Have you ever done something a certain way when someone made a suggestion and you realized, in that moment, you’ve been making it more difficult than it needed to be?

Those are blind spots.

Every time you drive your car, you have blind spots. Blind spots are those areas just outside of your mirrors. You can’t see what’s in them until you shift your view.

Sometimes you’re driving along and, despite your carefulness, something suddenly catches your attention from the corner of your eye and you swerve. In split second, you realize you just avoided a collision.

Generally, we live with blind spots every day we get into the car to drive. We even come up with procedures to avoid them.

The same can be said for your business. Tune up time: Do you have one of these three blind spots?

Blind Spot 1: Buying into the self-limiting excuses.

Many business owners come up with ideas but get stuck when it comes to implementing them. The usual excuses rise up, like I don’t have time or money to implement these ideas.

During my half-day Profitability Lab: Introductions, we complete a four-step exercise, by breaking down the business owner’s schedule. What’s interesting is each time we complete this exercise, there are two major outcomes attendees get from it:

1. They shift their time and open up their schedule.
2. They identify multiple ways to fund their idea.

It’s simply a blind spot getting in the way of implementing their idea.

Tip: The next time you want to buy into a self-limiting belief, ask yourself all of the possible ways to implement your idea to shift from problem stopping to problem solving.

Blind Spot 2: Inconsistently Promoting Your Business

A close runner up in common blind spots for business owners is not consistently and systematically promoting your business. You may get caught up in dabbling in duties rather than actively and systematically finding new customers or clients.

Tip: There are many different ways to market and promote your business that can become overwhelming. A simple solution is to pick 2-3 tactics that produce results and stick with them for 12 months. Make sure to point every promotional opportunity to your lead generation system. At the end of the year evaluate those tactics and repeat if they brought you clients.

Blind Spot 3: Thinking you can do it all…yourself.

If you think you can save money by doing it yourself, think again. You’re only delaying your results. When I first started working with one of my clients, I asked her about her team. She said she had an assistant but that person moved on. Based on her goals, I asked her when she planned on hiring another assistant.

She thought that she could save money by not hiring someone right away. We reviewed my four-step exercise for finding time and money in her business.  She realized in that moment she got caught up in dabbling in duties rather than implementing her strategy. When we reverse engineered her results, she realized that she needed to quickly hire someone so that she could reach her year-end goals.

Tip: Start with the end in mind so you know the resources today to reach your year end goals.

The next time you get stopped, consider there is a blind spot. Then, use these tips to get beyond it.