Look out the window…

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Looking out the window gives you time to think and ponder. I use it productively to come up with ideas and solutions. For me sometimes thinking too hard about something doesn’t give the best solution. A watched pot never boils and all that :)

If you spend a lot of your time being busy you will miss your best ideas. You will be too busy looking ahead that you may miss what is right in front of you.

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What to do when you don’t want to do your Thing any more

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So there’s doing your Thing in the BIG sense and there’s doing your Thing in the “How you do it right now” sense. When you realise these are different, you’ll see that there’s no problem if you don’t want to do your Thing any more, as you’ll most probably be meaning this in the “I don’t want to do the work I am doing right now any more” sense.

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Location Location Location (where it matters)

Apart from being one of my favourite telly shows (who doesn’t love a bit of Kirstie and Phil banter while snooping round other people’s houses?), Location Location Location is an important consideration too when working out where to sell your products and services. I’m not an expert in Retail, but I know enough to know it’s important to choose a location that works–lots of foot traffic, easy parking–that sort of thing. And location is as important when you offer a service too.

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Are you special? Can you explain your uniqueness?

I was reminded again at the weekend (I am being Masterminded by Jonathan Jay) how important is it to be unique in business. We were talking about USPs, and why a business owner must know what their USP is before they can market their business with success.

USP stands for Unique Selling Point, or Unique Sales Proposition. I was reminded how hard it is to define these — to really make them totally unique.

It is quite easy to come up with a USP only to realise under scrutiny that it’s not, in fact, unique and could easily be applied to other businesses. So it was good to have the Mastermind group of business owners challenging each other to be unique.

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Business is always business

When you’re running a business, you need to think like a business owner. Yes, here I am stating the obvious again. But it’s easy to start thinking too personally, or take things to heart, or get over-excited when your business is experiencing a peak or trough. Business is always business.

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Take time to Tidy

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I am not a neat freak—in fact, I’m pretty messy most of the time…

But I do tidy up when I need to and it ALWAYS makes a difference.

Now, you might think I am just talking about doing the filing (which is a good place to start, btw), BUT there are plenty of other things in your business that could do with a tidy from time to time that you should think about.

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