“Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in” Confucius.
Basically Confucius is saying you need to take action to achieve your objective. I love that Confucius lived over 2000 years ago but yet his observations are still very true, and they are incredibly true if you are trying to build your business.
If we use the 80/20 rule to look at businesses we would find that the most successful 20% all have something in common……they take plenty of focused action.
Their approach to taking plenty of focused action is to be totally clear on the objective they are working towards. This stops them getting distracted and importantly gives them the framework to prioritise their actions.
If these focused action-orientated business owners make up the successful 20% then it’s reasonable to extrapolate the challenges with the 80% majority.
To varying degrees the majority of business owners simply don’t take enough action.
Quite often they don’t have a significant plan or they simply don’t stick to it if they do have one. This causes numerous issues:
- They are unclear as to which tasks to do first as their lack of a plan effects their ability to prioritise
- They don’t focus enough on growing their business because they always prioritise their client work, quite often to the point where they don’t get any significant time to work on their business at all
- They easily get distracted by other opportunities which dilutes their time even more.
This all leads to a distinct lack of progress even though they may well be working long hours.
The key to escaping this painful reality is to
- Know what you want to achieve and in what timescale
- Build a plan to achieve it
- Take HUGE ACTION!
Just to be clear, I’m certainly not one of those people who advocates writing boring business plans but you do need a plan. My plans, and my clients’ plans fit on a side of A4!
So which side of the 80/20 do you sit?
What action can you take this week to increase your chances of success?
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