Self-Awareness and Your Business

Do you have a handle on where you are at?

Do you know how you want your adventure to end?

I don’t want you to think about what others think of you.

I want you to focus on your own self-awareness. Get your big girl or boy pants on, puff out your chest and let’s get into it.

Understanding where you are at, or are not at, is vital to getting the balance in your business and family life. 

TAKE A LOOK IN THE MIRROR 

Self-awareness can be very confusing. I can recall in the very early days of my car cleaning business I started a habit that would eventually set the tune for my life.

I was only 23 years of age and a professional horse trainer who was struggling to feed my wife and two sons.

I decided to start cleaning cars to fill up the day and make some extra money. I saw a lot of businesses, with a lot of people and a lot of dirty cars.

I thought, "How hard would it be to build up a car cleaning business? " 

It would have cash flowing through the door – I knew it!

Someone told me, ‘You should get some brochures to hand out’. Sounded like a good idea to me, so I designed my own very basic brochure. It was a hand-written rough sketch and design. I wandered into a print shop around the corner, handed over my design and ordered 500 copies. 

That should do the job, I thought. I’ll have the customers lining up in no time.

About a week later the printer had my brochures finished, and my very first marketing campaign was ready to launch to all the businesses in my area. 

Imagine this: it is 8.30 am on a Monday. I have my brochures in my hand. I walk up to the first business on the main street ... and you want to know what happened?

I just froze. I couldn’t get past the front door.

It was like an invisible force field had appeared to stop me from entering with brochures in hand. 

I had been to this business before as a customer and had walked straight through the door with no sign of this new, impregnable, invisible force stopping me from taking that first step. I decided I should try next door, confident it was unlikely to have the same force field. 

The exact same thing happened next door. I just could not get a step inside.

If you have ever had to do any cold calling, you may have experienced this strange phenomenon.

It is called ‘fear’. So, I decided it was time to go home. I spent the day washing my car. 

The next day arrived as it always does. I am not unintelligent. Overnight I worked out that it was not the businesses that had this force field of fear.

Apparently, it was all of my own doing. Go figure. 

Take two, day two – relaunch with a determined new attitude: 

I’m just going to do it.

Again, I’m at the front door of business number one. I take three very deep breaths. Then, I literally go running into the business, drop the brochure on the front counter, and in a single outburst say,

‘Hi, I’m Robert I’ve started a new mobile car cleaning and detailing business in the area if you want your car cleaned call me thank you.’ 

With that, I spun on my heels and bolted out the door.

I repeated this process another 499 times. Not once did I get rejected; I didn’t give them the chance. I did get one $10 car wash:

I tripped on the way out, fell to the ground, and the receptionist had the opportunity to yell, ‘My car is filthy, can you clean it now?’ Which I did – and my business was on its way. 

Looking back, I know I was the problem, not the 499 businesses that I didn’t manage to sell to.

My first major life-changing self-awareness hit me right between the eyes: 

I had absolutely no natural sales skills. 

I knew how much I enjoyed reading, and that I was a very fast learner. I had very little money, so I thought to myself, I wonder if there are books at the library on learning to sell? 

I was absolutely stunned to find that there were rows of sales books at my local library!

I was truly amazed; I was very young and na?ve. Little did I know at the time that it was my first step into self-education that would take me on an unbelievable adventure that I never could have imagined. 

Over the next 12 months, I immersed myself in my personal sales education. I read a new sales book every week, I practised every day, I tested different scripts and measured my results.

By the three-year mark, I could convert one-third of my cold calls.

Not only could I do it, but the tools I developed could be used by my staff, and they would get the same conversion rates. 

The same procedures would end up standing the test of time and become one of the foundation systems that would grow into the franchise system, James Home Services a $25-million- a-year home services network.

All because I knew when I was the problem. Because of this self-awareness, I also became the long-term solution. 

If you have a pragmatic handle on your own strengths and weaknesses it will give you a personal foundation that will help you deal with whatever lies ahead. 

If your business was problems, it is a direct reflection of your leadership.

Look in the mirror first if you want to "fix"your business.

Check out Balance: How to Make Your Business and Family Work Together