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Health & Fitness

Progress with Purpose

One of my favorite sayings is “progress with purpose”.  To me it means that whenever there is an opening or a moment in time, purposeful thought and decisive action should be taken.  Now, if you’ve driven in a car with me, you know that an empty space in front of the car I am following has me labeling them a “gap leaver”.  This is someone that is going about their day with no purpose.  If they had a meeting to get to or a yummy meal waiting for them, I believe they would be focused on using all opportunities to get to that point as quickly and efficiently as possible. That would certainly suggest that the 3 car lengths in front of them would have been eaten up in the purposeful progress. But back to business, are you a “gap leaver” in your business?  Are you purposefully considering every opportunity and resource to get you to your goals?

Action is required for movement.  To grow a company, more income has to come in the door.  To launch a new product, the design must be decided.  To double your sales, a new marketing campaign or target market may need to be defined.  A business owner has many opportunities for resourceful action but are you purposeful in these opportunities?  Networking is one great example.  I would suggest that most of you will agree, even if you don’t employ the tactic every time, that an owner should have 3 ideal “meets” for each event they attend.  Hopefully, you are as specific as a name or company, but at minimum industries and position titles are in front of mind.

When you are networking is it all sales driven or are you taking these opportunities to consider your strategic goals?  Are you considering writing a book?  Keep an ear open for publishers, copywriters or anyone that has already gone through the process.  Are you considering a new product line?  Use networking for face to face polling if there is uncertainty in a development point.  Clients asking for a service you would rather not bring under your umbrella? Go for the introduction with the expert talking to the host of the event. Perhaps a strategic partnership benefiting both of you could come of it.  Shaking hands and sharing drinks with new people to widen your “exposure” certainly may help. However, if you are in the room with someone that you have something in common with AND you could use this time to take action and move your company forward then close that gap!  For goodness sake, PROGRESS WITH PURPOSE!

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