Get a Reality Check on Your Business

When was the last time you a real reality check on your business?  Maybe you are doing well and things are going great.  Or maybe you've run into some challenges lately and are wondering what you may be doing wrong.

Either way, a good habit to get into each year is to get a fresh set of eyes on your business and get feedback to help you.  You should bring someone in from the outside and have them do a top down analysis of your business.

Now, forgoing objections in your mind, such as, "I can do that, but they don't understand our business.  They don't understand what we are going through and having to do.  Coming in for a few hours is not enough time for them really understand and help us."   There is some validity to the argument, but I would say that the feedback you will get outweighs the issue of them not knowing your business as well as you do.

Anytime you get feedback, there are elements of it that you will not use or are not accurate, but there is always something that you will.  And that is what you are looking for.  You are looking for the little diamond in the rough or that one of two things, or different ways of thinking that can make a huge difference in your business.

Look, I know it is hard to have someone tear apart your business and maybe challenge you about how your do things, but that is the point, right?  If you never confront things and do things the way you've always done, you pretty much get the results you've always gotten.  Your goal in this exercise is to expose the problems, the skeletons of things that you may have been willing to deal with and figure out how you will.  The goal is always to get new advice and a different perspective that may cause you to look at things differently and grow.

So, get a reality check by an outsider at least once per year.  It's one of the best ways to break your business out to new levels.