By Pat Meehan

“Another day another dollar...” If that’s all it is then why are we here each day doing our mundane tasks? What is our purpose? “Another day another dollar...” We have heard this term so often and what does it really mean? This is a statement of frustration, stagnation, and resignation that anything will ever get better and that everything will always remain the same. Is this is what you are stuck with, and if it is, you’d better get used to it, or move now to choose an ever changing course in your personal and professional life.

You, the business owner, have found yourself at a plateau, but who or what entity has created this plateau that says you have reached your peak? What else can you do or expect? It’s just “business as usual.” If you really believe this, I know hundreds of people who will buy you out, today, for ten cents on the dollar and why? Not because your idea is so great, but because their idea is the one they believe in and practice each and every day. Their idea is “business unusual.”

In these days of social networking, we find ourselves meeting new friends across the globe, and we exchange ideas and become networkers. Then we form groups, and each group has an owner with an idea and a slate of managers. When the group starts to go by the wayside, some of the leaders come forth and say things like “we should run this social enterprise group like a business.”

Jim Collins, bestselling author and student of enduring great companies and how these companies grow and how they attain superior performance, says there is a reason for that. Jim Collins says, “If you think about it, most businesses, like most of anything else in life are, by definition, is average. So why would we want to take the practices of average business and bring them to our world? The comparison is powerful because it’s not the difference between business and social, but the difference between “average and greatness.”

In our strife for greatness, we must be able to discriminate between “business ideas” and “greatness ideas.” As Jim Collins illustrates, we must define a culture of discipline that speaks to greatness, not average. We must seek to serve our customers based on not just what they need, but on what they long for. We must reach out to those who don’t know where they are, and try to show them a direction. We do these things in a culture of discipline, a culture of greatness, and a culture of genuine giving to a unique group called the human race, the most valued entity on this earth. We give, as business people and as part of this blessed group of human beings, endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, to help those like us find their way through the guidance of our God given gift, the vision of greatness that we have realized and have been blessed with to pass on to others.

Always remember our greatness in life is never measured by what we achieve, but by what we gave to others to help them achieve.