How to Prosper in Business

What does prosperity mean to you?

According to the Longman dictionary "to prosper means to grow and develop in a successful way".  

If you are a coach, therapist, course creator, author, or consultant in business by yourself, then you likely want your business, your private practice to prosper. Right?

To prosper you will need more clients and more high-quality clients so you can do what you love and have the lifestyle you deserve.

So how can a small business prosper?

You will find many articles written on this, but I believe it boils down to two critical things:

1. Direction

2. Action

To be able to grow your business, you must first know the direction you are headed.

What do you really want?

Think about and be clear on the sort of lifestyle you want to achieve from your business.

Be clear on your 'why'. Why did you start your business?

What do you want from your business- for you and your family? and for your clients?

Define your long, mid, and short-term goals. Have crystal clear clarity on where you want your business to be in 10-years time; 5-year's time and in 1-year?

- How many clients?

- How many days a week do you want to work in your business?

- How much time and money are you prepared to spend to grow your business? and market your services? to get the help to move faster?

Crystalise a SMARTI goal for the next 6 months. I'm sure you will have heard about SMART goals, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and time-bound, but have you heard of SMARTI goals?

I add the I to SMART to make the goal inspirational. We all know that even the best-laid plans can falter. Challenges happen, obstacles can arise to throw us off course. This is when the I comes into play.

Unless your goal is inspirational for you, creates such a burning desire inside, something you simply must achieve. Then when the unexpected happens you could easily be blown off course and falter, putting it into the 'too-hard-bucket'.

I don't want that to happen to you. so add the I to your SMART goals, and make them inspire you so that no matter how hard the challenge you face, you will have the drive and desire to keep going. If you keep going, you will succeed.

This leads us to the second critical factor for business success: Action.

To achieve anything, you will need to take action.

To prosper in business you will need to take action to market your services, talk with prospects, manage your finances, create your website and marketing assets, work with your clients, to research evidence-based best practices so you can best support your clients to achieve their aims.

The list goes on.

The more inspired you are by your purpose and goal for your business, the more likely you are to take action.

The more action you take, the more motivated you become to take more action.

Action Inspires Motivation

Have you ever hung around, waiting for inspiration to strike?

Maybe you had work to complete that needed a little more creative thinking, but you weren't feeling it. You might have even tried various things at the time to find motivation – maybe in scanning Pinterest for ideas. Or perhaps you looked for inspiration in nature, by taking a walk.

Did it work?

Chances are, you might have found a dab of motivation wrapped up in inspiration and it might have launched you – for about ten minutes. And then you were back to feeling unmotivated, but now that feeling was coupled with the idea that maybe you just weren’t capable of creativity. Or lazy.

The problem is, by seeking out motivation first, you’re putting the cart before the horse.

Motivation works best when it comes after the action has already started. If that’s the case, then what can you do to get motivated?

1. Start by doing something. Anything. Any action itself inspires motion. How do you do that? By using the momentum of a project that you're already engaged in, you're able to use your current forward motion to encourage you to keep going. It's the difference between the ‘carrot' and the ‘stick.'

In the old classic analogy, to move a donkey forward (donkeys being stubborn creatures) you have two choices. One is to use a stick. In this case, the ‘stick’ is the old way of motivating ourselves, where we try to force ourselves into action by throwing a lot of “You must do this now” statements at ourselves.

But in starting action first, we now switch over to the ‘carrot’ or the reward. This method of motivation is much more positive because you’re looking at the fact that you’re already doing something and asking yourself to keep going. Think, “Hooray for you, look at how much you’ve gotten done today, let’s see how much more you can do!”

The problem is, sometimes action alone isn’t doing it, and we’re still forcing ourselves along. That’s where the second method comes into play.

2. Act ‘As-if” The idea behind this method is simple – you act like you’re already motivated, and amazingly, you’ll feel motivated. It’s kind of like making yourself smile when you’re not happy, only to find out once you’re smiling that you’re feeling happier.

Together these two tools will motivate you even when you're not feeling inspired initially.

Remember that action is the key. So act first – the motivation will follow. You’ll be amazed at the difference.

Download my guide to abundant prosperity for more ways you can prosper in business. It's free!

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