If you have the mindset for growth, if you understand the psychology of your perfect customer and know exactly what they look like, if you’ve defined what your business does as opposed to what you do in your business, and if you have all your foundation systems in place, then it’s time to go marketing!!

Business Systems and Personal Systems create focus and, far from limiting you, allow you to be more creative!

While measuring your results is critical to understanding where your business is and where’s it’s going, I want to touch on another aspect of measurement. The first and only true measure of business success is not what we get from our customers, it’s what our customers get from us. So, we’ve also got to become more professional at understanding how our customers see and measure results.

Thomas Watson, the father of IBM, was once asked how he built his company into the structure it became – because, he said, “I planned that structure from day one”.

Most small businesses, if they have a structure, build it only to suit their current needs. Consequently, a few people are designated to fill all the roles so the structure is defined by the individuals and not by the tasks they do. As this becomes ingrained over time it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to separate the two.

What Do You Do?  In many cases, your success will be determined by how accurately you can define what business you’re in. It has to be presented from your customer’s view – they need to know WIIFM (What’s In It For Me!)

In working with business owners as they strive to get the most out of their operations and, at the same time, try to create a degree of personal balance, I’m often confronted with the response – “but I just don’t have the time to do it all!” Does this sound like you?