T'was the night before Christmas...

Spreading a little seasonal cheer; here's our last blog of 2013.  

Merry Christmas one and all, we look forward to helping you to achieve your business dreams in 2014! 

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house

Not a creature was stirring, except for the man with no business nowse;

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,

But business had been tough so they were filled with thin air;

The children were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of ipods and laptops danced in their heads;

Mamma downed gin in her grief, and he wrung his hands in lap,

There was no chance here of a long winter's nap,

When from my phone there arose such a clatter,

A new email offered a solution to the matter.

Away to the computer I flew like a flash,

Here was a business coach who could help me to earn more cash.

The text on the screen described things he needed to know,

Like how to double profit and make your business grow,

And what to his wondering eyes did appear,

But the business solutions he'd been waiting for his entire career,

With a little hard work, results could be quick,

He knew in that moment this coach could make things click,

More rapid than eagles he wrote down the name,

And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:

"Now, Momentum ! I need to be a winner! My business troubles need fix'in!

On, Profit! on, Team! on, Sales and Cash flowin'!

From the top of the drain an over this wall!

Now coach away! coach away! coach away all!"

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,

When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;

So up together he and his coach flew,

With the armoury full of strategies, and a firm commitment too—

And then, in a twinkling, He soon saw the proof

The dancing that signalled profit had gone through the roof.

Like the dreams he had had in his head, business was turning around,

Achievement and success were now a bound.

His coach had assured no more trouble would be a foot,

And no more did his eyes look tarnished with bags of soot;

A bundle of gifts he had been able to buy back,

And he looked in amazement and how close he'd been to giving his business the sack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His happy little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

Even the grey hair on his head had ceased to grow;

Misery had gone-no longer the need to clench his teeth,

And happiness, it encircled his family like a wreath;

Plenty of profit ensured never an empty belly

And he scoffed at talk of recessions on telly.

Coaching made life easy and gave him back his umpf, his jolly old self,

And He laughed when he saw his products fly off shelf;

A change to routine, time to clear his head

Soon gave him to know He had nothing to dread;

He felt once more a true love for his work,

And realised waiting this long to get help had made him a jerk,

And laying his finger aside of his nose,

This is a secret that not every business owner knows;

He sprang to his laptop , to email his friends as quick as a whistle,

To boost their businesses he knew a coach would be beneficial .

So if you're ready for change and need help to achieve all you might—

A coach from momentum could certainly see you right!

A merry Christmas to you all and to all a good night!

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."

If something isn't working, we've got to stop, figure out why and then try something new! 

If there's no return on your marketing investment, why would you plough more money into repeating the same failed exercise again? If you've got an employee not making the grade, why continue to employ them? And if you've got a client who doesn't pay, why continue to give your stock away for free? 

It's common sense, you would think, yet I see these issues time and time again. Perseverance is great, but being blindly stubborn will get you nowhere.  Simply put, if you always do what you've always done, you will always get what you've always got, so if you're not happy with what you're getting from your business, it's time to change what you are doing in your business.  Quit the bad habits and those proven unsuccessful enterprises that waste time, energy and money.

In two weeks’ time, as the end of the year approaches, some of us will make New Year’s Resolutions, some of us will already be thinking about what we can do to make next year a more successful year.  I am asking you this week to not only think about what you can do, but also to think about what you need NOT to do and what you need to QUIT doing.  Stop being the fool and get clever about how you can improve your business in 2014.

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."

Sometimes us business owners can be a little too persevering, too trying and are blinded by our own stubbornness to allow our businesses to move forward as successfully and as easily as they might. Have you ever heard a disheartened business owner exclaim, "we've run this marketing campaign three times already and we still haven't seen any increase in sales!' ? Or the overly patient business owner who confides that their sales person, "didn't meet this month's target again," but nothing changes so next month they have the same failure to meet target once more? How about the stubborn business owner who has clients with hundreds or even thousands of outstanding pounds in bills overdue, but they continue to provide further goods and services because, "well surely they will pay up eventually," yet the debtors just keep on growing and growing and the cash flow dwindles smaller and smaller?

Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?  Well here's where the second part of the quotation comes into play; if you've tried and tried and things still aren't working, don't keep trying the same thing again; that's madness! Doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results is a fool's errand. 

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."

As anyone who follows me on Twitter (SusanGallagher@susanMPC) will already know, I am fond of the inspirational quote or two; I like read and hear what little pearls of wisdom others have to offer and see if I can't glean some insight, knowledge or lesson from them myself. After all, none of us is individually are as smart as all of us combined. This week I came across a quotation that really struck a chord with me and it’s with this quotation that I want to base this week's writing:

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it."
W.C. Fields

So, I know it's not the most linguistically beautiful quotation you've ever come across, but the sentiment is precisely right and incredibly relevant to a great many of you I'm sure.

As business owners, we must have no small measure of perseverance; no business can succeed without it. At some point or another, we have all felt tested by the challenges of running a business and thought (even fleetingly and in private) that it would be easier to give up on that client, that contract, that target or goal. However, we are all still in business and thriving so we must have chosen to persevere. That's where the first part of this quote comes in; the willingness to try, try again and the desire to achieve success.

Vision, planning and achieving your business dreams

Once you have your vision and you know what successes you want to achieve in your business long term, then you will be ready to start planning on how to go about making your next year brilliant, gaining success and enabling your business to grant you the wishes and dreams you deserve to have come true.

Develop your vision and then talk to us about how to plan for your success in 2014:

Critical to the Success and Outstanding Results that our Clients achieve is attendance at our 90 Day Ultimate Planning Workshops where they plan and construct their activities to ensure that they maintain momentum and continue to achieve their goals and dreams…

Now you can join them and come and attend this Powerful One Day event that will give you the inspiration, ideas and strategies you need to make 2014 your best year ever..

Here’s what you will get from the day…

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

·       Understand the secrets of business growth

·       Tactics to enable you to build a winning team

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

·       Tips on how to track your progress

·       Achievable 12 month goals clearly defined

·       Network with other like-minded business owners

·       Direction and clarity of Vision

·       Inspiration from like-minded Business Owners

·       New confidence in building the business you really deserve

·       Great ideas from two of the top Coaches in the Business

An OUTSTANDING Day is Guaranteed to everyone who attends…

Places are limited so book now to avoid disappointment…

Vision, planning and achieving your business dreams

Developing a vision for your business is the first step. It’s this process that enables you to visualise where you want your business to go, not just in the next year, but in the next 5 years, 10 years, or even longer.  When you embark on your planning you can break this down into smaller chunks and targets in individual year, quarters, months, days, but a vision isn’t about the everyday, so think big and think long term.  Your vision can then inform your day to day running of your business because, like a guiding light in the distance, you will always have a point of focus leading you in the right direction.

If your vision is going to inform the running of your business, it must be clear and it should be specific; no woolly ifs, buts or maybes and no vague or non-descript aims, and it should be aspirational; this is not the place for humble humility.  Take Apple for example, their vision and mission statement is, “To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.”  Now love or loathe Apple, this vision for the company to ‘advance humankind’ is clear, specific and aspirational and you can well imagine the boffins in the development workshops and research labs standing around their latest prospective product quizzing each other, “yes, but will this advance humankind?” Simply, if their answer is “no” then the team will know it’s time to get back to the drawing board!

Which leads us to the next crucial step in building your vision for your business; your vision should be articulated and shared with your team so that you can all share in it, become invested in it and motivated towards it.  A vision achieves nothing scrawled on the back of an old envelope or crumpled post-it note stuffed down the back of a desk drawer!  Commit it to paper, share it, display it and strive towards it every day!

To read more on developing a vision for your business and planning to achieve your business dreams, catch the next instalment of this week's blog on Tuesday.

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

It is said that we learn twice as much from failure as we do from success and that’s the kind of progress we could all do with making.

Now, I’m not suggesting, you start planning to fail by gambling your profits in a risky investment that all logic is telling you is likely to fail, but rather take those measured risks that you can afford to fail without devastating consequences.  We can sometimes get too familiar with where we are at or we are; what is better known as in our comfort zone.  The question is though, "is a comfort zone comfortable?" Not necessarily. In actual fact, familiarity zone may be a better description. Perhaps you have become familiar with only just scraping enough in together in turnover to pay out your overheads so taking a risk to actually make a profit is scary, but what if that risk pays off?

Any success you want in your life lies on the other side of your comfort/familiarity zone, so to be successful in business you need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable and you need to be planning to fail on occasion so that you can pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start again, just like you would have done when you learned to walk.

By giving new ideas a go, you either win or you learn and both are successful outcomes so being afraid of failure is an illogical fear that you need to overcome.

Do we really need certificates to be successful?

Certainly not.  We only need one certificate; our birth certificate.  That’s the piece of paper that entitles you the opportunities required to achieve any success you can dream of. Nothing else.

If, however, you want to accelerate your success, as well as planning to fail, remember to PLAN! 

Critical to the Success and Outstanding Results our Clients achieve, is attendance at our 90 Day Ultimate Planning Workshops where they plan and construct their activities to ensure that they maintain momentum and continue to achieve their goals and dreams…

Now you can join them and come and attend this Powerful One Day event that will give you the inspiration, ideas and strategies you need to make 2014 your best year ever..

Here’s what you will get from the day…

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

·       Understand the secrets of business growth

·       Tactics  to enable you to build a winning team

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

·       Tips on how to track your progress

·       Achievable 12 month goals clearly defined

·       Network with other like-minded business owners

·       Direction and clarity of Vision

·       Inspiration from like-minded Business Owners

·       New confidence in building the business you really deserve

·       Great ideas from two of the top Coaches in the Business

An OUTSTANDING Day is Guaranteed to everyone who attends…

Places are limited so book now to avoid disappointment…

www.momentumperformancecoaching.com

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

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?

Well, we go to school and enter into the academic main stream whereby we learn that from that point onwards we are going to be judged; judged on our progress, our ability, our success.  We are set targets and we are given expectations for our performance and not achieving these targets, we are labelled as failures who are under achieving, unsatisfactory or inadequate when compared with our peers. 

Those of you with children will know that this is even worse for pupils today; there are curricula now set from nursery school so we begin assessing the ability of our babies as well as our children nowadays!  Society places a huge emphasis on the merit and importance of certificates that represent academic achievement and ability and we are told that without these remarkable pieces of paper, our opportunities to achieve success are greatly inhibited, if not withdrawn entirely.

So we leave school and take our new learned fear of failure into business.  We become risk averse and do all we can to avoid risk.  We have learned to play it safe and this can severely stunt the growth of our business. If we never take any risks, we can never enjoy the learning that accompanies a win or failure, we inhibit our own and businesses’ ability to grow.  A business can never outgrow its leader and if that leader is impeded by a crippling fear of failure, then they and their business will remain in a limbo of mediocrity.  

There is a clear a definite need for us as business owners to reframe failure.  There is a saying we often use in our planning workshops; “Fail to plan and you plan to fail,” but this needs to be extended even more; we should also be planning to fail occasionally because to be successful in business we need to fail more and learning from those failures.  It is said that we learn twice as much from failure as we do from success and that’s the kind of progress we could all do with making.

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 Tuesday.