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Is Your Small Business A Success?
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Article 7: Keep Your Success Yardstick in Sight
Every entrepreneur needs reliable yardsticks to measure success. Many times such yardsticks measure activities that have less to do with financial results than with the satisfaction of personal values.
Having such yardsticks is one thing; remembering to apply them is another. Too often we’re hypnotized by the demands of daily business activities and we forget our reasons for running our own show.
When we run off track, we start to think of ourselves as failures. That’s when it’s time to reaffirm your values and related goals.
“Sometimes we need to look back and ask ‘Why did I get into this business in the first place?’” says John G. Agno, a certified business coach and president of Signature Inc. in Ann Arbor, Mich.
We can stay on the right business track by cultivating a success mentality that always knows just how current business activities are magnifying our personal values. And the way to cultivate that mentality is to take out our success yardsticks and apply them to our business organizations on a regular basis.
“If you don’t reassess your business every day, you run the risk of falling prey to the success trap, or to chasing your own tail trying to live up to someone else’s definition of success,” says Ed Brodow, author of “Beating the Success Trap” (Harper Collins, 2004).
Keep your success yardstick in a spot where you can’t miss it. It will be a continuing reminder that there is more to business than the bottom line.
Entrepreneurs who keep an eye on their personal success yardsticks achieve a gratifying state of inner peace.
“If money is your only end in business, then you will be depressed every time sales go down,” says Brodow. “But if you look at money as the means to more worthy ends, then you can weather your organization’s ups and down with equanimity.”
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