3 Steps to Getting Real

People become entrepreneurs for many different reasons: to be in control, to make a lot of money, to create something great, to have the ability to live a certain lifestyle, and so on. For many of us, the initial reasons and goals for starting a business change once reality sets in.

Reality, in this case, is what really happens when you start operating a business. For example, cash flow is not what you thought it was going to be (and your lifestyle isn’t either); or the business starts controlling you and not the other way around.

When things are not going as planned, being entrepreneurs, we get creative and we work even longer, harder hours. Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, denial may set in. Some start to think that something will “just happen” to get us to where we think we should be.

Unfortunately, just about any economist worth the paper he writes on will say that economic growth prospects—save for a few industries—are not that great for the next few years.

We can’t expect the economy to turn our businesses around, so we have to look to ourselves and our teams. The question is not, “What needs to change for our businesses to get better?” but rather, “What do we need to do for business to improve?” Or, in some cases, “How do we, as business people, need to change?”

New ideas—a new revenue stream like a new product or service (or discontinuing a money-losing/time-absorbing one), or a new partnership—are exciting, but only part of the solution.

Without a plan to implement it, a great idea is like a drug that makes us feel better, but really doesn’t change the underlying condition. We have to create a plan and act on it, and the tricky part is doing that while still running the business. I have found that when I want to create something new (like a new event series), I need to make that a priority and schedule time each week to make it happen.

In summary, here are my three steps for “getting real”:

• Assessing the realistic prospects in order to get your business where you want it to be.
• Developing new ideas (e.g., products, services, partnerships) that will result in a bigger bottom line.
• Ensuring that you set aside time to turn your ideas into reality.

The above is quite simple, but certainly not easy. However, in my experience, the process gets easier as you progress through the steps. So if your business is not where you want it to be, take the first step right now by getting real—and realizing that you will have to do something different to fix it.