Being in Business on Purpose

I speak with many small and mid-sized business owners that are great people offering great products and outstanding service to their customers, yet they continually struggle to keep their business in the black. These down to earth, know everyone’s first name and family member, business owners are the type of people that will bend over backwards for their customers and sacrifice their profits to make the customer happy. Essentially they are giving away the store in the name of customer satisfaction and business loyalty.

From the outside the business appears to be prosperous servicing large quantities of consumers. The business is often bustling with activity as employees are kept constantly running between projects and customers. However, at the end of the day the business owner sits down to look over the daily receipts and is surprised to see little or no revenue or return for the day’s onslaught of activity.

I have a friend that I am constantly reminding that he must be in business on purpose and that purpose is to make money. If you are not in business to make money then you might as well close up shop. Being in business as a help and support to others is a noble and selfless course of action that will bankrupt you faster than you can imagine. Now I am not saying that customer service is not important, to the contrary customer service is the lifeblood of successful businesses that rely on repeat and referral customers. However, I remind you as I do with my friend that if you are a business owner or entrepreneur that you are, first and foremost, a businessperson and you are in business to produce revenues. The type of business that you are in is secondary; how you have chosen to make money and the profession to make money in is up to you and your field of expertise.

Be in business on purpose by letting go of emotional attachment and focusing on what will help the business to generate positive cash flow and steady payments for your services. Most small and mid-sized businesses are started with the notion that the owner can have the best of everything. Time, money and the freedom or liberty to come and go as he or she pleases; yet most business owners find that they are putting in long hours for less money and have greater strain and stress as a result of owning a business. They have become so involved in satisfying the needs of their customers that they forget their reason for taking on the added responsibility of being a business owner--that of making more than if they were working for someone else.

In speaking to my friend I discovered that he has a real passion for gardening, so I explained to him that running a successful business is just like caring for and cultivating a beautiful garden. In order for the flowers to grow and blossom it is necessary to give constant care and attention to the soil and regularly weed out the plants that are choking the flowers. In this case my friend has customers that expend a tremendous amount of time and energy and produce little or no income for the amount of work they receive. By “weeding the garden” and ridding himself of the clients that are choking the business, my friend is able to spend time cultivating the paying clients and working with them to produce the blossoms and fruits that he wants.

I gave my friend the assignment of evaluating each of his customers, using the criteria that he had developed to determine whether his clients were positively producing a cash flow or choking the stream of income. As you nurture your clients they will begin to bloom and grow as your garden does at home.

You must feed and water the plants regularly by nurturing the roots. The roots that are unseen determine what will grow. I am of course speaking metaphorically about the business and clients and I want you to take equal care of your business as you would your garden at home. Establishing a firm foundation of products and services and setting up a business plan for the enactment of your action will serve as a blueprint that you can refer to as your business begins to grow. Weeding out the clients that “choke” the flowering clients and monopolize your time is essential for you to grow your business. At times you will have to roll up your sleeves to do the dirty work in order to see the beauty that will blossom.

In business as with gardening you must be consistently spending time cultivating healthy relationships and caring for your customers. Being in business on purpose is about planting and growing the type of clients or customers that you want to work with, those that appreciate what services and/or products you offer and see the value to them in paying you for your time and effort. Remember why you started your business--to generate an income and be of service to the community and humanity. If you are on track and on purpose you are doing great. If you feel that you are barely scraping by and that your customers are sucking up your time and not rewarding you for your effort it may be time to sit down and evaluate each customer and do some “weeding” so that the clients and customers you do want will have room to come to you and you will have time and energy to devote to them.

If you were a farmer and you plant corn, you would expect corn to grow. If you planted wheat, you would expect wheat to grow. If you plant nothing, expect weeds to grow. Determine what your ideal customer looks like what are their buying habits are, if you are not currently servicing these “ideal” clients then it is time to do some weeding and cultivate your garden so that beautiful, healthy clients may thrive and grow and you will enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Shifting Paradigms moves You forward

 Have you ever driven a manual transmission? When you first begin learning how to shift gears there is a period of time when you are consciously making an effort to remember when to shift. You have to put the clutch in and then think about which gear you want then you have to ever so slightly let the clutch out. As you are learning there are times when you grind the gears or you let the clutch out too quickly and the vehicle stalls.

After a while shifting gears becomes second nature and you can smoothly shift through the gearbox without difficulty. You instinctively become aware of your speed and when the best time is to shift from first to second and second to third and so on. Those who drive a stick shift on a regular basis know that you can only go a certain speed in each gear and unless you shift to a higher gear the car will not go faster than the gear permits. In order to go faster and cover move ground you must be able to operate in the higher gears; third, fourth, fifth and occasionally sixth gear. With each gear the vehicle increases momentum and moves you forward toward you destination.

In life I meet people that are moving forward and those that are crawling along. Some of the people I encounter are operating in the higher gears; they are successful, motivated and busy generating results and attaining their goals and desires. We often refer to these people as “driven.” They know where they are and they know not only what they want but also what to do to get what they want. These people are constantly on the go, their movements reflect their intensity, they walk quickly, they think quickly and they make decisions quickly. Usually, they are tackling a lot of different projects at once and they have trained themselves to be productive through proactive action and attention to what needs to be done.

But not everyone is operating and moving through life in high gear. There are many people that are stuck in first gear, unaware that they can shift gears and pick up speed and momentum in life. Then there are those that are idling in neutral, who no matter what they do in life are not moving at all because they have not engaged the gears. These people talk about the future and how wonderful life will be for them one day. They speak in terms of “if only,” and “when I am,” and do little or nothing to change themselves or their circumstances to make things happen for themselves. These people often complain that life is hard and should be better, yet they sit idling in neutral without realizing that they can engage life and create what they want if they would just simply take action.

Just like shifting gears on a manual transmission, shifting paradigms is not easy for people that have rarely been out of second gear. Paradigms are the subconscious patterns of behavior that are the blueprints we follow for how we do things. Have you ever noticed that you follow a daily routine and it is the same day in and day out? You get up at the same time each day, you dress yourself following a set pattern of behavior; which leg goes in first, which shoe goes on which foot first, which arm goes into what sleeve first. Most of us aren’t even aware of these patterns they are automatic responses that we have followed for years. They are our paradigms. (Para-dimes: the ‘G’ is silent).

Our paradigms generate our thoughts. From the earliest years of our life our paradigms (patterns of behavior) are formed. Parents, the environment we grew up in, teachers and people we looked up to all influenced who you are today and how you do things in life. Clinical studies have shown that between infancy and four years old 50% of what a child believes about them self and how they will do things in their life is “programmed” into their brains. Between the ages  of four and eight another 30% of thought patterns and beliefs about the world around them are hardwired into the child's brain. And between the ages of eight and twelve an additional 15% of personality traits are set in place, so that by the time a child reaches twelve years old 95% of whom they are and how they view life, others and them self has been imprinted onto their subconscious mind. Our patterns of behavior, our values and beliefs, our very thought processes are structured and set; created by the people we were closest to growing up in those formative years.

Shifting paradigms is not easy. Becoming consciously aware of the automatic responses and unconscious decisions we make on a daily basis takes effort, practice and the desire to change. Our thoughts are governed by the subconscious programs that run us, just like a computer that is programmed to function in a specific way, the human mind is a programmed compilation of thoughts, feelings and actions that create our world and more importantly our results. Changing thoughts, changing feelings and changing actions creates a shift that generates different results.

Shifting out of low gear is accomplished by creating movement or motion, simply doing something different, doing something that you have not done before, generating an idea and taking an action step will lead to further action. The act of doing something will create a reaction that leads to momentum. Through the continual processes of motion, action and reaction momentum builds and new results will come. Velocity will increase and life will begin to move you forward as you continue to form new ideas and move in new directions. The more you do to generate activity, the busier you will become. The busier you become the more your momentum will grow and you will soon be shifting from second gear to third, fourth and fifth. The busiest people are the ones that get a lot of things done during the day. They have trained themselves to be successful by keeping everything around them in motion. Do not allow life to happen to you, make life happen for you. Get in gear and live a life that is driven by passion, by purpose and by your desire for success.