LEARNING TO BE FLEXIBLE! ![]() Do you want to increase profits? It’s all about being flexible and keeping an open mind: Flexibility & the ability to adapt & make changes is
key when it comes to running a business & seeing a profit. I am in the business of home staging. We have a business
plan and model that we are constantly revising to adapt to changing
circumstances & things we are learning.
I am constantly challenged, even with two decades of owning my own
businesses. Today’s business owners need to be savvy on multiple fronts:
internet marketing, social media marketing & continual changes to the sites
we are all learning to use. This is a different business world than the one I
first met two decades ago. But the overall principles for success in business have not
really changed. The underlying tenets to
creating a successful business are the same, but how we go about it & the
tools we need to master are different. THINK LIKE AN ENTREPRENEUR! Thinking like an entrepreneur requires a basic skill set. You can find dozens of articles on what it
takes to become a successful entrepreneur. Almost every list includes having a passion
for your business, tenacity, vision, the ability to take risks, break rules &
learn from setbacks. What does it take to move from that basic skill set and turn
an idea into a successful business? Of all the traits I have seen listed, I
believe flexibility and adaptability are the most important. It
is the same for the survival of any organism. Success in business is founded on adaptability and the
ability to assess where you are & make necessary changes. That takes an open mind. It means being able to make an honest
appraisal of what is working and what is not. You may need to consider questioning the belief that you are
ever finished with creating your business model. There is a fine line between finding what
works and staying with that & being able to see when circumstances have
changed & when you need to adapt to move on. Successful business owners are committed to constantly
looking at their business model and being brutally honest about what is working
and what is not. They are open to a
constant flow of new ideas and changes in the marketplace and how we are being
challenged to market with changes in technology. That social media site that gave you 90% of your business in
2010? Well, it may not be much of a player in 2015. We all know how fast things change today. Entrepreneurs know the value of rule-breaking at times and
the ability to look ahead and defy convention when we see a new open road. People who are able to spot trends in the
early stages have a huge advantage. ![]() TRY SOMETHING NEW! A step beyond recognizing & moving with trends is the
entrepreneur who is able to break with convention and actuallycreate change. The freethinkers of yesterday who defied
convention became the innovators who broke through outdated models in their
field. They were the ones who had the courage
to break out of the norm & come up with new ideas that changed the world. Many of the world’s great innovators, from great artists to literary
geniuses to business giants, were mocked when they first came out with ideas
that defied conventional thinking. Think:
Frank Lloyd Wright, Pablo Picasso, Steve Jobs & Larry Page. They were all freethinkers
who were unafraid of taking risks and creating something new. Flexibility and adaptability show up in many small ways in
the way we think and act. The words we
think and speak reflect our attitudes about how the world works and can show us
just how open-minded we really are when we take a hard look. THINK SOMETHING NEW! If we accept that mastering the art of being flexible and
adaptable can translate into a more successful business – which in the long run
means greater profits - how do we do make that change? First look at a couple of definitions. “Open-minded” is defined as being “willing to consider different ideas or opinions”. “Flexibility” is defined as “the ability to
recognize & adapt to fluctuating situations.” What
could be more fluctuating than the rapidly changing world of technology today where
we are trying to do business? It all comes back to how we think. If you accept that you have the power to
direct your thinking, then you realize you can change your thinking habits to
become more open-minded and flexible. We have the power to re-frame the way we
think and train ourselves to become less rigid in our thinking. Rather than sticking with an opinion that is unwavering, we
can chose to step back, reserve judgment and consider new options. A FORMULA FOR SUCCESS: A.L.C. One way to look at it is to try the formula: ALC: “Act”,
“Learn”, “Change”. In life we are always
going to need to “Act” in order to
put an idea into motion. Once we do
that, if we have an analytical approach with an open mind we can assess how
that idea worked, “Learn” from its
successes and failures, then “Change”
- that is what adaptation is all about. Do that once, then do it again & keep on doing it.
The process never stops. Try it – make a decision about something you want to try
with your business. Let’s take advertising. You make the decision to “Act” and take an ad out on FaceBook. You watch the analytics and you see how the
ad is doing. It’s not performing the way
you had projected. Begin to research how other people are doing the same thing
and see what kind of results they are getting. Figure out what they are doing
differently. “Learn” from that
analysis. Then “Change” the things that are not working. Then start over and do it again. ALLOW THE WORDS YOU USE TO CREATE WEALTH! How we think is reflected in what we say and do. If you’ve made a decision to be more flexible
and adaptable, try tracking how you are putting that into action as you
interact with others. What you ‘put out
there’ can indeed affect where you end up. Here is a small example of how this works in my business. I
see a lot of discussions about my field in articles and on social media sites. There
is always some discussion on best business practices. One such community for
business owners is LinkedIn. LinkedIn has some great opportunities for business networking
and sharing ideas through discussions that offer support to business
owners. The group discussions allow
people to post questions and answers to a wide range of topics. It is a great place to learn. One of the most interesting things I have learned from that
site, is that there is a tendency for many participants to have firm,
uncompromising, even judgmental, beliefs about just about everything - from
basic rules for how a home should be staged (should you use table settings in
kitchens or trays on beds, silk vs. real plants, air mattresses, leave business
cards at homes you’ve staged), to the best business model (should you rent
furniture or own your own), or the best way to use internet marketing – the
list goes on & on. The discussions can get heated and sometimes the
participants are downright insulting to one another. You hear “I would NEVER do XYZ…” or “anyone
who does XYZ is ….” – not the model for an open and supportive discussion and
the free flow of ideas. You’re not learning when you head is filled with
judgments. Reserving judgment and thinking before you speak may not
only be a kinder alternative, it can help you train yourself to keep an open
mind. Doing that allows you to explore
the possibility that someone else might have a better idea. Even if you still don’t agree 100%, by keeping an open mind
you may find that there is some small lesson that you would otherwise have overlooked
had you not indulged yourself with that “AHA, I would never do that”- moment. That small lesson could result in a slight
‘tweak’ you make to your own business model that ends up making a difference.
Sometimes those ‘small’ ideas create breakthrough moments for your business. AN OPEN MIND WILL ADD TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT! For me the answer is that there is no one right way to do any of these things. There
is no ‘one size fits all’. It
depends on the situation: your geographic location, your client, the current
market, availability of resources, budget constraints, local tastes and
trends. For home stagers, if the home is
at the beach an ocean-themed décor plan may be perfect year-round – in Ohio in
the dead of winter, that’s not going to work.
If you step back and reserve judgment, listen and learn, you
may decide that your opinion that inventory purchased at the local discount
store is tasteless is unfounded - it might be the perfect solution for someone
else in a different area with a different budget. It might even work for you
someday. And rudely expressing that
judgment has just shutdown someone in the discussion. When we don’t keep an
open mind we are at a standstill. GET GROWING! It is the free-flow of ideas that is at the heart of being
flexible and adaptable. If we learn to
check our egos at the door and step back from making broad judgments about how
other people run their businesses, we might just learn something. And that
little thing we learn might be just the thing we need to know to succeed &
grow profits. While the examples here might seem silly to those outside
the field of home staging, the basic issue – being flexible & adaptable
when it comes to how you approach your business model - is critical to seeing
your company grow. Inflexibility can show up in the many tiny ways we interact
every day. In order to live things need to grow and change. Being open to that change, not set in old,
narrow ways of thinking, can be your greatest tool to creating a successful
business & seeing greater profits. May you all succeed doing the thing you love most! |