I am sure you have a goal in mind of where you want your business travels to take you. Perhaps your goal is to be a one man operation, or maybe it includes your spouse. If this is your chosen dream, then I salute you for it. There is a value to keeping things simple and many have operated successful and profitable sweep businesses this way for years.
Perhaps you have a larger vision for your business. You may want to grow your share of the market and expand your business accordingly. This also deserves congratulations.
Remember, it is only your own dream you should follow. It would be a mistake to follow someone else’s, or to pursue a particular path because other’s think you should. This is true of your business dreams as well as your life dreams. There is no one path. The path to be followed is the one that you choose. The path is the one that delivers YOUR dreams.
If you choose the one man route, you will need to educate yourself fully in your chosen field. You will need to build yourself towards being the expert in your market; perhaps even grow to be an expert known far and wide as “THE MAN”. If you are doing this, again, I congratulate you. People will be waiting in line for you and your services. And you will be living your dream.
If, on the other hand, you have decided that the road you will travel will involve others, that you will need to build a pit crew, and this team of stars will be what takes you on the journey to reach your dreams, again, congratulations. This is, after all, your dream, your journey, the path you have chosen that no one else has forced this upon you.
Whatever path you choose, success will not simply fall in your lap. You have chosen the beginning, the shape your business will take, now you have to map out how you will get to your goal, what roads you will travel, and what roadblocks may come up and force you into a detour. Detours, of course, are a part of life. But, if we anticipate these and make the plans for them, the detours do not have to interrupt the flow. Of course the team approach requires a maintenance plan. At the very least, this means on-going training programs to keep team members at the top of their game. And this must be on going forever, all industries change, the buyer changes, the path to success will always involve the look to the future, some may thing it requires a crystal ball, not true. What it does require is the constant look at what the successes of the world do, and one this that success requires is the ability to anticipate when change is needed, without accepting change and in fact embracing it, the model will quickly become stale!
Naturally, planning for success to realize your dream will mean many things: marketing, tooling, organization, priorities, services to offer, and training. The plain fact, the big kicker, the big road block, the big challenge, the most important thing to remember is, YOUR PEOPLE are your biggest asset. So, you need to ask yourself are you prepared and ready to make your people the BEST? You can buy tools, you can buy marketing, the winning team cannot be bought, it must be built, and this build requires the fertilization of an on-going training, with your commitment to this. Are you ready to truly rock by having a team of professionals, a team of experts, a team committed to success and to a team that shares both in your successes and your failures?
What does the Indy 500 winning team do? They prepare before the season with training and testing as they get the team finely honed to the level that they need to go after the championship. They prepare and prepare and train even after the season starts.
Your championship is being the owner of the market. Remember you have decided that you will not be second best. You will be the winner, you will hoist the trophy and, you will “kiss those sacred (chimney) bricks” at the finish line.
Remember the great leaders in all sports, the guys who reached the pinnacle of their sports had to face the same frustrations you do. Great team members may have had to be traded, if they did not fit the mold. All great leaders operate with the understanding there can be no “sacred cows” in the organization. No one gets tenure.
It is also true that no great winner ever wins unless they have faced significant loss in their lives. This is true of the business world (Henry Ford / Milton Hershey / Steve Jobs). No one excels in entertainment without years of starvation and desolation, this is true everywhere. Can you expect something different? It always takes work and sacrifice and even failure to emerge as a champion. That is part of the price you pay.
When I look at the true successes of this world, I see so many have had to stop, look at why they were losing, regroup, set their new directions, and it was off to the races. If they can do it, so can you, so can anyone with that kind of commitment.
If you are in the process of setting your stage of creating a winning team, remember equipping them simply with tools is not the only answer. You must also be implementing the right marketing, pricing, and organizational structure. Then you build the team through training. You instill your mission, your dreams and your goals in the hearts of your team.
Do this and you will build the team that will deliver you to your dreams. There is only one thing stopping you my friends and colleagues; it is that guy who is looking back at you when you look in the mirror. He is really the only one that can whip you into shape.