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Small Business SuccessSmall business success requires someone who dares to dream and to believe in themselves and their dream. That is the first and most important ingredient to success. Read about the importance of believing in yourself and your dream, and then about other necessary ingredients to success below: Believe In Yourself:You can only succeed as far as you imagine, dream, think, and believe. Focus on your rewards and your dreams. Think of them daily, meditate on them as you fall asleep and when you open your eyes in the morning. Make sure they involve your family to keep your balance. Feel the joy today of having that vision and goal, and watch as your enthusiasm lifts you out of bed to go take steps toward your reward today."Poverty is of no value except as a vantage ground for a starting point." Orison Swett Marden 1908. "Every child should be taught to expect success." Orison Swett Marden, 1908. "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve," Napoleon Hill author of Think and Grow Rich, 1937. Napoleon Hill spoke constantly in the years before and during the depression on using the mind to its fullest. He inspired people to believe in themselves, and go make things happen. His book is highly recommended. His life story and vision will inspire you to be more than you ever dreamed possible. Take Courage:“A journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step,” Confucius.It takes courage to own your own business. But you only need enough courage for the moment. That first step into starting your own home based business may seem fearful. Every entrepreneur has felt it. But you don’t have to start your small business all at once. You should start by simply taking the first step, which usually is making the decision to go ahead and take the plunge. Sometimes we just need to hear someone say, “Go for it!” The dreamer who never takes that first courageous step to “go for it” never becomes an entrepreneur, much less a successful entrepreneur. Work With PassionChoose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. ConfuciusIf you have a passion for the business you choose, believe in what you are doing, and love doing it, you’ll work with more enthusiasm and interest. All successful small businesses are run by a person with an almost monomaniac passion for what he or she is doing toward their small business success. “Whenever you see something getting done, you find a ‘monomaniac’ with a mission.” Peter Drucker A monomaniac is someone who focuses excessively on one thing to the exclusion of all other things. Be BalancedBalance within the business and between business and personal life is essential to small business success. Without good balance a monomaniac will fail in his or her business and personal life. If the monomaniac loves fishing and wants to build a home based business around fishing that’s wonderful! But time has to be balanced between bookkeeping, customer service, running the business, family and community…not just fishing.Make Wise ChoicesChoosing a business wisely is vital to small business success because the business is generally run in the home…you and your family’s personal space.Opt for a small business that fits you, your personality, lifestyle, passions and works well with your family. Understanding yourself and your family is critical.
Begin With Research and PlanningInvestigate every detail about the business you are considering. Seek counsel from others with experience. Examine ways to minimize risk. The 80/20 Rule says in effect that 20 percent of or your actions account for 80 percent of your results. The time you invest in researching, planning and evaluating is not wasted, and creates a much greater percentage of return than your percentage of time investment.Make a business plan. Make a marketing plan. Read about evaluating small franchises. Energy and Imagination Plus:"The man who has learned the art of seeing things looks with his brain." Orison Swett Marden 1908.Using your imagination in building and improving a home business will make you special, and set you apart from your competition. Set aside time alone for brainstorming and recording your visions and thoughts. But dreams without action remain dreams… Energy then is another main ingredient to small business success. Implement your ideas by getting out there daily to do what it takes to make your dreams come true, and follow through with all your plans.
Good Character and Discipline"No substitute has ever yet been discovered for honesty." Orison Swett Marden 1908.Your business is only as good as you are. It is an open display to the world of your own integrity, abilities, character and discipline.
Find Experienced Mentors and TeamIn every business there is always someone to learn from. Wise business people seek experienced mentors to emulate. Why try to re-invent the wheel?Create or becoming part of a great team, with the best people. Andrew Carnegie said, “It marks a big step in your development when you come to realize that other people can help you do a better job than you can do alone.” A team can often get the job done quicker, increase your value to prospects and customers, and can strengthen your weak spots. Leading to your own small business success. Always Remember that To Everything There Is A Season:“Much of your success will lie in your attitude and ability to plant in the springtime of opportunity, to weed and cultivate in the testing time of summer, to harvest without apology or complaint in the season of fall, and to get stronger, wiser, better in the transition and learning times of winter. It is not what happens to you that determines your future—it is how you respond and what you do about it.” John RohnEmbrace Successes and Failures:Everyone loves a success. We are all happy to think about our successes, tell others about them, examine them, and learn from them. We go over them over and over in our minds and irritate others with our success stories.Success confirms that what we are doing is good. It is a wonderful thing for home based businesses to take time to evaluate each success and how it was brought about. Then it is important to keep doing the things that work so well. However, when we make a mistake or fail to do something, no matter how small, we don’t usually want to think about it, or look at it objectively, evaluating what caused things to go wrong in the situation. We don’t want to tell everyone about it. We’d rather forget it, push it under the table and pretend it never happened, cast the blame on the weather or something we can’t control. What we need to realize, is that failures, although definitely not fun, are often our best critics and teachers for improvement. They are capable of strengthening a business, making it more successful in the end IF time is taken to impartially evaluate what went wrong and what needs to change. Once those questions are fully answered, change should be carried out immediately. It sounds crazy, but failure generally comes from a few errors in judgment being repeated over and over again week after week. People choose to ignore the errors and minor failures thinking it doesn’t make that much difference. They aren’t proud of the errors, so they push them under the table to be dealt with later. Failure is the accumulation of repeated errors left unchecked until it’s too late. So embrace and study your failures as you do your successes and grow from them and you will one day be telling your own small business success story. Hang In There, And Put Your Time In:Don’t expect to become instantly well known and independently wealthy your first or second year in business. It takes long hours of hard work along with serious perseverance and commitment to build a strong business with dedicated customers. Learn each lesson gratefully as it comes, get back up when you fall, finish the race. People will love to hear small business success story if you never give up.Never-Ending Improvement:"The best educated people are those who are always learning, always absorbing knowledge from every possible source and at every opportunity." Orison Swett Marden 1908.The Japanese word for never-ending improvement is “kaizen”. Their warrior lived by this philosophy through the ages, and it is still a working philosophy in modern Japanese businesses. Success in anything in life is dependent on continual improvement. In business it is vital to continue to offer your customers more of what keeps them coming back, and to keep up with the times, technology, and your competitors. So improving skills, knowledge and customer service, products, etc. should happen continuously little by little as you go. Keep educating yourself. Read every book, magazine, newspaper you can find about people in your profession. Increase your understanding about your market or profession. As you grow in knowledge and understanding so will your interest grow, and your expertise. The greater your interest and expertise, the greater will be your desire to succeed. Observe your competitors, and other professionals in the field. Take every opportunity to meet them, hear them speak, read their books or listen to their audios. Read about small business successes everywhere. Surround yourself with successful people and achievers, learn their success stories. It will all rub off on you...and your small business success could become legendary. Be ProductiveEveryday be very sure that moment by moment you are doing the most productive thing possible for that moment and for that day. Ask yourself continually,“What is the most productive thing I can do right now?" Don’t think like a loser in terms of years and getting around to doing it someday, as Pa Kettle did. Think like a winner and live in the moment, doing the most productive thing now. Successes and failures don’t generally happen overnight but are an accumulation of decisions made moment by moment. Make your small business success happen by doing the most productive thing every moment. Time Management Skills"People do not realize the immense value of utilizing spare minutes." Orison Swett Marden 1908No one can change 24 hours into 30, or 60 minutes into 90. Everyone knows that. Then why do some people get so much done in the same amount of time that others get almost nothing done? The answer is self-management rather than time-management. What we do with our thoughts, emotions, work, family and community responsibilities is the only thing that can be managed…not time. Stating a life purpose and setting goals for every aspect of our lives, and finding the right balance of daily activity needed to achieve those goals is where we start. Then making a business plan with goals and strategies is next. Then comes the daily task of managing self moment by moment to achieve those goals. Self management will help you make decisions on the importance of constant influx of wide-ranging information that comes at business owners daily. There is no way to keep up with it all. So sticking to your business plan and goals will help you sort through what is imperative for today, this week, this month, this year. Don’t let the rest side track you. Remember that "small business success" is not true success if your life is out of balance and you hurt your family and friends in the process of achieving “success”.
Small Business Success
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