What business are you now in...and for the future?

Comment by Brian Tracy

The first and most important question is: what business am I in? This question is not as simple as it seems. To identify your career or business goals, you must first learn to define your business in terms of what you do for your customer or for your company. Expand the definition of your business so that it is as broad as possible. Never stop with the first answer. Take the first answer to this question and find new applications, new markets, and new definitions for it.

Railroads

For example, at the beginning of the last century, those railroads that defined themselves strictly as railroads—providers of rail transport—failed to see that new technologies and methods of transport, such as trucks and airplanes, were a potential threat to their business. If they had defined themselves instead as movers of goods and people—providers of transportation—their response to the changes in technology might have been different. When you define your business, think in terms of how your products or services affect or interact with the lives and work of other people and organizations. Consider both existing customers, and those customers that you would like to acquire.

Target the Future

The next question to ask is: what business will I be in if things continue the way they are today? Think about your career or business two years from now, then in five years. If you do not change the way you define your work or your business, what kind of work will you be doing?

Is it a sound and viable strategy to continue in your current way of working or doing business, or should be looking at changing in some way? Start by imagining what business you could be in.

Where would a dramatic change in knowledge or skills, products or services, or industries and markets lead you? To express it another way, if you were willing to take stock of the environment for your career or business and commit to taking action, what business could you be in if you really wanted to be?

Challenges or Opportunites for Small Business?

The old saying, if life gives you a lemon. Make lemonade. Is even more relevant in today's marketplace.

Small business: This is your opportunity to "squeeze" more juice from the lemons you may have been given or received. Take a look at your business, whether new or ongoing. What is your main product or service? Is there a new twist or repackaging you might do to increase your sales or profitability?

Who, are your clients? Many businesses do not know who they really sell to or who seeks them out. Where do you stand in the market place of your neighborhood, community or vertical market (niche)?

With the coming future and hopefully eventual upswing of the economy, are you now or soon to be planning to "capture" a larger market share when things turn around.

This past couple of weeks we have been learning quite a bit about how to deal with the current situation in the country, in our business and what we need to do better in the future. It is really exciting to move forward.

It's not all gloom and doom...Happy days will soon be here again!

We have a new friend, Zib, that we will be introducing soon who can help get the ball rolling for all of us. Happy days are here again...or soon will be.