How to make your business take off

This is the first is a series of 12 posts on this topics that will follow in weekly sequence from this introductory post, and it also relates to last week’s post about Entrepreneurial Types

As a Business-Life Coach I believe that your business is built on you. You, personally, are its foundation, and if you want to build a great business that stands the test of time, you better make sure the foundation is as solid as you can make it. Hence, I believe that effective business coaching and development programs should focus as much on the person of the business owner, as they are on the mechanics of the business. As a Business-Life Coach, therefore I want to help you become the very strongest foundation for your business you can be.

The very strongest foundation for a great business

To become the very strongest foundation for your business, I believe you must learn to focus on 10 Priorities. They are:

1. Yourself
2. Doing Nothing
3. Having Fun
4. Saying NO
5. Guessing
6. Asking for Help
7. Managing Money
8. Managing People
9. Managing Product
10. Managing Publicity

Over the next 10 posts I’m going to explain each of the priorities in more detail. The 10 posts are quite short (about 200 to 250 words each) and practical. I hope you’ll take the simple messages of each one to heart and experiment with them in your own life as a business owner. You can do a simple search and read all of the Priority posts at once, by clicking on the category: “Ten Priorities” in the category box in the right hand column.

The life of the harried business owner

First, let me sketch a picture of the life of a typical small business owner for you (BTW, I’d love to hear if you recognise yourself in any part of the picture):

You’re the first one in the door in the morning and the last one out at night. You run around from crisis to crisis, extinguishing brush fires all day long. You feel guilty that you don’t do the stuff you know you ought to do to develop the business. Your staff don’t seem able to tie their own shoe laces without your supervision. Customers expect you, not your staff, to be the one who personally does all their work for them, yourself. You actually made more money before you started employing all those people anyway. And finally, you have to do your admin and catch up on your email after the kids have gone to bed.

Sucked into a sea of mud

Recognise any of that picture at all? If you only recognise 25% of it, you’re on first name terms with overwhelm. Overwhelm is no fun anyway, but worse is that human brains in overwhelm are ineffective, they focus on the wrong things and make the wrong decisions and that leads to more stress and overwhelm and the whole thing becomes a vicious cycle. Overwhelm affects your health and well-being and that of your families and besides, your business gets sucked into a sea of mud as well.

That’s the general state of things for many small business owners in my experience and some of the reasons many small businesses never develop to their potential.

Hence I’ve written The 10 Priorities. If you make it your absolute commitment to focus on The 10 Priorities in the coming year, you will create a foundation on which you truly can build a Great Business that Stands the Test of Time, and your life will never be the same either… I promise you.

Next week, Priority #1: You

The post The Ten Priorities: Laying the Foundations for a Great Business and Life appeared first on New Perspectives.