Somebody will always be in control of your business and its success.
If you do not take control, somebody else will grab it by the reins.
If you do not control your business, you have to ask yourself what you are doing running a company in the first place.
Is running a business out of your control worth the sacrifices, commitment and persistence?
Why dedicate your life to running a business you ultimately do not control?
To help you gain more control over your business, I am sharing the most important factor to taking control of your company for good.
No, you are not in control of the world, but you are in control of your world.
Most importantly, remember that somebody is waiting in the wings to take control of your world if you do not control it yourself.
Here Is What Happens When You Do Not Control Your Business
You do not need me to tell you that nothing good happens when you do not control your business.
Being out of control negates the hard work you put into achieving your goals.
That said, here is a brief preview of what happens why you do not control your business:
You Set Goals But Never Reach Them
First, you will set goals but never reach them when you are not in control of your business.
Why?
Because being out of control causes emotions to go through the roof.
Running on emotion instead of logic mode makes managing and measuring goals nearly impossible.
As you already know, achieving goals requires consistent management and measurement.
Furthermore, the emotional response to being out of control makes reaching goals even more challenging than it already is.
Potential Customers Drop Like Flies
Being out of control causes your sales process to slow to a snail's pace.
Instead of flying through the process in a matter of days or weeks, it takes several weeks or even months to make it through.
As a result, prospects drop out of the sales pipeline like flies!
Unfortunately, time is the #1 killer of sales deals.
The longer it takes to move through the sales process, the less likely deals will close.
The reason is that long sales processes give prospects more time to overthink.
Nothing good ever happens when prospects overthink!
Ultimately, you will waste time on a sales process that does not produce closed deals.
Business Growth Becomes Impossible
How do you expect to grow your business if you:
- Are not reaching goals; and
- Cannot close deals with new customers?
Business growth is impossible when you are out of control because you cannot achieve goals or close new deals.
And if your business is not growing, it is dying!
Do you think your business can survive without consistent growth? Think again.
The future of your business goes into jeopardy from being out of control.
Do Not Forget You Feel Anxious the Entire Time!
I cannot move on without mentioning that being out of control is nothing short of anxiety-inducing.
Every business owner understands how terrible it feels to be in charge but not be in control.
What is the point of being a business owner if you are constantly anxious?
Yes, it feels good to be your own boss and make a direct impact on customers.
However, should being your own boss come at the expense of your mental health?
While being a business owner is inevitably emotional, that does not mean you should suffer from anxiety from being out of control.
Eventually, the emotional pain you feel will seep into your business life and create even more of a disaster.
Ready to Take Control? Do Not Forget About These Factors
Are you finally ready to take control of your business?
Are you done putting up with the impacts of being out of control, including 24/7 anxiety and failing to grow despite working like hell?
Great. But before I get into the most crucial factor regarding taking control, consider these other factors first.
While these three factors are not as important as the ones I am revealing below, they are still crucial to success.
Start taking control of your business by taking control of these three all-important factors.
Time
First, you do not have control of your business if you do not control your time.
Time is the most valuable asset in the world; you can almost always make more money or friends, but you cannot buy additional time.
Unfortunately, you are wasting time if you are not controlling it. There is no in-between.
Are you in control of your time?
Do you make the most of your daily hours to accomplish each of your goals?
Or, do you spend most of the day trying to get motivated, putting out fires, and getting distracted every three seconds? AKA, wasting time all day!
The business world will not wait for you to take control of your own time.
Sales Processes
Business success depends on sales success, and sales success depends on controlling your sales process.
Controlling your process causes:
That said, get your sales process down to a science!
Many sales teams do not even have a repeatable process, believe it or not.
It is as if they throw darts in the dark every time they hunt for new prospects.
If you want to take control of your business, you must take control of your sales process.
Team Members
Going the solopreneur route will not work forever.
The more you grow your business, the more help you need.
Specifically, the more help you need managing every part of your business that does not have to do with sales
How do you control a productive team without being that controlling boss?
The key is ensuring that every team member has a clear objective.
Every team member must have a defined objective they are trying to achieve and the time they need to achieve it by.
Taking control of your team members does not mean you have to be a control freak.
Instead, it is about making sure everybody understands the role they play.
You MUST Control This Factor to Control Your Business
It is crucial to control your time, sales process, and team members if you want to achieve success.
However, taking control of these three factors pale in comparison to another one. It is a difference between lakes and oceans.
Everything will go to waste unless you take control of this one all-important factor.
The factor I am talking about is your emotions.
You will never control your business if you do not control your emotions!
Again, you can take total control of your time, sales process, and team members, but it will not matter if you do not control your emotions.
Here is why:
If You Do Not Control Your Emotions, They Will Control You
Your emotions will control you if you do not control them.
You begin acting out of emotions when they control you.
For example, a problem will arise, and you will approach it from an emotional state instead of a logical one.
Not only will you fail to solve the problem, but you will make it worse.
Unless you want to go through a Will Smith Chris Rock situation, do not let emotions take control of you!
Name One Time Making Decisions Out of Emotions Did You Well
Name one time that making decisions based on emotions did you well.
See a cake on the counter? Eat it all because emotions are telling you!
Fears of a recession on the horizon? Sell all of your stocks before the crash comes!
Is a prospect suddenly ghosting you? Tell them how you really feel by sending a nasty email!
Case closed.
Making decisions based on emotions DOES NOT do you any good!
Furthermore, you will never control your business (or life) unless you control your emotions.
All the progress you make will get uprooted by a few moments of acting on feelings.
Do you really want that to happen?
Here Is How to Take Control of Your Emotions to Control Your Business
Remember, you will never control your business until you control your emotions.
Making a few decisions based on emotions can completely uproot all the work you put into your company.
That said, here is how to take control of your business by taking control of your emotions:
Set Clear Priorities
First and most importantly, set clear priorities.
Priorities are the things most important to you in business and life.
For example, common priorities for business owners include:
- Month-to-month sales growth
- Staying mentally and physically healthy despite being busy working
- Making sure everybody in the family gets to spend time with you
Setting clear priorities is important because it shows you what is and is not worth getting emotional over.
You have much more control over your emotions when you intentionally decide what does and does not deserve space in your life.
Most importantly, only select priorities that are in your control!
Setting priorities out of your control increases the odds of emotional responses when you cannot live up to them.
The ancient stoic philosopher, Epictetus, said, ‘Just keep in mind: the more we value things outside of our control, the less control we have’.
Set Even Clearer Objectives
Next, set clear objectives.
Objectives are not the same as priorities; a priority is what is important to you, while objectives are methods of fulfilling priorities.
Better yet, think of objectives as goals which ultimately accumulate to fulfil your priorities.
I suggest setting:
- Daily objectives
- Long-term objectives
First, set daily objectives. Your daily objectives are the most crucial items you must accomplish during a particular day.
You are less likely to deviate from an item when you know you must do it to have a successful day. As a result, you are less likely to get pulled in other directions and get emotional.
Second, set long-term objectives. I suggest setting monthly and annual ones.
Having long-term objectives gives you something to work towards. When you have something meaningful to work towards, you are less likely to get emotional and deviate from the path.
Emphasize Accountability
Taking control of your emotions requires extreme accountability.
Accountability is about doing what you say you will do. It is about keeping yourself in check with your commitments.
You can have clear priorities and objectives, but how do you stay in check with them?
Conveniently, accountability is also a matter of not letting emotions get the best of you. You have to do what you say you will do even when you do not feel like it.
That said, use these tactics to keep accountability in check:
- Tracking your objectives each day
- Surrounding yourself with people who will not make excuses for you
- Setting aside daily downtime
News flash: Nobody is going to hold you more accountable than you!
You are the only person who can take ownership of your actions (and inactions).
Set Aside Daily Downtime
Give yourself at least thirty minutes every day to have serious downtime.
When I say serious downtime, I mean time without your phone, laptop, or TV in the room!
I mean sitting on a park bench alone without headphones in your ears.
Or, spreading out a blanket in the backyard while meditating.
Downtime allows your brain to turn off its emotional circuits.
For many business owners, these emotional circuits are running 24/7.
They have a hard time taking control of their emotions and ultimately their business because of this.
Sometimes all it takes is a good 30-minutes to go from a zero to one hundred on the emotional scale.
Do the Daily Brain Dump
Holding emotions in IS NEVER the solution to controlling them.
After holding emotions in for too long, they will eventually come out in a way you do not want them to (anybody who has been there knows what I am talking about!).
From now on, do a daily brain dump every night to prevent emotions from building up and clogging your mind.
A brain dump is pulling out your journal and writing down any emotions you are feeling and why you are feeling them.
For example, you can write down how you are feeling frustrated over a prospect who keeps ghosting you.
The brain dump gets emotions out of your head and onto the paper.
For lack of a better word, the brain dump creates distance between you and your emotions.
With a distance between you and the emotions, you can look logically at them and determine if they are worth getting upset over.
Instead of letting emotions swirl in your head all day, get them out and into a journal.
Final Thoughts on Taking Control of Your Business
How long will you let other forces control your business before realizing you can and must take control?
That is, if you want to achieve business and life success.
Never forget that taking control of your business is more of an internal process than an external one: You can have control of the external forces, lose your grip on the internal ones, and lose everything.
Living up to your full potential is only possible IF you control your emotions.
