Identifying real and fake business opportunities will bring us much more growth and profitability. It's our job as business owners to discern between opportunities and fake opportunities.
It's key to growing a great business.
Finding the Real Opportunities
Once a business knows its real strengths and its sweetness in its sweet spot, it can focus on growing those elements inside the business. It gives you the clarity to know what to cut out or what things to stop doing so we have the resources to do things right. You want to ensure you know what isn’t contributing to our company’s profitable growth, then eliminate those things.
When we eliminate those actions or items that aren’t contributing to promising opportunities, you’ll free up much of your time and resources to use towards the things that benefit your business.
What activities benefit your top clients and services you currently have? Instead of spending all your time and resources trying to fix the bad customers, making unsuccessful products work, or chasing those shiny objects disguised as opportunities, you should focus on the activities that will grow your business and enable you to achieve your goals.
What actions have you taken historically, or clients or products have not moved your vision forward? Very often, when we encounter a crisis like a cash shortage or key employee leaves, most business owners will do whatever it takes to get out of that situation and to keep the business going.
This is a normal reaction and will likely save your business from further damage. However, more often than not, those actions will also take us away from the ultimate vision for our business.
This is called the survival trap.
The Survival Trap
The Survival Trap is a coping strategy that takes business owners away from their Ultimate Vision and where they want their business to be, look like, and operate. Business owners fall into the trap when they move away from focusing on their vision to do whatever it takes at the moment to stay afloat financially, meet deadlines, resolve employee issues, or resolve customer issues.
The mentality is that solving a crisis in any way you can is a good thing because it saves the business. In reality, it has the opposite effect. Many things do not move the business forward. They are moving away from their Sweet Spot and waiting for resources and energy.
Making a Plan to Move Forward
Often the Survival Trap is focused on things we can control and dealing with internal crises. But what if the crisis is external and outside your control, such as an economic recession, natural disaster, or industry regulation? Once you’ve identified those actions that move you in the wrong direction, it’s time to make a plan to move you toward your goals.
Feeling stuck, confused, or overwhelmed is normal when something outside of your control impacts your business. The first step is adjusting your mindset, and moving your feelings of fear to calm so you can find clarity in the opportunity. A true opportunity is aligned with your mission and sweet spot. It aligns with your company values and moves you towards your ultimate vision.
I have several resources on my website that will help you identify opportunities and create a plan to move forward to your ultimate vision. Check them out!