Creating a business that will last and have long-term success requires intention, resilience, trust, and the willingness to build a community that will grow with you.
The Keys to Long-Term Success
Intention
What is your intention for your business? Have you taken the time to sit down and really think about this? Why are you building this business? Who do you want to serve? What is your message that you want to get out in the world? What do you want to offer and why? What do you want to learn, and what do you want to earn?
If you haven’t figured this out, stop right here, and take some time to get some clarity around this. This will save you so much time in the long run. People you are talking to can feel the intention you have for your business. They may not be able to put a finger on it, but they can feel whether you are in alignment with what you’re saying or not. You know this because you have felt this yourself at one point, talking to someone else about their business. You may have thought, “This sounds good but something doesn’t fit”.
Once you are clear around your intention for your business (which doesn’t mean you have your entire business figured out but you do understand WHY you are building it), you will feel a lot more comfortable talking about your business and asking people to work with you.
Resilience
Building a business that has long-term success also requires resilience; a lot of resilience! You may see people who start their business, and they zoom to success but they may not be there 5 years from now. A strong, long-lasting business starts with you.
Are you willing to grow into your business and do the inside work necessary?
You will want to build a strong community of people around your business, which takes building relationships. Building relationships takes time. It takes getting to know people, actually communicating with them on the phone or in person. I understand that there is a big pull to take a short cut here, and work through social media, texting, and email instead of having a conversation with people.
Getting the right clients and customers in your business that last and refer you to other people takes time. It takes having a conversation, and really getting to know if someone is right for your business or if you are right for him or her.
Sure, you may get some big hits from social media. You may have figured out the secret sauce and have lots of people being added to your list and business. But are they the right people or are they coming in and going out?
It takes resilience to put out a great product or service. It means being willing to experiment, fail, get up, and learn, then develop a better service or product.
Are you willing to reach out for and receive support when needed? It takes resilience to continually grow personally, push the boundaries of your comfort zone, and fight for your business and your community.
Trust
Then there is trust. This is a big one. The most important thing to trust is you.
Trusting what you know.
If you are hanging around here and reading this blog, my guess is you do your homework. You are well researched. You want to get better, grow, and serve.
But you may also give away your power to someone else that you think may know “better then you”. You defer to what they think you should do instead of listening to what you know. I know this has been a hard won lesson for me along with many other women I have worked with.
Trust your intuition.
We all have it, but some of us have just disconnected from it.
“We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.”
― Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
Listen to your body, how do you feel? Did you have a thought that popped up only to disregard it as stupid? Then you find out how relevant that thought was at the time. The more you can tap into your personal guidance system and trust yourself, the more ease and flow you will have in your business.
Trust that you are fully supported.
You may take a detour every now, and then but you will eventually land right where you are supposed to be. The right people will be there when you need them. The right lessons will happen to teach you what you need to learn to move forward.
Trust that everything is as it should be. It may not always seem like that in the moment, but this is when you need to trust the most. It’s easy to trust when everything is going your way.
You are fully equipped to accomplish all you desire. The more you can move into trust, the more flow you will create. Although this isn’t easy (meaning little or no effort), it can be simple.
When you build your business on intention, resilience, and trust, you set the foundation for a strong business that will have long-term success and can withstand the test of time. You can build a community of people who will grow with you, support your business, and best of all talk about it.