5 Questions Successful Business Owners & Leaders Ask Themselves Everyday

1. What Makes Me Special?

Everyday when you awaken, you should take time to focus on “What Makes Me Special?” Hopefully this is not a very complex question to answer. However, don’t stop with a single answer. Dig deeper! If you really like to design, dig into WHY you enjoy designing so much.

People that succeed, do so because they are meeting a genuine purpose. Many of us have various hobbies that we enjoy doing, but very few of us identify how to start a movement based on purpose. When you consistently identify what makes you special, you tend to work in a way with a purpose that eventually gains traction for a movement, which launches your work into the foreground.

Remember, identifying what makes you special requires focusing within, taking the time to know yourself, and recognizing your strengths. Once that comes together, constantly focus like a laser on developing those strengths and exposing them in a way that provides opportunity for success.

Success is the result from a vortex of all your strengths working together as one at the right time.

2. What Can I Do Today That Gets Me Closer To My Goals?

In every hobby, sport, or career, you will probably agree that GROWTH is key to determining success and achievement. How many of us though recognize the benefit of taking steps to getting better every, single day. Everyday you have the opportunity to prove and be judged by what you are doing that day.

In the office, we tend to see successful leaders receive recognition after flourishing in a task that was either beyond their comfort zone and/or one that everyone else was apprehensive about taking on. When I learned that secret, my entire outlook on success changed. It’s not just about how hard you work, but how smart you work toward achieving your goal. In other words, I learned to use a strategy in every approach toward achievement. I would later take the same approach in starting a business. I found myself actively engaging multiple variables in order to grow as quickly (but effectively) as I could (using social media, blogs, networking, marketing, etc). My daily goal is to work smart enough and be most effective, based on my strengths, as they relate to my goals. As a business owner, if I’m not doing something productive everyday, I feel that I am losing ground.

My biggest competitor is myself. How can I keep up with and (possibly outdo) the greater version of me?

Finding ways to place yourself continuously within environments of growth will prove important to your path towards success. Just know that sometimes those environments are what you may deem to be “outside your comfort zone”. Those are the environments you want to engage in because they force you to GROW.

3. Is My Life in Balance?

While it is important to place yourself within “uncomfortable” environments for the sake of growth, it is equally important to maintain an alternate level of balance.

Meditation has continually been a practice that proves to balance my daily life. I typically start early in the morning before breakfast and while the kids are getting ready with a few inspirational statements that I find within an app and/or using those that I have personalized. These quotes provide inspiration for setting the ground and mindset for what follows, which is approximately 15-20 minutes of focused meditation. The beauty of meditation is that it places your mind on a frequency of positive thought and expectation, which attracts those same vibrations back into your life experience.

I find myself practicing mediation in the car (prior to a meeting), on the sofa (after a day of activities), and even at the dinner table (reflecting on the things that I appreciated from the day). Meditation is a practice that can be used to balance the anxiety leading up to a performance or the agitation of a trying experience. It can used anywhere, at anytime, to center yourself. The main goal here is to prioritize taking care of yourself over everything, first. This is not a quick win, and then your done.

The game of life is a marathon, and you will need balance in order to achieve success.

4. Who Can I Meet With Today?

Your path to success will prove to be easier (and quicker) as you practice consistently adding new people to your network.

Every month, we take time to acknowledge how many new people we've gained within our professional network and particularly where we met them. Looking forward to the next month, we constantly seek new environments or events to meet new people. The local newspaper has been a very good source for what is going on in our area. The consultants at BridgeBuilder Education & Investments act with intention to follow up and cultivate the relationships that we have gained via routine visits with other business owners, or even lunch with fellow colleagues.

Do not fall into the mindset that you only need to know people within your industry or field of expertise. Successful people have resources whom they can reach within various backgrounds. You will be surprised how building a relationship with someone may reveal how they can help you based on their past or present experience. --- It’s a small world!

The key to relationships is cultivating those relationships that are genuine and learning how you can be a help to one another as fellow business leaders. We can all learn from one another, and most times, it only takes a piece of advice from one of our colleagues to prevent us from wasting time or money in areas from which they have learned from. Having a reliable network can also prove to be an effective source of free marketing and advertising. Word of mouth is powerful. When people know they can trust you, they will want to help you succeed.

The truth is, you never know when or how a person will prove valuable to you or your business. However, I can attest that everyone we have built a genuine interest and rapport with at BridgeBuilder Education & Investments has led us down a positive path and broadened our horizons, largely due to the diversity of those relationships.

5. What Am I Grateful For Today?

The most cautious piece of advice I can offer in relation to building your base of relationships, business actions, and spiritual balance, is to not lose your focus. In the journey for success, it is one that is least travelled because it is a journey that will spread you thin. That is why only a selection of unique individuals rise to the top.

In the hectic journey, is very important to pause and actually enjoy your achievements and milestones. Celebrate them! Whether you have received a raise, a new car, started a new business, gained a partner or something intangible like choosing a different path in life, or a new sense of confidence, you must enjoy those life moments. Consequently, ignoring them will feel like you are in a rat race without a break or rest stop in sight. Going from one reward to the next without enjoying them is not a natural way to enjoy your success.

What good is it to shoot for the stars if you never pause to enjoy when you make it to the moon?

Be driven, but also be thankful.

DeWayne Johnson, PMP (dewayne.johnson@iamabridgebuilder.us) is a Co-Founder and Business Management Consultant with BridgeBuilder Education & Investments, which provides consulting for businesses interested in ways to improve process, strategy, leadership, and staff development. For more information, please visit www.bridgebuilderinvestments.com.

You can ‘like’ the company on Facebook: www.facebook.com/iamabridgebuilder and ‘follow’ them on Twitter: @BBEInvestments. You can also connect with DeWayne Johnson on LinkedIn.