The Power of Thinking Big, But Starting Small
Monday, March 10th, 2014
How did Google manage to come out of nowhere? And how did it grow to reach $58 billion in annual revenues in 2013 — all in under two decades?
There are many explanations for the company’s phenomenal growth. But one technique small businesses can learn from is the ability to think big, yet take small steps. Here’s how it works.
In a post from Google’s Think Insights, Google’s former Senior Vice President of Adwords and AdSense, now Senior Vice President at YouTube, Susan Wojcicki explains. The process starts with the company’s Eight Pillars of Innovation. One of those pillars, says Wojcicki, is “think big, act small.”
This means the company may have big ambitious goals. But it starts to achieve those goals by taking small steps, one at a time.
Wojcicki writes:
“No matter how ambitious the plan, you have to roll up your sleeves and start somewhere. Google Books, which has brought the content of millions of books online, was an idea that our Founder, Larry Page, had for a long time. People thought it was too crazy even to try, but he went ahead and bought a scanner and hooked it up in his office. He began scanning pages, timed how long it took with a metronome, ran the numbers and realized it would be possible to bring the world’s books online. Today, our Book Search index contains over 10 million books.”
Can you imagine a billionaire scanning book pages? It seems an unlikely picture. But, with that kind of attitude, it’s not hard to see how Google has grown so big and so fast.
Do you have big goals in your business? Do they seem unimaginably far away and hard to obtain? Well, all you need to do is start one step at a time.
Rohit Arora, CEO and Co-Founder of Biz2Credit, tells us the key to achieving any resolution is to set small goals.
Rohit explains:
“Setting a goal of 50 percent growth in a year is noble, but it can be daunting. A smarter way is to plan smaller, more manageable and less overwhelming growth rates for each month of the year. By the time next December rolls around, the overall increase for the year may indeed be closer to the target.”
Start with where you want your business to be next month. You may be surprised at the results.
Courtesy: Small Biz Trends
