For your business to grow and improve, YOU must grow and improve. Sorry, there's no shortcut around that fact. If you stop growing as an owner and leader, so does your business. For your business to get better, YOU must get better. You must expand your business vision, knowledge, mindsets, skills, and habits. Or, be content to stay where you are or worse yet, lose ground. Your choice!
Please don't misinterpret the point of this business coaching blog. It's not about the importance of personal development for the sake of personal growth. It's all about business development. To develop your business to a higher level, you too must develop, grow and evolve as a business owner. You must invest in yourself so you can effectively grow your business and enjoy the process. As an entrepreneur, you can't find a better ROI (return on investment) than from investing in yourself.
Let's face facts. Your business is where it is, how it is, and what it is today because of YOU...more specifically, because of your former knowledge, mindsets, strategies, and habits. What got you to where you are today is NOT SUFFICIENT to keep you there or to get you to where you want to be. For your business to keep on growing, you must keep on growing. That is the price you must pay. To earn more, you must learn more. Are you up to the challenge?
As a business coach for over 17 years, I have seen first-hand that the most successful and satisfied entrepreneurs never stop reading, learning, listening, growing and associating with winners. They invest in coaching and more knowledge. Bottom line, they invest in themselves. They are thirsty for new knowledge, ideas and solutions. As UCLA basketball coach and legend John Wooden said, "It's what you learn after you know it all that really counts".
Just when an owner thinks "I have all the answers and arrived at success" is the day that business starts to decline or collapse. Such arrogance will destroy a business. Instead, we need to remain humble and realize that we always have room to learn, grow and improve. As your virtual business coach, please be humble enough and open to the real possibility that you have a great deal more to learn... about yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, your business, customers, industry, vision, employees, your plans, opportunities, problems, threats/dangers, competitors, etc. Hopefully you don't really believe that you have all the answers, know everything there is to know, are smarter than everyone else, and that there is no room for you to grow, develop and improve.
Such arrogance would be toxic to your team and business. Sadly, a sizable portion of business owners think they know it all, stop learning, and pay a huge price for their hubris. These are some of the same owners who think that business coaching is just for other entrepreneurs. They don't get it! They fail to grasp that for their business to grow, they must grow. Coaching can help any and all owners to objectively face reality, gain clarity, develop action plans, receive accountability to stay on track...and expand their vision, knowledge, mindsets, skills, and habits. The ROI from coaching can be immense...anywhere from 10 to 100 times over, depending on how much a client puts into the coaching process.
Again, what got you to where you are today is NOT SUFFICIENT to keep you there or to get you to where you really want to be. Things change. Conditions change. New problems and challenges will require new solutions. New opportunities will require new ways of thinking and new strategies. Coaching helps you to think and act differently. Do not allow yourself and your company to be held back by your outdated practices, habits, strategies, assumptions, and ways of thinking. You must continually seek new and fresh ideas.
New ideas, answers and solutions can come from all around you. To learn from other people's experiences, read more magazines and books. Attend seminars and workshops. Listen to CDs while you drive to and from work, especially about how successful owners, leaders and executives think and act...get inside their heads. Join a group of peers in a Growth Coach group coaching program and learn new strategies, insights and perspectives from other owners and industries. That is a powerful mastermind group of like-minded owners all committed to growing themselves as owners, their businesses and the richness of their lives through a coaching and accountability process. Another way to leverage ideas is to ask questions and listen to your employees, vendors, suppliers and customers. Be thirsty to learn more and gather new ideas.
To help you continue your learning, click here to download a free copy of our highly popular, e-book, "Becoming a Strategic Business Owner". It's no coincidence, successful business leaders are voracious readers.
Daniel M. Murphy
President, Founder & Business Coach
The Growth Coach
Business Coaching Franchise System
Certified Business Coaches throughout North America