Ten Priorities for Change: Foundations for building a Beautiful Business and Life

foundation change business life
by flying success suitcase

How to make your business fly

This is the first is a series of 12 posts on Change (with a capital “C”) and laying the foundations for building a Beautiful Business that Stands the Test of Time. The following 11 weeks will see one post each week. Please also read last week’s post about Entrepreneurial Types, here.
As a Business-Life Coach (Principles of Business – Life coaching), I believe that your business is built on you. You, personally, are the foundation your business is built on, and if you want to build a Beautiful Business that Stands the Test of Time, you better make sure the foundation is as solid as you can make it. Hence, I believe that effective business coaching and development programs should focus as much on Change of the person of the business owner, as they are on Change in the mechanics of the business. (Read about my explanation of the different forms of coaching, guidance and business support here). As a Business-Life Coach, therefore, I want to help you turn yourself in the very strongest foundation for your business you can be. To do so, we must Change, with a capital “C”, ourselves. See also articles about personal and business Change in the Guardian here, in Success Magazine here, on Medium.com here , and in LinkedIn Pulse here.

The  very strongest foundation for a great business

For you to become the very strongest foundation your business is built on, I believe you must learn to focus on 10 Priorities. They are:
  1. Yourself
  2. Doing Nothing
  3. Having Fun
  4. Saying NO
  5. Guessing
  6. Asking for Help
  7. Managing Money
  8. Managing People
  9. Managing Product
  10. Managing Publicity
Over the next 10 posts I’m going to explain each of the priorities in more detail. The 10 posts are quite short (about 200 to 250 words each) and practical. I hope you’ll take the simple messages of each one to heart and experiment with them in your own life as a business owner. You can do a simple search and read all of the Priority posts at once, by clicking on the category: “Ten Priorities” in the category box in the right hand column.

The life of the harried business owner

First, let me sketch a picture of the life of a typical small business owner for you (BTW, I’d love to hear if you recognise yourself in any part of the picture): You’re the first one in the door in the morning and the last one out at night. You run around from crisis to crisis, extinguishing brush fires all day long. You feel guilty that you don’t do the stuff you know you ought to do to develop the business. Your staff don’t seem able to tie their own shoe laces without your supervision. Customers expect you, not your staff, to be the one who personally does all their work for them, yourself. You actually made more money before you started employing all those people anyway. And finally, you have to do your admin and catch up on your email after the kids have gone to bed.

Sucked into a sea of mud

Recognise any of that picture at all? Even if you only recognise 25% of that picture, you’re most likely on first name terms with overwhelm. Overwhelm is no fun anyway, but worse is that human brains in overwhelm are ineffective, they focus on the wrong things and make the wrong decisions and that leads to more stress and overwhelm and the whole thing becomes a vicious cycle. Overwhelm affects your health and well-being and that of your families and besides, your business gets sucked into a sea of mud as well. That’s the general state of things for many small business owners in my experience and some of the reasons many small businesses never develop to their potential.

Videos on Kochie’s Business Builders

Hence I’ve written The 10 Priorities. Accompanying the 10 Priorities are also a series of videos as as seen on Kochie’s Business Builders on national TV, Channel 7 in Australia. All 5 videos can be watched here I have also created a survey tool to help you gain greater insight into the many competing priorities of being the foundation your beautiful business is built on feel free to complete the “overwhelm and business” survey here now, and you will receive a handy report, by email in 24 to 48 hrs. If you make it your absolute commitment to focus on The 10 Priorities in the coming year, you will create a foundation on which you truly can build a Great Business that Stands the Test of Time, and your life will never be the same either… I promise you. For more resources and reading on strategies for growing your business follow this link For more information about to how to step out of overwhelm, get unstuck and start having Fun in Business again, click here I work with my clients in the Fun in Business Intensive program. The intensive is a 6 to 12 month program that is entirely focused on building a beautiful business and life and we start by creating a set of goals for making business fun again. Prior to engaging in the Fun in Business Intensive program, I take my clients through the 5 step discovery process, over a period of 3-4 weeks. The 5 step discovery process is designed to answer the question: Is it a good idea for the two of us to work together and do we thing we’ll be able to do great work together? The first steps in the Discovery process are entirely free, and the remaining steps are nearly free or low cost. Find out more about the 5 step discovery process here More about Personal Development and Leadership here

Next week, Priority #1: You

Download my free 12 Question Cheat-sheet to help you find your next Coach.

Leadership, Change and the 7 Big Questions of Small Business

Business owners frequently ask 7 Big Questions about how to Build a Beautiful Business and Life. The fifth of the 7 Questions is: How can I become a better leader? To answer this question about leadership I like to explain people about the 3 pieces of good news about leadership and change. There are many articles on this site about this topic.

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