The Small Business Administration of the United States estimates that there are currently 23 million companies classified as small businesses.  Why shouldn't yours be one of them?  After all, you have taken the important step of reading this blog to find out what makes a small business successful!

Visualizing your success

Having the expectation of success often provides the fuel for actual success.  If you cannot even picture what success looks like, it will be awfully difficult for you to drive yourself and your business to be successful. 

How many times have you seen an athlete close his eyes before a particular play and go through a pantomime of what he will do?  You may see basketball players "air-shooting" a foul shot before the referee gives them the ball, or you may see a baseball player pointing to the second deck of seats beyond the right field wall.  What these athletes are doing is expecting success.  They are visualizing what success looks like it.  Very often, they achieve the success they have visualized.

In his book, The Success Principles, Jack Canfield lists "believe it's possible" and "believe in yourself" as the third and fourth fundamentals of success. [i]   He tells the story of the strike-out pitcher Tug McGraw threw against Willie Wilson that gave the Philadelphia Phillies the 1980 World Series title.  McGraw had this to say about the experience:

"It was as if I'd been there a thousand times before.  When I was growing up, I would pitch to my father in the backyard.  We would always get to where it was the bottom of the ninth in the World Series with two outs and three men on base.  I would always bear down and strike them out."

McGraw had been trained to expect success from his very earliest days of playing backyard ball, and it paid off when it really mattered.  McGraw believed others should practice expecting success, too.  When he was a spokesman for Little League, he said "Kids should practice autographing baseballs.  This is a skill that's often overlooked in Little League."

Note that McGraw's visualizations are very specific.  He didn't practice simply "winning the World Series" or "being a very good pitcher".  Instead, he visualized what he would do if he got to pitch the bottom of the ninth in the last game of the Series, with two outs and three men on base.  He didn't advise Little League players to "think about being successful" but to practice autographs.

The more specific you can make your visualization, the more helpful it will be.  Visualization can help you to picture how you will handle certain events when they come up so you needn't hesitate before you respond.  For example, if your idea of success involves being interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today Show, it's worth spending some time running through the likely course the interview will take before you actually get there.  If instead, you want to eventually sell your company to the highest bidder, spend some time thinking about how you will attract bids and how you will determine the market value of your business.

Sometimes this is called "beginning with the end in mind."  By knowing where you want to end up, you can develop your business to meet your goals.  If you have no clear vision of what success means, you cannot hope to achieve it.  That would be like going on a cross-country road trip without a map.  When you leave New York, if you don't know that your destination is Los Angeles, you may end up in Florida or Canada instead.  Nice places, to be sure, but definitely not Los Angeles.

None of this is meant to imply that your goals won't change along the way, but when your goals change, your vision should change as well.  Your business is too important to allow it to just float along with the current.  Take charge of your destiny by having a clear picture of where you want to go and how you plan to get there at all times.