This then brings forth a very important question: how can a person develop a highly successful business?

What are the factors that need to be employed in order to achieve a high degree of success?

Many different elements need to come together in order to achieve success. There are three most common ones, though, and arguably, they’re also the most important. That is, you need to have inspiration, motivation, and facilitation come together in order to be successful. If you have these three things, you can indeed have success in your business.

First, what is inspiration?

It can be most commonly defined as a focus on and an opening to creative thinking or enthusiasm with your mind, with a particular focus on a given activity. Almost all successful people first get inspiration externally in order to become successful themselves.

For example, if you’re a musician, you have probably taken inspiration from other successful musicians you’ve listened to even before you considered seriously embarking on a musical career yourself. And it’s also true that you’ll probably have several sources of inspiration before you start on your own path as a business person.

For example, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Ted Turner are all sources of inspiration that may inspire you to have your own business and be as successful as they are. If that’s your own focus, then certainly, business moguls like those just mentioned could be a prime inspiration for you.

Where does motivation come in?

But, what is it that makes you want to wake up every morning and put a great deal of effort into your business? The answer can be summed up in one word: motivation. By definition, motivation is the means and reason in which a person seeks to achieve a goal.

There are many factors that can contribute to the motivation to succeed in business. Some are motivated to earn income, others are motivated by personal satisfaction, others can be motivated because they feel that they have the ability to contribute something great to society.

Regardless of the origination of motivation, one needs to possess motivation in order to succeed in business. Moving forward listlessly will not yield success. There needs to be something pushing the proprietor to achieve success. When this motivation is strong, really nothing can stand in anyone’s way and succeeding becomes a foregone conclusion.

Bring it all together with Facilitation

But while motivation and inspiration are certainly helpful, they can’t make your business succeed all by themselves. They’ll also need you as the driving force that will achieve your objectives. What you need, then, is a way to put your plan into action.

It’s fortunate that many trailblazers have blazed their own trails in the past, and by doing so have set forth processes that you can model for your own success. There are hundreds of business books showing you how to create a business plan or personal self improvement plan.

Of course, you don’t have to follow the model exactly, and it still doesn’t mean you’re going to have an easy time of it. That’s because it’s usually not easy to attain anything of true success and merit.

However, you do have the ability to attain success because many other people have done so, too. And that means that you have a shot at it as well. Why not do so?

There are options available however which enable you to have the best of both worlds and ensure that you can continue to manage your business expenditure wisely whilst also growing your business (in spite of the difficult times).

One such option is a government grant.  In times when businesses are managing within tight budgets, government grants are an excellent source of additional funding for business development projects. Combining these with some of the tax concessions being offered by the government at the moment, there are a range of opportunities available to help the astute business owner maintain business growth.

There are numerous government grants regularly available for funding of business development projects (too numerous to name them all here).  However to give you a taste of the opportunities available ,  I thought I would share with you a grants program I recently came across being offered to small business owners.

Known as the Work and Family Fresh Ideas grants program the Australian Government is  offering grants of between $5,000 and $15,000 to small businesses to support them in implementing family friendly work practices.

This is just one example of how a business can get free money to support business growth.  The exciting thing is that grants are regularly offered in a range of areas across a range of industries and sectors so with persistence, you are sure to find one to match the development needs of your business.

Having had experience working within government agencies, I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the application process for the Work and Family Fresh Ideas was straightforward.

So  as I regularly state to my clients – what have you got to lose? Start thinking about the projects you want to implement in your business and then take the time to investigate what grants are available to assist you to get the funding to make it happen.  You never know there may be a grants program out there perfect for your business and how much more enjoyable to be able to implement your project without impacting your profit margins!

By the way if you are interested in the Work and Family Fresh Ideas grants program you will need to act fast as applications close on Friday 24 April 2009!