Check Your Attitude - A List for Entrepreneurs

Fresh, new growth in your business happens when your energy and attitude toward your business are positive and sharp. I’ve developed this Entrepreneur’s Attitude Checklist as a way to assess small business owners and their need for change. Give yourself an attitude check by sitting down with a pen and paper (or your computer’s word processing program open) and rate yourself. No one will see it, but the results of spring cleaning your attitudes will definitely be noticed by your public.

How sharp is your clarity?
How clear are you about the purpose of your business? Have you slipped into adding on products or services that do not specifically serve your ideal and best customers in order to expand your market? Do you get lost when you explain your business to someone else? Clarity is key - you can't market what you can't succinctly say to others.

Assess your staying power.
How is your energy level toward your work? Do you easily lose focus? Do you let your energy lag when the going gets a little tough? To succeed in business requires staying power - a commitment of your energy, resources, and time on a consistent, ongoing basis. At some point, consistent energy literally turns your business on - and after that it grows on itself much more easily. Staying power is required to get to that first point.

How strong is your network?
You have to have help to build your business. It just cannot thrive in a vacuum and you can't build it all alone. Create a strong network of people around you for advice and support. Make sure your network is more successful than you are, and model yourself after the best of them.

How patient are you?
Your patience will always be tested in business. Impatience doesn't serve you well. If something doesn't work, look at it, change it and try it again. If a customer is trying your patience take a step back and reassess how to move toward peace. Flexibility in your behavior is a key component of business building. Rigidity drives you toward impatience. Rigidity doesn't last.

How opportunistic are you?
It consistently amazes me to watch business builders fail to either recognize or act on opportunities that are right in front of their faces. Following through with an idea, a contact, an article you come across that would be helpful to another - all of these are opportunities to make your connections and your business stronger. If you back away from opportunities ask yourself why. Find the fear and change it around. Taking action on opportunities is key to building business.

Do you trust your intuition?
The very best people in business will tell you that they make decisions by reviewing the facts AND trusting their guts. Skepticism and fear are business killers. Intuition and openheartedness create businesses with high energy, integrity, and success. There is no one thing that will help you more than to develop and trust your intuition.

How did your attitude check come out? Pat yourself on the back if you aced the test, and if you didn’t give yourself some time to correct any parts you lack. Two keys to keeping yourself motivated are to invest in yourself and hire some help, even if you can afford help only very part time. These actions will give you some free time and connect you with other entrepreneurs, guaranteed to make your business thrive.nn(C) Sue Painte