If your business is growing slower than it should be, this post is just for you.

To get your business moving forward, there are 2 things you need to focus on. I have set them out as 2 questions. Oh, and don’t worry, I’m going to help you find your answers too!

So, here are the questions:

1. What do you want to achieve with your business?
2. Are you willing to pay the price?

What do you want to achieve with your business?

Many small business owners lack sufficient clarity, regarding what they want their business to achieve. When I ask them, they will often tell me things like; I want a profitable company, I want a thriving consultancy, I want to retire in comfort. They hardly ever give me anything specific.

The challenge here, is that without knowing what your ultimate business target or goal is, you have no way to measure if you’re on track or not.

This lack of clarity about what you specifically want to achieve, means it’s extremely easy for you to make poor long term decisions. It’s what causes hard working business owners to spin their wheels.

It’s like the old saying, “When you don’t know where you’re going, every road will take you there”. As a result, we find many hard working small business owners taking costly detours.

The key is to get specific. To describe, in detail, what you want to achieve with your business.

Here’s how to find your answer!

A great way to get really focused on what you want from your business, is to ask yourself this question:

If my business was perfect in every way, what would it look like?

Then, start writing your answer down in detail!

Avoid vague terms and use specifics. Include numbers in your answer whenever possible. For example, include things like:

• What you want to generate in revenues and profits over the next year, 3 years, 5 years and 10 years.
• What you want to earn from your business.
• What you want your business to sell for, if your exit route is to cash in at some point.

You may also want to describe the type of clients you want, what your working day would look like, where you’d locate your business, etc. Make sure to include everything that matters to you.

Once you have a clearer picture of exactly what you want to achieve with your business, it’s time to answer that second question.

So, are you willing to pay the price?

You will seldom find a small business owner, who doesn’t work hard. That is not what this question is about.

The question is about whether we’re prepared to do everything required, to make that clear image of our future business a reality. The question asks us if we are prepared, time after time, to leave our comfort zone.

Success requires us to pay the price in advance. This means committing to do 100% of what’s required, rather than avoiding the necessary tasks, which we’re uncomfortable with. Hard work alone is not enough. If hard work was the key to success, our grandparents would have all been millionaires!

Success also requires laser-like focus. We need to put our evergy and efforts into a small number of areas – – rather than try and be everywhere. For example, choose one or two places to put your content marketing. I use a blog and a newsletter. I couldn’t have built this site or my newsletter list, if I’d split my time between Linkedin, Facebook, Youtube, podcasting, Snapchat and Clubhouse, etc.

What next, Jim?

Once you have got clear about what you want and you have decided to do what’s required in order to achieve it, it’s time to take action.

The best place to start, is to take a look at your current business activities and investments. Then, eliminate everything that is not taking you toward your business goals (or targets).

Next, replace the activities that were taking your business nowhere, with ones that are consistent with your new, clearer picture of the business you want.

This is the starting point of creating a great strategy. If you need help getting your strategy right, this 2 hour session with me could be just what you need.

If you want to rise above your competitors, you have a couple of options open to you.

1. Destroy the competition: Bad-mouth them. Spread nasty stories about them. Call them out when they screw up. Try to ruin their reputation, so your business looks better in comparison.
2. Mind your own business: Look for ways to improve what you do. Become a respected innovator.  Out smart and out care your competitors. Make your service so uniquely valuable that you have no competition.

The best way forward, is to focus on your own business. Pay attention to what you can control. Do everything you can with everything you have. If you mind your own business correctly, you’ll never have to worry about the competition again.

Here are 3 amazing opportunities, which you can invest in right now.

1. Look for opportunities to make promises, and then keep them. This is a wonderful way to earn trust and build a great reputation.
2. Look for opportunities to invest in others. Leave the people you connect with in a better position than when you found them. Even something as simple as a smile from you can make a difference to someone. It may be the only sunshine they see today!
3. Look for opportunities to learn. Commit to lifelong learning. It’s one of the best investments you will ever make.
4. Bonus: Look for opportunities to do more than people expect from you. There are no traffic jams on the extra mile, because although every business owner claims to go the extra mile, very few do. Be one of the rare few.

I hope you find these opportunities interesting. More importantly, I hope you do something with them.

Are your clients destroying your business? That may seem like an odd question. However, it’s an extremely important one. And for most people reading this, the answer is a definite YES!

You see, a huge part of the way your prospective clients will feel about working with you, is defined by who you already work for.

Allow me to explain.

How your client’s define you

Here are just a couple of examples of how the wrong kind of client can ruin a great business.

Firstly, when a prospective client checks your portfolio or testimonials, they get an immediate insight into the quality of clients you’ve worked with. If you’ve worked for clients, who failed to give you the freedom you need to do great work, this will be directly obvious to prospective clients. Most designers, copywriters, accountants, trainers and coaches fall into this trap. And it’s usually fatal.

Secondly, if you work for clients who don’t pay you on time (or pay you enough), you will always have cash flow problems. This leaves you constantly desperate for income. Prospective clients and customers can smell desperation a mile off. They will either be put off working with you or they will use it to drive your fees or prices down.

In each of those instances, your entire commercial future is being dictated, by the quality of clients you choose to work with.

The answer: Pick your clients and choose wisely

Working for anyone who will pay you is usually a very bad idea.

• It fails you in the short term (you’re miserable).
• It fails you in the medium term (you’re not rewarded financially or professionally).
• It fails you in the long term (the process keeps looping). This is how negative cycles are created and allowed to persist.

Yes, it’s tempting to grab whatever work you can get. However, it’s the root cause of the problem. It’s not the solution.

Thankfully, the opposite is also true. When you work with great clients, on inspiring projects and your time is valued, it places you in the VIP vendor box.

Prospective clients see that you work with great people. They see the projects you’re involved in. They draw the conclusion that people like you, don’t come cheap. You then attract more great clients, you get paid what you’re worth and this too creates a cycle.

A highly profitable, enormously rewarding cycle.

For more free information on the subject, read this: How to build a successful business. It contains lots of ideas and examples.

Steve Jobs was a remarkable person. Like many, I have studied his career for years and been amazed at what he achieved, in such a very short time.

One of the things that happens whenever someone has a massive impact in any area of life, is that their ideas get misquoted or distorted.

Today’s post looks at one element of Steve Jobs’ work, which is often quoted, yet has no foundation in fact. I think you may find it surprising too!

It’s not Steve Jobs’ fault

I was prompted to write this after receiving an email from a reader, who decided to do zero research before starting a new business. She failed to gain a single customer. Here’s an excerpt from what she said, used with her permission, anonymously.

She said:

‘It seemed like a good idea at the time, so I launched it without any planning or research. Steve Jobs never did any research. I thought if it worked for Steve it would work for me. It didn’t!’

Have you spotted the often quoted, incorrect assumption from that quote? It’s that totally incorrect fake-fact that Steve Jobs never did any research. This is absolutely incorrect.

Allow me to explain.

Going with your passion

It makes perfect sense to go with your passion in business. If you get an idea for a product or service and you think it stands a good chance of succeeding, do it! My own business was started that way and I know the same is true for many of the business owners reading this.

Steve Jobs was exceptionally passionate about his work and it shone through everything he did. In fact, people who worked with him often refer to his ability to create a reality distortion field, where he was able to convince them of almost anything he believed in.

Passion is essential. However, to ‘just do it’ as Nike say, and start a business or launch a new product without any planning or research, is extremely short-sighted. This is why someone as intelligent as Steve Jobs would never do that.

That’s right, Steve Jobs knew the value of research and planning. He didn’t become super successful by accident.

Steve Jobs, research and planning

Steve Jobs was the most interesting, fascinating and least understood businessperson I have ever studied. I firmly believe he was a genius and I don’t mean a genius in the, ‘everyone’s a genius’ kind of way. Jobs was truly exceptional.

Now, his approach to business was indeed pragmatic, however, he did invest in research. No, not as heavily as some of his competitors, but in his last year at Apple, Apple invested over $2Billion in research and development.

I bet that’s the first time you heard of the billions Apple Inc. invested annually, in R and D?

Why? Because it gets in the way of a better (fake) story… the idea that a company can become the most valuable in the world, on the hunches of one man. Steve Jobs knew his own brilliant mind and was an exceptionally good decision maker. One of the best, if not the best. However, to suggest, as many do, that he did no research and just launched into projects blind, is incorrect. Even a genius appreciates the value of planning, research and development.

If you have an idea for a product or service, go for it. As Steve Job’s said, ‘real artists ship’! Just make sure to do the research and planning, first.