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I’ve noticed that the media – newspapers, TV, magazines – love to talk about doom and gloom. And never more so than when it comes to business. I hear all sorts of numbers quoted to me about business failure rates – some as outrageously bold as the statistic that 95% of business will fail in their first year.

So I did a bit of digging around and found that it’s not actually all that easy to get to the bottom of what the real numbers are. If you’re a small business, sole proprietor or solopreneur you might not be included in these ‘official statistics’ because some of them are based on tax registation rather than business registration – pretty confusing, hey?

What’s fairly certain though is that between one third and one half of those of us who start a business will fail by the end of our first year. So what can we do to avoid it if we don’t want to become one of those statistics and we want to be one of the success stories?

The key to this isn’t the economy, and it isn’t the kind of business you are in (although sometimes this doesn’t help), it’s all about the habit of training yourself for success.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a pet, maybe a new puppy? I’ve always had dogs and I always have great intentions that each dog is going to be better trained than the last dog. How to walk on the lead, how to socialise with other animals and children, how to behave in the house. Sometimes I even imagine I will do agility training with the new dog. I know for a fact that if I work hard with the dog in his early years, he will reward me with love and obedience and will give the family years of joy. Or, more likely, we will have an unruly dog who rules our lives and pushes us to the point of exhaustion and beyond!

It’s exactly the same with your business – only the stakes are a lot higher. You can train yourself for success – get the right habits in place and build a strong profit foundation, or you can rush around ignoring the important building blocks and set yourself up for a future of money worries and sleepless nights.

And the ideal time to do this is when your business is young – if you train yourself for success from the outset you’ll get into effortless, good habits which then make your business life much much easier, and of course more profitable.

One way to do this is to spend time working on your business rather than in your business. Too often the first year of our business is so full of things to do that we lose sight of the big picture. And especially information. An average business owner thinks they need to read as many as one million words a week just to keep on top of new information, which is the equivalent of reading 10 novels a week. Give me the novels any day!

So why not go on an info-cleanse and let in some space and energy to build your success habits rather than your failure habits! For the next month try out these steps.

1. Every time you look at an email or a paper newsletter and think “oh I’ll read it later”, or “I’ll read it next time”, just unsubscribe. If you’re not reading it, you don’t need it and there will always be the opportunity to sign up again when you need the information.
2. Clear some physical space on your desk. If you can’t face doing this in one go then spend half an hour at the end of each day clearing, filing and, most importantly dumping. It may sound totally radical but why not get rid of your desk completely? If your desk is actually the meeting table as well do you think it would look like it does?
3. Get rid of any nagging essential tasks. Cleaning up is a hugely powerful success habit and I want to ask you to clear up any late payments, service agreements, difficult staffing issues. Allowing them to hang around just causes you more anxiety and it takes energy away from what could be productive time spent on your business.

You might find it a bit tough to give up your info-fix but if you stick with these habits for the next month, I guarantee you will end up with more time, more energy and a more profitable and productive business as a result. Oh, and a better trained puppy!

If you’d like more ideas and tips to help you build an extraordinary business, then sign up for updates in the sidebar.

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