As CEO of The Growth Coach, a business coaching franchise system, I am blessed to work with a great corporate staff and hundreds of passionate and dedicated franchise owners throughout North America. Great ideas, best practices, and wonderful coaching and accountability solutions are constantly being developed, refined, shared and exchanged.  It’s a vibrant and innovative environment to say the least.

As such, there’s always plenty of profitable strategies and resources shared within our coaching franchise system to better serve our several thousand small business coaching clients each year as well as our own franchise owners.  For our Growth Coach franchise owners, we are committed to support them, help hold them accountable, and help them to continually grow to become even more effective as business owners, marketers and business coaches.

Recently, our operations support team shared the following “10 Suggestions for a Great 2011” with all our franchise owners/business coaches.  With slight modifications and removal of some proprietary content, I thought our Growth Coach blog readers would enjoy these simple yet powerful suggestions as well.

After all, for your business to grow in 2011, YOU must grow in 2011.  If you think the same thoughts and do the same things in 2011 that you did in 2010, why would you expect any different results?  For a better 2011, YOU must grow your mindset, knowledge, strategies and habits.

10 Suggestions for a Great 2011:

1. STAY POSITIVE. For your business to grow, YOU must grow as an owner, leader, and marketer.  Feed your mind with a consistently positive diet … buy uplifting, motivational and educational CDs for your drive time … create a positive University on Wheels.  Go to www.Nightingale.com for some great CDs/MP3 downloads and select areas you would like to focus on and improve as a business owner. Be willing to expand your vision, mindset and possibilities for yourself and your business.  Also, go on a TV News diet … consume less news on a daily basis.  Most of it is negative, sensational, and meant to prey off your fears.  Above all else, as an owner, stay positive and remain confident.
2. KEEP AND EXPAND WHAT YOU HAVE. Visit with the Top 20% of your clients in Quarter One to see how they are doing, how you could better serve them, what their 2011 goals are, and what other unmet service needs they may have.  Focus on client retention and expansion. Stay close to your top customers as they are someone else’s top prospects.
3. MAINTAIN A MARKETING MINDSET. Never forget the business you are really in … the business of MARKETING.  Don’t think like a technician, think and act like a marketer. If you are going to be an expert in anything, make it marketing.  Marketing should be the highest priority for any owner and business.  It’s your lifeblood and it’s simply about educating others on why it’s in their best interest to do or continue to do business with you.  Make your marketing an on-going, systematic, educational process.  Get your whole team involved.
4. REMEMBER THAT BUSINESS IS A CONTACT SPORT. Growing your business (especially business coaching) is all about building trust, establishing relationships and helping to solve problems for others.  You can’t fully achieve that dynamic without sufficient marketing and face-to-face interaction.  Don’t fool yourself, your website and social media marketing will help you build credibility, but for the vast majority of businesses, that is NOT sufficient to grow a business … success still comes down to meeting with clients, prospects and referral sources on a regular basis and building relationships and solving problems.  To truly grow your business, consider focusing 60% of your time on marketing, sales and promotion (includes client retention and expansion efforts); 35% on client fulfillment; and only 5% on administration.  Get out of the office and actually go visit and see your customers/clients, prospects and referral sources.  Set a goal to meet in person with 10 people a week.  Go make contact! And please, please, please, don’t overdue the social media marketing (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogging, etc.) … that is supplemental, NOT a replacement for highly effective and productive relationship-building efforts.
5. FACE YOUR MENTAL DEMONS. As an owner, you can only advance when you are standing on the firm ground of TRUTH, not the quicksand of DENIAL.  Be totally honest with yourself and determine the Top 3 Limiting Beliefs/Excuses holding you back from greater success, happiness and fulfillment … and then, share those mental demons with someone (business coach, partner, peer, etc.) to help you slay them. To achieve your desired external outcomes, you must first win the inner game (proper mindset, supporting daily thoughts, empowering beliefs, positive stories, etc.).  You must conquer self and conquer your mental demons. If need be, hire a certified business coach like The Growth Coach.
6. BELIEVE TO ACHIEVE. Believe in yourself as a worthy owner, believe in the value/benefit of your products/services (business coaching solutions for example), and believe in the endless number of clients/customers that truly need your help and solutions.  If there is something you don’t like about yourself or your offering, FIX it.  If you don’t believe in yourself and your offering, why would anyone else?  Do not lets FUDs (fears, uncertainties, doubts and suspicions) hold you back. You have God-given worth, talents, desires and opportunities.  You deserve to be successful, happy, and fulfilled.  Don’t let your mental demons derail your success.
7. GET A BUSINESS COACH AS WELL. Busyness, denial and distractions are some of the greatest enemies of small business owners, including business coaches.  It’s hard for entrepreneurs to see the reality of their situation as they are often too close to the action and have subjective blind spots.  Do yourself a huge favor and hire a business coach to serve as an honest and objective GPS for you and your business … helping you get from where you are right now to where you want to be…to help you close the performance GAP. An effective business coach will help you to be more focused, effective and strategic.  You will gain clarity of direction, develop and continually update a strategic action play, and receive on-going accountability to keep you on track.  Can’t you benefit from greater clarity, confidence, capabilities and results?  We all can! And besides, on the conservative side, business coaching has proven to provide a robust 3-5 times return on investment.  Every business owner and entrepreneur (including a coach or consultant) deserves a business coach! Click here to learn more about our money-back guaranteed, group coaching workshops.
8. ADD MORE ACCOUNTABILITY. Put more accountability in your life and business in 2011.  Everyone needs someone to help us achieve our highest potential, to stretch us, challenge us and be honest with us.  Find an accountability partner or two (business coach, adviser, partner, spouse, peer, etc.) who will give you honest, tough-love, and objective feedback and on-going accountability. Surround yourself with a few highly positive influencers who will challenge you, get you out of your comfort zone, and keep you accountable.  Someone who will not allow you to make excuses or succumb to your limiting beliefs.  Someone who will bring out your very best.  Nothing you can do will improve your results more in 2011 than allowing yourself to be held accountable to higher standards and higher results. Give yourself the gift of accountability.
9. GET SALES HELP. Enroll in sales training/coaching to improve your sales confidence, capabilities, sales process metrics, and your overall sales effectiveness.  Lead generation (marketing) and lead conversion (selling) are two critical areas to focus on in 2011. Sales coaching will provide a significant and immediate impact to your bottom-line results. Click here to learn about our Sales Mastery Program for you and your sales team.
10. OWN 100% OF YOUR RESULTS. Take full responsibility for ALL your results … the good, bad and the ugly … allow no excuses or blaming.  Don’t tell yourself comforting lies to make you feel better, they are just excuses and do much harm in the short and long-term.  You can either make money or make excuses, you can’t do both.  You get to choose. Hopefully, you choose to fully accept and own your business results.  If so, you don’t give your power away to others or to circumstances and retain the ability to make course corrections. In 2011, choose to be a victor, not a victim.

Everyone at The Growth Coach wishes you a very prosperous, happy, healthy and fulfilling 2011.  But all our wishing will do very little for you.  Bottom line, you are 100% responsible for your success and happiness … only you are in charge and can make the necessary changes for a better business and life. If you want some coaching and accountability help to make positive and lasting changes, click here to find a certified Growth Coach near you or click here to learn about our popular Coaching Club Program (tele-coaching).