photo by Milos Milosevic

One of the best things that I can do with my clients is to ask great questions.  As a business owner the key ingredient for success is confidence.  Being decisive, having a plan and pushing forward are just part of the job description.  But that doesn’t mean you should just put your head down and go – taking the time to question things, make the right course adjustments at the right time…that’s what will ultimately get you where you want to go.

How do you know what questions to ask?  Every business is a little different, just like every business owner has their own way of doing things.  However there are fundamental core aspects of a successful business that have to be in place if you want to succeed in the long run – regardless of what business you are in.  If you start with that foundation and make it strong, everything else will come into shape.

Below are 10 questions that I recommend every business owner should take time and consider for their business.  If you don’t feel like you have a lot of time, read through the list and pick out the 2 or 3 questions that make you the most uncomfortable and start there.

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Looking through the lens of nostalgia, business used to be simple.  You could set up a road side stand (or the equivalent) and offer things that people wanted locally.  Your long term success totally depended on your local reputation and at the end of the day it was more about how you interacted with the community and your customers then it was about having some sort of great business model or get rich scheme.

Honest weights, Square Dealings – with the fish specials of the day.  Back in the day, it wasn’t just a numbers game, it wasn’t about having a sophisticated sales and marketing strategy or coming up with a surefire closing technique.  It was about doing the right thing, adding value and helping your customers win (while you win as well).

Sounds refreshing doesn’t it?

Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of those values – maybe because slow and steady wasn’t good enough or all of the technology got in the way of good business practices.  However…the good news is that we’re starting to see a return to the good old days – people are using the technology that’s out there to break down the barriers, not create more of them.  Let’s look at few examples:

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  photo from NASA 

Regardless of the type of business you’re in, the last 2 or 3 years have been a challenge, including the longest recession since 1929.  The good news is there are a lot of positive signs that the economy, led by small business, is ready to take off.

How do you make sure that your business takes off as well?  There’s one key ingredient that has to be there (the absence of it is the leading cause of business failures).

You have to actively plan for growth (and take action on that plan)!

Yes you have to have money, great people, solid ideas – but it all starts with a plan that makes sense…to you, to your employees, to the bank – whoever needs to know.  A plan that’s inspiring and actionable…and one that you actually do take action on!

As a business owner, or an entrepreneur you know how important it is to plan, but if you’re like most people it’s almost impossible to routinely find the time to be able to catch your breath, much less work on big picture planning.  What can you do?

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photo by Never Cool In School

There’s a lot going on with business owners these days – you’ve got the everyday challenges of just running your own business, you’ve got an economy that’s in the tank (and media outlets doing everything they can to make that as scary as possible) and you’ve got an election making a lot of noise and further distracting everyone.

But beyond all that, the problem I see with most business owners today is that they never take the time to look at the big picture.  They don’t have a focused view on where they’re going.

Let me know if you’ve ever heard this:

“That’s a great idea!  I just don’t know when I’ll get the time to do that!”

Or how about:

“I really should call my best customers, but I’m just too busy fighting fires!”

Now I’m all for hard work, but it doesn’t really matter how hard you work if you’re working on the wrong things.  And by wrong things, I’m talking about things that might be urgent but are unimportant in the grand scheme of things.

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