Is your business a fit small business? And what are the essentials for being a fit small business?
Anyone that commits to running an Iron Man, rides The Tour de France, climbs mountains, runs marathons or engages in other highly physical endeavors, knows how important being fit is to take on and finish such a demanding challenge.
Fit is defined as of suitable quality, standard, or type to meet the required purpose, as in good health, shape, or form. That might seem adequate on some levels but completely inadequate on others. Anyone who has trained for and done the Iron Man knows it requires exceptional and extraordinary physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, shape or form. Being a fit small business starts with being a fit person on many levels.
Being a fit small business today includes being:
- Real, relevant and competitive
- Consistently improving
- Delivering maximum value
- Embracing new ideas and creativity
- Committed, consistent, conscientious
- Engaged, interactive, involved
- Responsive
Below are essentials that can help you become a fit small business, capable of handling the unexpected and the successes you will enjoy.
How to Become a Fit Small Business
Mindset
There are numerous studies that make a strong case for how a “growth mindset” impacts motivation and learning. Based on years of research by Stanford University’s Carol Dweck Ph.D., Lisa Blackwell Ph.D., and their colleagues, students who learned this mindset showed greater motivation in school, better grades, and higher test scores. Make sure your mindset is set and focused on progress, learning and discovery and always be open to learning something new everyday.
Attitude
We make daily decisions to have a positive, productive, realistic attitude about our work and life. It is our disposition, feeling and position with things, especially of the mind that we all can set, fine tune and tweak to ensure the best possible outcome. It is best to adopt a solution attitude, that allows us to flex and bend and skip trying to control the things we can’t. It wastes our energy.
Health
This should be pretty obvious in the 21st century. That correlation between our personal health and well being and our success is well documented and established. What we eat, how much we move, the energy that we surround ourselves with, habits, all greatly effect our well being and can and should be changed and shaped quickly and regularly.
Curiosity
There are things that are right in front of us, which is what most people concentrate on and then there are the outer banks and fringes, where great discoveries lie. Are you curious? Curiosity opens many doors. There’s IQ, EQ and there’s CQ, which stands for “curiosity quotient”, which puts the focus on having a hungry mind (PDF). Knowledge and expertise, much like experience, translate complex situations into familiar ones, so CQ is the ultimate tool to produce simple solutions for complex problems.
Lifestyle
What’s your lifestyle formula? My baseline is work, rest, recreation and creativity. This allows me to set the lifestyle goals that feed and nurture me. This formula evolves as we age, but regardless lifestyle is and should be about what makes each and everyone of us whole, happy and productive. We must evaluate all our habits, processes and procedures and make sure they are working for us NOT against us.
Support System
We are not alone and we can’t do it alone. No one can survive, thrive and endure without a support system and without finding others to support. This communal idea is one of the most important environments and resources we can build and develop in business. Find or build a community, qualify it, rely on it, use it and grow it daily.
Balance
Once you find your formula for work life balance, how well you stay in balance can make a huge difference in your consistency. Monitor your guts and know when something doesn’t feel right. When it doesn’t feel right it usually isn’t. Make adjustments quickly and get yourself back in balance and on track.
Perspective
Is your glass half full or half empty? What perspective or point of view actually gets the best results? Usually it’s a positive, hopeful one, or seeing something negative with a more positive spin. Negative and difficult things are part of the yin and yang, where we can learn many things and learn lessons we should choose not to repeat.
Dedication
Dedication implies an emotional connection and commitment in play. If we are dedicated because something is the flavor of the moment, success will be fleeting. If we are dedicated because it’s a calling and something we really want to and feel we can do, than dedication will come easier. The first of Warren Buffet’s 10 Rules for Success is: find your passion. Use passion to fuel your dedication.
Resilience
How well do you bounce back, come through and land on your feet? Resilience builds emotional muscle. Resilient people possess three characteristics according to George Vaillant, author, psychoanalyst and the director of the Study of Adult Development at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Number one is a staunch acceptance of reality; number two is a deep belief, supported by strongly held values, and number three is an uncanny ability to improvise. His studies show resilience is the skill and the capacity to be robust under conditions of enormous stress and change. A GREAT capacity to have in our toolbox.
Humor
Humor is by far one of the sexiest, most attractive, endearing, effective and memorable essentials we harness and use in life and business. Nothing connects us and helps us find our commonality with others more than appropriate humor, especially in business. Forget the religion, sexuality and politics jokes (they do not work) and stick to your real life personal experiences, like dropping your phone in the toilet, forgetting where you parked, or getting locked out of your house in your pajamas?
Success today asks and requires more than it ever has before, but the payoff is big and worth it. It’s not for everyone, but if you have determined it is for you, than strive to be personally and professionally fit, fierce and formidable and you will cross many finish lines.
What are some of the things you do to be a fit small business?
Victory Image via Shutterstock
Aira Bongco
I love that you included health. This is most commonly overlooked by businesses who are so focused on results and profits. But it is a very important aspect that contributes to a company’s overall goals.
Thanks Aira, I couldn’t agree more. A healthy person can runs a healthy business!