Cash Flow Potentials

Just as each and every one of us had to learn to walk, no one was born knowing how to be a successful entrepreneur. Every entrepreneur had to learn how to be effective at what he was trying to accomplish -- and practice being effective until it became a habit. There are four key stages of understanding a new skill : 

Stage 1. Unconscious and  Incompetence. This is when you don't know how to do it, and you don't even know that you don't know.

Stage 2. Conscious and Incompetence. This is when you know what you don't know, and you begin to work on learning it.

Stage 3. Conscious  and Competence. This is when you know what you need to know -- and you can do it. But it takes all of your concentration.

Stage 4. Unconscious and Competence. This is when you can perform the skill without even thinking about it. It's now a habit.

To be able to continue to grow yourself personally and your business you must recognize which stage you are at, and then understand what you need to do to move to the next stage. Hopefully there are only a few areas where you are unconsciously competent -- things you simply don't know that you don't know. These are the hardest issues for an entreprenuir  because someone on the outside needs to enlighten you. And you need to be a good listener!

But my goal right now is to help you become cognizant that you may not know everything in building your business. Sometimes that is all you need to know to take your business to the next level or tranistion to Stage 2.

So what will help you transition to Stage 2 if you don't even know about what's in Stage 1?

The answer is pretty straightforward.  You need to look for areas in your business that are failing or not improving. In any business, all areas should have the expectation to be continually improving - sales, fiannce and profitability, marketing, and other operations. In difficult times like this, there seems to be an expectation that sales should decline and/or spending should stop. I disagree. The key is going back to Stage 1 to find out what you don't know that will take you to Step 2. It isn't going to come from what you have already done or learned.

In whatever area you feel needs improvement, you should get out and research to see what others are doing - in different markets, different companies, and sometimes in differnt countries or cultures. The entreprenuir needs to ask questions about this new area and then spend time listening  to others ideas and solutions to problems. This will allow you to have insight into -  what you don't know that you don't know. It is your company which will either be a success or a failure.