Trying to grow your business?

Well, you’ll need to grow as an individual as well by challenging yourself.

Shock your system.

Get out into a new environment for work or during your spare time and expose yourself to new people and places. Allow the unexpected to crop up and gauge your reaction to it and the behavior of people around you.

Assess how you’d normally view a situation and then take a step back. Think about how you think about things. Sounds circular, I know. But doing so challenges your routine thoughts and causes you to make new connections or discoveries you hadn’t before considered.

Step 1: Be observant

Lately, I’ve been stepping away from the computer and getting out more often. I’ve been taking time out to spend with family and friends. One reason being that I needed a fresh perspective. I needed less work and more play and interaction with people. Not to mention there have been some significant family matters going on.

But you get that sometimes, don’t you? Aside from family drama, you get to feeling trapped in the same routine and the same faces and thoughts stream by day after day, yes?

Well get out of your comfort zone.

Try a new coffee shop. Go shopping for the items you normally do but at a different store. Shake things up. Try a new experience and learn a new way to approach a situation.

Then study your surroundings while you’re at that [different] coffee shop or Home Depot or wherever else you’re shopping.

Look at how people interact with each other, study floor plans of the store and ask yourself why that company laid things out the way they have. Which colors do they use on advertisements? What power language do they use to entice you to buy or scoop up a sale? Who might they be attracting with a particular sign or sale?

Step 2: Immerse yourself

Dive in the deep end. If you’re grocery shopping, focus on grocery shopping. Think about all things grocery shopping and stop just going through the motions. If you want to grow your business (and develop yourself) then challenge yourself to truly immerse yourself in an environment.

Just as I did when I was recently doing home remodeling, I was in the zone. I immersed myself in those projects and took notes after the experiences I had. I thought about how people spoke to me at stores, how I reacted to them, the sales going on around me and even the arguments I heard between other people.

It wasn’t just about work; it was about the moment. As luck would have it, studying what was happening around me in the moment has rewarded me and my work.

Step 3: Reflect on your experience

Think about the new challenges you’re facing. Meditate on what you’ve observed in a new environment or that new shopping experience.

Were there any business lessons to be learned?

What type of people did you meet and what were their needs?

How can you incorporate something into your business that you saw, heard, felt, wanted or otherwise experienced in your new environment (or different store you visited)?

Grow your business

It’s all about learning. A continuing mission to learn new things and study what others are doing. Studying people and their behavior. Exploring the depths of yourself and finding, or rediscovering, the reason behind your behavior and your decisions.

Grow your business by observing something in a new light or trying a new experience. Immerse yourself in the task at hand and when you come up for air, reflect on each aspect of that experience.

Then find a way to incorporate the best and most relevant pieces of that experience into your business or even your personal life.

What are your thoughts? Do you find inspiration when you’re in different surroundings that give you that “aha!” moment for your own business?

Photo: follow777