Last month I shared the first part of my 747 Business Model, the 7 core areas of life. I shared the one and only reason your business exists: to help you achieve your life goals.

The “4” stands for the 4 Pillars of a Phenomenally Successful Company (which I have already written about in a previous issue of ICS). Briefly, the four pillars are:

1. Marketing - everything you do to attract prospects to your business.

2. Sales - everything you do to turn the prospect into a paying customer.

3. Operations - everything you do to service your new customer and hopefully turn them into a long term client!

4. Administration - Tracking your numbers. This is your sales reports, income statement, hourly production and any other stats that tell the story of your business.

When thinking about the Administration pillar, just imagine the instrument panel on a 747. It shows the fuel level, the state of the myriad of parts and it shows the attitude and altitude of the airplane while in flight.

My good friend Zig Ziglar says that “it’s your attitude that determines your altitude.” If you’re read this article right when it comes out, it’s February. That means you may be really busy with water damage work, you may be steady with commercial work…or you rely on residential cleaning and it just ain’t there!

If you’re in the last category, then this is especially for you!

The final “7” in the 747 Business Model is the 7 Steps of Implementation. Step 1 of 7 is “Inspiration.” This time of the year can be frustrating. People aren’t calling and now that you finally have time to market, no one seems to want your service. Your bills are still there but the income isn’t.

My goal this month is to take you from desperation to inspiration. And if you happen to be busy right now, it will encourage you as well.

First, what is inspiration anyway? And why should you be inspired in the face of difficult times? In my mind, inspiration is not motivation. Motivation comes from external forces. When you need to pay your bills, you are motivated to find money. Motivation can be a positive reward too. Perhaps you are working to pay for a vacation to Hawaii. You can get motivated about that!

But inspiration is different. Inspiration doesn’t depend on circumstances. If your attitude is determined by whether you are “busy” or “slow,” you are living by circumstance.

Was it slow last February? What about the February before that? And the one before that? Have you tracked your numbers? Did you do a 12-month budget for this year? If you did, you would know it would be “slow” and you would have found a way to fund your business during this time. That’s called planning. Don’t get me wrong, it’s normal to be discouraged when things aren’t going well, but let’s not put so much stock in living by circumstance. Instead, let’s get inspired.

Before I share how that works, let me also say to you who are “busy”. Don’t live by circumstance. We are grateful to hit our numbers and we are blessed to be able to build a phenomenal business, but you can be “busy and broke”. You can be “busy” but not really fulfilled.

So, keeping in mind that your business exists only as a vehicle to help you achieve your life goals, you must consider where you are going. That’s called vision. If you don’t have a compelling vision for your life, you will be forced to focus on activity and become enslaved by it.

Did you really put down some life goals last month? Once you get that vision and understand that you can reach it, you begin to look beyond your current circumstances. That’s called hope.

The No. 1 Reason Small Businesses Don't Grow is Failure To Implement

You know what to do and how to do it, you just don’t do it! The key to overcoming F.T.I. is inspiration. My slogan in my coaching program is “Inspiration to Implementation,” because when you have a compelling vision that excites you and you can see the benefits, you are going to implement!

But when you see just the problems rather than the possibilities, your mind shuts down and starts thinking about all the reasons it won’t work rather than why it will work. Have you ever noticed that the business owners that are growing are excited? You think to yourself “sure they are! They’re busy!” Nope. They were excited before they were busy. They see possibilities. They have hope. They know how to stay inspired during difficult times.

How do they do it? They have a vision. They have compelling life goals.