Fail to plan, plan to fail and PLAN TO FAIL!

Following on last week’s newsletter on planning for success, this week I want to write a little bit about the barriers we have to success.

As many of my clients will know (well, my clients, my contacts, my associates and basically anyone else who has held even a one minute conversation with me lately), I am a new grandmother.  Our granddaughter is now nearly 8 months old.  Watching her lately is intriguing and even inspirational.

At the moment, Eleanor is learning to walk and, boy, is she persistent! At least a hundred times a day, she tries to get herself from lying, to sitting, to standing, to walking.  She falls, she gets frustrated, she gets back up and tries again.  This is how she will learn to walk.

We all learn to walk by falling over a lot. We are encouraged by all those around us to get up and give it another go and another go and another go until we are successful. A massive amount of praise is bestowed on us as we take those first tentative steps and even when we fail, we are celebrated for trying.

 As babies, there is nothing wrong with trying and failing; it’s just how we learn to get it right in the end, but as adults, this all changes and by the time we own and are running our own businesses failure is not just seen as a negative thing, but it seems to have connotations of weakness, inferiority, even incompetence.  So how does failure go from a necessary and positive practice required in order to learn and progress when we are children to professional suicide as an adult?

For more on this and other ideas on how you can turn even the greatest ‘failures’ into successes, read the next instalment of this week’s blog on Sunday.

Goal setting + planning = Success

Our last couple of blogs have been thinking about the reasons why television talent shows are so popular.  It’s because people love to watch others succeed, but they also get a kick out of watching people be foolish and make a mess of things (think the opening auditions of X-factor).  In business, you can watch your business thrive and succeed or you can see it flounder and fail, but you are in control of the show.  Get goal setting, get planning and start living the dream.

Below are some clear and simple tips to help you to work on goal setting and planning in your business:

Dream big!  Setting goals isn’t about the little things; breaking even isn’t a goal, it’s a necessity!  Your goals should be aspirational dreams.  Make them big, bold and brassy and that way, even if you fall a little short in the end, you will still have achieved something outstanding.

Get focused, stay focused! Setting your goals is only the first step.  If you set your goals and then forget all about them you will get no where!  Firstly, commit them to paper- there is just something definitive about writing things down that you don’t get from simply verbalising an idea.  Also, you can look at them again and again this way; display them somewhere prominent or even visualise them in a dream board to help you really focus on them!  If the dream is a holiday home in the Alps, that car, that house, whatever… print a picture of it and really see the dream, every day.  Focus on it and get it!

Smart targets-  Once you’ve got your goals and you are focused on them, break down your goals into smaller chunks and targets.  For example, if you want to increase profit, how can you do that?  Increase sales-what do you need to do? Targets, unlike goals should be Small, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time specific.  After you complete each smaller target, focus on the next and before you know if the sum of all these small targets will be the achievement of a bigger goal.

Don’t be afraid to change the plan! Whilst your goals and dreams may be relatively fixed, the path you take to reach them may not be.  Revisit your planning frequently and evaluate what is working and what isn’t.  Be proactive to change and don’t be afraid to change things if something isn’t working, don’t  just react if a plan fails come the end of the quarter, of year.

All of our clients attend our Ultimate Planning Workshops as this gives the formal time and setting for planning for their businesses and our next planning event is just around the corner.

If you believe your business would benefit from the following, visit our website or get in touch to reserve your place:

·         Over 350 marketing strategies to build your profits right away.

·         Simple tools to help you get more done in less time

·         Understand the secrets of business growth

·         How to build a winning team

·         Achievable 12 month goals clearly defined

·         Tips on how to track your progress

·         Network with other like-minded business owners

www.momentumperformancecoaching.com

Goal setting + planning = Success

A great many business owners dream big and have great aspirations when they initially start up their businesses, but as time goes on, many seem to lose sight of their goals, let alone think consciously about how they might achieve them and fewer still have a concrete plan which they follow in order to realise their goals.  But if your goals for your business are vague and unclear and you have no clear plan in place, how can you ever expect to achieve them?

Businesses without clear goals and planning are easy to spot; they often  appear to be going round and round in circles, not progressing past the same point they were at last month, last year, even last decade.  Sales may not have altered significantly in years, profits however may well be dwindling due to increasing costs eating in to them and their owners are often stressed out and plagued by confusion as to why their business is failing. 

The saying goes, “what you focus on, you get,” so if you’re focusing on nothing, guess what you get… Nothing.

What’s important then is knowing what we need to do if we want more than nothing out of our businesses! 

For simple tips to help you to work on goal setting and planning in your business catch our next blog on Tuesday.

All of our clients attend our Ultimate Planning Workshops as this gives the formal time and setting for planning for their businesses and our next planning event is just around the corner.

If you believe your business would benefit from the following, visit our website or get in touch to reserve your place:

·         Over 350 marketing strategies to build your profits right away.

·         Simple tools to help you get more done in less time

·         Understand the secrets of business growth

·         How to build a winning team

·         Achievable 12 month goals clearly defined

·         Tips on how to track your progress

·         Network with other like-minded business owners

www.momentumperformancecoaching.com

Goal setting + planning = Success

I’m not a huge fan of trashy television, but it seems that you can’t turn on the television without being bombarded by a whole host of reality TV talent contests.  Strictly Come Dancing, X Factor and I’m a Celebrity are all in full swing and they’ll be followed up by Britain’s got Talent and Dancing on Ice later in the year, not to mention the plethora of other talent shows; there’s Bake Off and Masterchef for the talented cooks, Splash for the aspiring diver and the Salon for the wannabe hairstylist… the list is never ending!  It’s incredible really that there are so many of these shows (in my opinion most of them pretty awful) and that the Television industry keeps churning them out; clearly they are a popular programme genre. 

Now, I’m no talent show connoisseur, but it strikes me that these shows have a couple of central themes and ideas that run through them; they are all about contestants who have a goal or a dream and they undertake a number of challenges and overcome certain obstacles in order to achieve that goal or dream and attain success.  In this respect, talent shows are not unlike running a business.  In order to be successful, we must have goals and dreams for our businesses and there are challenges and obstacles to overcome in order to attain success. 

However, goal setting in TV shows is pretty straight forward; become a pop star, be the best dancer, the best cook and so on.  Goal setting in business tends to be rather more complex.  So what are your business goals?  

All of our clients attend our Ultimate Planning Workshops as this gives the formal time and setting for planning for their businesses and our next planning event is just around the corner.

If you believe your business would benefit from the following, visit our website or get in touch to reserve your place:

·         Over 350 marketing strategies to build your profits right away.

·         Simple tools to help you get more done in less time

·         Understand the secrets of business growth

·         How to build a winning team

·         Achievable 12 month goals clearly defined

·         Tips on how to track your progress

·         Network with other like-minded business owners

www.momentumperformancecoaching.com

Planning for Success in your Business

Often, business owners give excuses for not planning like they are simply too busy or too bogged down in the day to day running of their business to look or think ahead and this is an easy mistake to make, but it is a false economy to buy into the belief that you’re too busy; if your planning were better, there would be systems in place to prevent this and to distribute the work load more appropriately.

As we all become expert planners at Christmas, we thought we would devise some key tips and ideas you can use to help you with planning in your business.

Test and Measure (OFTEN)

We don’t prepare, cook and serve the entire Christmas Dinner without stopping to taste things and check that they’re going to be well received.  Realising the turkey is raw on carving is not the desired outcome!  The same is true of planning in your business.  You don’t want to set your goals at the end of this year and then wait until the end of next year to check on whether you’ve attained them.  Rather, set your goals, break them down into smaller, achievable targets and then devise your plan on how to achieve each goal.  Then review, test that you’re on track to meet these targets, measure your progress so far frequently throughout the year in order to be able to determine whether the strategies you’ve devised are working and so that you can plan further course of action to undertake either to continue in the same vein or to address a problem if there is one within plenty of time to still enable you to meet your goal.  

One of the first things we recommend to all of our clients is to attend our 90 day planning workshops as this gives the formal time and setting for planning for their businesses and our next planning event is just around the corner.  For more information, visit the events page on our website:

www.momentumperformancecoaching.com

Thoughts:

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Alan Lakein

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”
Thomas A. Edison

“Think ahead. Don't let day-to-day operations drive out planning.”
Donald Rumsfeld

“Let our advance worrying become advance thinking and planning.”
Winston Churchill

“Time = Life, therefore, waste your time and waste your life, or master your time and master your life.”

 Alan Lakein

Planning for Success in your Business

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”

Alan Lakein

It’s that time of year again when, love it or loathe it, we must all acknowledge that Christmas is well and truly on its way.  The shops have been gradually filling with seasonal decorations, foods and gifts; our children, grandchildren and husbands, wife’s and partners (big Kids) have begun writing their lists to Santa and the TV and radio are now dominated by adverts for festive shopping opportunities, activities and eateries.

In our house, like many of yours I’m sure, Christmas is a big deal.  Planning for Christmas starts weeks, or perhaps even months in advance.  We’ve been buying little gifts since the beginning of October and gradually stockpiling ideas for the Christmas menu.  Come December, we will sit around with our cookbooks and begin looking up this year’s recipes.  By Christmas week we will have placed our orders with our chosen supermarkets and food suppliers, we’ll have wrapped our gifts, sauces and stuffings will be made and there’ll be a plan in place for what needs to go into the oven when on the big day.

As we all become expert planners at Christmas, this week we thought we would devise some key tips and ideas you can use to help you with planning in your business.  Here's the first for you now:

Reflect and evaluate your past before planning for the future:

No one ever says, “Remember that thing we did last year that ruined Christmas? Let’s do that again this year!”  People remember the recipe that everyone loved, the present that made the kids so happy, the traditions of putting a plate of mince pies out for Santa and a carrot for Rudolf and how exciting it made going to bed the night before Christmas and then they try to replicate and even improve on that success every year.  The same is true for planning in your business.  Reflect on what has gone well and evaluate why it worked, how the success can be replicated and how it can be improved upon and then commence your planning for the future.

One of the first things we recommend to all of our clients is to attend our 90 day planning workshops as this gives the formal time and setting for planning for their businesses and our next planning event is just around the corner.  For more info, visit the events page on our website:

www.momentumperformancecoaching.com

Catch our next tip on Sunday!