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Growning is serious business, always. Design

Keeping a Growth Mindset

February 5, 2019
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If you’re not moving forward or growing, you may be standing still or even moving backwards. What does this mean? I probably don’t have to explain to you what growth looks like. It is a condition of the mind, it is intuitive to life and anyone knows if they are growing or not. The hard part is admitting lack of growth and doing something about it. Choosing to grow is a  choice, like exercising or eating healthy.

Reality is that the world, and the way we do things, is changing faster and faster.  Keeping up with the pace can be really hard. Since I contend that a growth and service mindset is essential to relevance in today’s marketplace, I had to consider the “keeping up” factor before I went into business. Here’s how that looked for me.

Both award businesses I bought were at a point where they were experiencing years of declining sales. A small business naturally loses a few customers every year due to attrition. Customers die, they retire and move on to other employment. But the key to a healthy business is whether it can consistently replace those customers lost to attrition with new customers.

Don’t misunderstand, both of my businesses still had many good loyal customers. Their products, for the most part, were good. The service they provided was good and relevant. Those were the reasons I bought them. Both businesses, in my opinion, were declining because their owners were either unable, for various reasons, to keep up with the changing structures and technologies in today’s business world. These were growth problems.

Just to clarify, growth is not always about making things bigger. Sometimes it’s a requirement just to keep things the same. For example, a business may be in a geographic area or a competitive market where there are only so many customers, and this is okay. But growing is still  necessary to address natural attrition and keep the customer base large enough for the business to remain viable.

Even when I was working for someone, growth was no less important. I knew if I didn’t grow I could become irrelevant and easily replaceable. The best book I have ever read regarding this is Linchpin by Seth Godin.

This brings me back to purpose, if you have a purpose for doing what you do, I believe you will naturally want to learn and grow to satisfy that purpose.  Your purpose could be as simple as providing for your family, or as difficult as providing clean drinking water for people that don’t have any. Both purposes changes the world for the better, today and tomorrow.

What to do? Are you continuing to grow, learning through curiosity and taking risks? Do you need some inspiration? Check out this video  How ya gonna Live? Answer these questions, and the world will thank you!

 

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Is Your Ship Sinking Design

Growth and Purpose: Is Your Ship Sinking?

January 25, 2019
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I believe the key to any successful life or business is a purpose (service) and a growth mindset. One without the other rarely impresses me.

One of my favorite things to do while on vacation is to admire the creativity of business enterprises, big and small. Everyone from the airline we fly to the restaurants we eat at, the resort we stay at and the shops we visit. The longer we’re engaged with them the more we see their uniqueness and personality or lack thereof, come out. The same holds true for the people we meet. It doesn’t take long to notice if the motivating factor for their life or enterprise is service or self. Soon, it becomes evident if the person or enterprise is growing, coasting or is declining.

Let me define a couple terms:

Purpose

Without a servant heart and attitude there is very little purpose beyond $money$ in what and why we do what we do. When things get hard and money is scarce the dream can easily die.

Growth

The saying goes “if you’re not moving forward, you’re standing still or moving backwards.”

The natural illustrations are everywhere on this. Stop pedaling your bike and coast, eventually you stop and tip, the ride is over. The plane you’re on stops fueling the engines, and it starts to glide.  We all know what happens next.

True to the pattern, the minute I quit investing in my personal or career growth, the decline is soon to follow.  First things will flatten out and I will glide on the momentum I previously had, then the downward trajectory will follow.

Is Your Ship Sinking?

I am convinced that this is a law of nature and no person or business is above it.  Whether it is my business, job, relationships or my spiritual walk, I must take time to think about the why (purpose) and how (growth) regarding what I am doing.

How about you? Take an inventory and ask yourself if you are growing, coasting or falling? If this causes you alarm or concern regarding your life or enterprise, take heart! Awareness and thinking about it is a big, first step. I’m going to be sharing some of my own thoughts on these important issues in the next few posts. Join me as I explore how to right the ship before it goes under and sinks.

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