As business owners, success is our goal, but sometimes we get so focused on today’s details, we forget to focus on the big picture of growth. As a business consultant and coach, I help business owners who want to take their business to the next level and make more money in the process. In my 40 years of experience I have found that accelerating business growth comes down to seven basic steps. The first is clarity of direction.
Creating Your Own Path
Clarity of direction is knowing where you want to be in the future for your business and your personal life. If we decide to take a thousand journey, we need to know where we want to end up. If I get on an airplane, I know where I’m going. If I don’t, I could end up anywhere. It’s the same in our business and our personal lives. Clarity of direction is knowing where you want to be in the future and taking the time to describe that. What does that look like for my business and my personal life?
In addition to knowing where you want to go, you have to know where you currently are. That’s your current state— where you’re at currently in this present moment in your business and your personal life. What is the current reality? You have to be truthful about that and be real. That is what allows you to see the gap between your current state and desired future.
EXPERT TIP | Gary Furr, Organizational Development Consultant:
The next step in clarity of direction is to go out five years from now and describe what that is going to look like for you in your business and your personal life. How many employees do you want to have? How much money are you going to make? How big of a business do you want? How many weeks of vacation do you want to take? Describe it and write it down and it should be not much more than six or seven items.
Then work backwards. So if you want to be at this particular future state in five years, where do you need to be three years from now? The idea is to do the same thing and write that down. Include six or seven items and what that looks like. Describe it and write it down. And then working backwards again, where do you want to be a year from now? So if you need to be here in three years, where do you need to be in a year from now?
We need to dream big and be bold about that, because it’s our life, it’s our future. And why not dream big? We shouldn’t let our small business make us small-minded. You didn’t start your business by thinking small, and you didn’t get into business just to do okay. You want to create a vision of your future business and personal life, and the way to do that is to write these things down. Once you write them down, your subconscious mind goes to work to start to make those things happen.
You can create the business and the life of your choosing, but you have to have the courage to step up to the plate and say, “This is what I want.” To download your own reference copy, fill out the form below. You’ll receive a PDF of this episode of Seven Steps to Accelerated Business Growth and continued access to information that will help you grow and prosper.
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