from the Competition

Let’s say you are trying to launch a blog and get your first 100 readers. To figure out how to do this, follow other bloggers and see what they did. There are plenty of articles on how to launch a blog that will give you step-by-step instructions.

Once you find a successful competitor, go through everything you can find out about them. Note how many blog posts they create a month, how many words they usually write, how many images they use, and where they share on social media.

Repeat this process with a couple other successful bloggers to see if there are trends. You’ll probably find out that longer articles perform better and the most successful bloggers post regularly with shares on all the major social media platforms.

Work Backwards to Find a Solution

The second option is to start with your end goal and work backwards to see where to start. A tool to help with this is to ask 5 How’s to get to the root cause.

To do this, ask the question how to reach your SMART goal using the smallest step to get there. Do this another 4 times to get more specific direction on where to start and how to accomplish your goal.

Let’s see how to do this in practice.

SMART Goal: Decrease customer churn rate by 5% over the next 6 months.

How #1: Improve customer satisfaction so that they are less likely to want to leave.

How #2: Address the specific pain points that cause poor customer satisfaction.

How #3: Determine the pain points that cause poor customer satisfaction.

How #4: Send out customer feedback surveys and monitor social media to see what people are complaining about.

How #5: Use a NPS survey builder and social media monitoring tools to get feedback.

At each step of the way, ask the question HOW the previous step should be accomplished. Using your knowledge, research, and data, you should then be able to find an acceptable answer.

By using this framework, you can be logical in your approach to building a process to reach your goal.

In this example, we now have a process that includes sending out NPS surveys, determining the most frequent pain points, and then fixing those issues.

Action Item: Research at least one competitor and write down everything they are doing. Products, website design, paid ads, social media accounts, blog posts, everything. Also, ask 5 How’s based on your SMART goal to determine an actionable process.

Create a System and Automate It

Now that you have a rough framework for how to reach your growth goal, you need to turn it into a repeatable system. It should be simple enough so that you (or your employees) can follow it while still getting results.

Preferably, try to automate as much as possible so that you can grow with minimal ongoing effort while getting consistent results. A repeatable process makes it easier for you and removes the human error aspect as much as possible.

Use technology to reach your goals as much as possible.

Based on your situation, you may be able to use free tools, or you may benefit from certain paid tools, as well.

“Technology” includes a wide range of tools based on what you’re trying accomplish. It can include software, SaaS apps, artificial intelligence (AI), machinery, and communication networks.

If you have the skills to develop your own tools and it doesn’t take much effort, go ahead for it. If not, you could hire a developer to build what you need.

However, I highly recommend starting with existing tools and seeing if they may work for you. For short-term, proof-of-concept solutions, you can put together a few pieces of technology that will work. As you grow and need a long-term solution, then you can build a custom solution, if necessary.

Say you are trying to get healthy and lower your blood pressure. You realize you need to track your blood pressure regularly in order to make sure it is improving.

You could either go to a local pharmacy to use their free BP machine or buy a simple one that you can use at home. The home blood pressure device has an app that tracks your readings over time and makes it easier to spot trends in the data. Clearly, that would be the best way to automate tracking your blood pressure to minimize the effort needed from you.

Action Item: Write down the step-by-step process that you will need accomplish your goal. Keep it as simple as possible and use existing technology to automate the system.

Never Stop Improving, Based on Data

Now that you have a system in place, don’t become complacent with the results. Continue to monitor the data in real time and make adjustments if you aren’t seeing an appropriate level of growth.

Without analyzing your data, you won’t know if you are actually improving and moving towards your goals. You can set interim goals along the path to your overall goal to make sure that you are still on track over time.

If you’re trying to grow your net worth and aren’t tracking your expenses closely, you’re unlikely to be very successful. Spending can easily get out of hand if you’re not paying attention because the little costs add up without you knowing.

By setting up a system to track your monthly expenses, you’ll know when you have overspent. The following month, you can then correct your behaviors to get back on track to meet your goals.

Accept Change and Pivot When Necessary

Finally, accept that change will happen over time and that there are certain situations that are out of your control. When this happens, you may need to pivot your strategy so that you can still accomplish your overall goal.

Embrace this by knowing that your first strategy may not be the best or most effective. With additional data and knowledge, you may need to change your process over time. This is completely fine on the journey to grow, so don’t get too married to one specific idea.

Action Item: Measure your results as you progress towards your goal and adjust so that you get the best results. If something is not working, pivot your strategy.

Ready to start growing your business, health, wealth, or anything else? Use this strategy to engineer success in anything you do.