This Is The Most Important Question You Must Answer!
March 9th, 2016 // 12:36 pm @ Scott Manning
Call it running on a treadmill, the hamster wheel of your operations, treading water or whatever analogy you want to use. Most businesses are in neutral going nowhere other than working hard to stay in the same place they have always been.
This is, by the way, called a job, not a business. Not so bad if you are the owner of a business investment that produces some reliable amount of return for you every single day, week, month, year it operates.
But it’s not so great, in fact the exact opposite of what a business is suppose to be if you are the actual entrepreneur, owner, doer, producer, ‘person’ who makes the machine run.
No one wants to work for the same amount, doing the same thing year after year especially if they are the owner of it. The old expression that is so true for life and everything that happens during it: if you aren’t growing you are dying. So true.
In business, if you aren’t evolving, changing, getting better, improving, growing profits, expanding reach, influence, success, hitting your goals faster than ever before – then you are absolutely going in the other direction.
I don’t believe in competition in the sense that most people do, obsessively thinking about others instead of themselves, making all kinds of excuses about why they aren’t hitting their stated goals or raising the bar of their own expectations – instead I do believe in competition of mind space, market influence, what others are doing to change faster than you are that will lure in your customers, patients, and clients that will leave you behind in the dust.
We are our own biggest competition. Our complacency, our lack of systems and inability to focus on expansion, evolution, and increasing profits that you need to fund future growth and objectives.
When you stand back doing the same thing, you are leaving yourself at the mercy of the market and the mindset of your customers, patients, clients instead of controlling it.
You must be controlling – maybe not healthy in a relationship – but damn sure essential in your business.
Controlling over what your customers think, their expectations, how they make a busying decision and justify value.
Controlling over what’s happening in your business, in the future, in the changes, in the way you do things.
Controlling over your results, your modus operandi, your operations.
Control is possible if you choose it deliberately; if you say “I refuse to be commoditized,” and follow that up with exactly how you are going to differentiate yourself.
Last week, we talked about creating leverage through systems, which is one of the best ways to differentiate.
Most every competitor will go for what’s easy, they will go for volume driven growth, they will try to out market you through discounts and low margins, and they will destroy the integrity of your industry and marketplace, they will infest your customers minds with bad ideas about what is important.
You must fight against these things. You must not give in to what others are doing but find your own niche and identity. Your refusal of this or resistance against it will leave you having to play copycat and you will be left behind, or worst yet a follower of trends far out in front of you.
This is so true of everything in business in every industry no matter what you are doing, it’s very simple: you either pick your business model and commit to it so you own your own market, customer segment, approach and way of doing business – or you will be forced into doing and copying things you don’t want to do.
Remember this, the profit is not in what you do it’s in HOW YOU DO IT – how you market, how you sell, how you educate, how you price, how you influence, how you operate, HOW YOU CONTROL every aspect of your business and the interaction and engagement you have with your customers, prospects, clients, patients, vendors, market place, industry, and everything else.
When you dictate the terms, make up the rules, control the playing field – you will always win.
And you do want to win, don’t you?!
Most entrepreneurs just never accept responsibility for this and therefore live their lives in the shadows of others. Whether it’s the ‘shop’ down the street or the regulations of the government or the pretend insistence of the customer to be or do things a certain way.
The most important question smart, successful people never stop asking: What am I doing to be in control of every aspect of my business ensuring the outcomes I have committed to achieving?
Category : Blog
