At this time of year I think that most small business owners are fully ready to give the old year a grand heave-ho and activate their dreams for the year ahead. The general consensus among the smaller business owners I spoke to during the holiday season is that 2010 was a challenging year. Their world was often a tentative place in which the banking and political picture lacked clarity which negatively affected their plans.
It certainly is easier to be hopeful at this time of year as most people are showing their best attitudes and good spirit with jovial greetings that begin with happy or merry. The thoughts of change and hope that fueled a political campaign two years ago become very real as we open the boxes bearing our new day-planners. The fuel that drives business owners is ambition and each day can bring many things to dampen that drive. For example I think that a daily diet of political palaver mixed with a cascade of negative news and a side of economic challenges can sap us of our most ambitious thoughts and we can’t get where we want to go if we accept that mindset.
Here in the Nelson Davis TV Productions office, we devote the last week before Christmas to discussing and writing out detailed goals for the coming year. You should try it. It is a great help to make the very first week of your new year a time of action rather than using that time to ponder what you are doing or where you are headed. I learned that goal writing habit years ago by talking to a couple of people who built multi-million dollar enterprises from scratch. Their lesson was that you can’t rise any higher than a vision of yourself that you are willing to accept.
In the past two weeks we also created a web page (www.MakingItTV.com) featuring some well known entrepreneurs who also began their journey as small business owners. You know their names now, but they were once in the same position as you, hustling hard and dreaming big. Jeff Bezos, Martha Stewart, Walt Disney, Russell Simmons and others all struggled through startup, growth and some near-death business experiences on their way to becoming household names. If you want role models, they serve the purpose well.
In the New Year you have to guard your dreams and vision as if they were the gold in Fort Knox because they may be just that valuable to you. Helen Keller said “Life is either a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.” We can all be too quick to define ourselves by stark limitations rather than soaring possibilities. I hope that you are able to wrap your mind around the idea that you can move beyond where you’ve been and get past what has been merely comfortable.
How much do you think you can achieve in 2011? I advise you to set the highest goals that you can imagine. Some people feel that circumstances drive thought. I believe that thoughts drive the circumstances. Talk to anyone who wins a lot in any category of life and you’ll note that they don’t let lack of privilege or current resources limit their dreams and ambition. Success begins with ideas and thoughts. In the early 20th Century author James Allen wrote that a person’s mind may be likened to a garden. He said that if no useful seeds are put into it, then an abundance of useless weeds will fall therein, and will continue to produce their kind. Let 2011 be a year in which you take very good care of your garden and look forward with great expectations to a bountiful harvest by this time next year.
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