Wednesday, May 12, 2010

How An Out-of-Body Experience Can Grow Your Business -- Day 3 of 365


When you've got your nose to the grindstone, it's hard to see the untapped riches surrounding you.

The truth is -- you and your business are surrounded by opportunities that, properly harnessed, could make your wildest business dreams come true almost immediately.  (And I'm not being hyperbolic.)

Really, the issue is a simple matter of perception and understanding.  Can you see it?  Do understand what you need to do about it?

The answer for most (on both counts) is "no".  As I said above,

When you've got your nose to the grindstone,
it's hard to see the untapped riches surrounding you.

The reality of the matter is this:  When you're stuck working in your business - and don't (or can't) invest serious time working on your business - you're basically blind to the vast array of profitable opportunities looking you right in the face, right now.

This is where the out-of-body experience comes in handy...

Astute entrepreneurs have the ability to stop, take a few steps back... perceive the most crucial areas of their business to tackle (the areas that would produce the biggest, most immediate gains)... and devise concrete action steps for moving their business forward.

This ability is something you must practice, develop, and finely hone --- if you want to survive, thrive, and grow continually in the future.

This ability is much like stepping out of your current mindset, your current perspective, your current attitude, your current assumptions... stepping "out-of-body" (if you will)... and looking at your business as if you were somebody else entirely.

How to Have Your Out of Body Experience

Take yourself through the following exercise to start developing this ability in yourself.

  1. Imagine that you are an outside consultant brought in to evaluate and counsel your own business.  It might even help to choose a specific person you know, imagine you are them, and role play from their perspective as you think it might be.
  2. Since negatives are often easier to spot than positives -- take a sheet of paper and thoroughly shred your business to pieces.  I mean take a ruthless hard look at everything that is wrong.  Put it in writing on the piece of paper.  Make sure you look at your operation as a whole:  the systems, the processes, the people, and (more than anything else) you and the results you're generating as the leader.
  3. After you've exhausted every negative you can come up with and put it on on paper, start listing anything praiseworthy about your business.  List every strength, every positive, everything your business does well.  Take the time to make the list comparable in size to the negative list.  The positives are there; you just have to identify them and let yourself feel good about them.
  4. Return to the negative list.  Identify the single biggest negative that, if you were to eliminate it, would allow you to make the biggest leap forward with your business.  Then, devise one single step you can take to reduce or begin to eliminate that weakness.  Take that step as fast as possible.
  5. Return to the positive list.  Identify the single greatest strength that, if you were to scale it up, ramp it up, or otherwise improve upon and leverage off of, it would generate the greatest breakthrough for your business.  Then, devise one single step you can take to begin to leverage that strength.  Take that step as fast as possible.
  6. See what results the real world gives you after you take each step, and then devise your next steps.  Learn, adapt, overcome, and follow-through with the effort.

The key is to force yourself to play the role of an outside figure.  Become an actor playing the role of someone with an outside, "out-of-body" perspective.  I think you'll be surprised at what you see that perhaps you have been blind to.  You'll gain an understanding of what to do that, perhaps, you've never had before.  And, you just might generate some new results you've never seen before.

An added bonus... as you develop these skills of self-perception, you will also hone your ability to see the opportunities surrounding you, how they intersect with your business, and how to harness them properly.


"Every moment, you have an opportunity to
invest your time in a way that creates a better future."

TAKEAWAY:  The every-improving ability to regularly step outside your usual perspective -- evaluate your business with brutal honestly, for better or for worse -- and then devise strong solutions for leveraging your strengths and eliminating your weaknesses -- is crucial to your continued success and prosperity.

ACTION STEP:  Be sure to set aside some time to complete the exercise I outlined above.

To Your Enduring Success,

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