Sometimes finding a starting point is the hardest part.

As a kid and a teenager, I always had a terrible time keeping my room clean. It would take threats of garbage bags and thrift store donations of beloved toys and clothes to get me to clean my room – which had a literal path from the door to my bed, with STUFF piled up everywhere else.

But I HATED having a messy room. I could just never compel myself to clean it.

My poor mom would get to her breaking point and I'd be banished to my room until it was clean.

Still – I just could not get started. Instead I'd find ways to plutz around. Entire mornings and afternoons were wasted as I did nothing.

Until about a half hour before my mom's deadline was here.

Then I'd get a rush of adrenaline and LAUNCH into sprint cleaning. And not "hide stuff in the closet" cleaning. 

The deadline would come and go – my room would be technically clean by the deadline, but I wasn't done yet.

I was now in a MODE. I needed my sock drawer to be perfect, the six years' worth of Highlights Magazines that hadn't been touched in years had to be sorted by date.

I'd even lay on my tummy for an hour with my nose 3" inches away from the baseboard heater, fishing out every spec of dust I could reach with toothbrush or toothpick.

But once my room was clean, the cycle would start again. It would stay clean until it was interrupted by something small... a pile of clothes to put away from the laundry, magazine that came in the mail for me, and *poof* my room was once again a mountainous landscape.

And then one day my mother (or maybe it was my dad...) said: "Meggie, go pile up all the red things in your room."

It was as if she had dropped a match in a puddle of gasoline.

That little request was all I needed to launch into a cleaning mode. It was a starting point.

And I see so much of the same thing happen in my client's businesses all the time. They KNOW their business, they KNOW what they need to adjust, they just don't know where to start.

And that's what the GROWTH/PROFIT Paradox™ comes in. When you know WHERE in the Growth/Profit cycle you are, you know your starting point.

On January 3rd & 5th, I'm hosting workshops for small business owners so you always have a clear starting point, no matter where your business is. Click here if you'd like to join in.