Building Your Success Engine - Part 4

Let's begin with a quick review. To build your success engine, we've discussed three steps.

1. Harness the power of language
2. Act from your future
3. Focus on the essential

This week we add over-arching guidance that is an exponential factor for success. 

I recently read Girl, Stop Apologizing by Rachel Hollis (2019). One of my favorite takeaways is her guidance to stop comparing yourself at the beginning of your journey to someone who is years into theirs. Many business owners get stuck in this trap. They aspire to have the success that they see around them and lose faith in themselves because they are not achieving those results right now. As business owners, you must travel the path. There is no teleportation device that allows you to skip to your future. Time and effort are required.

You can move faster and with more ease by adopting this one, simple habit​

Ask For Help

​We associate success with know-how. If we manage a team, then we know how to direct their work. If we own a business, then we know how to run a business. However, most small business owners will tell you that their business grew from their passion for a product or service that they wanted to make available to others. They followed their hearts, started their business, and quickly found that they had a lot to learn - regulations, marketing, financing, bookkeeping, and so on. 

The first few years of business ownership is a steady diet of learning and adaptation. Unfortunately, unless you have access to unlimited start-up funding, you spend less and less time immersed in what you love, and more and more time getting up to speed on the essential knowledge that you can't afford to hire experts to provide. Suddenly learning consumes your time and attention.

​Learning is a tentative state. It requires acknowledgment of our current limitations and a willingness to open ourselves up to the acquisition of new skills and information, and this process is imperfect. If you are one of those gifted individuals who need only read to gain understanding and apply the principles to your work, then you are lucky. For the rest of us, avoiding the pitfalls of trial and error requires access to an expert who shares their knowledge and teaches us how to apply it to our situation.

Want to accelerate your success?
Get honest with yourself about your limitations and seek guidance from someone who knows more. 

Asking for help is a valuable skill that you can quickly master. Sometimes that help is available freely. Look for free training programs offered by your local business associations or reach out to your network to find a colleague who is willing to help you. Sometimes you can trade your product or service for help from someone whose expertise you need. 

And sometimes, purchasing is required. I know that as a small business owner, cash flow can make decisions to spend money difficult. I remind you, however, that we are talking about asking for help in service of our goal to achieve success faster. When learning diverts your attention from money-making activities, spending money to power through the knowledge acquisition process is a smart investment that nets a better return in the long-run. [see math examples]

Becoming comfortable with asking for help serves you through every stage of your business growth. Anytime you struggle, lose confidence, or suffer indecisiveness, your ability and willingness to ask for help from someone with an outside perspective is the catalyst you need to get unstuck. 

So go ahead, permit yourself to drop the armor of the all-knowing expert, and proudly wear the mantle of a learner. The value of this choice will positively show up in your bottom line. ​