Tuesday

How to Make Money from your Passion. You don't want to forget this!

I met a business enterprise manager once in a small mining town in New Zealand.

She had come from a background of working in Social Enterprises and she said something to me that made a lot of sense.

"You know, small business owners expect so little from their businesses and they seem to lack passion" she told me. "In the social arena, people are so passionate and so hard working for what they believe in, they usually gladly burn themselves out."

"So why do you think that happens?" I asked her, suspecting she had figured something important out.

"I bet it's because in their first two years of business, there's just so much compliance, so much set up, so much output, they get overwhelmed by it all and simply forget why they started their business in the first place."

Has this happened to you?

Have you been so busy building your business, that you have forgotten why you have originally started this enterprise?

Are you like the person, who left their job so they could start a business where they could have more time with their family and they end up working 7 days a week?

Think about what you are passionate about in your business.

When you clearly remember this, write it down.  You don't want to forget this.

The next step is to clarify and define what you can do that's different and better than anyone else and that is something that expresses your passion.

There are plenty of "Me too" businesses that deliver the same Product & Service in the same way with the same result.  Most of them are fading ito the yellow pages with all their competition, doing the same old, same old.  What can you deliver with passion, that is different, that serves the customer's needs in a different and better way than anyone else?  What can you do that's unique?

When you clearly remember this, write it down.  You don't want to forget this.

And finally, have you ever see someone putting their focus on parts of their business that are not the part that makes the money - have you been into a business lately with staff who are looking for the easiest way out to deal with customers?  Or the easiest way to do a job.  And they spend their time and effort on that, not on things that make money?  Have you seen that lately?


Is that a business owner who is focusing on the important things?  Or is this someone who is tolerating destructive behavior in order to keep the peace?  What is going to make the money?

It's important to figure this out for your business.  The Commonwealth bank last year gave Kiwi CEO Ralph Norris a huge payout handshake for getting the bank into number one rating in customer service.  The other banks must have known they were on a winner, because there was a real fight for that number one position.

What's your economic engine?  What is going to drive the money making engine in your business?

When you clearly remember this, write it down.  You don't want to forget this.

 Hey - if you have forgotten why you started your business - it's not too late.


By answering these three questions, you have come a long way forward from simply not knowing and just working harder to keep getting the same old, same old results.

Good luck with this and if you need some help, give us a call.

The Methodology for this process lies in Jim Collin's Hedgehog Concept.

You can hear what it's about from the Maestro's mouth here.

Thanks for visiting us here. Get to know clarity. Email me, Mike Kennedy...

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