18 Steps to Business Health
A Guide to the Deeper Meaning of Being an Entrepreneur and a Leader

You have the power to change a life and by doing so, change the world. For your investment of time, energy, and commitment to humanity, you should feel deeply satisfied and entitled to enjoy the financial rewards.

Dreams become reality one step at a time

Change is impossible, unless you first have the awareness that something needs changing. Once the light goes on, you can get pretty anxious. But that’s a good sign because you can start assessing your situation. Uneasiness puts you into action. Soul searching, writing, learning new skills and discovering new talents cultivate your growth. Pruning can hurt, but it produces something more abundant and sustainable.
 
This 18 Step Guide to Business Health will make it easier and more fun to pursue the challenging work of reinventing your company and yourself. Take your time to ponder each question and write your answers in a journal or computer file. Complete each step before you go on to the next.

Step1: Take Inventory

• Document your history. What are the things in your personal and business life that have led you up to this point?
• What core values do you hold?
• How have your education, friends, media, and family influenced you?
• How have you managed your time and money?
• What has been the fallout of employee issues, product flaws, lawsuits, improper tax planning, changes in insurance?
• How have you handled problems, frustrations, and annoyances?

Step 2: Distinguish Yourself

• What is your fundamental purpose in life? (See Niche Marketing)
• Does your business support your purpose?
• What if anything undermines you fulfilling your purpose?

Step 3: Take Responsibility for Your Own Health and Business

• Take charge of your business systems
• Track outcomes
• Be accountable for errors
• Take charge of living a healthful life

Step 4: Design a Blueprint

• Align your business with your life’s purpose
• Make a treatment plan for your business
• Make business decisions that fit with your personal goals and core values
• Keep it simple

Step 5: Obtain Guidance

• Be prepared for navigating through unfamiliar territory
• Learn from your experiences
• Successfully identify things that don’t work
• Hire professional consultants where you have deficiencies or lack of time to avoid unnecessary hardship, setbacks, and costly mistakes

Step 6: Stop the Fountain of Negativity

• Avoid sacrificing your family, friends, or your health for business sake
• Practice willpower to not yield to business decisions that could come back to bite you
• Speak positively about people
• Take negative words out of your vocabulary
• Frame your thoughts in the positive whenever possible

Step 7: Clear out the Clutter

• Vigilantly eliminate what is not supportive to your health or business
• Identify all the aspects of your business that you need to detoxify
• Eliminate unsuccessful marketing
•  Divest yourself of equipment, products, supplies, furniture that are no longer useful or are outdated
• Change vendors who no longer satisfy or support your needs
• Dismiss employees who are not contributing to your mission

Step 8: Nourish your Body and Soul

• Do what it takes to remain physically and emotionally strong to make important decisions
• Always eat, breathe, and drink healthfully; your cells depend on it
• Foster higher energy and contentment with music, meditation, prayer, exercise, nature, hobbies, art, and the like.

Step 9: Create an Environment that Works for You

• Evaluate your location for your target market segments
• Feng Shui your office
• Bring “life” into your space with plants, fresh air, natural light
• Work the hours that healthfully support you

Step 10: Learn and Implement Business Systems

• Decide how you want things done
• Obtain what you need to do it
• Document the systems
• Hire the people who will effectively orchestrate the systems
• Give responsibility for implementation to trained individuals who are in alignment with your philosophy
• Continually monitor, revise, and improve the systems

Step 11: Manage Your Money

• Always monitor what is being taken in and going out
• Print out designated reports on a regular basis to give you vital information about the financial health of your business
• Be able to read and interpret and act on reports
• Plan for taxes and pay on time

Step 12: Maintain Stewardship

• Teach and clarify your business mission to every employee
• Only hire staff that support your mission
• Train the staff using the documented systems
• Work as a team
• Develop honorable leadership skills
• Have a system in place to unemotionally and expediently handle problems
• Continue to innovate

Step 13: Express Yourself

• Teach others about what you do
• Write articles, books, brochures, manuals, editorials
• Give lectures, go on talk shows, be on panels
• Have an informative website
• Exercise your right to freedom of speech within a legal framework

Step 14: Market your Business

• Learn to bridge the gap between the products and services you offer with the people who need them
• Make known your authenticity and what distinguishes you
• Use proven lead generation systems
• Have a referral system that keeps recycling
• Cultivate prospects in a niche market
• Use proven sales techniques to increase case acceptance

Step 15: Persist in Learning, Innovating, and Improving

• Continue to evolve to keep rising to the top
• Broaden your vision
• Keep motivated with continuing education, networking, and reading
• Market what works

Step 16: Effectively Promote Your Solutions

• Teach employees to sell appointments based on solving problems
• Offer what is needed, rather than what you think will be accepted
• Go the extra mile
• Keep in touch

Step 17: Protect Yourself

• Know what is legal to advertise
• Know what you can legally say and do for patients/clients
• Document carefully
• Protect your assets with a business entity
• Have appropriate insurance, a will, and good professional advice

Step 18: Have an Exit Strategy

• Plan with the end in mind
• Have a business that is “sale-able” and worth a high price
• Perpetuate your philosophy and business skills with systems
• Leave a legacy
• Hire good advisors that support your philosophy
• Keep current until you sell
• Don’t leave with any regrets

Let your professional life enrich your personal life. Learn how to be a champion in times of challenge. Draw upon your persistence, resiliency, confidence, knowledge, and resourcefulness.

Peace and good health,
Andrea H. Brockman, BSN, DDS
President, OraMedica International, LLC
 

Dr. Andrea Brockman