If you are trying to fix the obstacle to your business growth, people who have never gotten beyond that same obstacle can’t help you get to where you want to grow. It’s really a simple concept, and yet, repeatedly I see businesses doing things that won’t get them to their goals. Here are a few of them…

On Your Own

If in your business, you’re trying to get to your goals (‘there’) on your own, that’s going to be a tough road because your own resources and brain (or collective team brains) have gotten you to where you already are. If you could get beyond that on your own, you’d never even stop to reflect on if there was an obstacle. You’d just keep doing your thing and growing at the rate you want to. In fact, a client who makes business decisions by team consensus because he’s so dedicated to keeping his staff happy has recently revised his aggressive growth goals and pulled them down to a fraction of his initial plan. Expecting a group of employees to decide on how to make a plan to get to growth they’ve never previously created is an exercise in futility.

Wrong Expert

In business, is there any such thing as a “wrong expert” if everyone is claiming to help grow your business? A most definite YES! For example, I found that when I heavily invested in a coach who turned out more to be a mindset coach rather than a marketing strategist, I didn’t get nearly as much ROI as when I hired a strategist. Your first job as a business owner is to figure out what is the barrier to your growth. Then go out and hire the best in the business. If you can’t figure it out on your own, get help. Also, please don’t hire generalists who themselves haven’t figured out their own best expertise. Hire the ‘right’ expert who can help mend the very special pain that is keeping you from your goals.

It Doesn’t Feel Right

The other way that people try in vain to get to where they want to grow is by coasting along while resisting any type of change. Neuroscientist Dr. Joe Dispense says that of the 60000 thoughts a human has per day, 90% of them are the same!! In fact, he talks about how when a person behaves differently than before, the discomfort, uncertainty and unpredictability produces such hormones (which produce feelings) that the body wants to turn back to familiar territory. They start to think things like “why don’t you start tomorrow, this is too hard, we don’t need that big a change, we’ve done it before, we can do it again” and so on. They confuse what feels right with what IS right, when in fact what feels right is what feels familiar.
So if you’re looking for a change in your business, don’t expect your staff, your own knowledge, mentors or consultants to do it if they’ve never been able to create it themselves.
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