3 key questions to increasing your revenue and impact
Entrepreneurs that own service based business all face very similar and VERY predictable challenges. But, all too often I hear people say “my business is different”, or “it wont work because….”
The story is always the same and the answer is NEVER what the entrepreneur thought it was. You may already know the only true limitations to personal and professional growth are the limitations we place on them ourselves. The likelihood a perceived limitation is an actual limitation is actually quite small.
Ok, great, so now what?
Here are three key questions to stepping “outside the box” (physically and metaphorically impossible though) and unleashing future revenue:
- If it is possible for someone else, what made it possible for them?
- How would someone who was capable of doing this view the same problem?
- If this were already complete, what tools or resources would I have needed to accomplish the goal?
As you begin to remove yourself from the equation you are able to begin to find more resourceful ways to view a same problem.
Let’s say for example you wanted to get “in shape” but you haven’t been able to lose those 10 pounds for 5 years. By simply asking yourself the questions above you will find there are adjustments that you previously thought impossible that are actually quite possible.
What’s the biggest stretch goal you have for yourself this year?
You can’t think outside the box, and that’s keeping your business stagnant
How many mentors, teachers, coaches, consultants have ever uttered the words “Just think outside the box”. The concept is correct, and we all get what they are talking about, but I’m here to break some news to you...
There is NO getting outside the box.
Not only can you not do it, you never will be able to do it and you have never done it. If you disagree, stop reading right now and DM here a single time that you have been able to critically analyze and think outside the box. If you can come up with an answer where you have been able to think outside the box, just send me a DM here.
The concept in it’s entirety is much like trying to bake a cake with instructions written in a foreign language and the measurements written in code.
Try as you may there would be no way to decipher what needed to be put in the mixing bowl. This is the same reason you can’t just become a heart surgeon, astronaut or successful business owner overnight (unless you already identify as one of those, in which case you get credit). There is a secret though to how we can harness this concept and use it for exponential gains.
What nobody ever told us was how to define the box, so I’ll define it for you.
First, The box, is really a cube.
On the bottom is your anatomy (This is the floor, and the foundation, and the only thing we cannot change). On the top is your Desired Outcomes (This is the ceiling, and what you can change the most)
The four sides are defined by:
Experience
Emotions
Values
Community
In order to think outside the box, we would make an effort to “correct” or broaden one of these sides of the box. If you were to read a book on a subject you desired to learn you would have contributed to growth on the experience box.
In this case your box got bigger and so did your map of the world. Whoever has the biggest box and broadest view of the world, will win every time. But there is one very simple way to make your own box bigger. Ask someone what the view of your box looks like from their box.
And that, my friends, is my secret power. I simply leverage other people’s boxes. Which side of the box would have the biggest impact on business growth if expanded?
One single break through doubled my revenue in 12 months
(and how I do it repeatedly now for others)
There is a secret to business growth, I thought I knew it all along, but I didn’t really know it until a mentor showed me what my missing ingredient was . The problem with me sharing it (which I will) is that most struggling entrepreneurs truly can’t learn it from others. The most unfortunate part is that this lesson is one you have to feel, bot the pain and the pleasure.
It’s almost like riding a bike. You could have someone tell you a hundred times that you need to pedal more, sit upright, release the death grip on the handles and just relax.
But the even less intuitive part is that you need to go FASTER in order to feel safer. In the beginning the faster you go the more you can sense that crash landing is going to really hurt….
……except, you aren’t going to crash!
Business is no different, and now that you can see you need to release, be more at ease and go faster, what now?
Struggling Entrepreneurs get mired down and tricked by their subconscious into believing that working HARDER and focusing more on their business is the only way to grow their business. But, let me ask you, when Tesla knew they had a concept that would work, did they try to keep their team small and just see how hard they could work?
Ok, maybe too broad, pick someone in your own service industry that you would say is doing it well…..do they look like they are working 80+ hour weeks?
But before I tell you what it is, I’ll tell you how I figured it out. My AHA moment came when I realized that my business was nothing more than a reflection of me. My own constraints were being mirrored in the business to an absolute T.
Where I saw opportunity and abundance, the business thrived.
Where I lived in fear and doubt, scarcity and lack- the business suffered.
When I came to grips with what I was doing to the business and accepted responsibility for what my role SHOULD be and not what it HAD been, everything fell into place, and it happened extremely quickly.
The single greatest breakthrough you can have in your business is to just RELEASE.
That’s right- let go, do less, work less hard and be LESS in touch with the minutia in the business.
Release the day to day stress by hiring an incredible team.
Release the expectations surrounding your future success.
Release the judgment (What if we were our own best advocate instead of own worst critic?).
Release the fear.
Most importantly, release the desire to control…
….and just start leading!
And lastly, realize that you are enough. As a person, spouse, parent, leader, business owner- everything. You are enough.
So at the end of the day, get comfortable putting the pencil down. You owe it to your friends and family to be as present for them as you were throughout each work day.
