ATTTENTION Business Owners
What is commonly taught but seldom
caught!
Nine
Keys that will cause your Fruit to Remain
- Love
- Love
what you do! Your passion will
take you as far as you desire to go with your business. Most of the time people give other people
the benefit of their passion and not themselves. If you are passionate about what you do
and have ever worked for someone else, then you may have been
passionately working at a high level of proficiency and effectiveness
because you loved the work. They
were making a great deal of profit from your passion. You can enjoy
the profit from your passion.
- Love
those you provide a service or a product to. Customers are aware of the passion you
have for what you do and it creates an excitement in them.
- Customers
respond to the way you respond to them.
It does not matter how important your excuse is, when it comes to
your customers there is no such thing as having a bad day. It doesn’t matter how great your
product or service is, if you neglect or treat your customer poorly you
make an unconscious decision to decrease your profits.
- Joy
- There
is strength in joy. Excitement
adds energy while disinterest drains energy. Joy does not equal to happiness, you
may not be happy about the long hours you have to devote to the
business. Starting up a business
does require long hours of planning, preparation, activation and
commitment to the success of your dream, but the joy is rejoicing for the
opportunity to make a profit for the passion inside of you.
- Joy
also draws. A business can have a
product that is equal to or inferior to their competitor but joy will
make the difference. Joy produces
after itself.
- Peace
- Be at
peace with yourself and your business idea. Peace of mind is a great encourager
when situations and circumstances appear not to be in your favor. When you know that all is well with
what you are doing you can have peace in the midst of what appears to be chaos. When you do the best that you can do
and do it with integrity you can have peace. Often people that are not connected to
your vision will complain or criticize supposing that you can do better and
have not done your best. But when
you know that you have done your best, to submit to complaints about it
implies that your best is inadequate.
When you know that you have done all that is right you can sleep
at night.
- Peace
will allow you to remain calm in the midst of growing pains. It will allow you to keep a leveled
head to create a solution.
Remember, there is nothing new under the sun, therefore look for
the solution. Someone else has
already solved some of your problems.
- Whenever
possible, keep the peace.
Remember, the customer is always right. Find a way to work with your
client. Make sure that they
understand that you are working for them not against them even if they
are difficult. Sometimes, however,
this is not possible.
- Patience
- Being
patient will be one of your greatest challenges. It may not seem that your progress is at
the level you expect during the developmental stages of your
business. But remember, you are
pregnant with purpose and purpose does not get in a hurry.
- Be patient
in dealing with people. If you are
not a people person, put someone that loves people between you and the
people.
- It
is difficult to avoid people if you are a business owner. You have to interact with vendors,
customers, employers and government officials.
- Patience
will carry you further than explosiveness, intolerance or utter disgust.
- Gentleness
- Handle
with care. Often, new business owners
are so zealous that they neglect themselves and their families. Remember the reason you started the
business. The business exists for
you, you don’t exist for the business alone, and your health can’t be
bought with wealth.
- Handle
the people carefully, don’t be abrupt and respond to your customers as if
you are doing them a favor.
- Differentiate
between the dollar and the individual purchaser of goods and services.
- You
are dealing and doing business with human beings with human needs and
feelings.
- Goodness
- Goodness
prevents enviousness and rivalry within a business infrastructure.
It should be your business practice to operate as a team as
you implement the vision, mission and goals of the company.
- Kindness
is a very important key to customer satisfaction. How many places do you return to where
the individuals were not kind to you?
- Faith
- You
must have faith in your business idea and your ability to produce profit
from that idea. You must also have
faith in your ability to provide a needed service or product for the
market that you target. You should
have the ability to delegate to others the task that you can not
proficiently accomplish yourself and have the faith that you can get
whatever you need that you personally lack to accomplish your business
goals. Do what you do best and allow others to complement you by doing
the things that you don’t have the time or the ability to perform.
- Have
faith in your business. No one
should be able to cause you to doubt
- Have
enough confidence to back what you provide not only with word but with
deed: a guarantee, warranty,
refund or exchange. There will be
times however, when you must say no refunds on particular products or
services because for every transaction there must be a fair exchange.
- Meekness
- Pride
and arrogance can be detrimental to a business. Shooting yourself in the foot does not
help the rest of your body even if your foot deserves it. Sometimes, you may have to humble
yourself to accomplish a particular business goal even if you are the one
that is in the right. That is not
a weakness but rather strength.
- You
don’t have to put down another company’s product or service to advance
your own. If your product or
service is unique, excellent, and marketable it will be well sought after,
it will speak for itself and others will sing its praises.
- Temperance
- Self
control is very important; you must be able to discipline yourself
regarding business and finance practices.
If you can not rule yourself you can not manage a business; you
can not manage people; you can not manage money; nor can you manage
inventory.
- Be
aware of who you are and operate accordingly. You are a leader. You are a manager. You are you a producer. You are operating in your passion and
purpose. You are the Chief
Executive Officer and the President.
