The only barriers that are worth solving are the barriers that actually keep you from winning the game. If you aren’t sure what the game is, then you might consider any problem in your office significant enough to handle. This could be something such as having two staff members not getting along and you spending an afternoon trying to patch things up, when most likely if you’d just throw them in a room they’d work it out and you could get back to solving the barriers that are in the way of your practice goals being achieved. A true barrier is something that you must confront fully and handle or you will never get to the next step.

Sometimes a barrier could be a thought or consideration that you put in front of you to keep you from doing something courageous or starting something new. These thoughts are in place so you can sleep better at night. What do I mean by that? Well, if you consider that there’s too much competition in your area as the reason you’re not doing well, then you don’t have to do anything about it — unless you plan on taking out your competition, which I doubt is on your list of things to do. The fact is, there isn’t such a thing as too much competition: take a look around at the number of people that need your service or product. All you have to do is become better known and better respected than other companies who sell that product or deliver that service. You may not know how, but because you don’t know how, you commonly have to put a barrier there or a reason why you are not doing well.

Honestly take a look at the barrier of "there is too much competition." What are your true options about that? What can you actually DO to change that? Think about that for a minute. You cannot change competition – to eliminate competition would be to move, and have you ever heard of a business moving out of a densely populated area with a lot of demand for their services or product to a remote area and doing better? Chances are they didn’t do better.

Well, what are your options then? Burn the place down? Not much of an option. The only option you have is to change the publics about you so that they choose you over your competition.

Imagine how much less stress you would have if you knew exactly what to do each day to make your business expand. What if you could spot when someone placed a barrier in front of you whether it was worth one nanosecond of your time to solve? Would you have more freedoms? Could you actually focus more on your purpose to provide the best service in your area? I bet that you could.

The recognition of the true barriers to your business expansion will greatly enhance your freedoms and allow you to expand your company. Many businesses don’t even set a goal to beat last week’s sales or production because they are so mired down with all the problems of the day-to-day company. This indicates a game with too many barriers and that’s a game that you can never win.