BUSINESS SUCCESS
What does it mean to you? People define success differently, so what actually does it mean to you? Is it how much money you earn? How many staff you have? The size of the company? The lifestyle? The freedom? The challenge? Defining success is important, but taking a clear-eyed look at the impact of your definition matters even more. As in most things your intent is important but the results provide the real answers. About 25 years ago, to me success was always about how many employees I had and how large the contracts were. It was always the case that, ‘bigger is better’. The only trouble was, ‘bigger’ didn’t seem to be ‘better’ as I hoped for. There were the continual problems of slow payers, staff issues, jobs not being ready (not good when you have multiple employees to find work for), long hours and of course, ‘the stress’. This is the case with a lot of business people. They have the tendency of working 10
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or more hours a day and also on weekends as they are focusing their attention exclusively on building their career. Over the years I ‘woke up’ to myself and realised having a large team was not what I really wanted in my business and that a smaller number was more manageable and less stressful. I even found my business was more profitable doing it this way. Working directly with a client and not a builder, was also more pleasurable for me as there was that personal interaction with them. When it came to invoicing there was never the problem of payment as I made sure they were always happy when the job was completed. This gave me a constant cash-flow into my bank account and therefore the ability to pay my bills and wages on time. This in turn, relieved the stress that most business operators encountered. I am far from being rich but I am very happy in what I am doing and
to me, this is how I interpret ‘business success’. So determining whether you are successful should be based on one question: ‘How happy are you?’ Your level of success is based solely on your answer to this question. If you’re making serious money but are unhappy on a personal level, then you haven’t embraced the fact that incredible business success often takes a heavy toll on a relationship. Other things should be clearly important to you besides just making money. So think about what motivates you. What do you want to achieve for yourself and your family? What do you value most, spiritually, emotionally, and materially? Those are the things that will make you happy, and if you aren’t doing them, you won’t be happy.
