I have a very good friend that recently passed away from cancer: She was very young. I remember going shopping with her after her condition had become really bad and she was beginning to suspect the end was near. I was shopping for a jacket and being the very price conscious customer that I am I chose a jacket I found to be okay but had the right price. My friend asked me if I liked the jacket. I replied that it was okay and that I will probably grow to like it. She looked at me very sternly and said to me, “then don’t get it, we will go to another store where you will find something you like at the right price. Never trade the okay for what you really want, life is too short”. I knew going to another store for her was a big deal. She was tired and would rather go home and rest. But being the great friend she was she was willing to sacrifice her time so as not see me settle. Even though she has passed away that sentence still haunts me every day. I frequently ask myself, “am I trading the okay for what I really want?”In life it is so easy to settle for what is just okay, rather than striving for our dreams and vision. For instance, we get a job offer and we know we want to be in another field but we accept it because we are afraid we may not be able to do better. Or an example I see a lot is women dating men that are just okay for them. They date because they are afraid they might not be able to do better.
So how does this apply to business?
How do you build an exceptional lifestyle business that is way beyond the ordinary? How do you move away from okay?
The answer is in your sales mix. A sales mix is the relative proportion of the each type of product or service you sell. Look at your sales mix: Are you passionate about what you offer to others? Or, are you in business just to earn a living? This does not mean you have to like everything about your business. As a matter of fact, there are things about your business you are just not going to like. But the point is, when you stand back and look at your business as a whole, do you like what you see or is the ordinary taking precedence in your business?
How do you determine your sales mix?
Like I said earlier, the sales mix is the relative proportion of goods or services you provide. So for example, let’s say you have 2 services and 90% of the time you perform Service A and the other 10% you perform Service B. Your sales mix is 90% Service A and 10% Service B. You can compute your sales mix using sales data from previous years (hopefully you keep good records and if you don’t you need to start).
If the percentage of “ordinary” products or services you offer is more than the “exceptional” products or services, then it’s time to have a business makeover. A business makeover starts by looking at all part of a business and develops a plan to turn the ordinary to the extraordinary. Without a plan, you will keep doing the same things hoping for different results – the very definition of insanity.
Every lifestyle entrepreneur goes into business because they cared enough about something. Somewhere along the line we get buried in the tasks and forget the purpose we started in the first place. We get the okay jackets” rather that the “exceptional ones”. If you look at a child, they seem to know what they want. But as they grow older they are told to just be grateful for what they have before them. Don’t get me wrong, I am all for gratefulness: I personally am grateful of all the wonderful blessings in my life. But gratefulness has been used interchangeable with mediocrity. This is what bothers me.
So let’s turn back to you: I do not want you to stop reading this blog without taking at least one minute to reflect on your life. Is your dream worth waiting for? Is it worth it for you to go beyond what is okay and strife for what is buried deep down in your heart? Just like the jacket we are surrounded with things, concepts, people, ideas that are just okay for us and it is so easy to settle. Today I am challenging you to go beyond okay, DON’T’ SETTLE BUT STRIVE FOR THE EXCEPTIONAL!