The right time, and the perfect time, are not the same time.

But many small business owners are totally unaware of it.

And it screws up everything.

The right time

The right time to take action on improving your business is the moment you know there’s a problem. It’s an easy to identify moment. And it makes zero sense to allow a problem to persist; it only gets bigger, and costs you more in time and money to fix.

This means the right time is always, always, blindingly obvious.

However, even really smart business owners totally miss it.

Why?

Because they’re not actually looking for the right time. No. They’re looking for, and waiting for, the perfect time.

The perfect time is an expensive illusion

It’s an illusion, because it exists in an impossible to identify moment.

Think about it.

• If things are going great for your business, they might get even better. Now is not the perfect time.
• If things are ‘okay’ or even if things suck, then maybe they’ll pick-up. Now is not the perfect time.

So, when is the perfect time to improve your business?

You missed it. Because we can only ever know the perfect time, after it has passed. We identify it on reflection. It’s rear view mirror stuff.

That’s why the most successful businesspeople focus on the right time. It’s clear. It’s existential. We experience it. It’s in front of us.

In short, if you have an ongoing business problem, the right time to do something about it has passed. The next best time to do something about it is right now.

It has never been easier for you to research your competitors than it is today. In minutes, you can tell if someone is serious competition to your business or simply a dabbler.

For example.

• You can visit their website and tell instantly if it looks professional and up-to-date or not.
• Their site will also show you the range of services they offer and the guarantees they provide.
• In some cases, you can see what they charge and whether they offer payment terms, etc.
• You can also check their social media footprint and see if they are using it professionally and how large their social networks are.

Over the years I’ve worked with thousands of business owners. One of the things I see over and over again, is a tendency to underestimate the service offered by their competitors. This is a potentially fatal mistake.

Here are 2 of the main reasons why this happens.

1. Hard work and dedication

They work so hard on their own businesses and care so passionately about their own clients, that they can’t imagine their competitors being equally committed. In reality, the vast majority of business owners work their tail off and try extremely hard to keep their clients happy.

We need to avoid underestimating our competitors at all costs. It’s a mindset that can cause us to ease off the gas. To coast. And in doing so, we make it way too easy for our hard-working, professional competitors to eat our lunch!

2. Biased reporting

There are a lot of people out there, who will tell us what they think we want to hear. Others will tell us what they want us to believe. In either case, their reporting is not telling it like it is.

Here are a few examples.

• If you attract a new client, who was fired by one of your competitors for being impossible to work with, that new client will seldom tell you. Instead, they’ll often say they left because the service was lousy or another fake reason.
• Similarly, when you hire people who previously worked for one of your competitors, they’ll often trash-talk about them.
• Many business owners use the same suppliers as some of their competitors. If you ask a supplier how your competition are doing, you’ll often get negative reports. Don’t take too much notice. Remember, those who are unprofessional enough to share (or fabricate) news about their customers with you, are unprofessional enough to give fake feedback.

It’s worth taking feedback like the above with a large pinch of salt.

In short

If you’re going to assume anything about your competitors, assume they are hard-working professionals who are targeting your clients. That will stop any chance of complacency from creeping in.

Have you ever noticed how the major fast food restaurants seem to cluster in certain parts of your town or city? It happens for the same reason that theatres cluster on Broadway, New York, and the same reason that trading and financial services cluster in London’s Square Mile.

It’s not because they’re lonely.

It’s because they’re following a proven business strategy. A strategy that can work for your business, too.

Clusters create crowds

Once a location becomes well-known for a certain product or service, prospective customers looking for that ‘thing’ will head there.

This means a business moving into that location will open their doors on day one, knowing there will be crowds. Crowds they can potentially attract a subset of and convert into customers.

If that business is savvy, they will provide a uniquely valuable version of what the others offer. Something a section of the crowds desire, but can only get from them. This provides them with their very own corner of the market. It’s a strategy that works extremely well.

Before you assume this strategy is of little or no relevance to your business, think again.

Adapt. Then deploy

Look at the components behind that extremely successful strategy. When you do, you’ll discover something interesting and more importantly, potentially very useful to you and your business.

You’ll discover that you can adapt and deploy part of what makes that strategy work, into the online marketing of your own business.

How?

Be where your competitors are online. For example, be part of social media conversations around your industry. Join forums that are dedicated to your industry. Join Facebook Groups or LinkedIn Groups. You get the idea.

Offer something different from your competitors, which is uniquely valuable. So, when prospects find you, they can see you’re unlike the others.

Every single one of the prospects, who wants the unique value that only your service provides, can only get it from you. Do this correctly and you will have created your very own corner of the market.

Not sure where how to stand out in a meaningful way that works? Don’t worry. This will help you. And so will this.

Photo | Steve Johnson Pexels.com

Today, I’m going to show you how to have great business ideas and how to put them to work for your business. This includes a step-by-step guide that you can easily follow.

Think about it: Behind every successful business are a series of ideas. Great business ideas, which open up new opportunities or set the business on a more fruitful path.

The challenge with great ideas is that they often look like average ideas, until after they become hugely successful. As a result, most great ideas never see the light of they.

In fact, I bet you have a few tucked away right now, without even knowing it.

Here’s an example of what I mean.

How a great business idea was mocked

In 1985, The New York Times announced the death of laptop computers, in an articled entitled; “Whatever happened to the laptop computer?” They wondered why laptops never became popular (seriously). Here’s how one of the greatest business ideas in history, was openly mocked:

“[…] I.B.M. never legitimized the market with its much rumored ”Clamshell,” probably because the company realized that laptops are a small niche market, not a mass market.”

Erik Sandberg-Diment. New York Times 1985.

And when the electric light bulb was invented, most people said it would never become a mass market product. It was thought that there was no affordable way to get electricity to enough homes.

How to have great business ideas that win!

Business owners sometimes ask me what I think of an idea they have. The challenge here, is that it doesn’t matter what I think or what their friends think. Great business ideas are not anointed. If you want to know how good your idea is, you need to get it out there.

If you do, you will find it’s almost impossible to fail.

Really?

Yes, really!

It’s a win win thing.

• If it is a great business idea and it flies, you’ll have a success on your hands.
• If it flops, you’ll learn something. Something that you can invest in the next idea and greatly increase your chances of success.

Ironically, the only way to guarantee a business idea will fail, is to try and protect it from failure by locking it away.

It’s a lose lose thing.

• The idea you fail to ship can’t succeed.
• The idea you fail to ship can’t teach you anything new.

This not only insulates you from success, it also insulates you from learning and growing. This used to be a major problem for me when I started out in business. I was in my late 20’s and lacking in confidence. I’d sometimes have a great business idea, but I wouldn’t put the idea into action.

I knew I needed to do it. I also knew it couldn’t work if I didn’t ship the idea. But for me, putting an idea into action, even one I thought was great, felt way too risky.

Thankfully, I discovered a way forward, which I’m now going to share with you, step-by-step.

Here’s the business idea strategy, which worked for me

I’ve shared this strategy with countless people over the years and the results have been amazing. It’s actually really simple.

My breakthrough came when I figured out that the part of my mind responsible for putting ideas into action, was weak. It needed strengthening. I thought one way to do this, would be to treat it like a weak muscle. To make a weak muscle strong, you start off by working with very light weights. As the muscle grows, you slowly increase the weight you’re working with. Eventually, the muscle becomes strong.

Here’s how it worked

I started by acting on what I considered to be small ideas. Ideas that were unlikely to set the world on fire if they worked, but where there was relatively little downside if they failed.

• I’d get a business idea.
• Every time I put one of these ideas into play, I’d write it down in a journal, along with the results.
• With each new business idea in my journal, my idea muscles grew a little.
• I also noticed that even with these small ideas, my business was starting to see some very encouraging results. This further built my idea muscles!
• Pretty soon I found it easy to get great business ideas, big, meaningful ones, and ship them.
• Every day since I’ve eagerly looked for ways to get great business ideas to help me make opportunities or solve problems.
• And if they’re interesting, I always put them into play.

As the frequency and size of the ideas you act on increases, so does your ability to get great ideas. This is reflected in the development of your business.

And something else happens. Business in general becomes a lot more interesting. That’s because working on new business ideas, even small ones, is extremely invigorating. It causes you to think differently, meet new people and explore new opportunities.

Just remember to start with small ideas. Slowly build it up. And be sure to chronicle your results, so you can see the progress you’re making and also learn from the feedback.

In short: How do you get great business ideas? You put the small business ideas you already have into play. Each time you do, your ability to have great ideas and ship them increases.