A New Era - Take Action
Posted: March 4th, 2009 Category: Building A Culture for Success |
“It is a new era.”
Every day we realize that in fact each day is unique and uncharted waters, truly a new era is in front of us and all around us. I can look at these words” new era” in many different ways and apply the meaning in so many different aspects of our lives. We set goals to achieve, accomplishments we want to obtain and a life we want to enjoy.
For many of us small business owners, we started a business to serve our lives. A business that serves our lives enhances every goal and accomplishment and fulfills us. Our proud life. A business that serves our life is one that is dedicated to making our business function and trying to reach our goals. A life that serves our business consumes us and makes us reactive, not proactive. The difference between business serving life and life serving business could be the difference between succeeding and not succeeding.
It is a new era.
Gone are the days of having time to recover a business from bad decisions. Gone are the days of having the time to have a long learning curve trying to establish your business and reach your goals through trial and error. Proactive or reactive, which one describes you?
A proactive person is pragmatic, thinks about their business and plans strategy before tactics, but takes action to implement this plan. Good decisions are based off good information, but we will never know the fruit of our planning if we don’t take action. The worst plan is one that never comes to action.
A reactive person usually does not plan strategy before tactics and will put the cart before the horse. This type of planning or lack there of, requires timing and luck. If you miss your timing you are only left with luck and you will probably need plenty of it. It is hard to rely on luck.
I was partners with a very successful man that grew his business from one office and one truck to a national company with multiple factories. Needless to say he was a great business man. He always said a couple phrases to me over and over and they are worth repeating now. “Without sales, you might as well throw away the key to the front door, because without sales, there isn’t a business.” The second phrase was, “ If you aren’t marketing you don’t get the opportunity.” What did he mean I thought the first time I heard him say that. Opportunity? I found out quickly that opportunity meant staying in business to keep selling and creating revenue.
As small business owners it is time to get back to the basics that make small businesses so great. The new era is about small business and making good decisions. The new era is about taking action and responsibility for ourselves and refusing to fail. Zen philosophy says life is full of 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. Small business owners are resilient, we bounce back realizing that any failure is just an event. The ability to keep focused on your goals, ability to keep building your dreams one step at a time, planning and putting strategy in place before tactics and taking action is a proactive approach to having our business serve our lives.
By being proactive and saying that I will market wisely and take advantage of my resources, we are developing an aggressive proactive approach to having our business serve our lives. Marketing isn’t about spending more than your competition in the marketplace. Marketing for small business can be simple, effective and affordable. There are resources if you are proactive. More importantly, operating a successful business is about doing all the little things properly and building your operation organically, one block at a time. The stronger the foundation, the stronger the structure. The stronger the structure the longer it will stand and weather any storm. Remember it is a new era and it is or time to shine. When times are challenging, it the successful ones that rise above, not by luck, but by taking action and doing the little things right one block at a time.
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