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Have you had some good success? Been in business for a while? If your business has been doing pretty well for a good amount of time, then you’re likely developing a false sense of security. There aren’t very many scenarios where you will be able to do things the exact same way forever and always be as successful as you are now. This is why the best way to quantify a business, no matter what size it is, is to think of it as a work in progress. Forget Your Past Successes The best way to keep making great strides is to create a great stride and then immediately move past it. Take pride in what you’ve done, learn from it, and put it behind you. It’s really easy to live off of the afterglow from a successful project or even a good decision that turned out pretty well, and …

Think of all the businesses in the world as species of fish in an ocean, and then imagine all of the individual fish within each species. In the current corporate climate, there are more species and families than there have ever been before, filling the ocean with all kinds of colors and types of fish so that it is densely populated. Now imagine your customers as ocean divers who are each searching for the fish that they need. The only way that each diver can pick out the one they are looking for is to recognize a simple, crucial difference that sets it apart from all the other fish in the ocean. Yes, You Need a Differentiator If you’re not familiar with the concept already, then commit this to memory. It doesn’t even matter if you’re entering a completely saturated industry–you can do very, very well, but only if you’ve …

  When a business owner finds that they have a successful small business, they have a tendency to look beyond it and consider opening up another one. That can either turn out to be a massive triumph or a dismal failure; it depends on a variety of factors. The bottom line is that ambitious entrepreneurs should think very carefully about the decision to take a leap into adding another business.   Is it an Emotional Decision? There’s a good chance, when you decide to open another small business, that you don’t realize what your true motivation is for doing it. You will tell yourself that you’ve found another great business model, but it could very well be a subconscious, emotional response to the success of your first business. It behooves you to take a close look at what is motivating this decision because you may find that, rather than creative …

  Maintaining a successful small business is fraught with battles every day, that threaten to compromise what you’ve worked so hard to build, and it is enough to injure your confidence or even make you feel as if you need to change course. It’s just resistance, otherwise known as adversity, and it’s important to remember that it is something you can overcome.   Put It In Perspective When you are trying to expand, for example, and your investors won’t part with any more dough, no matter how lucrative you propose it to be, that’s not the end of the story for your expansion. You can come up with a more convincing proposal, sell it to other investors, and at the very least, continue to be successful at your company’s current size & scope and expand it later on. That’s just one example, but the point is that you can’t let …

Do you ever get the feeling that you’re not operating at full capacity? It’s difficult to pin down what the reason for that is, and though there is sometimes an event or personal hardship that takes you down a notch, it usually happens gradually. You’re plugging along, putting out the daily fires, but you wake up one day and suddenly realize that you haven’t been getting as much done as you were before. There are a variety of things that may be holding you back, most of which are totally fixable. The Distracted Age More than ever, we all have to be aware of the many things that can distract us from our work these days, especially environmental and technological factors. We’re living in the Information Age, but we could well call it the Distracted Age. There are so many things that constantly vie for our attention, from political and …

Do your customers ever make you angry? It’s pretty much guaranteed that it will happen sometimes, which is why it’s imperative that you have a plan to manage it. Some CSRs have a talent for this, and some do not; so, if you’re not talented with the endless capacity for kindness, then this post will give you some tools not just to act the part of someone who is kind (which will come off as sarcastic and disingenuous, anyway), but to truly quell your anger when dealing with tough customers. Put Our Weapons Down It’s the solution to so many different problems, where it concerns people. When you put yourself in the position of the person with whom you’re speaking and try to see the situation through their eyes, it will disarm you most of the time. That’s when you can actually help them, which then makes them treat you …

  How much time do you spend thinking about the subject line of your emails before you send them out? Hopefully, you spend a good while thinking about it because it’s more important than the body of the email, by far.   Think of It as a Blog Post Headline Marketers these days are focusing a lot of their energy on blog content, written as well as video, and we all realize at this point that the headline of a post is one of the most crucial elements of the content, if not the most crucial. Within seconds, the headline is what will make the recipient decide to either click through, or ignore the post. Marketing emails are less popular now, but they are still used because they still convert. The subject line of an email is equally important.   Would You Click On It? We’ve harped on this many …

The dictionary literally defines luster as “a period of five years”. That’s one of its definitions, anyway, but the point is that it is temporary. When you open a new business that is well-planned out, there’s a good chance that you’ll have great success and hopefully, broad acceptance from the market. The challenge is that, for many small businesses, that initial period of massive popularity will be short-lived—probably a lot shorter than five years—after which the luster fades and revenue plateaus. This is extremely common, though, and it is a phenomenon that a company can overcome with the right strategy. Innovate The first and best way to overcome this obstacle is to continue to innovate. It’s really easy to keep on doing what brought you so much success in the first place, and whatever you’re already doing will bring you loyal customers who got in on the ground floor. But …

The idea, or interpretation of “resistance”, as it is used in this post, was originally authored by Steven Pressfield in his book, The War of Art. What is Resistance? For the purposes of this article, think of resistance as the invisible force that fights against you to keep you from completing your work, or to keep you from being generally productive. It takes many forms, and the greatest danger it poses is that, if you don’t actively watch out for it, resistance can destroy your focus, your work, and even your business. Take the following pieces of advice well to heart because this will keep it from beating you. 1. Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff One of the worst things that can happen to you when you’re on a roll and blasting through a project is for some little distraction or irritant to interrupt your good vibes, like a phone …