There is nothing wrong with making mistakes, so long as you learn from them and don’t repeat them, but with the wrong mindset, it’s easy to do the wrong thing over and over.

It has been said that your current reality is your past’s future becoming real. Or, put another way, your position today is the result of all the decisions you made in the past.

The challenge here is that most people think, all I have to do is change my decisions and I'll create a new reality. Unfortunately, that is too simplistic a way to affect real change.

You can only be what you are and what you are is determined by what you think about every single minute of every single day.

For most people, this reality can be summed up with a simple thought: What you think about are the seeds you plant and what you do is what you grow and if you continue to plant tomato seeds, you can't expect a great oak tree to grow.
You see, people plant seeds, or thoughts, in their mind every single day. Too often these seeds are counter-productive to what needs to be accomplished.

Instead of focusing on what can be accomplished, people think of what they lack, their limitations, what they want or fear, and then they wonder why these thoughts become their reality.

One of the simplest examples of this is when you say to yourself, “Don't forget, don't forget …” and what do you do?

You invariably forget because the seed you planted was the central theme of your sentence, “forget”. Instead of remembering the negative, your central theme should have been to “remember”.

So how do you overcome this? Here’s a simple exercise that should help.

Grab a pen and paper and write a list of the top 20 things you think about every day.

You can start by dividing up your life into business and personal. You could even go further than that with a section for wealth, health, relationships, spirituality or any area that consumes a considerable part of your time.

After you've finished the exercise, start to think of every thought as a seed and ask yourself whether the seeds you're planting are truly going to create the reality you're after.

If your answer is a definite “no way” that's a good thing, because imagine what a difference you'll make when you do start planting the seeds you want to grow.

Brad Sugars

So, you started the company, you built it up, but are you the best person to keep running it?

It’s a tough question.

Entrepreneurs are not always the best managers. In fact, they are often some of the worst.

For entrepreneurs who find themselves “stuck” or see their companies at a growth plateau, a great question to ask yourself is whether or not your greatest strength is managing what you’ve built.

For most owners, it isn’t. For most of them, what they really need to do is get out and start a new venture or enterprise.

Because entrepreneurship is what they do best.

What are the characteristics of a great entrepreneur?

Different from those of a manager or employee. That’s why owners are entrepreneurs in the first place. Beyond a vision and drive for something more, true entrepreneurs realize trading time for money is not the way to get rich.

However, being stuck as a manager in your own operation is not productive, especially when your talents lay elsewhere. But how do you get out of your own business in a way that benefits everyone – including yourself?

First, you must recognize “you” may be the issue. Once you admit that, options and opportunities become more clear. Ideally, you already have some systems in place in your business and a good team you can trust to run at least some portions of your operation.

Then, you must take a leadership position to put new leadership in place.  There are a few great ways you can successfully make it happen that have proven effective for other owners in your position over the years:

1. Recruit two or three high caliber people and let them work their way to the top. Don’t let them know you are looking at them as your replacement one day; instead, mentor them and let them lead their various divisions and see for yourself who would be the best fit for the company long-term.
2. Look within. Here, you’re looking at your current roster of executive staff you currently have for one or possibly a group of employees who could takeover the company and run it long-term. You might even find a way to create an income flow for yourself long-term from this type of arrangement – one that would let you do something else, like….
3. Find and run a business that is not dependent on you. Ideally, this is the business you start after you sell or find a creative way to get your cash out of your existing business.

That said, there are a couple of ways NOT to replace yourself. In some instances, these tactics may have worked. Just remember, those successes are the exception – and not the rule.

1)      Make a clean break. This is the easiest way to replace yourself. Here, you basically go out and hire a pro to come in and run the business. That person comes in, and you go out. Obviously, this isn’t recommended for a number of reasons. First, the new person has little or no institutional knowledge of your business or its history.

Second, such change is usually too drastic for customers and employees. Sometimes, it’s even too drastic for the business owner – who in many instances undergoes a change of heart six months or a year down the road and decides to come back. Many times, the company the owner returns to is not the one he or she left.

2)      Put a family member in charge. This is also an easy way to replace yourself, and it is also not recommended. The reasons for this are obvious:  resentment among top management and employees; perceptions of nepotism; the idea that skill sets don’t match the high standard of a founder.

Putting a family member in charge could be an option if the plan of succession for a business is already laid out that way, all team members are aware of that plan and the person tapped to lead the company has paid his or her dues working in the company from the ground up.

Most times, however, owners aren’t so prepared or long-term oriented in this regard, and the envy and resentment of family members in charge leads to problems from which most companies never recover.

Regardless of the route you take, the important thing to realize is most issues in business start at the top. It’s why a company suffering for lack of sales is probably led by a boss who is not a great sales person. It’s why a company with a dysfunctional team is led by a person who is not a great manager. Or why a company that seems unfocused is run by a person chasing after every new market or idea that seems to hold opportunity.

Maybe you’re the person I’ve just described. You had the great idea, the brilliant innovation or the breakthrough product. But maybe you’ve taken the business as far as you can take it. Maybe it’s time to get out of the way and let a new team of professionals take over so you can move on – and start your next business.

Recognizing you are not the perfect sales person, manager or marketing director isn’t bad. It can be liberating.

Realizing you’re the perfect entrepreneur can be the just what you need to really succeed in business – at a level you may have never dreamed possible.

This article is reprinted courtesy of My Business magazine, one of the leading business publications in Australia.

They try everything - new sales scripts, better ads, new products, yet to no avail ... every day they open their doors, they plunge further into debt.

In most cases, the reason things aren’t working is very simple - there’s not enough business out there to keep them operating.

To illustrate, think about this example - Harry and Barry open up a hardware store.  There’s 6 other hardware stores in the immediate area, but the boys aren’t fazed - the other shops are staffed by ‘pimply kids who don’t know anything’.  According to Harry and Barry, they’re experts in the game - and will get heaps of business simply because of that.

They open a store a block down from the big competitor, write a couple of ads with the headline ‘Opening Sale’ and they’re off and running.

For two weeks, things seem to go well - they may be selling the products extra cheap, but they’re selling lots.  The cash register keeps ringing and things are pumping along.

Soon after though, things slow down.  In fact, they almost come to a dead stop - just a few customers a day, buying a hammer here and there.

The boys wonder why.

Whilst they got a few things right - the ads were ok, the customer service was good, the store was laid out well and the products were well chose, they missed the most important point of all ... whether the business was viable at all.

If they’d done a little research, they would have discovered the following - every year, 1.1 million is spent on hardware in their area.  If each of the 7 local hardware stores had an equal share of the sales, each one would have revenue of around $150,000 each.

Of course, the stores had wildly different figures.  The largest, a nationwide chain had the lion’s share at $475,000 - almost half.  The next biggest, a smaller, older store with a loyal client base, had $260,000. 

The 5 other stores made up the rest.  Naturally, 4 of them were on the verge of going under.  The fifth was Harry and Barry’s.

Looking at it from this perspective, the boys’ dream of opening a hardware store and becoming wealthy seem a little unrealistic.  They’ll be lucky if they last the next 6 months.

Think about your situation.  How much business is out there, and how much can you actually claim?

If there’s only a million dollars worth of sales, and you manage to grab 10%, that’s only $100,000 in sales.  Take out basic expenses (not including your own wage), and you’d be lucky to pull $30,000 profit out of it.

You may as well go and work for someone else - that way, you’ll earn more money and have less responsibility.  If the business goes down, it’s not your house, car and credit rating on the line.

So what do you do if your business is a dud?

Sell - get the heck out before it’s too late.  “But nobody will buy it,” most people say.  Wrong - you’d be surprised how many people there are willing to take a business that’s just getting by to buy themselves a job and ‘make a go of it’. 

Take the money and invest in something with more potential.  “But I can’t do anything else,” business owners often contest.  Wrong again - if all you could do is sell hardware, or wash dogs, or whatever it is you do, you should avoid business and get a job.

Owning a business isn’t about doing something - it’s about making money.  It doesn’t matter what the actual product or service is ... you can easily find people who know how to do the work; your role is to do the business.

So don’t flog a dead horse any longer than necessary - you are not bound to your business for the rest of your life.  You are free to change direction at any time.

Scared?  Good - that means something has stirred.  Let that stirring become action, go see one of my ActionCOACH's and you’ll be taking the first step towards real business success. 

All the Best ... Brad Sugars