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At it’s core, business success is a decision. A decision from which everything else flows.

I was originally prompted to write this, after taking my friend to his chiropractor. As we arrived, I asked him if he was sure he had the correct appointment time, because the place wasn’t open. “Oh, it is open”, he replied. “It always looks like it’s closed”. There were no lights visible from outside, the door was closed and the ‘open’ sign was tiny. It looked to all the world (and every prospective client) as if it was closed.

I was introduced to the chiropractor and as always when I meet a business owner, I asked him how business was. He explained that business was slow. Hardly surprising. He’s paying a premium rent for a high street location. But he’s losing the vast majority of the passing trade he’s paying for… because they simply pass by unaware he’s even open!

Like the chiropractor in that example, most small business owners are genuinely unaware of the marketing mistakes, which are needlessly losing them a fortune. They wrongly assume their poor results are due to a lack of demand, a quiet period or aggressive competition. Instead of the reality: They never made the decision to succeed in their business.

What is the ‘business success decision’?

It’s the decision to do the right things, correctly.

Poorly performing businesses are not provided with the expert help they need, in order to grow and thrive in a competitive marketplace.

Instead, the business owner chooses to dabble.

Why?

• Much of the time, the reason is fear. Their fear of investing in professional help is GREATER than their fear of failure. That’s what happens when a non-entrepreneur starts a business. They’re guided by fear from day one.
• Sometimes the business owner lowered their expectations after years of sluggish growth, so slow growth or no growth is now acceptable to them.
• Other times, they have no idea what effective marketing looks like or what it does, so they suffer in ignorance.
• And in some cases they are so used to dabbling with their marketing, that they have a mental block about getting expert help.

A mental block?

Yes.

They insist on using experts to style their hair. However, they will watch their business stagnate because they insist on treating it as a DIY project.

Business success is a decision we make, to provide our business with the expert help it needs.

If your website is a sales generating machine, if your contact forms are a regular source of high quality enquiries, if your newsletter is a gold mine, if the profile of your business is rising like a star, if you’re attracting attention from all the right people and if your business is thriving… you’re good to go.

I hope that’s where you are right now.

If not, remember that business success is a decision. A decision to do the right things, correctly.