Today is all about celebrating! It’s about being excited and looking forward to our successes. Having your own business is fun and rewarding, but will also challenge you in more ways than you could ever know. Which in turn will make you a better person.
Those of you that have kids, will understand the similarities in feelings of having a business.Words that come to mind…Scary, rewarding, frustrating, joyful, hard, proud, disappointing, meaningful and fulfilling. But it’s joyful because you’re living the life how YOU want to live it.
The reason I started out Successful Business Saturdays, has been a journey for me. From the start it was a way to explore ideas that I could not get out of my head. In the middle people started tuning in. I saw it as an opportunity to build a community, my wife being involved. Today, one of my favorite things I do each week and has helped my wife and I work towards our long term goals. This is about that journey. Being positive and looking at all the challenges and realize that those are opportunities to grow
Got to spend time with my wife yesterday, refining out why When I talk about challenges, a lot of what I talk about is getting that “why” down. And learned that it was actually easier if we started with our core values. We were trying to force our why to fit our business ideas so it was all there, but was just not easy to put into words and it didn’t feel right.
Core values we came up as the most important ones for us. Family-Knowledge-Joy-Connection-Health-Persistence. We started there and once we did that, then we could fit everything together. It was a failure, it was something we weren’t able to get through, had a roadblock in front of us and it turned out to be rewarding. Because now we’ve got this thing here that we can move forward and do these things all the time. Our why is something you’ve got to put in words.
Here’s our why-“Persistently connecting seekers to knowledge product and services to bring joy health and the importance of family.”
When we got done with that we thought OK, what’s next? and that is what I want to talk about today! How do we get from idea to success? How do we get pushed to launch or continue to grow?
First, let me ask you all questions. Comment below on this blog for anyone who currently has their own business that is…
- -Full Time and Your Source of Income
- -Side Hustle That Brings Extra Cash
- -Hobby – Your doing it, but not making any money yet
- -Not Started Yet
- -Full Time – Source $
- -Side Hustle – Extra $
- -Hobby – Not making $ YET
- -Not Started Yet…
The first thing you’re going to want to do to successfully launch is…a BUSINESS PLAN!
I am the business planning guy. I talked lots about this over the last year, but I’m going to keep going because of one of the core values that is in our why, persistence.
Developing a Business Plan is VERY EASY! Anyone can do it and it requires no special skills. You have an idea, you take that idea and put it in writing and write out the details. It’s about the act of doing it, not about how good or bad it is.
Now people will say that it is hard, and yes not everyone will do it because it takes work, effort and self reflection. And it can be scary and feel confining as the term ‘business plan’ has a PR problem.
There are two different versions of one. But there is not a name for the two different versions. The true working version is what I talk about, and the formal one that can, at times seem like a waste and have little purpose outside of trying to raise venture capital or get a loan.
The working version is a guard rail, a tool to help you not get blinders from the daily grind that we all get, a framework to help you pivot more efficiently when change is needed.
Success is interesting. It is not a superhighway that is straight and free of obstacles. There are lots of different roads, turns, stops and starts, and hills and potholes to navigate.
So to tie this back, success is about EVOLVING. The Business Plan is your MAP.
That’s my soapbox about business planning and the bad PR it gets. Business planning is a never ending process that needs managed – BUT NOT a negative thing. It’s really just part of running your business, not some outside strange things that wastes time
As a bonus, it will make your future business decisions easier. You will have a framework to go back to and see what decisions fits into the plan and doesn’t cause you to drive off the cliff
Running a business without a plan would be like driving a car with no front window or map. What you see ahead and the info the map gives you doesn’t drive the actual car, it just gives you the tools to do it as safely as possible.
ACTION ITEM – Go check out my BP videos and do the homework.
-I will check in with you quarterly if you have done the homework. If you already have your own BP, share it with us, and I’ll check in quarterly.
-If you want more help, we are available to consult on a more regular basis. The cost is $55 per hour.
- Do – Yes I know, not some revolutionary technique, but often we just need to be reminded by others. So lets get together and celebrate and push each other.
- Push the envelope of what you think your limitations are, try to make mistake or have failures and create learning opportunities
- Told my 7 year old the other night as he was frustrated with his math homework and the mistakes he made, that those were more valuable to him than the ones he got right. And while that is a good lesson for a 7 year old, as I was saying it, it reminded me that I need to also forgive myself for the failures.
- Getting things right and doing the same thing, just keeps you right where you are. Content can be fine, but if you are not at your definition of success, then failures are a MUST and to be celebrated.
- Cartoon worth watching – Meet The Robinsons Great for kids, but also a wonderful lesson for adults and small business owners.
- Push the envelope of what you think your limitations are, try to make mistake or have failures and create learning opportunities
ACTION ITEM – Go do something outside of your comfort zone to improve, grown or launch your business this week!
-Its time to push yourself forward, so time to do something that will get you closer to your goal.
-Make some cold calls, go to a networking event, record AND POST a Video, launch your website etc.
-Find an accountability partner – Spouse, Friend, Someone in our community here, myself or my wife. talk to them TODAY and ask if they will help you. They only need to be able to listen.
-Tell them what you are going to be doing and why it is outside of your comfort zone. Ask for feedback and keep an open mind.
-Go do it and check back in with your accountability partner after its done to CELEBRATE the success and failures