By now you should be ready to review your short term goals, are you on track or off track? simple question, simple answer. One of my all-time favorite quotes is from the late Jim Rohn.
“If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.” —Jim Rohn.
I don't know about you but I am ready to move into phase two, I have achieved so much in the last 60 days I'm ready to go through the gears and spring into summer (sorry for the pun)
If your also ready fasten your seatbelt and read on:
Step 1: Make a decision.
The power to decide and understand that you will have to do something is one of the most powerful decisions in the universe. The process of deciding that you will be a success, have a great career, strong relationship with the company or certain type of business will cause you to move forward towards your goal.
Most people never decide what they truly want, those are the ones you see bumbling around from day to day, stumbling into week to week, crashing into month to month, and before they know it, then there goes another year in which they have achieved nothing or very little. The good news is we have a choice, I am giving you the opportunity make a conscious decision today, one that will cause your mind to diligently search and create the positive reality that you have chosen.
Step 2: Creating a schedule.
Your schedule should encompass your whole life. Your business and personal life need to be factored in to create balance. I have seen far too many people sacrifice their family to achieve a production or commission goal. When they finally reach their goal, they have no one to share it with or they realize what little importance that goal had compared to their family. I am of course highly qualified to speak from personal experience, and it is a very hollow feeling.
The schedule should encompass the "time block" system. By time blocking I mean to schedule a specific time for each daily activity. Schedule time to negotiate contracts, return phone calls, and attend meetings. The better you "time block" the more effective you will be. The more that you adhere to the schedule the more success you will have overall. Remember to allow for a little "play time" or "Time Out." You will need some time to relax and decompress. This time for relaxing will enable you to stay focused and sharp during the "up time." Give yourself a 15-minute "time out" every two to three hours. This should be sufficient to break the tension or catch up so that you are able to stay focused and "time blocked."
Step 3: Value of Time.
To decrease your time worked and increase your production, you must know and understand the value of your time. Anyone can make more money if they trade more time for it. Even the road digger can do that. He merely needs to work overtime. The secret is to trade less time for more income.
People who understand the value of time trade less and less time for more and more income. You must first know the value of your time today. What are you worth per hour? Do you know? If you do not, it is a simple equation. Determine your gross salary plus any commission for last year and divide it by the total hours you worked. The total would be your hourly rate or...
Now if you want a more accurate figure of what you are worth per hour, subtract your business expenses for last year from your gross salary for last year. Divide that figure by the total hours you worked. Now, look at your value per hour. Most people don't have the courage to really look at this number, let me tell you a great fact of life here, time is far more important than money, the fact is you can always find a way to get more money, you can’t get any more time.
People who know the value of time in their life create rewarding lives. People who do not know have a miserable existence because they do not understand the importance of time.
Let me give you an example:
If you had a bank that credited your account each morning with £86,000 — that carried over no balance from day to day — that allowed you to keep no cash in your account... and every evening canceled whatever part of the amount you had failed to use during the day — what would you do? Draw out every single penny, of course! Well, you do have such a bank—its name is 'time.' Every morning it credits you with 86,000 seconds... every night it rules off as lost whatever of this you have failed to invest to good purposes. It carries no balance... It allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new account for you. If you fail to use the day's deposit, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against tomorrow. You must live in the present on today's deposit.
If you and I make the most of our time, it will be because we understand the value of each and every second. We will learn how to spend our time wisely.
Step 4: Invest your time in high payoff activities.
You must invest your time and define what the high payoff activities are for you. Once you have defined the activities, you need the discipline to do them daily. These are the only activities you can do to pay yourself well. You need to also understand that these activities will change as your hourly value increases.
You must invest the time to define what the high payoff activities are for you.
Step 5: Developing a philosophy.
By philosophy, I mean guidelines for doing business both personally and professionally. If you understand your value per hour and your average salary check, you can determine the type of people you are willing to work with.
You need to understand you were not put on this earth to help everyone. There are people you cannot help. This fact does not make them or us bad people or you a bad person. It just makes you a business person who expects a reasonable profit for the amount of time invested. You must define clearly your world of business. This definition will enable you to better select the people to work with. We have all selected the wrong people. We have spent large amounts of time and money working with people we should not have and felt awful afterward. In some instances, we were never paid or appreciated for our efforts.
You will feel much better turning them down before you invest your time, energy, and money in a losing cause. By understanding your "core" philosophy, you will be able to seek out the clients who meet your criteria rather than finding those that do not. By having this philosophy, you will generally find the clients you are looking for. You will also be able to quickly dispense of those clients who do not meet your standard operating procedures.
Step 6: Understand your business.
Know what generates your business. What are the top three income producing activities that you do? Where do you spend your time daily? Compare those two answers and look at what you are worth per hour. Do only those activities that earn you the highest return the bulk of your day. I will give you a hint; high payoff activities are not from sitting around in the office, a desk is a very dangerous place in which to view business in the modern world.
Step 7: Focus
Recently I was reflecting on what it took to be successful. My mind recalled a recent article, called physically present but psychologically absent. It goes on to say that 4 out of every five employees do not consider themselves engaged in work. This is estimated to cost the British economy 46 billion pounds a year*.
Life gives you many opportunities to ponder, to evaluate your progress and see the results of your labor. This is one of those moments, with the first quarter of the year point coming up, to evaluate, ponder, or replay the tape. I was recently reflecting on the question, “What is the one characteristic that makes someone successful?” It was one of those moments that you struggle to boil all of your knowledge down into one distilled thought; to remove all the dross of your thoughts to one true nugget of incredible value to all who come in contact with it. My mind zeroed in on the concept of how our effort dictates our reward in life, our effort being our work or what we do. In life, we create our reward, whether it is financial or relational, by what we do. It’s not based on intent or what we plan to do but, ultimately, what we actually do.
While pondering, I realized that we do many things and that some of the things we do have more value than others. We can often select the wrong thing to do and complete, thereby creating a lot of effort with very little results. Ultimately, the results are the name of the game. We can easily get faked out with regard to what has the most important value. The key characteristic of successful people is the skill and ability to focus intensely on their most important task and do it to completion with excellence before moving on to the next task. If you work at mastering this one skill, or ability, it will transform your life. This skill will also transform your relationships in your life. Your career will explode to new heights. There will be no limits to the exceptional life that you can create. There is an ancient saying, “Don’t put all of your eggs into one basket.” My Mom would use that old axiom quite a bit when I was growing up. She would also say to me, “You must keep your options open.” Today I realize that these sayings are dated and inappropriate to one who seeks success. You must put your focus and effort into the “one basket.” To zero in on the one task, or most important task, that must be done right now. To single-mindedly do what will have the biggest impact and take it to completion is essential to success. What is the one basket that you need to work on right now? What is the one thing every day that will create the biggest impact on your business? Only then, when it is done, can you look for another “basket” to work on.
All too often we have ten to fifteen baskets open with our hands, efforts, and focus going into all of them at once. We can often move them along but never get them done and completed and then moved off our agenda. The skill to select the most important task right now and take it to completion is the difference between massive success and failure.
So, I ask again, what is your one basket right now? What is the one task or activity that you need laser-minded focus on to complete? What must be done and completed today? What can’t wait and will bring you the biggest return? Set some time aside to do it now. Then, before you leave today, select the one thing to focus on for tomorrow. Prepare your day for tomorrow before you leave today. Create the order of how tomorrow will unfold in the calmness of today. Select the one thing you will focus on right now. Then, resolve to not quit until it’s done! This one skill will enable you to craft the life that you desire. Don’t wait to start learning the skill, start today!
Step 8 Priority Focus
Let me share an example. The Rolling Stones are one of the most prolific and enduring bands in history, to date their career history has spanned over 56 years, and they are still performing to sold-out stadiums all over the world, you may not be a true fan of their music, but it is hard to deny their success.
Let’s go behind the scenes just before their concert begins… The stage is set, it took over two hundred people to build this mammoth structure several stories tall and half the length of a football field. A convoy of more than twenty trailers was
required to haul it from the last location. Two private planes jet the key people, including the band, between cities. It’s a huge operation; it’s a fact that the last tour earned more than $80 million profit, so it is obviously well worth the effort!
A limousine pulls up backstage. The four band members step out and wait expectantly for their cue call. Seventy thousand people erupt into a deafening roar when the band hit the stage, for the next two hour they perform brilliantly, sending their fans home happy and satisfied and after the final encore they wave goodbye and leave the stage, step back into the limousine and exit the stadium.
They are masters at applying the habit of Priority Focus. That means they only do the things they are brilliant at – recording and performing on stage – period.
Notice this, they don’t get involved in hauling equipment, setting up the stage, or hundreds of other tasks that need to be performed efficiently to make the tour a smooth operation, and ultimately profitable. Other skilled people look after the details. The Rolling Stones simply concentrate on what they do best – singing and performing, they leave the other skilled people to complete the operation. Do you have the skills and the systems to help run your business this way? What would your production look like if you did? How balanced would our life’s be with this type of system?
There’s a great message here for you, and that is when you focus most of your time and energy doing the things you are truly brilliant at, you eventually reap big rewards
There are more people who truly need your services than there is who need the Rolling Stones. You have a bigger market to sell your service in today than the Rolling Stones have. The question is whether you are truly taking advantage of it and preparing yourself to win.
Abe Lincoln said, “If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first four hours sharpening the axe.” He would spend two-thirds of his time improving the tools that make him effective at work. What would your business look like if you spent time sharpening your axe?
What do we normally do? We start right in trying to chop down the tree. We don’t evaluate how best to chop down the tree. We just start chopping and hope that the tree will eventually fall. We keep swinging the axe until the sweat is pouring down before we evaluate if this is the best approach.
Most of us work to make progress in our life. By working hard, we make good time. But we are often making good time in the opposite direction from our desires in life. The problem is that we don’t know where we are going. Many of us have not clearly defined what we want. We also haven’t spent the time to sharpen our skills so that our efforts can produce much fruit.
Many leaders talk about being efficient. When your efficiency increases, they say, you have won the game. It is true that there is value in increasing your efficiency. Efficiency is great, as long as we are effective as well. But being highly effective is more important than being highly efficient.
You must spend the time to focus on being effective, to “sharpen the axe.” What is your axe in your business? Which tools do you need to spend time sharpening in order to be more effective? Most of us have quite a few things that we need to sharpen in our business. Select one thing that really needs your attention today. Don’t wait until tomorrow -- do it now. Then work, focus and improve that one area, even if only for 30 minutes a day, to sharpen your axe. You will be amazed at the ease with which you can fell the big trees of life.
Step 9: Create Strong Systems.
Systems enable business people to leverage themselves while still servicing their clients and prospects. You need to develop systems that create the desired result without your involvement. The reason why McDonald's is so popular is not the good food, it is because of the consistency. Whether you go into a McDonalds in Dubai, Las Vegas in the States or Sha Tin, in Hong Kong the fries will be the same. They have developed their systems and procedures that allow them to sell billions of fries with the same effort and outcome every time.
As leaders you do not have to be mechanical like McDonald's, but you do need effective systems.
STEP 10: Delegation.
You need to delegate the low payoff tasks that need to be completed to other staff members. You need to teach and train your support staff to replace you in certain functions. You need to monitor their progress with praise. And finally, you need to get out of the way and let them do it.
The last step is the most difficult step for most leaders. They hire support assistants then never turn over ownership of the tasks to the assistant. You need to be able to relinquish control. They are going to fall down and bump their knee. They will ruin some deals and make some clients angry. But you have made mistakes, why wouldn't they make similar mistakes?
Let me give you an example: your child is learning to walk. How many times do you let him fall down before you say that is enough? You are done trying to walk. If you say enough, he will have to crawl the rest of his life since he will never learn to walk. However, you would not do that; you would help him until he is able to walk all over the room. You need to let your staff fall down and get banged up.
Don't shelter them from the storm, but do not create a hurricane in your office either.
Final Note –
If you have enjoyed reading this post from my blog, promise me that you will share what you have learned today with others, if you can do that you will have demonstrated that you are indeed a true LEADER.
The season of spring is a time for new beginnings and right now I'm buzzing, let's do this.
