Tony Robbins advises millions of people on how to get more out of their businesses and their lives. A critical part of his approach involves intentional decision-making and boosting awareness; Robbins sees a long-term commitment to evolving, improving and adding value as central not only to his success, but to anyone’s success.
Robbins counts his seven key habits and seven forces of business mastery among the core aspects of his success. Both the habits and the forces offer valuable insights about the kind of effective financial management that can help your business thrive. Here are just some of the common financial business mistakes you can avoid by implementing these key habits and forces of business mastery into your day-to-day life — at work and at home.
MISTAKE: UNDERUTILIZED CUSTOMERS
If you already have a fantastic base of devoted customers, but you’re not using that to your advantage as a business, you’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity. And if you lack that kind of customer base, you need to work toward creating it anyway for your business to thrive; for example, research shows that dissatisfied mobile phone customers find new providers 74% of the time.
REMEDY: CREATE RAVING CUSTOMERS AND CULTURE
If your customers are merely satisfied, they’re not yours for life; they’ll follow the best deal, which may lead them away from your business if someone else offers something more enticing or marketed as “better.” In contrast, raving customers stick with your business out of loyalty because you reliably add value to a unique degree that can’t be had elsewhere. When you and your business can figure out the needs of your customers and meet them in innovative ways, the result is a raving fan culture that surrounds your business.
MISTAKE: FAILING TO TAKE ACTION OR INNOVATE EVEN WHEN UNCERTAINTY EXISTS
It’s a fact: starting your own business demands some level of risk-taking. If you want to own your own successful business, you can’t wait until there are no variables in play.
REMEDY: PRACTICING A HABIT OF CERTAINTY
Tony Robbins explains that you can’t let uncertainty prevent you from taking action:
“With uncertainty and periods of big change can come opportunity. When you step into uncertainty knowing that certainty isn’t a feeling — it’s a habit you create — everything shifts. Progress comes when you tell yourself the truth, and you’re able to feel the uncertainty and take action anyway.”
In other words, business owners should create their own certainty mindset. This isn’t a denial of the obvious risks inherent to entrepreneurship. It is the certain knowledge that control over one’s day-to-day choices can and will have tangible, positive results. The key to breaking out of stagnation and into innovation is facing uncertainty and fear to see opportunities to thrive.
MISTAKE: OBSERVING DETRIMENTAL MONEY AND SPENDING RITUALS
Many of us have developed detrimental money and spending rituals over time, and these can spill over into our businesses. Failure to save properly, blurring the lines between personal and business finances, and even poor understanding of bookkeeping generally can all lead to business failure.
REMEDY: CREATING HEALTHY RITUALS AROUND MONEY
Tony Robbins argues that business owners (and everyone else) should create new, healthy money and spending rituals to ensure financial success. For example, creating and following a spending plan is essential to the success of a new business. Getting professional financial assistance for your business and focusing on growth investments are also important to your young business. The common factor here is that these are financially-sound steps you can take in your business and personal life that foster healthy change.
MISTAKE: BEING UNAWARE OF YOUR INDUSTRY AND THE BUSINESS LIFECYCLE
You can’t serve customers well if you don’t have a sense of what they want. Without a deep understanding of your current place in the business lifecycle, there’s little chance that you’ll be able to forecast and budget well.
REMEDY: KNOW WHAT BUSINESS YOU ARE IN
Your business mission should be clearly defined so you will always know what outcomes your business should serve. After all, how can you achieve long-term success without really understanding what success will mean in terms of your business? Success for a business in the toddler stage of the business life cycle will look very different than success for a business in its prime — and both of these change significantly from industry to industry. Know where you are so you can make smarter decisions about where you’re going.
MISTAKE: PARTNERING WITH THE WRONG PEOPLE
One of the most serious mistakes a business owner can make is partnering with the wrong person. You may have the best idea, a fantastic product or a truly innovative service to offer, but if you get embroiled in a failing business with a bad partner, none of that will matter.
REMEDY: CAREFULLY CHOOSING THE RIGHT PARTNERS AND PEOPLE
One insight that Tony Robbins offers on this point is that we all need to create and strengthen the habit of carefully choosing the right people to be in our lives — even when it comes to business. Maintaining a circle of the right people around you can make or break your business, not to mention your personal happiness.
MISTAKE: FAILURE TO MAKE LARGE-ENOUGH PROFIT GAINS IN THE EARLY DAYS
Creating meaningful growth, especially for a new business, can feel like a daunting task. Some business owners react by taking wild, unjustified risks to make something happen; others fail to act at all. The results are, surprisingly, similar: neither is very reliable when it comes to growth and profits.
REMEDY: OPTIMIZATION AND MAXIMIZATION
Although you may think you have to make major changes to see major profit and growth, this isn’t always the case. In fact, a more powerful, reliable change agent for your business is an ongoing commitment to day-to-day optimization and maximization of your business’ processes and people. You can achieve this by making minor, incremental changes each day; the force of these improvements acting together is vastly improved efficiency and profit.
Tony Robbins explained to Entrepreneur Magazine:
“We’re treasure hunters. We know there’s treasure in our business, no question, and we’re going to find it no matter what it takes. If we try something and it doesn’t work, we’re going to try something else, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll make another change, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll shift something else until we get the result we’re after.”
CONCLUSION
If you want to save your new business from being in the 50% of businesses that fail in the first year and ensure your spot in the four percent that last more than 10 years, take steps to protect yourself and your business from common financial business mistakes. Better techniques for managing your business finances can keep you and your business thriving.