You’re in the business of design. How did you get here? Most of you embark on this adventure because you have faith in yourself, your talent, and what you have to offer. As challenges and roadblocks are faced during the course of running your business, they can either strengthen your faith or let doubt in. When economic times are tough, when we’re tired or confused, it can be tempting to give into the doubt. This is when you need to rely on your plan, systems and support to get you through.

When things don’t work out the way we thought, we label that ‘failure.’ Failures are what help you adjust your plan, improve your processes and system, and add the right players to your team. Fail forward every time and emerge stronger, wiser and better prepared!

Compare running your design business to training for a marathon. Runners don’t just decide one day to run a marathon and do it the next! They come up with a training plan. They put systems in place to improve overall health and fitness so they’ll have the strength, endurance and fuel to perform. They have a team to help make it happen – from supportive family and friends, running partners, and trainers to event sponsors, volunteers and spectators cheering them on. They also have a process to track and measure results, providing continual feedback (mile markers, elapsed time, pace, distance remaining, time remaining) so they can easily monitor progress, make adjustments along the way and emerge victorious!

So putting this in the simplest of terms, why would you approach running your business any differently than you would running a marathon? Where will you end up with any less dedication?

You need:

• A plan. Doubt exists when we’re unsure of where we’re going.
• Systems. Doubt exists when we don’t know how to get to where we want to go.
• A support team. Doubt exists when we don’t have mentors, like-minded colleagues, resources, staff, and fans cheering us on and helping us along the way.

“To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting.” – Stanislaw Leszczynski

Your doubts can function as a guidance system, providing continual feedback to help you gauge your progress. May they propel you forward, inspiring you to make the necessary adjustments along the way, taking action that feeds your faith, so you can emerge victorious!

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 at 12:51 pm and is filed under Mindset. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.