As children, we jump into new experiences with both feet and with not much thought about what’s going to happen — will the roller coaster be too frightening, the swimming pool too deep, etc. As adults and business owners we know that it’s best to have a bit of caution before we go plowing blithely forward.
As a business owner you will be planning for strategic growth and it is a plan that needs to occur at the right time and for the right reasons. If you don’t implement steps for methodical business growth you could expand too quickly or you could expand your business offerings too rapidly and not have the support staff or the resources to fully carry them to fruition.
Here are some decisions you need to make if your company is teetering on the edge of business growth:
Why is now the time for growth?
How much should we, can we, grow?
How will we grow? Online? Physical storefront?
Can we afford to grow?
Do we have the right people in the right places to support our projected growth?
Ask yourself these questions, talk them over with your team, then jump into business growth with both feet!
Are you perfect? Do you strive to be perfect? Do you find it exhausting? While you don’t want to put forth shoddy goods or services, you do need to let go of perfection if you’re looking for happiness and satisfaction in both your business and your life.
What can you do to be less perfectly toxic? Here are three habits and behaviors I encourage you to let go of:
Being competent and experienced is more crucial to success than is being perfect. If you’re a business owner you can drive your team away if you are constantly trying to be perfect rather than competent. While competency may not be the key to all your successes, perfection can certainly hold you back. To be effective as a leader, you will want to instill confidence in your team and you do that through the experience you bring to the table.
Does not having all the answers mean you are a failure in business? It doesn’t. It means you are able to admit that you don’t know everything and that you will look for the answers. No one expects you — even as the business owner — to know everything. They do, however, expect you to be able to find the answers to the questions asked.
If you’re perfect do you think you will be more successful? Chances are, you won’t because you will be in such heavy pursuit of perfection that your goals will fall by the wayside. Failures in business should be counted as learning and growth experiences — if you don’t fail that means you haven’t stretched yourself or tried anything new. Striving for success means you may stumble along the way and that’s all right!
Do you have any limiting beliefs that are holding you back from success?
If you don’t know where you’re going any road will get you there. I’ll bet you’ve heard that saying before. It may sound cliche, but in business it’s true. If you don’t set goals how will you know if you’re meeting them? How will you know when you’ve achieved success if you don’t know what “success” looks like to you?
Here are my top five tips for setting achievable goals for your business, keep in mind though that there is no one size fits all for goal setting:
What is your business’s purpose? Knowing this will help you set goals to achieve its overall purpose aka mission and vision.
Will your goal help you to grow as a person? Setting goals that keep you well within your comfort zone don’t allow you to grow or change as a person. Gaining knowledge and being a lifelong learner keeps you fresh and your skills current. Don’t let lack of current skills mean the competition is taking away your client base.
Will achieving the goals you’ve set help you with your personal satisfaction? At the end of the day, if you don’t love what you’re doing and if you don’t feel you’re making a difference, you will be working for an empty goal. Set goals that not only enhance your business but your self of self worth.
Will your goal change the world? I don’t necessarily mean the entire world, but your portion of it. Does the goal you set and the business service you provide enhance or enrich the lives of those with whom you interact? What can you do to change your corner of the world?
Is your goal tied to monetary levels of success? If so, what are they? Are you meeting them? Are you exceeding them? Are the goals you set pushing you out of your comfort zone? Do you want to go from making five figures this year to six or seven figures? What can you do today to make it happen?
How often do you set goals and how often do you check back in on them to make sure you’re on track?
I know, “exponentialism” is not a word, but maybe it should be.
We have entered a time in history that will be looked back upon as a great time of upheaval and transformation. It is a time of exponential growth in technology that is making obsolete entire industries at a pace that is mind-boggling.
But for every displaced industry, and every lost job, there are new opportunities as well. Not just a few, but many more than ever before. The challenge before us is just to see them.
You see, our minds are programmed to think in an incremental, progressive, and linear fashion, and the world no longer works that way. For some the angst of being left behind causes enormous stress, fear, and frustration, while for others these same conditions create new excitement. The difference between the two is the ability to open the mind and embrace a totally new paradigm.
You see, we want to “append” our existing paradigm and have that as a sufficient goal. But that can no longer work. We have reached the point — in fact passed i — where a complete paradigm shift is in order to make sense of the world as it now is. Our old thinking is broken, ineffective, and possibly even dangerous.
Many of the world’s challenges that our “old paradigm” embraces, will be solved completely by those who have made the “shift.”
The “shift” we now face is no longer how to get from one perspective to the next, but is now to embrace a perspective of ever increasing and accelerating change. A combination of infinite possibility combined with an assured accelerated obsolescence.The attempt to “hold on” to the past is painful, frustrating, and futile. The past is gone. Those who cling to the past, sadly will be left behind, and will echo mantras of the “way it used to be.” But we are not going back. In fact, it is impossible now to return as the old thinking will only increase pain, poverty, and violence.
But this is not a message of dispair, but a message of hope. The “shift” begins with a change of mind and that takes but a moment of time. Yes, new skills will be required and you may say, “it’s too late for me,” but we have all heard stories of men and women of advanced age, returning to college, or revitalizing their lives to create a personal renaissance, and enter a refreshed era of growth and excitement. That is what is needed now.
The difference is, before it was an option for those who wanted to renew life, vitality, and relevance. But not it is a necessity for survival itself. In fact, most people under the age of 65 to 70, living on this planet, have to ability and benefit to make the commitment to to embrace this change.
Change can be hard, but it does not have to be. You see what makes it hard is the attachment to, and nostalgic love of our past. The fact is, as great as it may have been, there are greater things ahead.
Long ago I embraced a life of youthful thinking and constant change. I have lived in an “unsettled” fashion to prevent attachments to points in time that are becoming irrelevant at an increasingly rapid pace. It is a great way to live. And until a future period of balance and stabilization arises, it may be the path to survival.
The solutions to tomorrow’s problems will not be solved by the same thinking that created them. It will be fresh minds and new ideas.
We are creatures of amazing resourcefulness, and creatures of survival. Fresh minds will build solutions even as many stand by and proclaim doom.
There will always be opposition, negativity, and stagnant thinking, but the future will not be built upon these. It will be built upon creativity, ingenuity, resourcefulness, advancing technology, and open minds that embrace accelerating and continual change as normal.
I am excited about tomorrow. I hope you are too and will join me in building it.
I’ve been doing quite a bit of public speaking lately — in addition to attending many networking events and seminars. I find that some of the individuals are fantastic speakers while others are clearly nervous. What is the differentiator? I believe it’s in the preparation for the speaking gig.
Here are somethings I’ve discovered that help make me, and could help make you, a better, more poised public speaker:
Know the audience. While you won’t individually know who the audience members are, ask the organizers to let you know what the attendees are interested in. What are their fields of expertise. Once you know this nugget of information you can make sure your speech will have talking points that will speak to them.
Engage the audience. Ask questions. Make eye contact. Walk around the stage rather than stand behind a podium. Make sure you tell a story to help the audience know who you are, what you do and more importantly why you do it.
Make sure your slides or other visuals do not give all of the information you’re speaking about. You don’t want the audience spending their time taking notes rather than listening to you. Use your slides as talking points and build from the bullet point that you share with the audience.
Once the speech is over, take time to answer questions or expand upon something you’ve said that may have struck a chord with the audience. Take time to stop and shake some hands and “get to know” some of the people who have attended.
Don’t forget to thank the organizers that invited you to speak and follow up with them after the event to see how well received your information was and if they want to invite you back!
Do you have speaking as part of the services you offer? Do you feel confident as a speaker? If not, give me a call!
In an ideal world your clients would provide word of mouth referrals to their friends or business associates and your phone would ring non-stop and you’d be set for all of the business you can handle. In the real world though there are times when your phone just doesn’t ring and clients aren’t calling you back. Why is that? There are many reasons but it could be that you need to put in place a better system of following up and continually marketing your business.
Here are my steps to connecting with prospective clients and to having my phone ring:
Schedule time for follow ups. If you meet someone at a networking event, set a time right then and there to follow up with him. Make sure you keep that appointment. Also, make time in your weekly calendar for your follow up calls and contacts. If you don’t schedule it, it won’t happen.
Send a thank you note. I realize that “everything is on the internet” and that is part of the reason a follow up thank you note is powerful. When is the last time you received a piece of physical mail that thanked you for something? Probably not very recently. Send a post card with your business name or logo on it and viola you’ve not only thanked the customer, you’ve had your name “out there” with the delivery people.
Make sure your follow up goals are realistic. Can you honestly follow up with two dozen people in a day? Not likely unless you’re willing to sacrifice an entire day of running your business to do it. Aim for a half a dozen or set aside two hours a day to make follow up calls and do as many in that time as you can. Don’t make the task insurmountable.
What are your follow up methods? Do they get your phone ringing?
