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How to Make Next Year Your Best Year Ever

Nov 18, 2020 | Business Growth, Business Owners, CEOs, Goal Setting, Strategic Planning

First, you need to define what “Best Year Ever” means to you; you have to know what you want in order to achieve it. Your ability to get crystal clear about what a successful year looks like will help you make the leap towards that ideal year.

What is your personal strategic plan for your life next year? You can follow these three simple steps to make sure you have the best year ever in 2021.

Step 1 – Be Extremely Clear On What You What. Know what you really want in life and in your business. Know what goals and outcomes you would like to achieve by the end of next year and know exactly what you don’t want. Create a list of personal goals and business goals for the next 12 months. The fact of life is none of us is going to live forever and we don’t know when our number is up so it is so important to get clarity around what is most important for us to achieve. We need to remember to create goals for personal health and well-being and spend more time on our most important relationships. You should also pursue that special hobby or interest you have been putting off. Take time out of your busy schedule before January rolls in to recharge, relax, and reenergize with powerful and meaningful goals for next year. Get the pen to the paper right now and start mapping out your future.

Step 2. Review & Execute. After you create your goals schedule an appointment with yourself every week to work on the action steps to move your goals forward. Our lives are built on the foundation of these six major areas of our wheel of life: Family & Home, Financial & Career, Mental & Educational, Physical & Health, Social & Cultural, and Spiritual & Ethical. These areas are the pillars that you will build a totally integrated life on. Make sure you are spending at least one hour a week in your plan of action. Your personal plan of action is the master plan for the rest of your life. Your planner should contain a master list of priority business and personal goals. The world is infested with distractions and noise designed to take us off our goals program and put us on someone else’s goals program which is why we have to continue to be intentional about setting aside time to work in our plan of action on a weekly basis.

Step 3. Keep the Main Thing the Main Thing. Develop a relentless focus on what really matters most, what is most important and significant in your personal and professional life by setting up ironclad boundaries so you are not interrupted with the tyranny of the urgent which usually isn’t really important. Focus on what you want and not on what you don’t want. For everything that is not a high payoff activity for you – figure out a way to simplify, eliminate, delegate or outsource the activity. Take massive action on your goals – make this a daily habit.

Remember, “It’s hard by the yard, but it’s a cinch by the inch.” Concentrate daily upon doing the little things that eventually will help you accomplish the big things. You create and maintain an environment that is conducive to ongoing motivation. Create a work environment that energizes you and always surround yourself with positive, goal-directed, self-motivated people. It is true what they say – you are the company you keep.

The Right Questions Lead You to the Right Vision

Nov 10, 2020 | Business Growth, Business Owners, CEOs, Goal Setting, Strategic Planning, Success

How has your vision changed for your business and personal life over the past few months? Have you taken the time to think about how the current pandemic and economic turmoil has impacted this vision? Is it the same as it was before or completely different? Hellen Keller once said “The only thing worse than being blind is having no vision.” Even though we cannot completely know what will happen tomorrow or even five minutes from now, it is important to have a detailed image in our minds of what we want to achieve in the long-term. This may change and this is ok, too. But we must always be able to imagine how achieving our goals will look to us and the world around us. We might also imagine how it might feel to achieve those goals and how we might benefit the people in our communities.

A business vision is a crystal-clear image of the future we wish to create. It describes what our company aspires to be and how the world could be impacted, hopefully positively, by our company’s actions. If we want to consistently move toward our vision, we must know what it is, inside and out. We can ask ourselves questions to better understand this vision and in doing so, we can gain clarity on how to achieve it.

There are two main types of questions we can ask, inward questions and outward questions. Inward questions allow us to discover information about ourselves and our business. Some examples of inward questions include:

What do we do best?

 What are our strengths?

What is an ideal organization and how can we be that organization?

How do we want to influence the world around us?

Outward questions lead us to uncover information about our industry and customers. Some examples include:

How is our industry changing?

What is our competition doing in response to market changes?

What are we hearing from customers about their needs?

If you answer these questions you will have a solid jumpstart on developing a vision for your business that takes into account today’s reality and consumer needs. If you want to continue building this vision and begin designing a strategy to achieve it, join the FAST TRACK Challenge beginning November 16th. Click Here for more information.

I Challenge You!

Nov 9, 2020 | Goal Setting, Strategic Planning, Success

I hope you have received my hints that creating a strategic plan is critical to your success in business and in life. If you have not or if you do not believe me, think about what Jim Rohn said, “Success is 20% skills and 80% strategy. You might know how to succeed, but more importantly, what’s your plan to succeed?” The end of 2020 is nearing and there is no better time to set aside some “think time” and create a plan for 2021.

Do you know what you want to achieve in 2021? Do you have a clear and specific, written plan for how you are going to achieve those goals? Do you think you could benefit from LIVE coaching on developing your plan? I will be hosting the Fast Track Strategic Plan Challenge with Marc Daniels, CEO of ResultsBI, beginning November 16th. Over 5 days in one hour zoom sessions, we will walk you through creating a strategic plan for your company. Here is a brief glimpse of what we will go over in those 5 days.

Day 1 – Vision: It all starts with your vision. Where are you going? Why are you doing this? What really matters most to you? What are your core values?

Day 2 – Foundation: Who is your target market? When you get this right, it provides context for all you do. Who are you speaking to in your marketing efforts? What is your brand? How are you positioned in your market?

Day 3- Long-Term: We will cover two well-known analyses that will provide you with a comprehensive understanding of your market and help you identify your strategic moves: 5 Competitive Forces & PEST Analyses. Have you taken a look at your competition recently? Do you know what they are doing to overcome the current challenges faced by your industry? Have you defined your Long-Term Strategic Moves?

Day 4 – SWOT: We will discuss the old standard SWOT Analyses and go over the SWaTOL for leveraging trends and identifying strategic projects.

Day 5 – Execution: What does it mean to be an Effective Execution Leader?

Larry Bossidy is quoted as saying, “Execution is the ability to mesh strategy with reality, align people with goals, and achieve the promised results.” Are you ready to stand up to this challenge?

Over the next few weeks, I will dive into greater detail about some of the topics mentioned today but now is the time to start thinking about the answers to the questions I presented to you and maybe even write those answers down. If you want to find out more about the Fast Track Strategic Plan Challenge, click here. Space is limited and registration closes November 14th.