Have you ever been in a place where you needed to seek a guide for what you didn’t know?  I was a partner in a firm some 10 years ago. We’d been in business 15 years, had done very well and been very successful. Then we started hitting many roadblocks and having many challenges, both within our industry and within our business team. We were running really close to the brink of disaster and losing the whole business after some 15 years.

At that point one of our partners brought in a book called The Emyth by Michael Gerber. The book was based on the idea of working on your business instead of in it.

We were at a critical point in our business. 

1. Follow the guide? Yes or No
2. Second big decision – life or death of the business
3. Hire the Guide? Yes or No 

In our desperate situation we read the book and then we had the Confidence to make a choice to attend a weekend seminar on this whole idea. We went to the seminar and got further confidence and a clarity that we could turn things around.

Out of that, we hired a Guide and paid more money than we had at that point to listen to someone with a different perspective who would challenge us and hold us accountable to work on the business to create something unique and special.  Little did we know how this guidance would help us.

We then made that choice and out of making that choice we started working on the business and really had to change our mind frame about what we did and what was important. We had to make some tough decisions about where we invested our time and energy. We had to make some tough decisions about personnel; about direction of the company and most of all we had to be honest with each other and with our guide about what we ultimately wanted out of the company at that point.

This was a time filled with doubt and fear.

After going through the process of seeking out a Guide and seeking out outside help, and not only seeking it but listening and doing the hard work and making the difficult choices and following the process, in a matter of a couple of years we were able to totally turn the company around and through that process discovered in each other that we no longer wanted to continue on as owners.

Through honest, good conversation, we discovered we all had a different vision of what we wanted to do from that point forward. We were given clarity through this discovery process. We built a company that could be sold, and not only sold but sold amazingly fast, and sold at a premium in an industry and an economy where nothing was selling like that. And so, we were able to accomplish this huge goal and it was all based on us seeking a guide, finding a guide, investing in a guide and doing the work the guide gave us, and we experienced a total turnaround.

So if I could challenge you in one area today, one thing that I would say is “you don’t know what you don’t know.” There is somebody out there that knows that; that can see that clearly. Find a guide, find a coach, find an advisor or consultant that can help you for your business to be all it can be.