15 Powerful ideas to help you grow your business in 2012!

Here are 15 ideas and suggestions, to help you and your business have your best year ever!

1. Embrace brevity.
2. Understand that you must fail more often, if you want to make meaningful progress. If you’re not failing often enough, you’re sticking to things you already know. This means you are no longer growing.
3. Remind yourself that the process of giving and receiving starts with giving.
4. Avoid chasing perfectionism. It will stop you getting started, kill your creativity and block your progress.
5. Avoid these rhinos. They will hurt your business and motivate you to do the wrong things, correctly.
6. Accept that not all advice is created equal. There is a lot of poor quality information out there, especially online. There are several well known business bloggers, who are working as sub contractors because they have no idea how to develop a viable business. If advice smells like bullshit, it probably is.
7. Get yourself a Google+ account. If you are on Google+, you can connect with me here. For those interested in the numbers, in the few months I have been using Google+, I have built a network of over 9,500 people. It has taken me almost 3 years to attract just 6,000 on twitter.
8. Stop doing work that pays and start doing work that matters. Here’s why. (Hint: The payback is better!)
9. When an opportunity comes your way, trust your intuition. It’s your mind telling you what’s best, after running the information through all your past life experiences. In my own case, every time I have gone against my intuition, it’s bitten me on the butt!
10. Get expert help in any area of your business, where you are under performing. Things don’t just change for the better because you hope they will. Hope is important, but it’s not a business strategy.
11. Remind yourself often about the value of your time.  No one ever lay on their deathbed, regretting they hadn’t spent more time watching reality TV. Throughout the day, ask yourself, is this the best use of my time right now? If it isn’t, go and do something more productive.
12. Take care regarding what you say online. Most of it will be stored somewhere and searchable. A reader told me that a drunken rant from back in 2009, was found by a prospective client this year, who immediately withdrew their interest. It lost him a very important contract and was, he says, instrumental in his bankruptcy. Just because you may think it’s OK to rant, doesn’t mean everyone else does. Do it if you must, but be aware of the potential cost.
13. Ask better questions. If you want great answers you need to ask great questions. If you want to attract more clients you could ask yourself, “how can I attract more clients?” Alternatively, you could ask yourself; “how can I attract high quality clients and lower the acquisition cost?” Better questions cause you to focus on better answers.
14. Consider the source. There is always a reason behind people’s actions. People give you advice or feedback based on their motivations, not yours. Equally, some well intentioned advice can come from people without a clue.
15. Learn to embrace your inner freak. This may be the best advice on this list.