How to achieve a successful business

What does a successful business look like to you?

Many people have different ideas of what a successful business looks like or even what success is or means.  

Most people would say a successful business is one that is profitable, makes money and preferably a lot of money for the business owner and has a lot of clients or customers.  I would agree that would be a successful business.

To achieve this type of success, it requires hard work, dedication and commitment one hundred percent all of the time - or so most people would think.

Richard Branson has a different view point, profit is not always the key to success.

Having a good idea, also doing the things you enjoy doing and seeing them through with planning and foresight will bring success.

How do you do that?  

First thing to do is research, who else has a similar business idea to yours?  Find people who are already successful doing something similar to your idea and then find out in detail how they go about doing it.  

There is no point in re-inventing the wheel if there is already a model and plan to follow, especially if it works and is already successful.  

Many people have similar products and businesses they are all very different and some work and some don't.  If you are passionate about what you do or want to do, then as Nike says "just do it"

Being turned down and laughed at and people telling you it won't work - ignore them if you are really passionate about what you do, it will be successful.

How to ensure success?

Planning - I can hear you moaning as planning and research are the key to success.  First create and write a business plan.  It doesn't have to be in too much detail, but it really needs to be written down on paper so you can see the following in black and white

• your company name and image
• how many products or services will you be offering
• what equipment you need - essential and non essential
• what premises you need - physical, virtual, mobile
• other people you might need
• how much is everything going to cost
• most importantly how much will it cost to run for the first 3 to 6 months while you are establishing your business

Many new companies start out without any of the above information, they just have a great idea and think, I can do this.  You might be working for a company and see a lot of money coming into the business, unless you are in the accounts department, you don't see the money that goes out of the business.  Basing your idea on what you see others doing, might not be as profitable as you think.

There are set formulas that work to find out how much you need and these can be calculated down to the hour or even half hour.  This can be for many businesses the key to failure or success.

With new companies and even established companies that have not done the basic calculations on what their fixed costs, variable costs and relate this to the rate they need to bring into the business to even break even - this will be contributing to failure.  

If you want to succeed in business, be profitable, and live longer than one or two years in the same business - then planing and research are key.

Want to know how to do this?  We have several workshops to help businesses.  We also have business consultants who can come and meet with you, do a fact finding report and offer you a quotation on what areas that need addressing that can turn your business around from being barely profitable to very profitable

for more details email anne@thehealingzoneacademy.net