Is your business EXCELLENT? Or merely ADEQUATE?

By ALI CUDBY

This question might keep you up at night. If it doesn’t I invite you to ask yourself why not. You spend a ton of time in your business. Maybe more time than you spend on anything else in your life.

Including time with your family.

Including sleep.

So ensuring your business is EXCELLENT in all things is incredibly important.

I see many businesses decide that ADEQUATE is good enough. If you’re one of those people, let me save you some time – there’s no need for you to read any further.

I was talking to a retailer recently, and she was complaining about her business. She was frustrated by her customers, her employees, and her vendors. She wanted to be more successful with the businesses and asked me to help her turn things around.

As much as I felt sad for her and her customers, I declined to bring her on as a client, because she seemed more interested in everyone else’s shortcomings than her opportunity to create change by taking action to solve the challenges in her business. Being stuck in blame-mode meant that she was focused on adequacy – at best – and that’s the opposite of focusing on passion for helping women look and feel their best.

On the other hand, another business owner called me a few months ago. She was experiencing even more dire financial problems and was working herself into the ground, but couldn’t afford any help. She came on board as a client exactly because she was dedicated to learning the ways she could take action, and create excellence in her business. Within a few short weeks, she was seeing results, then explosive growth.

I talked to her recently – she was interviewing potential employees.

I just spent 10 days in Las Vegas, working with a wide array of brilliant business minds. While I learned a ton about marketing and strategy, the topic that came up again and again had much more to do with focusing on ways to be excellent, and to rise above the adequate across the spectrum of business. (And life, come to think of it.)

One key to having a business that’s EXCELLENT is to truly love what you do, and who you serve. People like that sad, angry retailer, who is bringing her frustrations to the business each day, do real damage – not only to their businesses, but also to the women they serve.

If there is ANY aspect of your business you don’t love and don’t think you’re delivering at the level of excellence, now is the time to address it. Doing anything else may be costing you time, money and customer loyalty.

The buying season is an ideal time to reassess anything you want to take to the next level of greatness.

Consider which aspects of your business you want to change. Ask yourself if you prefer to make the changes by yourself or if you’re ready to invest in your growth by having a mentor help you make the smoothest possible transition to excellence.

Creating a clear vision of who you want to be and how to serve women from excellence is a gift you give your customers, your employees and yourself.

Want some additional guidance? Here’s access to a free webinar I hosted for Curvexpo recently, discussing key tips when considering inventory in advance of the Curve shows.

You can access the webinar and watch any time, simply REGISTER to access the replay.