photo by chuckyeager

I started Aspire 4 years ago, give or take a couple of days, and it’s been a fun, exhausting and enlightening ride so far.  Not only have I had a chance to learn a ton of great things through my own business efforts, but I’ve picked up a lot of amazing things from my clients as well.

When I started Aspire, I didn’t realize I was ramping up my business a few months before the ‘Great Recession’ started, which has led to some really strong lessons as well (things like living within your means, slow and steady, bootstrap wherever possible, etc.).  It hasn’t been easy and certainly there have been plenty of stumbles and frustrations over the years but there’s also been steady growth and I’ve gained a lot of clarity with each lesson.

As they say…”If I only knew then what I know now…!”.  Which brings me to the point of this post – I wanted to take a shot at sharing the most useful things I’ve learned over the last few years – hopefully they’ll be helpful to others…and if you’ve got some useful things that I haven’t learned yet, then share them in the comments!

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  photo by looseends

Do the right things and be patient. That is easier said than done. As most of us are painfully aware following the Kansas City Royals has been one of the most challenging tests of perseverance and patience in the history of professional sports. The 2011 season is young, but it appears Dayton Moore’s plan of doing the right things (developing young talent through the Farm System; the foundation of the franchise) and patiently waiting for the results is starting to payoff…stay tuned and read on.

Approaching your business with the mind set of doing the right things and being patient is also easier said than done. If you are going to have sustainable long term success in your business you must build a strong foundation. Short cuts usually only yield short term results. And the process of building a strong foundation takes patience.

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  photo by icatus

When you’re talking about overall business effectiveness, the first thing you have to figure out is where the bottleneck is within your business (side note – it’s really challenging to find a good picture to represent a bottleneck).

Of course the bottleneck is the constriction / constraint in terms of your growth potential.  As an example, a lot of businesses have the issue of getting enough leads generated or getting interest in buying.  They have plenty of capacity in all other aspects of the business, so in this case, the bottleneck of the business is marketing.

Of course using that example, it wouldn’t make any sense to invest time, money or resources into anything but better marketing…at least until you uncover the next bottleneck. 

I thought it would be worthwhile to dig up a post I did a while back that has a pretty good model to talk through this idea – I call it the 8 Pillars Model and it’s a good way to think through your business.   What Pillars are holding you back?

Can you identify the primary bottleneck in your business success right now?  When’s the last time you tried to identify where things were getting hung up?  I’d love to hear your thoughts – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach

photo by mikejmartelli

It’s the start of a new year and the possibilities are endless!  Although that sounds like a great situation, the problem is that the possibilities are endless, and if you’re like most business owners (or most people for that matter) it’s easy to get overwhelmed when you have that many things you could focus on.

What tends to happen is you get distracted with all of those possibilities and you ultimately don’t make all that much progress.  Your efforts are diluted, you get distracted before things really get done and there’s not a serious push behind any one effort.

If you really want to hit what you’re aiming for in the long run, you will be a lot better off limiting the number of targets you have at any given time.  In fact I’d recommend thinking of it like an old fashioned revolver – you only get 6 bullets at any given time and you have to make it count!

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I had the chance to watch Hoosiers over the holidays – it had been a long time since I’d seen it (and the rest of the family hadn’t seen it!).  Great movie – I’d highly recommend catching it again!

If you’re not familiar with the movie – it was made in 1986 and it’s the story about a basketball coach (Gene Hackman) who gets a final chance at redemption by coaching at a very small rural Indiana school.

Although it’s a very small school they have some talented players and reasons to believe they can compete but they’re undisciplined and raw when the coach makes it to town.

One of the things that stood out to me is the coach’s approach to bringing the team around – early on he tells the team:

“I’ve seen you guys can shoot but there’s more to the game than shooting. There’s fundamentals and defense.”

There’s more to the game than shooting…now how would that apply to small business owners? (you knew I was going to tie this into business somehow didn’t you…?)

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