Hi there,
What an odd title for a Blog. Or is it?
All business owners get the business equivalent of ‘writers block’ from time to time. Your list of things to do stretches into the future with no end in sight. To make matters worse, you don’t have the information to hand to actually complete any of them either.
What you need really is not more things to do, but an injection of inspiration and surprisingly, this can come from just having a chat with another business owner. As you discuss how you are getting on etc and listen to their conversation, you pick up ideas from what they are doing right and then can apply this to what you are doing. Sometimes you will even get a terrific new idea of how to get more customers or sell in a different way – and all this just by having a coffee with a friend. In my experience, I have never come away from a meeting/chat like this without some new angle and one that I am keen to get on with – something that gets me up in the morning.
That’s not to say that all you do is pump people for information and then just copy their business using their inside knowledge – you would soon run out of friends that way. What I mean here is just listening to what is happening in their business, mulling it over and then applying the idea to your own, non-competitive business. In fact, if you then go back to your source and tell them that you have implemented and idea you got from them, tweaked it and applied it to your business, they are likely to take that as a compliment.
Remember, they may do the same for ideas you have too. In fact, what I try and do during these chats is to see what I know that I can give away to the other person without any expectation of a return favour. By doing it this way, usually something does come your way, but not from where you might expect. I know that sounds a bit woolly, but just try it for a few weeks and see what happens.
Let me know how you get on and what idea got you inspired again.
Have a great weekend. All the best. Roy Lewis