Managing a Small Business
Boosting Profits - Think Success

Think Success

Success Is All In Your Mind!
Thinking success goes a long way toward being a success!

If you picture yourself as someone who is ultimately going to succeed-then success is going to come a lot easier.

If, on the other hand, you picture yourself as someone who is either highly likely to fail or not to progress-then no matter how talented you are or how hard you work, it's going to be very difficult to succeed.

Thinking success can catapult your career or business ahead and make you more effective in all kinds of different situations, from dealing with people, to concentrating on analytical issues, to developing creative ideas.

Thinking failure can stop you cold, like the icy moat or cold stone walls of a medieval castle, and make you less effective in dealing with people, less able to focus on your work, and less likely to develop creative ideas.

The Success Formula!
So how can you think success? Here's a few quick suggestions equally applicable if you're running your own business or trying to build a career:

1. Have a five-year plan for success.
2. Realize that you, not others, ultimately control your success.
3. Brainstorm alternatives to tough situations.
4. Celebrate your achievements.
5. Shrug off your setbacks.
6. Develop a support network.
7. Always stand for integrity.
8. Remind yourself that every day is a new opportunity!
9. Keep yourself in top physical condition.
10. Always be open to learning new ideas.

But your ultimate success is going to have a lot more to do with how you respond to setbacks than with the setbacks you actually encounter.

Just a couple of weeks ago, I was blown away when an overhaul of our cash-flow forecasting showed we had underestimated our Fall borrowing needs by 100 percent. I would need to borrow an extra million dollars-close to our limit!

Uncomfortable with this outlook, I spent an entire evening searching for solutions, but emotionally I couldn't get past the bad news-so I couldn't find any solutions. However, the next day I woke up feeling refreshed and optimistic and was able to shave over $400,000 in expenses and add $500,000 in projected new income.

If you have the right attitude, you can always find alternatives.

No Risk Means No Success!
To really get ahead, you've got to take some risks. No successful business or career was built without some risk taking.

This doesn't mean you should walk off a cliff-but instead you need to take calculated risks, after you have carefully collected and weighed all the information you can gather.

How much risk should you take? How far ahead do you want to go?

I don't think it's a coincidence that some of the most spectacularly successful business people have also had some spectacular failures and near failures. Take Henry Ford or Thomas Edison, for example; they didn't let their failures hold them back.

Come to think of it, with all of the failures I've had . . . maybe some really big success is just around the corner!

Successful People Celebrate!
An important ingredient for success is celebrating each and every triumph-and forgetting about every failure-both with the people around you and with yourself, too!

This doesn't come naturally to me, but I have a great sales manager who more than makes up for it.

I might be complaining about how disappointed I am that our sales are off budget by 15 percent, but then he'll point out how happy he is that sales are up 20 percent over the previous year! His kind of talk breeds success!

Don Dwyer, the late franchise king, emphasized in his paperback book Target Success how important it is to celebrate success even if you don't hit your exact goals. If sales are budgeted to be up 20 percent, but they only went up 17 percent, celebrate anyway! Have a party for the company and give yourself a reward, too!

Me-I just bought an awesome powerboat with a two-hundred-horsepower engine!