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Business Basics
Heres an exercise for you.
Where are you now? What turnover and income? Is it enough?
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Where do you want to be?
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What are my goals? (simple, overview aims)
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Why am I doing this? What do I really want to achieve?
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And every journey has a destination, an end to aim for, so the next area we briefly look at is where do you want to be?
Where do you want to be?
Okay, so now you’ve written a few thoughts on where you are now, let’s look at where do you want to be? We’ve got a ‘start’, so now let’s just see if we can loosely put an ‘end’ together. Where do you want to be? I know a lot of people have a very loose end goal. What do you have? Just a loose thought of what you’d like if it all ‘goes according to plan’? Or is it a precise and specific end point?
Well, as before, please just write down some thoughts on where you want to be.
Do you see yourself on a beach retired?
Do you see yourself owning a huge company but having a less active daily role?
Do you see yourself having sold out and not owning anything and starting another one?
Do you see yourself quitting this daily grind and actually then just doing what you really want to do which is have fun, play golf, fly aeroplanes, do whatever?
Do you have a hobby that you’d like to do, and work is a necessary evil at the moment? Do you see your business expanding nationally, internationally?
Where do you want to be?
(It perhaps isn’t easy to get your brain ‘muscle’ thinking beyond your usual daily thought level. You see, generally you will find that most day-to-day activity isn’t thought out. Most day-to-day activity you’ll get sucked along with what’s happening around you. And that’s given your brain a lazy get-through-the-day attitude. Your brain isn’t driving you, it’s just coping with what you’re doing. So when it comes to now driving forward, we are now having to think, and it doesn’t come naturally! You have an awesome computer between the ears…but it isn’t working at much of it’s capacity so let’s try hard here to stimulate it into overdrive. Train that muscle and it will soon become strong and fit as does any other physical muscle like your Bicep.)
And what does it mean – all this writing down where you’re at and where you want to be?
It means taking control and putting your brain into active gear, and then saying “no I don’t want that, I want this”. It means you stop drifting and start steering.
It means that as you develop these skills and re-train your ‘mind muscle’ you gain more and more control of your life and thus increase hugely the chances of getting what you want out of it. Don’t be lazy! Do not get swept along in an aimless drift!
It simple means that pushing, when it doesn’t come easy now, will directly impact what you get out of your life. It means it is worth it!
Thursday, 15 October 2009
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
Where are you now?
Where are you now?
Where are you now in your business? What’s the answer to that? Well, how much are you making? Are you feeling buoyant? Are you feeling stale? Are you full of enthusiasm?, Are you knocking at the door, chasing it? Or are you sitting there thinking, “Oh my god I really don’t know how much longer I can keep this going?”
Where are you? Have you really asked yourself that question? Do you stop to think enough about your existence and your path? The truth is that many business owners feel they are ‘too busy’ to stop and think they just need to do! Well you and I my friend are going to stop a little and think so please ask some deeper questions. Where are you with your business? It is more about how you feel than what you’re actually doing.
Turnover? Yes, you need to know what your income is. Profit? Yes, that’s more important because turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, as we know. You must know that, but also you must know for example how many customers you’ve got? How many sales are you getting? How many sales do you need and at what level to achieve your objectives? What about the sacrifices you are making to operate your business in terms of time commitment…are you working too many hours? Do you want to slow down a bit? Is it all a bit manic at times? These are thoughts that you need to clearly talk through with me and share with yourself. If you write them down as a collection of answers you will see clearly a picture of where you are at…and this is absolutely so vital because if you see clearly where you are at it gives us starting point to spring from and also tells us what you want to avoid and leave behind as we begin our journey.
Just be totally honest, do you think you’re flying or are you drowning? Are you treading water but not getting anywhere and being frustrated at the effort? Where are you?
It’s not all about money…but hey, it is all about the money!! Are you making enough? If not, how much are you actually making for YOU? How much do you want? How do you see yourself making up the shortfall? Can you really make up the shortfall without adding also to costs?
And if you do that are you also adding to headaches?
How do you feel about ‘headaches’ like staffing issues? Administration issues?
And is your business known in the market? Are you always adding new business?
Are you really gathering new customers apace or are you very much painfully aware that customers aren’t coming in very fast these days? Or are you gathering new customers but painfully aware that they’re coming in at a very poor level so you’re not making the money these days?
Are you finding that some of your customers are moaning a lot and therefore the enjoyment factor’s gone and in the old days it didn’t used to be like this?
Are you finding that because of the customers you serve, maybe because they moan too much, your position in the market is wrong and you’d like to change your positioning.
(A good idea is to write – honestly, simply – just write down your thoughts as I ask you these questions. Use the ‘GOALS – Where Are You Now?’ section on the page overleaf.)
Are you dealing to the middle class of your market, the bottom end, or are you very exclusive at the top end?
I’m trying to get you to involve the feeling inside of it. How do you feel about where you’re at? ‘Where Are You Now?’ is about a lot more than just facts and figures. Tell me about your current clients, your existing business levels and all that goes with it.
Are you enjoying it? are you frustrated? Which bits do you still enjoy…and which don’t you like so much?
Do you think your positioning is right? Do you think your pricing is right? How do you compare to others?
Tell me about your energy levels. Are you tired most of the time? Has it ground you down or do you feel it gradually doing so?
What about your mental activity…are you awakened at night with excited thoughts and is your daytime a buzz with anticipation and vision? Or are you merely coping with everything that every day throws at you?
Do you worry? What about? Why? What do you think is the cure?
Is it that simple? Honestly! What do you think?
And as we talk, as you think start to formulate you ‘answers’ and write them down. It is a great habit by the way…as you talk with yourself and learn to open up, if you give yourself a creative outlet by writing the thoughts down your mind will suddenly feel like its being listened to and as that process starts to flow more regularly your mind will start to produce all sorts of amazing answers! Its true! You will actually tap into a vast resource that in fact will provide you with all of the answers to all of the challenges you’re ever faced with, so encourage it now by starting the process. Write down these thoughts as to where you are now. Write as fluently as you can, just get used to thoughts flowing out, because it’s a powerful habit.
Do you think you’re at the beginning of your business or approaching the latter stages? If you’re in what you identify as a ‘middle stage’, then how did you identify that? Is that because you just think how many years have I been doing it, or is it in terms of progress towards where you think you want to be? Are you planning an end? Do you see yourself retiring soon should finances allow?
What about your team? Do you need to gather around you a core team or do you have that but recognise you need extra bodies at a lower level to maintain higher volume levels? Is staffing an issue?
Tell me about your enjoyment levels…are you enjoying all of your roles? I mean, when your actually ‘doing what you do’ I guess you enjoy ‘it’ but do you? As much as you always did? If not why not? If you do but it’s the other bits you hate then write down what you like and don’t like. Break your current existence down into roles…tasks that consume your time perhaps, and just get knowledgeable about where you are at.
And it might seem I am labouring this point…it might seem that you just want to get reading about more hot tips to build your business, but as I said previously, I am with you in this mission to attain the result you want and please trust me, this is such a core and vital part of the future build that right here now up front I want you to get into the disciplines needed to see it to the end. Getting down into ‘boring stuff’ actually exposes the mind to real hidden motivations and without correct motivations you are not going to go very far.
And if I keep repeating something as I chat with you it is because again your mind works in a pretty simple way and when it comes to learning we learn things easily when they are just repeated time and time again! Remember when we learned nursery rhymes? How did we learn? By listening over and over again! So, if this is to work it is going to work because we break the ‘old mental pattern’ and break away from your current business operational methods and get into a new one that can give you better results…and to learn a new one we can help ourselves by repetition.
To help you, you’ve got to get the brain to think on a different level here, so ask yourself more questions…
How do you feel about where you’re at?
Are you satisfied?
Are you stale, are you full of energy?
And if you have thought that through and written some things down …
Please don’t worry about writing the correct answers either! There is no right or wrong…just start the process and then look at what you’ve written…you’ll find that it’s a little difficult to get the brain to start thinking and it’s probably not easy to know what to write, but please try. Just let it flow, bounce crazy ideas around in your head and give silly answers if that’s how they feel.
I know I’m firing a lot of questions at you and repeating them. I probably know that you want to just read on, thinking, “I know all of this.”
When you’ve finished scribbling, you will have a collection of thoughts that basically show you some good points about today and some definite not so good points that we want to move away from. We’re going on a journey in business development. The future is not going to equal the past. It can be anything you wish and if today’s business lifestyle and reward system isn’t giving you all that you’ve dreamed of (and I assume it isn’t or perhaps you wouldn’t be with me reading this now) then we have to know exactly what is not right about today’s business lifestyle, we need to understand what we do not like and for what reason…and then we can re create your business lifestyle to one that suits. As we have said this is a journey…and every journey needs a start point. Find yours.
WARNING! Remember, please, before you just read on…if you are wanting to simply read on then probably you are only thinking about this at the same surface level as you’ve become accustomed to and that will probably imply a level of application much as you’ve previously become accustomed to - if you do that then the ‘same as before’ in application will produce the same as before in result. Please, stop now and take a few minutes to review these questions, ask yourself more and examine where you are at with your life, your business life especially and write a clear account of what you like dislike and give yourself an accurate start.
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