Transform Your Business Today, with These 5 Tips

Take steps now to anticipate what your customers will need in the future. This can be done with focus groups, customer feedback channels, anything you can do to paint a picture of tomorrow’s customers.

Take time to know what results customers are ultimately after – and how you can play a part in making this become a reality for your customers.

The ground you gain today, planning ahead, will position you to lead tomorrow.

4. Avoid obstacles with foresight.

Just as you should be preparing yourself (and your business) for inevitable changes, you can proactively avoid problems and roadblocks with the same type of forward thinking.

What potential problems might you face in the coming year, and what can you do now to avoid them? When planning for problems, sometimes it even pays to include some unlikely extremes – at least you’ll be thinking about what do in the face of disaster.

In our business, we use something called “The Strategy Circle” introduced by another one of my mentors, Dan Sullivan.

It works like this:

• First, we define our biggest macro goal for the year
• Then the date we want to achieve it
• Followed by all the targeted results that must happen to reach the macro goal
• Next we list any obstacles which may prevent us from achieving results
• And finally, the strategies to overcome those obstacles

5. Define your purpose.

This is an absolute must for any successful business, whether you’re a solopreneur or an international corporation. You have to know why you’re doing what you’re doing (and I don’t just mean making profits).

This sense of purpose is ideally shared throughout your workforce, no matter how large or small it might be.

• What impact do you want to have on this world?
• How will your business change lives with the benefit you’re offering?
• Are you driven to spread awareness, to educate?

I’ve yet to have met a mega-successful entrepreneur – millionaire or billionaire – that achieved their success without a clearly defined purpose.

By defining the purpose of your business, you set the standard for the direction you should be moving in. With a clear purpose, you can compare every proposal and every project to your overarching goal and ask yourself, “Does this align with the purpose of this company?”

Set clear, measurable goals that align with your purpose and stick to them — and you too can have your most phenomenal week, month or year in business yet.

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Charles Gaudet’s controversial marketing insight has earned him the title of “The Entrepreneur’s Marketing Champion” by both his clients and Insiders’ for his ability to help them out-compete, out-market and out-earn their competition. As the founder of PredictableProfits.com, he’s an expert at helping entrepreneurs radically improve their profits through a series of effective marketing strategies. A version of this post originally appeared on the author’s blog.