We love to know exactly what the near-term process is we’re supposed to be doing, we’re almost obsessed with it, to the point that at least in business, we’re too often okay with knowing exactly which direction we’re going without any idea where it’s leading us. It’s a little Yogi Berra-like “I don’t know where I’m going but I’m having a great time getting there.” Or in many cases, we have an insatiable need to know the process in all its detail before we will make a single move. Either way we find the process to be more important than the goal.

I’m not at all opposed to online networking – I use it all the time to build relationships, but no matter what medium you use to connect with people, it’s not about CONTACTS, but meaningful and lasting CONNECTIONS.  It’s ALWAYS about being social.  So maybe I do

“Social networking” is the apparent standard description of online networking.  But how is it that “social networking” is somehow just an online thing?  I get business from my neighbors, my family, my bicyling friends, my golf friends, my business friends, my clients, and from people I meet in a restaurant, as well as from people on Twitter and Facebook.

It’s like a stream running downhill, winding all over the place to get where it needs to go. Those that get tired of hitting and overcoming beaver dams will quit.  Those that are able to clearly keep the goal in mind will keep going, pay the price and push their business over the top to profitability.  Those seven days were like a compressed microcosm of what it was like to build the seven businesses I’ve started over the last 25 years.

Want to be successful? It won’t happen because you have a great idea, big financing or slick marketing. It will happen because you know exactly what the goal is, you never lose sight of it, and you become a bulldog, doing whatever you have to in order get across the finish line, even if it means making your own rules.

Bob Parsons of GoDaddy says simply “get and stay out of your comfort zone”. I agree and would add that adults don’t learn unless we are disoriented.

When we believe we ”know”, that is when we stop learning.  We must be disoriented from the comfortable zone we live in.

Are you wandering through your business wondering what it could be like when/if…?

We almost always get something close to what we intend.  Most people never think about what they want out of life, so they never figure out what their business should look like to support a life of significance.  As a result, most people never accomplish the things that would have made their lives count for so much more.  We wander through life wondering how it could be different.

Guess Who Does

If you’re spending a lot of money to develop your brand through advertising or a nifty website, you might want to rethink that. You don’t control your brand anymore, so trying to create or enhance it with slick images and thought-provoking tag lines could just be a waste of valuable time and money resources.  

Retirement is a really bad, bankrupt, industrial age idea that was never a good idea in the first place.  It was invented by big businesses to steal the best 40 years of our lives so they could discard us when our good years were all behind us.

Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, understood that to have his business grow up and run itself, he would need to pay attention to all of the Seven Elements of a Business – so he did.

Kids need to grow up and stand on their own two feet without leaning on you – that is maturity.  Your company should do the same thing.

We assume we should wait until we’re big enough before we figure out how to make the  business run itself, but  – where we start is where we end up.  No matter what  size your business is, you should be manically focused on getting  yourself out from behind the steering wheel from the gitgo.  Pay attention to all Seven Elements of a Business, like Kroc did, and watch your business grow up.

There are seven words a business owner can never afford to use.  Which of these words are you using to run your business?  Here’s a way to remember them –  “Try” to strike them from your vocabulary, “but” if you “can’t”, you can “settle” for only using a few and make a “goal” of getting rid of the rest “later”, when you’re “alone” and nobody’s watching.

Guiding Principles of a business are necessary (honesty, integrity, customer service, etc.), but there is another set of principles that help the Business Owner in particular: decision-making principles.

How we make decisions effects everything we do.  Problem – we make decisions subjectively, even when we think we’re being objective.  All the research shows this – even at the major company level – we even buy subjectively.

As a result, we react badly to shiny objects, short-term victories and defeats, and strategic planning. So the question becomes, do you guide your biz or does it rule you?  Who’s really in charge?

Want to make more money and stop recovering from bad decisions?  Get some simple decision-making principles on which you run your business.

Like rails that guide a train, your decision-making principles are a core strategy to having a business that knows where it is going and how it is going to get there.

Here’s my seven decision-making principles.  What are yours?