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Small Business Tips: Think Your Business To Success

Guest post by: Ingrid Cliff

Article Overview: Before any action happens in the world, first there is a thought ... an idea ... a stroke of genius. This thought triggers the response into the physical world. So say for example you want to pick up your coffee cup – your brain thinks the thought and then sends electrical impulses and chemicals to your arm muscles which in turn extend and contract to pick up your cup. But your eyes first assess how far away the cup is and how potentially heavy the cup is before you lift it – otherwise you would knock it over or spill the contents. What happens in many businesses is they miss the thought stage – leaping into action before fully have completed the thought action. As a result, mistakes and errors are made which mean re-work and wasted effort.

Small Business Tips: Think Your Business To Success

Before any action happens in the world, first there is a thought ... an idea ... a stroke of genius. This thought triggers the response into the physical world. So say for example you want to pick up your coffee cup – your brain thinks the thought and then sends electrical impulses and chemicals to your arm muscles which in turn extend and contract to pick up your cup. But your eyes first assess how far away the cup is and how potentially heavy the cup is before you lift it – otherwise you would knock it over or spill the contents.

What happens in many businesses is they miss the thought stage – leaping into action before fully have completed the thought action. As a result, mistakes and errors are made which mean re-work and wasted effort.

The most effective strategy is to stop for a few hours and think about your business in depth. If you have a team you all should be part of this process and share your thinking process.
Start with you. Think about:

• What is the purpose of your business – why does it exist? The most successful businesses are ones where your business purpose and your personal purpose are directly related.

• What is important to you in life – what are your core values? Unless you know your values and what is important to you, you won’t know how to choose the right customers and suppliers for your business.

• What sort of lifestyle are you looking for? Do you want school hours or are happy to do what it takes as long as it takes?

• How big do you want to be – do you want to be a local hero or internationally renowned?

• What are you good at? What do lose track of time doing either in work or your private life?

Can you find any common threads between these things? For example – playing strategy computer games and financial planning – the common thread is planning and strategising to gain results.

Think about your customers and then write down:

• Who you want to serve as a customer (and no – everyone is not going to be a customer)

• What is their gender, age, financial status

• Where do they live

• What sort of work do they do

• How do they find you

• What sort of person are they? What sort of challenges do they face in life?

• How much do they spend on services like yours each year?

• What values do they hold?

• What is important to them in a business?

• What don’t they like about businesses like yours?

• Why do they buy from you?

Think about your staff then write down:

• If you have achieved success in your business, what are the key roles that need to be filled by team members?

• What sort of person do you employ – new graduates, mums, experienced people?

• How much do you pay them?

• What sort of relationship will you have with them?

• How will you manage them

Once you have these basics covered, imagine your ideal business day. What will you do? Where will you go? Who will you meet? How much will you earn?

Write down your ideal day in great detail. Read it through and see if you can visualise and feel your emotions of living that ideal day.

If you are having a problem with this visualisation, (and assuming you truly do want this business to succeed) it may be that your personal thoughts and attitude are carrying a block to your success. To shift the block in the fastest time you need to work on both the logic and energetic level.

To unstick at a logic level you need to find either a bigger reason or purpose for your business or you need to discover the depth of pain of remaining the same and not shifting. You need to explore your vision – filling in the small details to see if this fills in the blanks for you. You need to find the limiting personal beliefs that you are carrying about success and business.

To unstick yourself at an energy level you could explore creative thinking processes, facilitated planning sessions, space clearing or work with energy workers. All of these bypass your logic circuits and work more subtly.

For your business, unless you can see it clearly in your mind and feel it in your body – you won’t see it in reality. So, take your time and get your thoughts about your business totally clear.

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Article Tags: arm muscles, brain, business purpose, chemicals, coffee cup, common thread, common threads, core values, electrical impulses, financial planning, gain results, lifestyle, local hero, personal purpose, private life, strategy computer games, stroke of genius



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