Are You Stuck? How to Create Exponential Growth

One of the biggest challenges facing business owners and sales professionals today is that they are stuck and may not even know it. To see if you may be stuck, ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you frustrated with the results you’re receiving for the time and money you’ve invested?
• Does it seem that no matter how hard you work, you can’t get ahead?
• Are you feeling anxious that if things don’t improve soon, bad things will happen; so you increase your efforts even more?

If this sounds like you or someone you know, odds are you’re stuck. So how do you get unstuck? I suggest the following three-step approach that I use and that has helped many of my personal coaching clients.

Step 1

It may sound silly, but the first step is to find out if you are stuck. By answering the previous questions you may find that you’re not actually stuck, but moving very slowly.  Did you ask yourself the questions? What did you discover?

If you realize that you are stuck, now what? That feeling of a deer in the headlights may take over because you don’t know which way to turn. Congratulations; you just completed step 1.

Step 2

Now it’s time to find out where you’re stuck. Ask yourself “What are the obstacles that are stopping me from reaching my goals?” Your answers may be: Not enough cash flow, the economy is bad and people are not buying or there may not be enough hours in a day. Whatever it is, write it down. Don’t work on the solution yet. That comes in Step 3. It’s vitally important that you capture as many possible obstacles as you can.

Step 3

Now we get to get unstuck! It doesn’t matter if you uncovered one or a hundred obstacles in Step 2. The important thing now is to address the obstacles one at a time. Many times our urgency takes over and we want to overcome all of our obstacles at once. If you give in and attempt to do more than one, you run the risk of getting more deeply stuck than when you started. Remember the old adage “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch; Yard by yard, it’s hard”.

Identify the most pressing obstacle and ask “How can I make this obstacle an asset?” This question allows you to gain perspective about the perceived obstacle. There are options. Not always perfect options, but options that are enough to get you moving again.

I have a gift for you. If you have a question about how to get unstuck, email your question to gary@garybarnesinternational.com.  I will send you a personal reply.

Getting stuck is normal, staying stuck can be fatal to your business and sales.