Small Business Owners – Expect Success

February is International Expect Success Month. As a business owner, professional, student or parent why would you do anything without expecting the outcome to be successful? We should expect success in every endeavor or why are we doing it? This requires a mindset shift. My five tips below will help you achieve success.

1. Strategy – As a business owner, professional, student or parent you must know the steps necessary to complete the project. You would not get in your car and drive to an unknown destination without a roadmap or GPS unless you wanted to waste hours being lost. Design a step by step strategy either as a list of steps or design a flow chart to ensure you do not forget something and waste time. You must have a strategy or plan so you can achieve success.

2. Billable Hours - When you make the decision to complete a task think about how many hours you would be willing to pay someone to complete the same task. This analogy can also be used when assigning children chores or helping them gauge how long a homework assignment should take to be completed. When you think in terms of billable hours you will often see that a task does not take as long to complete as it does when you procrastinate or let fear derail you. Remember, perfection is a form of fear. When fear gets in the way you will not achieve success.

3. Impose Deadlines – Many people work best under pressure. Impose a deadline either by assigning a by date for completion of a task or when you will reach a decision. Setting a timer and only allowing you a certain amount of time will also aid in getting the project completed. Completion of a job or task will bring you success.

4. Outsource – Regardless of the task you will not be the expert on every facet of its completion. Outsource the critical steps that can be done by someone better at the job than you because they will be able to do it faster and better. Everyone should always outsource proof reading the final product. After you have read a document so many times you will be reading it the way you want it to sound. Get a few extra sets of eyes on it to catch small grammar or sentence structure errors. Build this proofreading time into your strategy and timeline so you can expect success.

5. Examine Your Environment – you will want to make time to examine your environment so that you can see who or what is sabotaging your time and efforts. You may be surprised that the family pet is begging for your attention or someone close to you is leaving your office a mess each time you have an important client session. He or she may not even be aware that what they are doing is derailing your success.

As a small business owner, professional, student or parent you deserve to be successful. You should never settle for less than a successful outcome in your endeavors. When you use my five tips and design a strategy, think in billable hours, impose deadlines, outsource and examine your environment you will see yourself and your business growing personally and professionally. Success is not something to fear and it is not something that we should think of as unattainable. February is International Expect Success Month. Let’s make every day a day we expect success.