Today's post is a bit of rambling about a principle that all of us seek and can, at least to some degree realize, regardless of how our business endeavers pan out.
Of course, from the title of this post you know the principle in mind is that of SUCCESS.
Whether or not you feel that you are a success really depends upon how you define and measure results that you consider to be successful.
Whether in business, life, in your marriage, in your relationships with family and friends, or wherever your "counting" takes place, the level of success you reach is often determined by the standards you set.
Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about.
Imagine that as a new entrepreneur you set goals for your home business as all the textbooks and experts tell you to do.
You will undoubtedly have long-term and shorter term goals that might be measured in terms of:
- The number of customers on your mailing list;
- The number of sales per month of your product;
- The dollar amount of revenue created on a monthly or yearly basis;
- The number of top ten placements you get for your best keyword terms;
- The number of products that you are able to add to your line in a year;
- The dollar return on investment that you generate in twelve months;
- The small amount of complaints or product returns that come in for the year;
- The level of affiliate commissions you're able to gather in a year;
- Etc, etc, etc.
The point is, you will most likely measure your business success based upon some ideas or benchmarks that you will have in mind (hopefully on paper as well) so that you will know if your business is living up to the standard you've set.
The hope is that you will meet or exceed your standards and therefore will have the right to proclaim that you have created a successful operation.
The flip side to success, of course, is that you are not able to meet your benchmarks. You managed to fall short of "hitting your numbers" for whatever reason.
You may then be inclined to consider your business (or much more damaging, your self) as a failure. Please, please, please don't place that burden on your shoulders!
So what? So you didn't meet one or more of your goals - does that mean that somehow you are all of a sudden something much less than you were yesterday?
Of course that is not the case. Any number of situations could play out such that your goals become impossible targets.
Sometimes the business climate or environment shifts and the waves that result are more than an amateur can be expected to negotiate.
Sometimes we set unrealistic goals and standards and doom our own chances of success before we even get going.
Sometimes outside market and competitor actions take place that negatively affect our business and there is no way to recover in time to meet our success timeline.
Sometimes life just gets in the way; you are confronted with challenges that command center stage and your business gets put on hold.
Think of your business life as a never-ending journey rather than a specific destination that must be reached by a time certain.
Goals are great and serve a motivating purpose; but not reaching one or more on time doesn't have to be the end of the world.
I love Michael Jordan's observation:
I've missed over 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot . . . and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Success like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As a business owner, you are in the sole position of determining how you measure your own success.
Remember that this business journey doesn't have to have a strict timetable or revenue standard for you to feel that you are making acceptable progress toward your ultimate long-term goals.
