Business Education

2 Strong Signs You’re Actually Successful, Even if You don’t Believe It

What does success look like? More particularly, what does success feel like? These are, of course, quite objective. But, there are some signs you’re successful, even if you don’t particularly believe it yourself. It’s always worthwhile to take stake in where you stand — especially when you feel as though it’s less than inspiring.

2 Strong Signs You’re Actually Successful, Even if You don’t Believe It

Aside from the hard numbers, how do you know you’re successful? Sure, you can always look at the books and see the bottom line. However, these figures don’t tell the whole story. One such example is when you feel comfortable that you can’t change everything but do change what you can.

We’ve all experienced those days when we feel like an absolute failure. It’s a normal feeling when things don’t go as exactly planned. And, when we feel like that, it’s challenging to think of yourself as a successful individual. Here’s the thing about success though – no one can agree what that word means. Even though we all have our own definitions of success, there are also a number of signs that we’re overlooking that can let us know that we’re actually more successful than we could have ever guessed. —Inc.com

Or, if you don’t feel stressed out at every bump in the road. People who aren’t struggling just don’t usually sweat the small stuff. It’s really that simple. When you’re making it, little setbacks are regarded as valuable lessons and not nightmare scenarios.

Top 3 Signs You’re Making It, Even if it Doesn’t Feel that Way

Now, if those don’t apply to you, let’s take a look at a few more telltale signs you’re actually making it — even if it doesn’t quite feel that way:

You see the bigger picture. When your focus is large in scope, you are able to think more clearly. Which means you look into the future instead of fretting on every little component in the now. In other words, you’re more comfortable with the bumps along the way because you know it’s just part of getting to the next goal.
You feel excited to keep at it. If a person feels excited to keep on with their role, there’s definitely a reason for that. Fulfillment is a sure sign that you’re successful. Otherwise, you’d feel quite different, more pessimistic and gloomy. And, you most assuredly wouldn’t feel energized or enthusiastic about your role.
You look forward to the next challenge. Another sign you’re successful is you’re looking forward to the next big challenge in the future. After all, you’ve had to achieved a level of success in order to get to this point. In other words, you’ve had to racked up some successes in the past because there’s still more to go.

What other signs of success do you think go unnoticed? Please share your thoughts and experiences by commenting!

Interested in learning more about business? Then just visit Waters Business Consulting Group.

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Accomplish Your Biggest Goals in Small Steps

May 16, 2017 No Comments

You’ve probably heard the way to eat an elephant is to take one bite at a time. In business this is fundamental because it decidedly identifies the road to success. This road, it should be well understood, isn’t an easy path and will have plenty of bumps along the way. These setbacks, or failures, are excellent parts of the learning curve and are typically more valuable than successes. Savvy entrepreneurs embrace this truth and use it in a strategic way. Some of the largest and oldest companies were born from simple ideas. These giants grew from obscurity, not because of all they offer, but because each accomplished a goal which made them instrumental to the world of commerce. In 1939, after many frustrating years, inventor Charles Goodyear discovered the process of vulcanization. Though the legendary achievement is etched in history, the backstory is quite telling. Goodyear spent years trying to turn his concept into reality. He went dead broke and into extreme debt, yet endured and persisted on one single goal. How to Accomplish Your Biggest Goals in Small Steps Of course not every entrepreneur suffers such extreme adversity. It’s true that the majority of businesses do experience fits and starts but overcome and go on to achieve enough to turn a respectable profit. The way this happens is through a series of phases which include periodic cycles of failures. These aren’t due to lack of motivation, not being smart or talented enough, but the result of trying to accomplish too many things at once. When people set out to begin a major work project or adopt a healthier lifestyle, it’s easy to become discouraged when picturing the long road ahead. By the same token, even smaller-scale plans like keeping a medical appointment or a standing date to the gym can become easily derailed by the busyness of our daily lives or a simple aversion to the doctor or the treadmill. —The Wharton School Let’s get back to how to eat an elephant. The key to tackling any big goal is to do so in a smart and workable manner. Though most people understand reaching a goal takes time, their enthusiasm causes over-reach and that’s when things start to go wrong. You just can’t do six things at once and expect to master all of them. Too many directions, which is to say too many projects, is a recipe for failure. So, the key to success is the opposite — do one thing at a time. Here’s how to accomplish your biggest goal in small steps: Set a big goal to reach. The first step is to set a realistic goal. There’s nothing wrong with dreaming big but these can be too large to reach before feeling discouraged. One of the reasons entrepreneurs achieve success is they have a vision that’s focused and workable. Identify a realistic path to take. Another component to achieving your big goal is to map out a realistic path to take. Break the process down into phases —these don’t have to include every possible detail or include all contingencies. Martin Luther King remarked on this when he said, “Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Start with one small, incremental step. You’ve probably heard different adages about the first step being the hardest. It’s true and to feel a sense of accomplishment while building momentum, the first step ought to be small. Take a moment to reflect the accomplishment. After each incremental step or phase is complete, take time to reflect on your accomplishment. The sense of pride is inspiring, and it reinforces your self confidence. With every step and phase completion, you can look toward your ultimate goal but stay focused on the here and now. This will help to motivate you and it’s a great way to appreciate your hard work. As a side note, it would be an honor to help out my LinkedIn connections with their business. At minimum, I’d love to connect and be in touch. We can do this by you signing up & getting my Top 5 Business Tips each month; and it’s free! May Your Business Succeed Beyond Your Dreams! ~Best, John Waters Want to find out about what a business coach can do for you? [shareaholic app=”follow_buttons” id=”26833294″]

Embracing the Pressure: What Small Business Owners Can Learn from “Pressure is a Privilege”

January 16, 2025 No Comments

You’ve probably heard the analogy that running a small business is like walking a tightrope. There’s the thrill of balancing on your own terms, but also the pressure of the long fall looming below. However, it’s precisely this pressure that holds immense value. As tennis legend Billie Jean King once said, “Pressure is a privilege.” This phrase isn’t just an aphorism for sports; it’s a profound lesson that small business owners can embrace to better their companies.

From Surviving to Dominating

July 30, 2026 No Comments

How Waters Business Consulting Group has helped transform many commercial landscape companies into more profitable, scalable businesses Every commercial landscape company eventually hits a moment that defines what happens next. For some, it’s growth outrunning the systems meant to support it. Revenue climbs, but profit doesn’t follow. Labor costs creep up. Cash gets tighter. The owner is working more hours and feeling less in control of the business every month. What used to feel like success starts to feel like an endless string of problems to solve from employees, field operations, customers to cash flow. For others, the challenge shows up faster and with more urgency. Margins have already eroded. Operations are inconsistent from crew to crew. Leadership is stretched too thin. Customers expect more, and the company doesn’t have the structure or financial visibility to respond. In both cases, most owners reach for the same fix: more sales. But more sales don’t automatically fix thin margins; the exacerbate them! With fuzzy accountability, inefficient processes, or an owner who’s become the bottleneck. Usually, what the company actually needs isn’t more revenue. It’s a better business. Waters Business Consulting Group has worked with commercial landscape maintenance and construction companies across the country, including Pleasant Places, Blue Star Landscaping, Genesis Landscape Solutions, Sun Country, and Creative Environments, to find what’s really limiting their performance and build practical paths toward stronger profitability and cash flow, tighter operations, real leadership capacity, and long-term value. Our goal was never just to help these companies survive. It’s to help them build what it takes to lead and increase the the value of their business asset. Struggling doesn’t always look small Some of the most challenged companies we’ve worked with had real revenue, loyal customers, experienced crews, and a strong reputation in their market. From the outside, everything looked fine. Underneath, the same familiar warning signs kept showing up: revenue growing while profit stayed flat, the owner still involved in nearly every major decision, labor costs nobody could quite explain, crews performing inconsistently from job to job, estimates that didn’t reflect what jobs actually cost, financial reports arriving too late to act on, managers held accountable for results they had no real authority over, cash flow swinging unpredictably, and roles and processes that were never clearly defined in the first place. These problems rarely show up alone. A bad estimate turns into a margin problem and project losses. A margin problem turns into a cash-flow problem. Weak reporting means leadership doesn’t catch it until the financial damage is already real. And without a capable leadership team in place, the owner becomes the answer to every question and the fix for every problem. Over time, the business ends up running on effort instead of systems. Our approach starts by understanding how these challenges connect to each other, then figuring out which changes are actually likely to move the needle in a lasting way … in the same way we moved the needle for Pleasant Places Landscape, Blue Star Landscaping, Genesis Landscape Solutions, Sun Country, and Creative Environments. Clarity comes before transformation You can’t fix a business you can’t see clearly. That’s why we look past the top-line revenue number and into the operational, financial, and organizational factors actually driving performance: profitability by customer, contract, or service line; labor efficiency and crew productivity; how accurate the estimating really is; direct costs and overhead; pricing strategy; cash flow and forecasting; org structure; leadership capacity; roles and accountability; the sales pipeline; operational processes; and how dependent the business is on the owner. We’re not trying to hand leadership another binder of reports. We’re trying to find the small handful of constraints actually driving performance, the levers, so leaders can stop treating symptoms and start fixing what’s underneath them. Pleasant Places: turning rapid growth into stronger profit Pleasant Places was already a real success story by the time the company partnered with us. Founded in 1984, this commercial landscaping company had grown fast, taking annual revenue from roughly $10 million to nearly $18 million in just two years. But that pace of growth had created its own problems. Margins were under pressure, processes and procedures needed real work, accountability was inconsistent from department to department, and the organization simply didn’t have the infrastructure to operate efficiently at its new size. We worked with the Pleasant Places leadership team to strengthen the financial, operational, and organizational foundation underneath all that growth. That meant digging into historical financial trends and building a model to evaluate cost of goods sold, margins, and breakeven performance; putting systems in place to track labor hours and materials against estimates; refining pricing to hit target gross margins; implementing real purchasing controls; identifying gaps in leadership and org structure; clarifying roles, responsibilities, and who reported to whom; supporting a management transition from father to son; establishing real performance metrics; and researching and implementing an ERP system to give the company far better operational visibility. The results speak for themselves. Pleasant Places gained real visibility into projected revenue, gross margins, profitability, and cash flow. Pricing discipline, tighter labor and material cost controls, and real leadership accountability helped push gross margins up from low 20’s to an average of 42%. Revenue grew past $35 million, and the company came out the other side with a stronger leadership structure, clearer expectations, and a healthier culture. The lesson here is simple: growth gets a lot more sustainable when financial discipline, operational systems, leadership accountability, and org structure grow right alongside revenue instead of trailing behind it. Blue Star Landscaping: building profitable growth, and a successful exit Blue Star Landscaping came to us with a different set of problems. The company needed to improve profitability, tighten up its pricing, get real control over labor and material costs, develop its leadership bench, and build a clear plan for growth. The team had solid industry experience, but they needed a more disciplined way to connect strategic growth to financial forecasting, pricing, cost control, and actual profitability. We worked with Blue Star

2 Strong Signs You’re Actually Successful, Even if You don’t Believe It