Change or Die

I haven't written anything on the business side of relationships in a long time.
 
Truth be told, the last several months has been quite the whirlwind of events, and I've been more focused on growing my own business than I have helping others grow theirs. 

I've learned something, but it's not anything new. In fact I've known it, I guess a better word than learned would be experienced. 

I experienced something in my business. Change is necessary to survival. Adaptation. The ability to assimilate and thrive. In business if you want to thrive, you have to change.

You have to be willing to grow and admit there's things that could be done better.

I've mentioned this in my blogs before, but when I explained how I use neuroscience to help business owners understand their customers' values, and relationship skills to make sales professionals more likable and influential, I always got the same question:

Do you do personal relationships too?

That's when the light came on. I said to myself, "self, you could help a lot of people with this stuff." And I started tackling personal relationship problems, not just my own, but other people's too. And my business grew.

You have to invest some time and effort into implementing new ideas, and create systems that keep those new ideas flowing. Rewarded behavior is repeated behavior, so the more you can implement those changes in a positive way, the more it will encourage the team to think outside the box for solutions.

In my case, I'm a solopreneur. My team is me. My social media marketer is also me. I'm responsible for all of it, and I don't like social media, so I'm not very good at that part. To be quite frank, I stink at it. I should've been fired a while ago. 

Seriously, it's hurting my business. 

Because I can't fire me, I have to invest some time and effort into becoming a better social media manager, until I hire one. 

You also have to keep doing what you're good at. 

It's easy to get the wind knocked out of you sometimes. Life can hit pretty hard. When that happens, there's a temptation to lay down and quit for a while until the pain goes away.
You don't get that luxury in business, at least not until you're building passive income, but that's another lesson for another day.

In active business, we get hit with things like the 'rona, and we get the wind knocked out of us. That's when you take a step back, take a deep breath and do what entrepreneurs have always done, keep going. You keep delivering the same value to your customers that you've always done. You build relationships in your community. You give back. 

You find a new way to do it better. And before you go typing in the comments "but I can't blah blah blah blah" ask yourself how can I blah blah blah blah? And watch how creative you get.

Start writing down possibilities.

​I'll stop there.