Today I am talking about how my personal philosophy, The APE Philosophy, can help you grow your small business to the next level of success you are working towards.
Awareness: Being able to plan aheads, write a business plan with short and long term goals.
Prevention: Knowing how to prevent some of the major challenges many small business owners encounter.
Early Detection: Dealing with known challenges early enough before they get out of hand.
If you are aware of the steps to take to ensure your business has strong foundations this will save you time and money.
If you know how to prevent loss of revenue, credibility and even clients in the early stages of your business this offers you more opportunity to move forward.
Detecting any problems early enough to deal with them can mean the differende between success and failure.
So how are you made AWARE in the first place. One of the steps people sometimes like to skip when planning a small business is market research. Being aware of what is out there, who your competition is, how much financial backing you have or do not have are crucial elements within your business. If you decide to miss this step out and jump forward too fast you may find your small business does not succeed. Being aware is quite simple, visit your local small business centre and find out how they can help you. You may have friends who already own a business and they raise your awareness by offering tips and ideas how to build strong foundations for your future sucess. AWARENESS is a vital tool which, if utilised and used properly can benefit you on a daily basis.
How can you PREVENT certain challenges impacting your business. Prevention works hand in hand with AWARENESS, by practising both Awareness and Prevention you can definitely ensure your success. Let's use your office computer as an example of practising prevention. You may not be able to hire an IT consultant in the early days so you decide to set up your business computer yourself. You can prevent the loss of data, and other serious issues from occuring by being Aware of the consequences in the first place. If you do not have a firewall are you preventing the bad guys from breaking into your computer and stealing all your client information? Prevention means you are aware of the relevant facts and ensure you act accordingly to prevent challenges to the best of your ability.
Does EARLY DETECTION mean you failed to ensure your business was adequately protected in the first place or does it mean that you detected a challenge early enough to ensure less serious conequences? Early detection means that there is a challenge, which you discovered early and you can deal with it before it gets out of hand. It may or may not be that you were not Aware, or practised Prevention, but ultimately, the goal here is not to be perfect but to do your best.
APE is a tool you can use in every situation every day of your life, I do and it works for me, so try it and see what you think!
- Log in to post comments