10 Things That Small Business Owners REALLY Want But Will Never Have Unless They…

24 Feb 10 Things That Small Business Owners REALLY Want But Will Never Have Unless They…

What do small business owners want from their businesses? Possibly top of the list of wants of someone hoping to create a successful business would be:

1. To generate a torrent of quality leads
2. Convert a higher percentage of their leads into paying customers.
3. Make more profit from those paying customers.
4. Enough money not to have to worry about how they are going to pay the next bill or feed themselves and their family.
5. To work less and make more (Not be required to work 24/7)
6. Enough time off to spend doing the things that they love with the people they care about.
7. An investment for their future
8. A business that makes the money they require to live the life they’ve always dreamed of and deserve.
9. To make a difference and leave a legacy.
10. To be considered successful and an expert in their field

However, for many small businesses, these ambitious plans are completely at odds with their actions and thinking.  For example, If I asked you what business financial success looked like for you, what would be your answer?

What is your annual turnover figure? Write it down. Did you write down a six, seven or eight figure number? (e.g., $100,000, $1,000,000 or $10,000,000) If you felt uncomfortable imagining such large numbers this is not uncommon.

Many small business owners have what can only be described as a small business mindset. They see their business more like a job than an investment. The difference between being an entrepreneur and being self-employed is seeing your business as an asset, which you can build and even sell and seeing it as a job.

Business owners who are self-employed have decided to trade their talents and time for money by employing themselves rather than work for someone else.

The problem with this is that there are only so many hours in the day, which have to be divided between filling the sales pipeline with new prospects and supplying their talent through a product or service. If they don’t work, there is no income so they can’t take too much time off.

Small business owners who are entrepreneurs, are able to grow their businesses effortlessly, and maintain steady growth because they have mastered the art of creating multiple income sources within their business. Including passive income sources which means they bring in money even when the entrepreneur isn’t working. They are able to work a few days a week and have long holidays confident that their business will be making money without them being there.

Unless you are able to imagine having a business with a million-dollar revenue, you will never create one. The thoughts and activities of someone who is creating $5 million business are different from the thoughts and activities of someone creating a $100,000 business, just as the thoughts of the Olympian set on winning a gold medal are different from those of the amateur weekend warrior.

If you will not see the potential in deals, ask for the big sales or make the investments (in time AND money) required if you are running your business on a day to day, hand to mouth basis.

To set yourself up for building a $ 1 million business you have to change the way you think about money, the way you see your business and the way you value your time.

The most effective way to change the way you think is to practice a new behavior. Your thoughts create the actions that get you the results, but it also works in reverse.

• Change your actions:  identify the results you want, and the actions needed to get them.
• Identify the positive thoughts that would go with those actions.
• Take the action(s) and reinforce your new thinking by creating affirmations with them and saying these to yourself every day. Write them out and display them in places where you can see them frequently, i.e. on the bathroom mirror, beside your computer, etc.

Although not impossible, it is very difficult to achieve behavioral changes working by yourself, which brings us back to square one, the small businesses thinking.

The small business mindset is reluctant to seek professional help because the self-employed:

a) don’t value their time highly enough and therefore are prepared to struggle alone or spend hours doing menial actives rather than outsource them and

b) their attitude to money. The business owner with the small business mindset is often too afraid to invest the necessary money in their business because of their perception of the risks involved.

No one has ever created a financially successful 6,7 or 8 figure business with a small business mindset and neither will YOU, unless you change your mindset…