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Get Your Business To Where You Want It

Written by: Howard Litwak

Article Overview: As a small business owner, you need to understand where your business is heading and why and how your efforts are important. Here is some thinking which will force you to take a fresh, hard look at your business. Then you will be in a better position to get your business to where you want it.

Get Your Business To Where You Want It



As a small business owner, you need to understand where your business is heading and why and how your efforts are important.

Does the following sound familiar?

You opened and have been running your own business. You've worked hard on making the business profitable. From your humble beginnings, you are where you are today with your business. Success! Or not...If you could find a way not to sleep, you would be working twenty four hours a day. This is the trap of the present for the small business owner. Are you in this trap?

You've heard catch phrases like "working in the business and not on the business" and "confusing activity with productivity." Can you relate to either of these? They will both lead to your growth curve flattening out or even going down. They can also lead to adverse effects in other areas of your life like mentally, physically, socially, or in your family.

If this is you, don't worry. It's with realization that we can start to make changes. You may just need to take a hard, fresh look at your business.

Take some time and answer the following questions. NOTE: Don't just take your surface answers. Really think and dig deep into the answers if you want a foundation for positive change.

What are you doing?

Why are you doing it?

What's not working?

What are your biggest concerns?

Once you have a handle on these answers, you have something to continue to build on. Let's move from analysis of the past and present to the future.

What are you trying to create?

It is here that you can make a dramatic impact on your business. Decide on four to six things that you want to create for your business. Alan Kay said "The best way to predict your future is to create it." Some areas for creation could be cash flow, marketing, people development, product quality, or employee retention. You decide based on where you want to take your business.

Here is the next critical step. Focus on these things! If you spent even a few hours every week on accomplishing what you want in these areas, would you get there quicker? Of course you would! When you are focused, you'll get better results.

Turn what you want to create into S.M.A.R.T. goals. When you have goals, you are more focused. Measuring your goals against the S.M.A.R.T. criteria (specific, measurable, achievable, realistically high, time bound) will dramatically increase your ability to achieve what you want.

Action and focus. Sometimes the answers are right in front of us and we don't see them. Now, no more reading. Get busy creating your roadmap for success and get your business to where you want it.

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Article Tags: small business owner
Referred by: http://www.processspecialist.com/



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