In the previous post we looked at the first challenge of what type of business to start in a bad economy.  The first challenge was to determine if you have a market with some depth for your product or service. 

Challenge #2 is about how vulnerable the market, you wish to pursue, is to economic cycles.  Most products and services can and will be affected by economic cycles.  The key is how large are the fluctuations will be. 

Of course, that is hard to know.  But, I would suggest that you research some history of how your market fared during previous economic downturns.  If your product or service falls more into the category of a “want” rather than a “need” then the probability of failure is increased. 

But, that is not always the case.  Let’s look at the leisure or recreational industry.  You may say, and correctly so, that leisure or recreational activities fall in the “want” area.  Yet, people still are going to do something to enjoy themselves.  Very often they will possibly go to more movies instead of concerts because of the expense.  Or, travel may be limited to seeing things in their immediate area as opposed to a large or expensive trip.

The goal is to find a market that will still be needed during a downturn.  Basic services such as cleaning, caretaking of others and bookkeeping are examples of services that should see a reduced negative impact during a downturn.

When starting up your own business, especially in a bad economy, you will move ahead much more quickly if the down cycles are shallow.   A successful performance strategy demands this.  And, to have more consistent small business growth it is critical that you know as much as you can about your market. 

Growing small business is not just about having a great marketing plan.  It is about having a product or service that is needed or will be in demand even when economic times aren’t good.

In the previous post we looked at four challenges or questions that must be answered to starting your own business during an economic downturn. 

Today we’ll take a look at Challenge #1: 

Do you have a market for the product or service you wish to provide?

You may be saying that answering this sounds pretty simple.  In many cases it is.  One of the major considerations in starting a business should be where is your business going to come from?  To whom are you going to market your product or service?  Are they ready to receive your product or service?

Very often I have watched people who work for a larger company and develop relationships with that company’s clients.  In fact they may have had conversations with the client about going out on their own and that when they do, the client will come with them.

There are a couple of problems with this scenario.  Studies have shown that for every 10 clients that will tell you that they are going to switch that only 2 do.  Secondly, in today’s litigious world, depending on the stipulations of your employment, you may be subject to a lawsuit. 

Even if you are totally in the right, a lawsuit, because of the time and expense it requires, may very likely sink you.  I have watched companies sue former employees in an effort to kill their business by tying up a major amount of time and resources. 

A better performance strategy for success and to grow your small business is to stay away from any legal problems. 

The second point to consider in whether or not you have a market that is good for your product or service is to study the obvious.  Too often, what may appear to be obvious to you may be full of problems. 

Too often it is easy to fake yourself out by thinking that your passion and enthusiasm for a product or service will make you successful.  Passion and enthusiasm are important ingredients in the success process.  But, they are not a guaranty. 

Look beyond your passion and enthusiasm for your market and be as realistic as possible.  Be realistic as to whether or not this market is a good market.  Be objective.  Once you have determined that the market is good, then you can let your enthusiasm and passion loose to create the business and life you desire.

All of us need water to survive and to thrive.  But, the quality of the water you are drinking will determine your success or failure.  The water, in this case, is what you choose to let your mind drink in.  Are you drinking in thoughts of success?  

Years ago in Africa there was this tribe.  They were healthy and prosperous.    All their water came from a beautiful spring that supposedly had medicinal and healing properties. 

Suddenly, people started to die or get very sick for no apparent reason.  Experts were called in to determine what was causing the problem.  Here’s what they found.

The experts went back up the mountain to the origin of the spring.  It turned out that a mother pig and her piglets had drowned and were stuck in the opening where the spring came out.  The water was contaminated. 

The mother pig and her piglets were removed and the water was once again pure and the health of the people of the tribe was restored. 

The key to having the success you desire in business and personally rests on your ability to keep your water as pure as possible.  Be careful about what you let your mind drink in. We all have bad things that happen to us.  Starting your own business or running your own business is about challenges and overcoming them.

The problem is that too many business owners will hold onto the negative.  They will keep drinking in defeating thoughts.  They will remember the negative customer or they will not forgive and employee.  Over time the anger that they carry simmers.  It becomes the fertilizer in which the root of bitterness takes hold. 

There are many keys to having small business growth and to taking future steps to have your business successful.  But, to truly move forward you cannot let the root of bitterness take hold.  It may sound trite but it is true. 

First, forgive yourself.  Stop using the past as a weapon on yourself.  The past is past.  There isn’t anything you can do about it.  Secondly, you must forgive others.  Without forgiveness you set up an invisible wall that may protect your anger but at the same time it will keep opportunity from coming in. 

Develop a successful performance strategy.  Get clear of your past and uproot any bitterness you may have.  Focus on keeping your mind as free as possible of the negative.  When you do, you are more likely to attract the success you desire.

Inflexibility is one of the deadly mistakes that can prevent small business growth or to cause a small business to fail.  A successful performance strategy for growing small business must include flexibility.  After all, if you don’t embrace change you will be run over by it. 

I came across this solution for dealing with inflexibility.  It comes from one of my favorite authors, John Maxwell.  Go to www.JohnMaxwell.com and find a book of his to read.  It will be well worth your time.  The following shows the humorous, and often truthful responses, that come when people are inflexible. 

Inflexibility is the enemy of personal growth, success and achievement. 

The Top Ten Strategies For Dealing With A Dead Horse

1.  Buy a stronger whip.

2.  Change riders

3.  Appoint a committee to study the horse.

4.  Appoint a team to revive the horse.

5.  Send out a memo declaring the horse isn’t really dead.

6.  Hire an expensive consultant to find “the real problem.”

7.  Harness several dead horses together for increased speed and efficiency.

8.  Rewrite the standard definition of a live horse.

9.  Declare the horse to be better, faster, and cheaper when dead.

10.  Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.

Most of you have probably seen these solutions enacted at some point in your business career or life. 

So, how do you deal with the challenge of inflexibility.  When your horse is dead and your inflexibility is causing you to hold onto something that isn’t working, dismount. 

Small business coaching is about helping people to learn how to dismount, let go of thoughts and processes that aren’t working and to bury them.  Only once the things that don’t work are buried or put in a safe place, may you move forward. 

And, the way to move forward is to come up with a new performance strategy. Embrace change.  Embrace flexibility.  When you do, you will be able to mount a live horse and gallop forward to the success you desire.

Growing your small business requires many things including how to cope with overwhelm.  When you are starting up your own business or running your own business you are very likely at times to feel overwhelm.

This is normal.  Somehow the orderly small business growth you dreamed of is just that, a dream.  It is easy to have too many things coming at you at one time.  When you do, that is when overwhelm can set in. 

Why is overwhelm dangerous?  Because it can cause you to lose your focus, enthusiasm and desire for productivity.  None of these ingredients are in the recipe for small business success. 

Most importantly, overwhelm can cause you to lose your energy and your edge leading to a meltdown.  What do you do to combat overwhelm?

1.  Have a plan for each day

2.  Identify what is important

3.  Prioritize your day to do what is important

The more you identify what is important and do it, the less things that you will have that will become critical.  When you have too many critical things and your day is taken up with them it drains you psychologically and emotionally. 

Being drained psychologically and emotionally is what leads to a feeling of overwhelm.  Know your steps to business success.  Your daily performance strategy should be about your priorities.

Know your priorities and take care of them.  When you do you are more likely to avoid overwhelm.

For most of us who are self-employed one of the most crucial measuring sticks for success is sales.  A good marketing business plan is a must to support consistent sales and small business growth. 

And, if you don’t address some of the other topics in the previous posts then you are more likely to have a more difficult time with sales.  A successful performance strategy in marketing is about finding prospects who are interested and keeping the pipeline full. 

In sales you must have a sound conversion strategy.  Obviously, when there are no conversions there are no sales. 

Successful sales and marketing is built first and foremost around identifying a pain or need of your market. 

After you have identified the pain or need then you want to show your market how you can be the solution.

Next, you want to show them the benefit of you as the solution. 

Then you want to add features. 

Let’s say, for example, that you are selling a particular type of car.  Benefits to this car may be safety, good acceleration and good gas mileage.  Features may be reinforced steel frame, a responsive engine type and low body weight to increase gas mileage. 

I think you get the picture.  Too often people try to sell features instead of benefits.  In the process, the customer gets disinterested.  Find out the benefits and solutions your customers want.  When you do, you will be on the way to having more sales and your small business successful.

What is marketing?  Marketing is the process that you will use to bring in prospects for your product or service.  Once you have the prospect’s attention then you can focus on sales. 

But, how do you plan to market your business to keep the pipeline full?  Before you get started in a business be sure of two things:

1. How to successfully market your business?
2. How that marketing strategy will be implemented consistently?

These two components will be part of any good marketing business plan.

Small business growth is about having a good marketing plan and executing it consistently.  Interestingly, the creation of the marketing plan is not as big a challenge as is the consistent execution. 

And, it is lack of consistent marketing that can doom a business to failure. Why does this happen?  It happens because the entrepreneur, business owner or solo professional does not have the skills to execute the marketing plan.  And, because the budget is tight they will not pay to have it executed. 

Making your own business the success you envision requires, in most instances when starting out, that you wear most, if not all the marketing hats.  It must be part of your performance strategy for success.

For example, for some businesses to be successful it may require consistent phone calling with a script from a targeted list.  If you are not good on the phone or don’t like it then it won’t happen. 

Maybe your business requires a great deal of face to face contact and networking.  If you aren’t comfortable with that then it won’t happen. 

Know what type of marketing your business needs.  Either be ready to develop the necessary skills to be successful or look for another business that caters to your strengths. 

I have observed many small businesses fail, not because the owner wasn’t a good person, but because the owner didn’t have or wouldn’t develop the marketing skills necessary to make his small business successful.

Napoleon Hill in Think And Grow Rich said, “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” Everything that we have today is because someone first had a vision in their mind.  Somebody had to visualize an airplane, the internet and many other things.

You have the power to create the future you want. Are you looking for small business growth?  Then visualize it.  Are you seeking a successful performance strategy, then visualize it.

The key to success is first visualizing what you want and then, and this is critical, believing you can have it.  Belief is the inspiration that is the fuel to make it happen.  Belief and the enthusiasm that goes with it makes things 1,000% better.

In owning your own business and being successful a large ingredient is inspiration.  Be inspired.  Stretch yourself to be all that you can be.  Remember, you have a choice.

You can choose to be more.  Or, you can choose to be less.  Why not strive to be all that you can be?  Only then will the possibilities for the goals you want to achieve start to become the reality you seek.

Have you ever spent a great deal of time learning about something, only in the end, to not apply it and have very little to show for it?  If you are truly trying to move forward in your business, then the answer will be yes.  That’s the good news!

Education for many is a solution to a problem or a challenge in growing small business.  Yet, small business growth is not so much about what you learn as it is about applying what you have learned.  And, since education takes time it is critical for you to be learning things that you are going to apply.

The bad news: If you aren’t learning things that you will apply, then you are actually hurting yourself.

Why?  Since education takes time, and time is finite, education that is not on purpose causes you to procrastinate and keeps you from doing things that would benefit your business.

Educated procrastination is not a successful performance strategy.  It eats up time and can lead to failure.  Growing small business is about having education that is on purpose.  If your education is not on purpose you will end up with “too much of nothing.”

That’s right!  To be successful in growing your small business you must know that when everything else fails all you need to do is go back and read the directions.

You may be asking yourself, what does he mean?

Growing small business and small business growth don’t come with directions.

You are right in one sense.  Yes, you can read a small business ebook or books about small business success. Or you can have consultants, advisors or coaches to help you along.

But, without a clear set of directions you are 60% more likely to fail.  What are directions?  Directions are the goals you set.  Goals are not just for a week or a month.

Goals must also be long term.  They must give direction for the next year, five years out and ten years and beyond.

To have the success you desire you must have goals.  Your goals are the directions you will go back to read.  They will keep you on course.  They will help keep the vision of success alive.

Yet, without goals you will have a tendency to waste a lot of energy wandering and bumping into things.  This takes time, energy and causes pain.  It happens because you have no set of directions.

• Create your own set of directions.
• Create your own performance strategy for success.
• Write down your goals.

When you do these things you increase the odds of your success by 60%.  Those are the directions for small business growth and success.