Happy New Year.
I love you Mr. or Mrs. Reader-Of-My-Blogs, but my job isn't to tell you what you want to hear.
It’s to tell you what I strongly believe you need to hear in order to best help you create the business that brings you more income, impacts more people and gives you more influence in your community.
I speak to business owners every week, and I hear certain things from all of them that aren't true 99% of the time.
It's almost a gut reaction to certain questions, thoughts or suggestions. Sometimes I don't think you know you're saying them, but you are, in one way or another.
So let's get down to the harsh reality...
2019 isn't buying your BS. You can lie to yourself, or to me all you want, but here's the thing, these are not victimless lies.
If you continue to lie to yourself about where you are as a business, or what it takes to be a premier business, you're not only hindering your business, you're hindering the success of those that could benefit from your business.
That's an issue.
I've worked with hundreds of facilities one on one and it's my moral responsibility to call these lies out so that you can run a better business and impact more people.
So without further ado.. The Lies.
“My business is different.”
No, it’s not. The fundamentals are the same, and that’s what we all need to master.
You may believe your situation is special because of your demographic, your square footage, who you work with etc.
But even as the small details vary, there is a formula to success in business that encompasses all businesses. Big, Small, Rural, Urban, it doesn't matter, you have to position yourself properly, build a premier offering, market that offering and build the systems that allow you to grow and scale.
I've seen massive industry players fail because they don't recognize this, and I've seen nobodies turn things around and scale to multiple locations, because business is business, plain and simple.
“We don't need to market, our business is run off word of mouth”
Oh dear Lord. Not this again.
I'd like to invite you to consider the amount of money you're leaving on the table thinking this is the case.
The business that markets always does better than the business that doesn't.
If you want to learn how to market check my last article out here.
I challenge you to market for the next 90 days.
If you don't bring in more revenue than you do right now, I'll personally refund you the money you spent on marketing.
“We've already got everything we need." OR "We're doing Great"
You may have everything you need, and may be doing great... if you do things differently.
And unfortunately most won’t do anything different so they stay "Doing Great." which is only a feeling measurement, not a fact measurement.
What got you to where you are today, won’t get you to the next level. The same is true to get to the top of your market.
Business growth has various phases and you must adjust and tweak in order to get from one stage to the next because "Muscling It" (Pun Intended) won't cut it.
You need to make sure you have the systems in place in order to grow, and most people don't.
So I bring this article to you 3 days into the New Year so that you can quickly make the adjustments needed to succeed (And cut all three of these statements out of your vocabulary).
Stop thinking your business is any different, go back to the basics, master them, work on your systems and strategy, and market the heck out of yourself.
To succeed in 2019, you have to be open minded to new opportunities. Obviously these new things must improve productivity and profit, but you'll never know if you don't look into them.
Being open minded won't change things overnight, but by next December you'll look back and realize you've made a lot more progress towards being a premier facility than ever before.
Business is a marathon, not a sprint and because of this, it requires different efforts than being in the weeds all the time.
In 2019, open your mind, seek new opportunity, come up for air, work on your business and work the process to success one step at a time.
Position yourself, build a premier offering, market that offering, systemize your business.
If you do these 4 things this year, you'll grow exponentially.
To your success.
