Welcome to my weekly column on questions for you and your business. Every week I will give you a question that you need to ask about your business. The idea of these questions is to make you re-look at your business. The business world keeps changing, what worked two years back does not necessarily work today.

Asking questions is a very powerful tool for a business owner to help drive their business growth. Failure in business does not come overnight. Failure is the inevitable result of an accumulation of poor thinking and poor choices.

In business, it is our own doubts that undermine the distances we can travel. The biggest limitation in your business is you. You will mistake cash or sales for profits, treat your customers poorly and give them less time than required. Success in business is predictable. What you put in is what you get out. Analyse your current behaviour in your business and you will know the direction of the business is going.

Businesses are affected in totality by the small actions you do on a daily basis. Timing is everything. Everything you are or ever will be is completely up to you. Know what to do, when to do it and how you do it. Success in business is not a part-time affair, your business is your life and your life is your business. Act as though it were impossible to fail.

Work on your business as much as you work in your business. If you spend too much time micromanaging you won’t have time to work on your plans and strategies to take the business to the next level. Work with a purpose, work with a plan and work for growth and success.

No business can survive if it is not evolving through innovation. Blackberry and Nokia are classic examples. They were the leaders in the cell phone market, but the market changed and they did not. People were looking for more, they wanted smartphones.

Do not become complacent and fall into a comfort zone. Every day is a new day, find something to improve, get out of your comfort zone and grow. Grow as a person and grow as a business. If you are not growing you are dying.

Hopefully, you will find value in these questions and they will help you and your business prosper. Answer them truthfully. The only way we learn is from our mistakes. There is no shame in admitting you made mistakes, the shame is not learning from those mistakes.

Before I get into the deep-end of questions, next week I will first start by looking at what successful businesses do right. Knowing what a business should do to be successful is a good start for your journey to business growth and success. 

johnheidgen@gmail.com

"Nothing stays the same. It either gets bigger or smaller. Better or worse. You either grow or you shrink”.