Every good plan, whether business or personal, starts with setting goals; specific, quantifiable, written goals. If you know the outcome you expect, you will know when you have reached what you have set out to achieve. Having confidence is essential when you are managing a business. You need to have that point in time when you feel a sense of accomplishment to give you the confidence to push forward to achieve additional goals. That feeling of confidence gives you energy. That energy, mental energy, gives you the strength to overcome obstacles getting in your way every day of your life. When you have confidence, those obstacles are just small impediments that are no larger than a pebble in your path.
That “mental energy” or “confidence” also enhances your decision-making ability. Achieving your goals requires that you be mentally sharp and confident that the decisions you make are sound decisions. When your confidence is low, you can almost become paralyzed in decision-making. Making no decision is generally much worse than making one, even if the one you make is not exactly the best decision.
Having confidence has an added benefit in addition to you feeling good about yourself. You actually make more money when you are confident. Confidence is like a magnet. I believe that other business people like to do business with people that are confident. They don’t necessarily understand the reason they are drawn to do business with someone. But often it is because the person just exudes confidence. Think back to a time that you decided to do business with someone. Did you sense they were confident? Did you end up doing business with them for that reason? Protect your confidence and use it to your advantage. Never put yourself in a situation where your confidence can be compromised.
We at Shaw & Sullivan, PC provide a structure, through The Advisory Board Program, to help you quantify your goals, monitor those goals and make mid-course corrections to keep your business on track. To succeed, you actually need to drive your business toward success. When your business starts to go off course you have to immediately get back on track. It takes a surprisingly short period of time for a business to get into financial difficulty but once in trouble a long time to get stability back. But with focus, you can make those mid-course corrections to keep your business on track.
