If your business is not providing you with the lifestyle or financial rewards you deserve, you will find today’s post extremely useful. In fact, I wrote it just for you.
Here’s the thing:
- When a business fails spectacularly, you know about it.
- When a business becomes a success, you know about it.
- However, when a business lands somewhere in between those two, it’s easy to get stuck in The Average Trap, without even knowing.
What is The Average Trap?
The Average Trap is what you get caught in when you run a business, which is too good to kick into touch (it pays the bills), yet not good enough to give you the financial freedom or lifestyle you want.
A failed business forces us to make dramatic changes. This is why so many super-successful business owners have previously gone broke, learned the lessons and then come back stronger. Their failed business forced them into making the changes required. Their so-called failure was a blessing, something that provided them with the lessons and motivation to try again with a better strategy.
A business stuck in The Average Trap simply lingers. This is why the average business is so average. Unlike the owner of a failed business, who HAS to make changes, the owner of a business stuck in The Average Trap doesn’t have to. In many cases they simply lower their lifestyle expectations, to meet the limitations of their under performing business.
Getting free from The Average Trap
The only way to escape from The Average Trap is to:
- Admit that you are in The Average Trap.
- Decide that you will no longer settle for average.
- Do something about it. Make the decisions you have been dodging. Decide to fire your worst clients. Commit to charging what you are worth. Get the expert help you will need, to do those things and more, correctly.
The hardest part
Of course, the hardest part of all is answering the question: Am I ready to go ‘beyond average’ or have I lost my desire for something better?
The reason that question is so hard, is that no one admits they have become comfortable settling for less – including everyone who has.
Breaking free
A useful starting point is to reconnect with the dreams you had when you started your business. You did not start your business in order to embrace being average. No one does. You started a business because of the freedom and potential you saw. It’s impossible to be free when you are worried about money. It causes you to make bad decisions, work with the wrong people and ‘make do’ with so much less than you deserve.
By reconnecting with the goals, dreams and ambition you had when you started your business, you get to see your future as it can be. This stark reminder of why you started out in the first place, can inspire you to take action. It can motivate you to get the help you need.
Maybe most importantly, it can compel you to never again allow yourself to settle for average.