Do you get tired of reading another ad or enticing offer telling you that you are a couple of mouse clicks away from making a fortune?  Personally, I find it very frustrating.  I have had numerous clients who have invested their time, which can’t be replaced, and their money, which most cases can be replaced, getting caught in the maze of finding the right business for them. 

Small business growth and success are about one thing:  Honoring Who You Are.  Let’s say that you are in a business that demands that you show up at a particular place every day.  It could be a retail business.  Yet, you thrive in an environment where you can get out and visit people.   The odds of being successful in that business are low. 

Why?  You are going to be unhappy.  You may earn good money for a while and enjoy it.  But, ultimately not doing something you truly enjoy will drain you and your relationships.  And, when you crash, in most cases so will the business. 

The business mortality rate is the same as it was 20 years ago.  If you want your small business successful, if you want more small business growth there is more education available than ever before.  Education from books is not the problem. 

I have observed that education about yourself is the challenge.  To often people pick a business where they are the round peg and they are trying to fit it into a square hole.  My wish for you is to increase the odds of your success.  Discover “who” you are.  Don’t jump into the maze that is the next golden opportunity. 

Once you really understand who you are and how to honor it in business then you are much more likely to recognize the businesses that will be a better fit and at which you are more likely to succeed.  I have two products that will help you in that process. 

I have developed these after 30 years of working with business owners and solo professionals and starting, owning and running several successful small businesses.

The first is my Progress Set Free E-Book, 

The Lost Keys To Small Business Success:

For Starting Your Own Business

Running Your Own Business

  .  The second is the Progress Set Free Home Study Course. 

The Keys And Steps To Small Business Success:  A Definitive Guide To A Better Business And A Better You

This is for those of you who are committed to knowing who you are in order to become more and have more. 

Regardless which one you choose, the key to success is to get started in making more and better choices when it comes to you and your business. 

Get to know yourself and get out of the maze of trying to find the business that is right for you.   You must get to know yourself.  InterestAfter all, is it going to make any more sense tomorrow than it does today to take the steps to having the business and life you desire?

With the numerous businesses and business owners I have worked with over the years there is one thing all of the successful ones have done.  They have embraced change.  To have your small business successful, you must embrace change or you will be run over by it. 

If you are serious about yourself and the success of your small business then you must be an active participant in change.  Look at the businesses that once were thriving but are no longer around.  With this in mind, I have put together several products that are designed to support you in creating your own successful performance strategy.

A good marketing business plan that recognizes change and embraces it can make an entrepreneur successful.  Do you want to be that entrepreneur?  Are you willing to learn the steps to success? 

All progress starts with those 5 inches between your ears.  What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.  How are you feeding your mind?

If you change your thinking you will change your habits.  Change your habits and you will change your activity.  Change your activity and you will change your results.  Change your results and you will change your life. 

If you are COMMITTED to change and taking yourself and your business forward, take a look at the following:

1.  Progress Set Free E-Book–The Lost Keys To Small Business Success–This will get you started on the process of change. 

2.  Progress Set Free Home Study Course–The Keys And Steps To Small Business Success:  A    Definitive Guide To A Better Business And A Better You.  This course goes in depth and is for those who are truly serious about their success.  This course can help you create pathways to upgrade your business and your life.

3.  Progress Set Free–Free Audio Mini Course–Imprisoned By Progress and The Treadmill Philosophy–The 10 Deadly Mistakes Entrepreneurs and Solo Professionals Make And How To Avoid Them.  This audio series provides short audio clips with stories that discuss common challenges the business owner faces in starting up a small business or running a small business.

Whether you are running your business in a bad economy or a good one, change is the key to success.  Make a number of small changes and it will lead to the bigger changes you desire.

How often have you gone to a funeral and you hear people say that this is a celebration of a person’s life?  If you are like me, I have heard that quite often.  And, there was a part of me that was always confused.  I have lost someone I cared about and therefore it is hard for me to celebrate. 

My mother, who I was close to, died last week.  Her funeral service was yesterday in Pennsylvania and I was in charge of conducting it.  At times I felt overwhelmed with emotion and a sense of loss.  It was a challenge. 

Afterwards many of the people came up to me and told me how much they enjoyed the service.  They used terms such as “feeling a sense of closure” and “freedom to express gratitude”.  Everyone got to talk about my Mother and what she had meant to them.  It was a remarkable experience that I will never forget. 

But, what the funeral service was truly about was embracing change.  It was about celebrating the past and moving into a future without my Mother, who had been a great, positive influence on me and many people’s lives. 

To have a successful small business you must embrace change.  Too often, when we think about change we procrastinate because we focus on all the difficulties in making it instead of the benefits that will come from making it. 

There are some businesses I have worked with over the years that have a “celebration” when a change in completed.  In one instance, the new accounting system got installed and they had a party.  They celebrated the death of the old system and bringing something new and better into replace it.

To have your small business successful it is good to have funeral’s for those things that should be dead and gone.  Those are the things that hold back a business.  We should celebrate change and focus on the positive that is going to be open to us as a result. 

A successful performance strategy for embracing change is to practice the art of detachment.  You must learn how to detach and do it regularly.  It’s hard to move forward at the pace you like when you are holding onto something from the past.  That past can become like an anchor.  Every time you celebrate the past you are pulling up your anchor and you are moving forward.  You are detaching from your current mooring which allows you to sail in a new or better direction.

When you dwell on the past you are anchored in it and stuck.  In running your own business you must take a look at what needs to die.  When you do you will be embracing change and moving forward because you will be bringing death to what is holding you back. 

Now there’s something to celebrate!

Have you ever heard someone say, “I’m practical.”  Or, they say, “I’m pragmatic.”  They both sound good.  A practical person does sensible things within a set of moral values.  A pragmatic person does whatever makes sense at the time.  

In today’s world the line gets blurred between the two.  For this post I am going to put them together although there are differences. 

Be very careful when you hear someone say they are pragmatic or practical.  What they may be saying is that they will do whatever they think is right.  And what they think is right can change from one day to the next. 

To have successful small business growth you must have a strong moral philosophy.  You must know what is right and what is wrong.   Pragmatism and practicality, more often than not, are about a “me first” philosophy. 

For example, a business owner takes steps to make his business successful and then changes his mind.  When asked about changing his mind he may say, ” I was just being practical.”  Or, he could say he was being pragmatic.  Of course his change of mind disrupted the lives of people.  But hey, he was just being practical or pragmatic.  In his mind, what’s the big deal?

Here’s the big deal.  People are counting on him keeping his word.  Yet, what he promises doesn’t happen.  The reason for not doing what he said he was going to do may be, “I changed my mind.”  If this happens regularly this is a problem. 

“Changing one’s mind” regularly is not good.  Very often you will hear along with “changing my mind” that “I was just being practical”, or “I am being pragmatic.”  And you are supposed to accept that as a legitimate excuse.

If you hear these phrases too often from people it is a warning sign.  It is a warning sign that they have no coherent philosophy to guide them.  Their philosophy and how they are going to act is, more often than not, subject to change.  Changing philosophy is not a foundation when building the steps to business success.

The pragmatist or practical person is always changing their philosophy because they are more concerned about what is right for them at the moment than adhering to any principles.  The only principle they adhere to is what is in their best interests.  Self-centeredness, more often than not, is their philosophy. 

Here’s what’s dangerous.  They cannot be trusted.  Business success and life is all about them.  One day you may feel close to them.  And, the next day you may feel as if they deserted you. 

You will find that most successful people make their decisions very quickly and change them very slowly.  They have a philosophy of right, wrong and good human relations that is bigger than them.

One of the biggest obstacles to growing your small business is motivation.  How do you harness it to work for you?  How do you channel it to have a successful small business? It may sound like an easy question with an easy answer. 

Think about it.  If you knew how to harness or channel your motivations then you would currently have the business and life you want.  In some earlier posts I have brought up a couple of important points about motivation. 

1.  Motivation alone is not enough to insure your success

2.  You must be very clear on what you are motivated to do and not motivated to do. And, you must make sure that what you are not motivated to do gets covered to insure the success and growth of your small business. 

When your motivation is taking you down the wrong path and you are hurtling toward crossing the wrong finish line you don’t need more motivation to turn you around. 

You need more education.  You must take time out to reflect and evaluate you and your business.   And, when you do you must get clear or educate yourself about you and your business and ultimately what you are going to do about it. 

No one likes crossing the wrong finish line.  Crossing the wrong finish line is not about small business growth.  It is about small business failure. 

Take your motivation and combine it with education to turn yourself around and take you and your business to greater growth and success.

Over the years in working with business owners and entrepreneurs I have found one of the biggest obstacles to small business growth and having a successful small business is being absolutely clear about two things. 

1.  You must understand and know what you are motivated to do.

2.  You must understand and know what you are motivated not to do.

You may say, this seems pretty obvious.  If you are struggling in your business, either with cash flow, personnel, the job you have created for yourself or one of many other areas then I can assure you that it will be worth your time to understand the two points listed above. 

Take a sheet of paper.  Draw a line down the middle.  On the left side list all the things you are motivated to do.  These are the things where you naturally go and welcome doing them.  Don’t spend a great deal of time in thought.  Just let it flow. 

Now, on the right side of the paper list all the things you are motivated not to do.  On this side you will list the things that you do but really don’t enjoy doing as well as things that need to be investigated or done but haven’t. 

Armed with this information you can now start building your business and life from what I call an “honest foundation”.  In particular address the things you are not motivated to do.  To have small business growth and your small business successful these must be addressed. 

In addressing them come up with systems that either minimize your involvement or allow you to delegate.  When you take care of the things that you are not motivated to do it clears up more space for you to do the things you like to do. 

It gives you more time to spend on your strengths.  Spending more time on your strengths while having your weaknesses covered, gives you the time to have small business growth that is designed around you and your vision of what you want your business and life to look like.

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.

Very often I hear this question.  How can I have success or bring more success into my business and life? 

There are literally an infinite number of paths one can take to achieve the success they want personally and in growing small business. 

But there is one step to having a successful small business that you must take.

You must come to the edge and…….

What do you think is next?  What do you have to do when you come to the edge?

To grow a small business you must know the next step.  When you do, you can choose the pathway to the success you desire. 

It is a step you can take yourself.  But, more often than not, it is taken with the help of others.  It could be an associate, friend, small business coach or business advisor. 

To have a successful business you must come to the edge and…..

When most people come to the edge they pull back and say, “I can’t get much closer or I will fall.”

Fear sets in.  As a result things stay the same.  The success and freedom they desire eludes them.  Their frustration mounts. 

The answer to be successful is to find the right person to be with you when you come to the edge.  The right person will be there to push you over the edge. 

And at the very moment they push you off the edge you will become more and strive for the success you desire because you will have to learn how to fly.

Learn how to fly and you will be successful.

Are You Frustrated by a lack of success?  Do you feel stuck or overwhelmed. 

A common obstacle to success is to cut corners.

Don’t cut corners.  Reading one chapter in a book on a topic won’t give you the education to move ahead. 

Most people will underestimate the time it takes to achieve something of value.

Think about this.

1.  Cutting corners is a sign of impatience and poor self-discipline.

2.  But if you are willing to follow through you can achieve a breakthrough.

3.  The best way to set standards for yourself to succeed is to require accountability.

And here is the KEY.

Accountability must come from the outside.  It can be a small business coach, business advisor or a good associate. 

Accountability from the inside is like do it yourself heart surgery. It is not successful.  Even worse, very often it is fatal.

With outside accountability you will head in the right direction.   Successful small business has outside accountability.

And you have outside accountability you will develop the winning self-discipline to have small business growth and the success you desire now and in the future.