Without self-discipline and self control in business , no success is possible. There is no area of activity that demands more self discipline than starting and operating a successful business in our current economy. The first law of economics is scarcity. As a rule, there is never enough of anything for everyone who wants it. Specifically, there are never enough customers for you to sell everything you want to sell.
There are never enough sales revenues to help you achieve all financial goals. There are never sufficient profits to enable you to expand as much as you want. It requires tremendous focus and discipline to follow the things necessary to attract the scarce money of customers toward purchasing your product or service.
The first discipline of business success is that you offer a product or service that people want, need, and will pay for at a price they will accept– a price that is competitive with every other business that wants the same customer money. You must be completely honest with your product/ service mix to ensure that it is well suited to the current market. This is an area where false assumptions or incorrect conclusions can lead to business failure. This answer is continually changing as competition and customer tastes also change.
It requires tremendous self discipline and character to face the possibility that you could be wrong in your most cherished assumptions and beliefs. Nonetheless , this discipline is essential if you are going to minimize your mistakes, cut your losses, and redirect your resources toward offering customers more of the things that they really want, need, and are willing to pay for today.
All business investment and business start-ups require a high level of optimism. You must believe in the future possibilities of your business along with your new products and services. You must have so much confidence in their marketability that you are willing to under financial risk and invest many hours, weeks, and even years to achieve your business goals, and you must do all this with no real guarantee of success.
At the same time, you need discipline to curb your confidence, to remain objective and realistic. Overconfident in business can lead to business mistakes, financial losses, and even bankruptcy. Because of the aggressive and determined nature of your competition, in order to simply survive, you must discipline yourself to be equal to or better than your competitors.
After all , your competitors get out of bed every morning thinking about how they can put out of business. They want to take away your customers and your sales. They want to get your profits. They want as much of your business as they can possibly get. To increase your probabilities of success against such competition, you must make every effort to out think them.
When you start a business or a new venture within a business, you require the discipline to a new venture within a business; you require the discipline to do your homework thoroughly, in advance. You create a complete business plan before you start operations, and you continue to update it and revise it every year thereafter. The discipline of advanced planning can spell the difference between success and failure.
