The Correlation Between Action and Results

In my former working life (pre-retirement) I associated with business owners and entrepreneurs very closely every day. The essence of my “job” was to help them become successful and expand their businesses thus creating jobs in the local economy. I guess you could say I was a “small business job developer.”

I’d like to share something that I learned (over a period of 35 years or so) that was a common trait or characteristic of all those business men and ladies that successfully grew their businesses. I hope this little thought will help you. I’ll tell you what trait that was in a second, but first  . . .

After many years of watching and learning from small local businesses, I’ve noticed that it’s very common among owners that they don’t (or won’t) recognize there is a direct correlation between what they do and the results they get.

It seems so elementary and obvious; yet evidently it’s not!

Maybe society is changing and people don’t believe they are accountable for their behavior – I don’t know.  Maybe their parents never taught them to work in order to get something they wanted.  Maybe it’s the “entitlement mentality” we hear about. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s easier to rationalize why the world is conspiring against them – so they blame others for their lack – rather than to go out and work for what they want.  Maybe our society has gone haywire and focuses too heavily on idolizing the rich and famous without nearly enough emphasis on planning, goal setting, hard work, persistence, and personal accountability.

New entrepreneurs to online business love asking how to make large sums of money quickly. But do they typically want to hear that they are the ones that will determine their own level of prosperity?  That it will be totally up to them how much money they make and how fast it comes? No.

It’s much more convenient to blame others, or courses, or ebooks, or shyster coaches for the lack of results in marketing that they experience. Incredibly, many never even begin the entrepreneurial process yet online for years seeking “the perfect opportunity” to dive in!

The trait that I mentioned I saw time after time – in fact, every time – in successful business owners is this:  they know they are totally responsible for the results they get.  Their business results are the direct consequence of the choices they made and the actions they took.  If they didn’t like the results they got, they modified, or scrapped the things they were doing and chose to try something else.

Of course, this can be a painful lesson to learn – apparently, some never learn it.  Some seem to avoid the issue of accountability altogether.

If you’re a parent, teach the principle to your little children when their consequences don’t bear them down too much.  Keep helping them to learn the correlation (between behavior and consequences) during their teenage years – you’ll have lots of meaningful opportunities during that time because children want to learn how to “grow up” and see the results of their own actions.

Hopefully, when your children become adults, they will have the behavioral foundation that seems to be lacking in so many people that show up online hoping to make lots of money in a short amount of time … looking for wealth in push-buttons, courses, and get rich quick schemes.

Thanks for listening . . . and if you’re a grandpa like I am and your children are already grown, there are always grand kids that you can influence!  What better lesson can you “arm” children with as a foundational principle in their character?  The correlation between behavior and results shows up in every aspect of a person’s life!  I know that from lots of experience.

To your online business success,

Steve Browne

www.SteveBrowneDirect.com