Build Your Business With Your Strengths In Mind

Just the other day I was meeting with a client to discuss his frustrations. All of them had to do with obstacles. His competition had more money so could get better pricing on product. The manufacturers were creating too many new products making purchasing a crapshoot. It was the slow season. An employee wasn’t making the proper effort.

Individually they didn’t seem so bad, but in total they seemed insurmountable. One by one we worked through the litany of depressing obstacles, trying to figure out what we could do about each problem. Not much, it seemed.

Totally worn out, we changed our discussion to what he and his business were good at. Seems there were one or two things he had definite advantages in. The conversation lightened up. We agreed that if he worked on doing what he did well and improving it, and then leveraging everything else off that, things didn’t look so bad. In fact they looked pretty good again.

My next conversation with him will be to ask him what his business would look like in a few years after succeeding at the things he does well. This should help him keep his obstacles under control.