The life of a small business owner is incredibly tough. Small businesses are often under-resourced especially when it comes to the array of skill sets and time required to improve the business. Information systems need upgrading, marketing plans need to be developed & implemented, staff need to be trained and a huge range of other tasks have to be considered, usually all by the business owner or owners. All of these business upgrade & improvement projects have to be performed alongside whatever service is offered or goods sold by that small business.

All too often the enormity of the task set leaves the small business owner in a state of paralysis or simply promising him or herself that the business improvement projects will be attended to at some later date.

These task sets ultimately have to be scheduled and then performed in parallel with usual business routines. Once the decision is made to implement a project, nothing should be allowed to derail the implementation of that project. Discipline in implementation is critical even under the most trying of circumstances. Disciplined project implementation becomes habit forming allowing the small business owner to engage in a never ending series of business upgrade projects always in parallel.

Steve Jobs is a master at innovation. His early association with Apple gave us the GUI or graphical user interface and his more recent association with Apple has given us the iPod, iPhone and other unique, highly recognised technology tools and applications. The question is how does Steve Jobs keep coming up with these masterful inventions?

Innovative entrepreneurs have a particular type of intelligence called creative intelligence that enables discovery yet differs from other types of intelligence. (per Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences)

Innovators are able to leverage both the left & right sides of the brain that yield structured thought & the ability to imagine. In using both modes of thought, innovators naturally leverage the five discovery skills to generate their concepts & ideas.

Innovation starts with connecting the dots. The dots we are talking about here, are potentially different tools, applications, ideas, objects, business processes, physical processes, laws, modes of travel, modes of life, in fact everything that it is possible to encounter in real & imaginary worlds. Strange & unrelated connections can yield amazingly creative insights that yield innovation. Obviously, connecting the dots can only happen in the mind of a person who has exposed themselves to a huge range of dots. Connecting the dots is a backward process that falls into place only after a significant number of dots have been sampled. Steve Jobs dropped out of structured University only to drop back in on the topics that interested him. He also spent time learning calligraphy and attending an Indian Ashram.

Questions have to be asked in order to build structure around the dots. It is of limited value to know that all small vehicles running on four wheels are called cars. To derive innovation potential, it is necessary to ask how cars work, what powers them, how are they constructed, why are some cars more popular than others? Learn to ask, why, why not & what if.

It can also be useful to imagine opposites without confusion or emotion. Hold the thought of Perth with a huge abundance of water or with very little water. Completely different alternatives can lead to valuable insights and allow for synthesis to occur.

Try to embrace constraints too. Limit the freedom of an imagined project or put constraints into your ideas and then see what emerges as an opportunity. In business we have to live with constraints every day. We are regularly under resourced and technology fails. Sometimes we have to be creative in the face of limitations.

Common phenomena go unnoticed by the majority of the population. The everyday mundane is exactly that to most people but to the innovator, the everyday mundane is there to be inspected, examined and picked apart.

Innovators are always on the lookout for the small details in the lives of their customers, suppliers and employees. It is in the mundane that opportunities lie like rough diamonds in the dirt. Learn to observe and don't close yourself off from the world. Flick through the junk mail, read widely, visit lots of websites covering different topics.

Life is one big experiment. Charles Darwin proved that. The evolutionary machine churns out experiment after experiment and in the wild, as in business; lots of failures are required to deliver a survivor. Innovators are constantly experimenting by constructing interactive experiences and then looking for unorthodox responses. It is from the unorthodox responses that insights emerge. Innovative companies are always testing and experimenting. Failure should not be frowned upon but celebrated. Experimentation does not need to be expensive and projects that fail can be killed early or morphed into another project.

Wide networks supply the individuals and groups that are necessary for testing out the ideas of an innovator. Innovators want to sample the experiences of people and groups as they come into contact with them. Most business people seek out networks purely for the opportunity to find markets while innovators seek out different people to tap their unique perspectives in often totally unrelated fields as it is often these encounters that generate a new idea or insight.

As with other skills, innovation requires practice and those that practice will gain a degree of mastery in this most valuable of skills.

Every leader, regardless of their organisational position, owes it to themselves, their employees & their company to practice the skills that deliver an innovative, creative mindset.

Do you want to be successful and build a hugely profitable business? If so, here are some keys to obtaining a position in the "promised land".

• Think outside the square. Don't create limits. If you believe that you will only obtain a certain degree of success then that is exactly what you"ll get. Aim high & you just might hit the target.
• Starting with little to nothing is often an advantage as it supplies the hunger and drive that are vital ingredients on the route to great wealth.
• Debt is the big leaver that will lift you to your goal. Don?t be afraid of using debt to reach your objective so long as you understand that the return from your investment must exceed the cost of the debt. Knowing that you have debt will encourage you to push harder.
• Organic business growth usually only delivers incrementally increasing returns. Sometimes you?ll need to take big steps & get into a bigger business or buy new parts to add to your business.
• Your business needs to be scalable. A corner deli may be unique but it will always be limiting no matter how successful. Look at the big global brands. They all have scalable products &/or services. You cannot make exponential money without an exponential business.
• Time is in short supply so you cannot afford to be too patient or take lots of time off. If you want to build a big business you have to be prepared to work day and night on the task.
• Intelligence is an over-estimated attribute. Hard work is where it is at.
• Making mistakes is necessary for learning. You just cannot make fatal mistakes.
• Education is everything. If you have time to watch hours of television or play computer games you will not have the time necessary to dedicate to the many hours of education that are necessary to understand and control the many facets of operating a business. The more you know, the more subtle connections & ideas will pop into your head.
• You cannot do everything. Fortunately, the world is full of talented, smart individuals who are more than happy to work for a wage. Hiring good people is a great investment. More scalable businesses are driven off the back of good employees than you can poke a stick at. Investing in the stock market will never deliver the returns that can be derived by investing in good employees.
• Choose a good marketplace.

Three things that customers want in exchange for giving their business are value, service and help.

As a sales person, you have to be able to articulate the service, value and help that your company provides plus absolutely believe that your company can deliver.

Here is a list of characteristics that distinguish great sales people from the merely average -

• Be creative in presenting your goods and services and demonstrating the features that diferentiate your business from the competition.
• Constant positive outlook and optimism
• Unshaking belief in the ability of the company to deliver
• Unshaking belief that the customer is better of having bought from you
• Exciting presentation skills that capture the imagination of the customer
• Great questioning and listening skills
• Prove your value by using the testimony of others
• Prove value that exceeds simply making a sale and that entices the customer to remain as a customer for the long term
• Building an environment in which the customer want to make a sale
• Build relationships that deliver real value
• Personal values that are never compromised
• The desire to excel & be the best
• Promotion and positioning. Positioning on the web is critical

If you want to win, you have to master these skills. Start the journey today!

Do you own or operate a business? If so, the outcomes that you achieve are highly dependent on the energy, vigour & enthusiasm that you bring to bear on your business and the people that you interact with including your employees, customers and suppliers. Here are some basic questions that will help you assess the energy that you bring to your business -

Are you at work before your employees almost every day?

Do you come up with new ideas to test & implement at least every month?

Do you implement your ideas without fail?

How quickly do you implement?

Do you feel energetic & enjoy operating your business or is it  drag?

Do those that you interact with percieve you to be positive or negative?

There are probably lots more markers that will help you to assess the energy that you bring to your business. It is worth reflecting on this matter frequently.