Growing small business and having your small business running successfully have many components.  Yet, without an underlying vision to guide you to creating the freedom and abundance you desire, you may consume more time and energy than you should. 

After all, would you rather reach your goals and your vision of the future sooner or later?  The choice is yours.  Small business growth is a choice. The little secret of owning your own business is that the very thing we created to give us greater freedom and abundance has put us into bondage.  We have given very real meaning to the phrase, “life is a do it to yourself proposition.“ 

And, if we don’t change we will reach our goals and vision later rather than sooner.  Why is this important?  We can always spend more money.  But we can’t spend more time. 

Yes, time management work is important but think about this.  We create something that is our identity and yet we are unhappy.   In fact, I work with successful business owners who hate their jobs.  Sounds weird but it is true. 

How do we get on the right track to freedom and abundance?  The key is to start focusing on the present and the future.  Use the past as a school to learn from.  Otherwise, put the past in the trunk.  After all, we can’t change the past. 

To get started on the road to success you desire you must incorporate the following:

1.  Change your thinking

2.  This will change your habits

3.  In turn this will change your activity

4.  Changing your activity will change your results

5.  And changing your results will change your life.

 Start with a small changes in your thinking and be committed to them.  Incorporate them today.  Then do some more.  You can build confidence with the small ones and when you do it will allow you to take on the bigger ones and move to the business and life you desire.  This is your performance strategy the small business growth and the personal growth you desire.

You now have your vision.  You are clear as to what you must do.  Yet, do you have commitment?  Most people will state that they do.  Yet, the truth is most don’t.  At the sign of the first difficulty or set back they will quit. 

Successful small business is about commitment.  It is about commitment to the actions that will help you achieve your vision of the successful business and life.  Here’s the tricky part.  Very often we confuse commitment with involvement.  How many times do we hear someone talk about change yet see nothing happen.  That’s involvement.  It doesn’t work. 

COMMITMENT IS THE KEY!

To grow small business and to have your small business successful you must have commitment.  Very often a small business coaching or business life coaching can add emphasis to your commitment and ultimately increase your odds of success. 

Here’s where small business coaching can help.   Logically, your vision and plan makes sense.  Logic is half the solution.  The second half of the solution, and more often than not the most difficult, is the emotional component. 

Coaching success is about taking that 18 inch highway from the head to the heart and keeping it as clear as possible.  For without clarity, you can’t be committed. 

To Increase Your Opportunity To Be In The Winner’s Circle:

1.  Be clear. 

2.  Be committed. 

3.  Get someone to help you with the clarity and to hold you accountable for the commitment. 

Self-accountability usually doesn’t work.  When you hold yourself accountable to others, whether it be a small business coach, employees or someone else,  you have taken on a performance strategy that can create a successful small business.

When you are the lead dog in your business and life you are more often than not living by design.  How do you become the lead dog in your business and life? 

Step 1–You must take action.  Sounds simple yet we can come up with all the excuses in the world to not take action. 

Step 2–And, the only way to take new action to have your small business successful is to become committed to a new vision of your future. 

Without a clear vision of the future you want, you will be a wandering generality.  You may bump into success and happiness temporarily only to have them disappear a short time later. 

Think about this.  Once the future is finished in your mind, then the present becomes absolutely clear.  You know exactly what you need to do.  Therefore, the first step is to get a clear picture of what you want your small business and life to look like. 

See your small business successful.  Envision what your small business running successfully will look like.  Another good step would be to commit it to paper.  Regardless, to be the entrepreneur successful in business and life you must change your thinking. 

And, as long as you learn the discipline of changing your thinking you will be the lead dog and you will have a small business successful for you, your customers and your life.

Owning your own business is a challenge.  And one of the greatest challenges is to have a marketing and sales performance strategy.  The biggest challenge once you have decided on what you are going to do is to execute it faithfully.

Successful small business is about executing the fundamentals.  Remember, most small businesses fail not from lack of ideas but from lack of discipline.  Lack of discipline creates a lack of action. 

Small business coaching, small business courses or small business books and small business ebooks can help create structure and accountability to take the action for success.  Or there are audio courses that can help

Not only does action cure fear.  It will bring success.  You must act on your plan.  In putting together a plan there are a couple of steps that can help you.

1.  Have a database of your existing customers and/or create one of the ones you want to have.

2.  Identify target markets within your existing customers or within the customer base you want to have.

3.  Identify their wants and needs.

4.  Identify how you are going to solve their wants and needs.

This will get you started on a successful performance strategy for marketing and sales.  In the next post we will get into the key to a successful marketing and sales performance strategy.  Start creating and working on the four areas listed and you will be on your way to having a small business running successfully.

If you are wondering where your next sale, job or client is coming from that is not a good feeling.  If it is continual it is even worse.   Owning your own business can have many challenges including the fear of not knowing or having a grasp on our sales and how to get sales.  These are a few of the things that can keep us up at nights and put our stomachs in knots.  

How do you move beyond this stage?  You must have a marketing performance strategy.  Quite simply you must have a plan for action.  Then you must execute the plan.  And, here’s the key.  You must execute it consistently.  This is where most people fall short.  They don’t execute the plan.  

1.  The first step to successful small business is having a performance strategy for  marketing.

2.  The second step to business success is then executing it.  

There is nothing fancy here.  To get off this treadmill of uncertainty you must take action.  Action cures fear.     

Put together an action plan for marketing your business.  Go out and start performing it every day. 

Start with some small things to build your confidence.  When you do you can work up to the bigger ones.  Then you will have your small business running with a plan and in turn you will have greater confidence and peace of mind.

When owning your own business one focus is more small business growth. In an earlier post I talked about the first rule of exceptional customer service, which is to have a good attitude.  A good attitude means having your customer service set up to provide for the needs of your customers, not your needs.  For many that would seem to be obvious.

Rule #2 has to do with your employees or independent contractors if they are to be involved in customer service.  One of the biggest mistakes I see in small business coaching is not giving the very people who can help you with the process of providing exceptional customer service, ownership of how to provide good customer service.

As a result, the customer service department or area bumps along and becomes your negative marketing department. Of course this doesn’t help any one’s attitude or morale.  To get others and you, the small busines owner,  truly involved in providing exceptional customer service you can start practicing with your employees or contractors.

When you do you will have a small business running well and a successful small business for you, your employees and your customers.  And, the satisfaction you will feel from a growing small business will be great.

Instruct them that when they bring you a problem that you also want them to bring three solutions.  If they have two or one, that is okay.  But, ask for three.  Listen to these solutions.  And, more importantly, look for ways to incorporate anything good you hear into the customer service process.  Not only do you start building a sense of ownership but also a sense of team.  Your employees know and feel that we are all in this together.

If you practice having them offer solutions to problems and giving them ownership in the outcome you will start building a customer service department that is on the way to being exceptional and part of your positive marketing department.  When you sow these seeds you will reap small business success and small business growth.