Starting a business today is far tougher than a few years ago, not only do you have to know your business, you have to know how to market your business within your budget in a world where companies are spending tens of thousands on marketing and branding. We hear the statistics that a successful business is 80% psychology and the rest is skill, timing and luck; and we invest a good proportion of money into marketing, when really the driving factor of any business is the owner. The owner can make or break a business and the owner is governed by their knowledge and their psychology. The problem is that knowledge without action and flexibility is never going to make the grade and that is the main reason why over 75% of businesses fail in the first three years. The concepts required to make your business grow are in themselves very simple, but they need to be applied consistently.
It is commonly remarked that business is one of the toughest games out there, you have to be mentally tough with the resilience to bounce back from many challenges. If you were a professional athlete, you would not dream of competing without a coach. A extraordinary sportsperson will have an extraordinary coach and be training both physically and mentally.
Training provides you with
a) the ability to draw the skill set required out
b) tips and techniques to take you to the top of your game
c) the psychology to get up when others would be beaten
Business is a game and if you do not know the rules your business, your life and the life of your employees is going to be severely affected. You need to know how to stand out from the crowd in psychology as well as appearance.
In business, success depends on the owner and the feeling and psychology of the customer. A good reliable product provides your customer with comfort and you will sell well, but provide your customer with significance and they will pay a higher price tag (sometimes the higher price tag itself also provides significance - fashion designers rely on such psychology)
However, if you increase the value to the customer in terms of an intangible psychological lift, such as happiness, you have a customer fan base for the duration that you can keep that feeling alive in your customer. Service industries have a perfect opportunity to tap into this aspect of the psychology of their customer and as such can have dramatically increase profit but other businesses can adapt as well.
My clients often ask for key points to focus on to help grow their business and I would like to share my top 7 with you today.
To grow your business you need to understand that:-
1. You need to leave your personal baggage behind be that past beliefs, insecurities, negative unhelpful thinking and attachment to ideas or people who are holding you back.
2. The story you tell yourself is what will manifest. Whether you believe in law of attraction, self fulfilling prophecy or psychology, that which you focus on with enough intention and emotion you will move towards.
3. Your personality as the owner of the business is key to it's success. Knowing your personality type and how to shift into different states to enhance your strengths in an authentic manner is imperative.
4. You have to relinquish attachment to the how's and why and use your focus, drive and determination to achieve the outcome.
5. Connection and communication is fundamental to successful partnerships. Be it social media, business breakfasts if you are not out there connecting your product/service is being severely limited.
6. If you do not change the actions that are not working for your business, you will not change the results. You have to get to the cause of what is holding your business back and adapt. You cannot attack all problems at once or you will hinder your company more than you are helping.Chunk it creating small manageable changes that last the test of time.
7. Anticipation and flexibility is the solution to making it through the tougher times. You only have to look at how Apple persevered to become one of the biggest companies of all time to learn great insights into a successful company model.
Business is tough not only do you have to do the right thing at the right time, you have to do it consistently. Knowing the above is not enough you have to take the tools and techniques passed on from successful business models and apply them. If you are not taking action you are not getting the true results your company deserves. Whether you buy a book, get a coach, talk to a mentor, you need to take action to improve the profitability of your company. Today's workplace environment is highly competitive and you need to play to win.
If you'd like to connect with Sloan directly you can do so via her website