Just tonight, a friend of mine told me that he wakes up every morning and listens to the doom and gloom of Wall Street on the MSN network. He then becomes utterly depressed and then starts his work day. Whoa! That's no way to start the day if you're an entrepreneur and responsible for creating the morale and vision of your residential cleaning company. Now, I'm not advocating sticking your head in the sand and becoming oblivious to what's going on in the world's financial market. But I also don't agree with ingesting a steady diet of despair and misery. I tune into the news just long enough to be in the "know" and then I watch a comedy or turn off TV altogether. A steady stream of "the sky is falling" will polarize you in business. Business owners need encouragment, inspiration, and possitive motivation. I am firm believer that you are what you eat. And that goes for the food of the mind as well as the belly.
There's only so many hours in a day. How will you spend those precious hours this next week? You could fill your mind with new information on how to market and grow your business (like my upcoming Power Workshop: "The Ultimate Gift Card Sales Workshop"). And there are dozens of new books on the market each year that will help you focus on growth and management! What about audiobooks on employee motivation, and retention? You could listen while you work out. I'm listening to an audiobook biography on Benjamin Franklin, during workouts on my eliptical machine. Talk about a power entrepreneur! He started and operated numerous successful businesses during some of the most dismal of economic times. He was surrounded by extreme poverty in a time that had almost no "middle class". His businesses thrived because he understood how to create new markets, not just new products.
Let's face it, we may be in for a long, hard recession--they usually last a minimum of 18 months; the last one I went through seemed to last 36 months. We can't change the financial market. But we can be smart business owners and brilliant entrepreneurs! We can take a pro active approach to meeting the new challanges head on, and actually gain the competitive edge over our competition during this time. Remember, often only the strongest businesses stay standing during the tough times, the weaker ones drop like flies. You could emerge from this "recession" in a stronger position than ever, especially if the weaker, "cheaper" compition bites the dust (he he--no pun intended).
Join me Thursday evening, October 23, 2008 at 6:00 p.m. CST for my live Teleworkshop "How To Grow Your Business In A Down Economy" and let's focus some time and energy on growing your business. We'll also talk about strategies for change in a tough economy and how you can differentiate even more during this time. Join my online cleaning business network and you'll be informed every time I have workshop on maid service growth and management. Remember, if you can be the solution to their problem, you won't lack for customers. When times are good, people have money to hire a maid service. When times are bad, people work more and harder, and need a maid service! Let's grow together.
www.themaidcoach.com
