YOUR LIFE AND YOUR BUSINESS: How Alive Is Your Business Life?

Your business is not your life. Your life and business are two different things entirely, and should not be equated as one and the same. Therefore the growth or death of your business depends on a peculiar set of principles which should on the other hand not determine the directional swing of your life. To apply this wisdom, you must understand how to “work on your business and not in it”. Lack of this understanding breeds a cataclysmic effect that makes circumstances in business have a ricocheting effect on its proprietor’s life cycle, and the worse of it when the circumstances are bad.

However, for your business to have a true success destination, it must form a core part of your life. But in this equation, your life is the master and business the servant. Therefore, your business can and should only play a significant role in your life, but not to alternate as your life’s alter ego. Yet, before you can determine what that role will be, you must ask yourself the following questions:

i.             What do I value most?

ii.            What kind of life do I want?

iii.           What do I want my life to look like; to feel like?

iv.           Who do I wish to be?

Your primary aim in life will provide the answers to these questions.

Once you have established a picture of how you want your life to be, and you come to the realization that it’s more than just the craving for things to have and things to do, you can then direct your focus to the development of your strategic objective.

Your Strategic Objective is a very clear statement of what your business has to ultimately do for you to achieve your primary aim in life. In this understanding, your business is a means rather than an end, a vehicle to enrich your life rather than one that drains the life you have.

Your strategic objective, as well as your business strategy and plan are products of your life plan. Your life plan shapes your life, and the business that is to serve it. Your business strategy and plan provide the structure within which your business is intended to operate overtime to fulfill your life plan.

As soon as you come to understand that your strategic objective, business strategy and plan are meant to drive a business that will actualize your life plan, only then will you see that this is actually a game dominated by a rule: “Setting Standards”, e.g. setting financial or money standards. The standards you create for your business will shape both your business and the experience you have of your business. Standards create the energy by which the best companies, and the most effective people, produce results.

At this point you come face-to-face with the first dilemma encountered by everyone going into business: “How can I possibly know what standards to set and how much results they will produce in future?” The answer is, you can’t possibly know it or see it all; there are certain steps best taken and journeys best traveled even before the total picture becomes crystal clear. At the beginning of your business, any standards are better than no standards.

Therefore, creating standards is not just strategically necessary for your business; it is strategically necessary for your life, for the realization of your primary aim.

Indeed, the first question you must always ask when creating standards for the achievement of your strategic objective is: “What will serve my primary aim or purpose?” And when it’s about setting financial or money standards, it becomes: “How much money do I need to live the way I wish?” Not in income, but in assets. In other words, how much money do you need in order to be independent of work, to be financially free (Financial Freedom)?

Gleaning from all that has been said, it becomes evident that why many small business owners and entrepreneurs rarely succeed is because there are in businesses or pursuing business opportunities tied to motives outside what inspires their life plan or primary aim in life. The greatest energy the universe has ever witnessed is that which resides in life: “The energy of discovery and creativity”. Therefore, when a business or endeavor is not tied to life fulfilling goals and objectives, it lacks the basic requirement for growth.

An opportunity worth pursuing is a business that can fulfill the standards you’ve created for achieving your primary aim and strategic objective in life. If it is reasonable to assume that it can, then the business is worth pursuing. If it is unreasonable to assume that it can, then no matter how exciting, interesting, or appealing the business is, forget it. Walk away from it. It will consume too much of your precious time and prevent you from finding a true opportunity worth pursuing.

How do you know whether you have an opportunity worth pursuing? It is when it is tied to what you can drive passionately and which can produce solutions that can alleviate the frustrations experienced by a large enough group of consumers to make it worth your while.

Identifying this standard fulfills two basic requirements of your strategic objective:

(a)  It gives you feedback on what kind of business you’re creating.

(b)  It defines who your potential customer will be.

In other words, it tells you what kind of business opportunity you need to create or embrace and for whom (consumer and customer).

BOTTOM-LINE IS!!!!!!

Get a “Life” today!! Locate your passion (primary aim), develop strategic objectives and set the matching standards, then watch your business or enterprise serve you, to achieve your life plan.