Yesterday I outlined two steps to finding the bright spots in your business to grow small business, as discussed by Chip and Dan Heath in Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. The bright spots are the key to changing your business, gaining more balance, clarity and focus.
Step one is to find the bright spots in your business (or in your life). Then, step two is to analyze what it is that makes those bright spots shine. Don’t just take them for granted. Go under the hood, tinker around and uncover what it is that makes the bright spots shine. Now on to step three. Take the analysis you’ve completed in step two and find ways to clone what you’re doing in the bright spots and incorporate into your not so bright spots. If you find that your bright spot is in selling, but you struggle with planning, what is it that makes selling work for you? Is it the thrill of uncovering exactly what your client needs and satisfying that need with one of your products or services? If that’s the case, approach your planning as identifying needs for a person aka your business, and going on a hunt just like you would with a client, to find the perfect solution to that
need. If you need to increase sales, what resources do you have access to that can best meet that need for your business.
Is it the interaction with another person that makes selling a bright spot with you? Approach someone you can talk to about your plans. Bounce ideas off of them and in return, offer to do the same for them or something else that they need help with. Create a social planning process so that it’s more appealing to you than being in a room alone thinking.
Being a successful business owner does not require you to reinvent the wheel. Look out into your network. Who are other successful business owners do you know? What are their bright spots? Just because they aren’t in the same business you are in doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them.
Talk to these people. Find out what makes them successful. Take them to lunch, coffee or for a drink. Then, synthesize the bright spots across all the different successful business owners you know. Whether it’s 3 people or 20 people, discover what those common factors are to their success. How can you clone those commonalities and bring them into your business? Again, by shifting your focus to the positive and bringing more positive, successful practices into your business, you’re taking a BIG step to changing your business into the revenue generator you desire.