Business Success Strategies: Make Sure Your Business Is ‘On Purpose’

Live Life 'On Purpose'

Is your success in business happening on purpose or by accident? I am going to challenge you to consider that your long-term success in business depends to a very large degree on your ability to define your Purpose. So let’s take a second here to explore the dictionary definition of purpose:

PURPOSE - The reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists. (Oxford English dictionary).

Why do you exist? – For what purpose were you created? That has to be one of the fundamental questions of the the universe, and certainly not something that I feel qualified to explore in the short space of this article. Nonetheless, let us narrow down the question and ask an equally hard-hitting question: “Why does your business exist? – For what purpose was your business created?” Can you remember? Or perhaps even more poignantly, did you ever know?? Your ability to provide a rapid-fire response, honed, like a laser-guided missile locking its sights onto its target, is probably determining your level of success right now.

People who have jobs may spend years sat in the place drifting aimlessly through the day to day motions (or more likely in today’s world, trying to fire-fight their way through mountains of every day tasks in a whirl-wind of stress) with no real sight of the bigger picture. But these people do not carry ownership for their success or failure in the same way as a business owner does. If you are sat in your business right now, feeling more like an employee than an entrepreneur, with all of the overheads and none of the perks,  then I challenge you to take some time out to consider what you true Purpose is and to decide whether your goals and your business are properly aligned to that Purpose.

Your purpose ignites your spirit. It is your guiding star, in your life and in your business. It is the planet you are headed for. Without a sense of purpose how will you know whether the actions you are taking are the right ones? If you have nothing to bench mark your actions against you will spend your time running around taking endless actions that ultimately lead you nowhere. Despite this sounding seemingly obvious, a study by psychologist William Marsten revealed that a staggering 94% of people have no definite purpose for their lives. That is tantamount to saying most people have no real point to their lives, a sad testimony to the saying ”Everyone dies but not everyone really lives”. Your ability then to identify and hold true to your purpose is going to define your ability to stay on course in your business and in your life. So what is it that really ignites your spirit? What is your raison d’être? When you close your eyes, which star are you headed for? Rocket fuel is expensive, don’t waste it by veering hundreds of thousands of miles off course. And certainly don’t waste it by heading in the wrong direction.

Once you have identified your Purpose, the star you are headed for, as a business owner the challenge then becomes staying focused on that purpose. If you do not take time out on a regular basis to refocus and realign your day-to-day activities with your purpose, you will find yourself veering slowly but surely off course. Time taken once a week or once a month to realign your actions with your purpose can mean the difference between your business staying laser focused on your star of success or fizzling out half-way there. Plus, if you do not keep up this constant course correction, the day to day millennia of tasks that go to make up the running of a business can take over. You end up ‘fire fighting’ and the smoke from each of those little fires is actually clouding the bigger picture that is your Purpose.

So how do you stop fighting the little fires? You can take the extreme but exhilarating approach (read Tim Ferriss ‘The 4-Hour Work Week’) & simply refuse to spend more than one hour a week answering your emails (outsource all your customer support, people will call you if it is that urgent) or you can be less extreme but nonetheless laser focused and ’Master Your Work Day’ à la Michael Linenberger. Either way you need to find a way to take your eyes off the ‘small stuff’ and refocus on the stuff that really matters. A rocket does not wait until it should be at the moon to decide if it was on the right course or not.

How will you know when your business is aligned with your Purpose? You will know it because the passion you feel for what you do will burn a light bright enough to illuminate that purpose no matter how many of  life’s little fires you have to put out on a daily basis. And if it does not, maybe it is time to consider a change?    

“He who is fixed to a star does not change his mind.” – Leonardo da Vinci.

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