It’s heartbreaking to watch the once ‘action-oriented’, ‘built from scratch’ business owners who have grown their company to the point of getting so busy – they have forgotten how to be assertive and proactive. Their marketing success, and sales volume have paid off in the form of massive stress, brought on by constantly reacting to issues, fixing problems, and simply just ‘keeping up.’

Not all adopt this identity of ‘servant’ to the business however, many continue with the builder mindset and habits they started with at all levels as their company grows and grows.  A few continue to evolve and grow; here are 3 ways they remain more proactive than reactive – truly conducting the locomotive that is their company and not just in the back shoveling coal into the engine.

They build to quench the market’s needs, not their just their own needs. Some people only set out into business with the idea of: ‘one day this company will pay the bills, cover rent, and make payroll…consistently!’ While others consider the needs of the market, or the problem that their product or service solves, and thereby give themselves NO ceiling, and NO comfort zone, and NO sense of maintenance. Pro-active growth is simply a by-product of the crusade they consider themselves on.

They ritualistically create and work from 90 day action plans. The difference between massive excitement and massive stress often just comes down to planning habits.  Sounds boring right? Maybe so, but it is true. See, workload does not cause stress, nor prevent us from being pro-active; it is DECISION load that causes stress and keeps us re-active. Most are caught in heavy decision load ALL the time as they fail to protect time to complete 90 day action plans where they in essence lay out their ‘marching orders’ for the quarter. When you take one full day to make the BIG decisions for the coming quarter, you can spend the rest of the quarter actually taking actions, and not being paralyzed by looming decisions and reacting to problems and opportunities.

They adopt an attitude of service to the shareholders, EVEN when the only shareholder is them. Those of you with shareholders (other than yourselves) will likely have this mindset already, but it’s not as easy to adopt for those of us who run the company day to day AND sit as sole shareholder. Imagine how much more focused you would be on proactive growth and reporting how the company has advanced, evolved, increased in value, expanded, as well as what the plan is going forward if you had someone else to report that to, other than just…yourself. We often are willing to pay more respect and courtesy to others than ourselves; adopt an attitude of service to the shareholders – especially if the shareholder is you.

Action Edge Business Coaching, a proud firm of ActionCOACH, opens our office doors every day to help Calgary business owners achieve more and thus move closer to our vision of World Abundance Through Business Re-Education.