Business HorsePower
The Power Of FOCUS

The Power Of FOCUS

by | Jan 13, 2016

So how are your New Years resolutions going? Are you giving them the focus they deserve? If not the reason might be that they are not important enough to you, or else you have too many other things going on.

Todays Wednesday Wisdom has been inspired by by own situation over the last few weeks. As some of you know I made a commitment to start running in November and yesterday, 8 weeks later, I have just run, for the first time in my life, 5km. It felt amazing.

What I’ve realised about my approach to running is that I have been disciplined and focused. I even went out on Christmas Day!. I could have never even have conceived that running 5km would even be possible but with regular practice I am moving forward to achieve my goal of completing 10km.

And in business too, you need to ensure you just FOCUS on one thing at a time. I love the acronym for FOCUS which is Follow One Course Until Successful. So this is my mantra for this year. Choose one thing and stick to it, because by taking small steps everyday the impossible can start to become a reality.

What are you choosing to focus on today?

Systems Not Goals Help You Make Progress

Systems Not Goals Help You Make Progress

by | Aug 12, 2015

My coach recently introduced me to the concept of systems not goals and it is making such a difference in my life that I wanted to share this article with you which has been inspired by James Clear.

We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives — getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on.

And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific, measurable actionable goal.  For example I would set goals on how much income I wanted to make a month, how many times I wanted to work out, how much food I wanted to eat. But there was a problem.  When I failed to meet this goal I became disillusioned and rather than the goal motivating me it was infact putting me into inaction. I never wanted to set goals in case I did not achieve them. I started avoiding goal setting and planning as it was too painful to see the results. And as a result my business lost focus, direction and momentum.

What I’m starting to realize, however, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things.

It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.

Let me explain.

The Difference Between Goals and Systems

What’s the difference between goals and systems?

  • If you’re a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.
  • If you’re a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.
  • If you’re a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.
  • If you’re an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.

Now for the really interesting question:

If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still get results?

For example, if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get results?

I think you would.

For example, if you committed to write two blogs per week over the course of a year you would have written over 100,000 words. The typical book is about 50,000 to 60,000 words, so by this habit of writing twice a week within a year you would have completed enough content for two books.

All of this is such a surprise because goal was never set for the writing. Progress wasn’t measured in relation to some benchmark. What there was a focus on was writing two articles every week. And after sticking to that schedule for a year the result was 100,000 words. If you focus on the system and the process of doing the work, in the end, you might experience better results results.

Let’s talk about three more reasons why you should focus on systems instead of goals.

1. Goals reduce your current happiness.

When you’re working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, “I’m not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal.”

The problem with this mindset is that you’re teaching yourself to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. “Once I reach my goal, then I’ll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I’ll be successful.”

SOLUTION: Commit to a process, not a goal.

Choosing a goal puts a huge burden on your shoulders. Can you imagine if I had made it my goal to write two books this year? Just writing that sentence stresses me out.

But we do this to ourselves all the time. We place unnecessary stress on ourselves to lose weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel. Instead, you can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big, life-changing goals.

When you focus on the practice instead of the performance, you can enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time.

2. Goals are strangely at odds with long-term progress.

You might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that’s not always true.

Consider someone training for a half-marathon. Many people will work hard for months, but as soon as they finish the race, they stop training. Their goal was to finish the half-marathon and now that they have completed it, that goal is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?

This can create a type of “yo-yo effect” where people go back and forth from working on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build upon your progress for the long-term.

SOLUTION: Release the need for immediate results.

I was training at the gym last week and I was doing my second-to-last set of clean and jerks. When I hit that rep, I felt a small twinge in my leg. It wasn’t painful or an injury, just a sign of fatigue near the end of my workout. For a minute or two, I thought about doing my final set. Then, I reminded myself that I plan to do this for the rest of my life and decided to call it a day.

In a situation like the one above, a goal-based mentality will tell you to finish the workout and reach your goal. After all, if you set a goal and you don’t reach it, then you feel like a failure.

But with a systems-based mentality, I had no trouble moving on. Systems-based thinking is never about hitting a particular number, it’s about sticking to the process and not missing workouts.

Of course, I know that if I never miss a workout, then I will lift bigger weights in the long-run. And that’s why systems are more valuable than goals. Goals are about the short-term result. Systems are about the long-term process. In the end, process always wins.

3. Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over.

You can’t predict the future. (I know, shocking.)

But every time we set a goal, we try to do it. We try to plan out where we will be and when we will make it there. We try to predict how quickly we can make progress, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way.

SOLUTION: Build feedback loops.

Business intelligence dash boards give you great feedback on how you are doing. They can create continual feedback loops enabling you to course correct. They help you know if you are staying on track and let you know if the system is working. If we are to keep our business on track it is imperative that we measure the key business indicators and then use this information to help us course correct.

So I encourage you to Fall In Love With Systems

Goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.

Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.

 

Get Focused: Declutter Your Environment

Get Focused: Declutter Your Environment

by | Jul 7, 2015

“If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” Albert Einstein

Whilst some of you might argue that it represents an empty mind I would counter-argue that an empty or tidy desk represents an organised mind.  One where everything has a place.  And when everything is organised you can save time.  Organisation gives you focus.

A recent survey by Brother International interviewed about 800 office workers and the findings estimated that 76 hours per year or nearly two work weeks per person are lost searching for items around the office or on the computer. Three out of ten people admit to losing a file folder a year and one out of four lost a mobile phone, a calculator and/or a flash memory drive.

Staggering, what a massive waste of time. Imagine what else you could do with this time instead.  So how do you get started.

1)  Set aside 10 mins a day for a week each and every day
2)  Collect all the clutter together
3)  Put all the stuff you have never looked at in boxes
4)  If you’ve not looked at the stuff in months either dump it or decide what you want to do with it
5)  With things you want to save (or might need again) make a decision to work through that pile over the next week.
6)  Put everything else away, find a space in your office for it
7)  Make all your desk area clean and then keep it that way
8)  Create a system for tidying your desk each evening before you close down
9)  Finally plan the next day activities so you have no opportunity for procrastination
10) Just do it and get into action

So get going now and start tidying up your desk.  You’ll be amazed at the clarity you experience from having a decluttered environment.

And if you continually struggle with focus chances are you are struggling with Entrepreneurial Attention Deficit Disorder (EADD).  So why not join my Facebook group and check out the 5 day masterclass I ran on STOP Faffing, START Focusing

Persist As The Money Is In The Follow Up!!

Persist As The Money Is In The Follow Up!!

by | Jun 5, 2015

Recently this great information was shared with me and it was so powerful that I wanted to share it with you too because it talks to a subject that comes up with my clients time and time again.  And that topic is customer follow up.

I think these statistics will shock and surprise you. So get ready:

  • 48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect

This is of course shocking but not surprising.  I know from my own experience how often I have expressed an interest in a product/service and then no-one has followed up with me. This is especially frustrating when I want to buy!

So why would you start a business and not follow up an incoming enquiry?????

So we continue:

  • 25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
  • 12% of sales people make more than three contacts

and so why is this.  Well it is often that little voice in your head that says:

  • “I don’t want to hassle them”
  • “If they want it they will buy”

Well it seems they won’t….please read on for the most surprising stats of all…

  • 2% of sales are made on the first contact
  • 3% of sales are made on the second contact
  • 5% of sales are made on the third contact
  • 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
  • 80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact!!!

Just look at the jump between the fourth and fifth contacts.

So my friends persistence is the key to your success.  I learnt this lesson the hard way from my financial adviser. I actually wanted his services but I was just way to busy to complete the paperwork. Consistently for about 10 months Nigel called me every month.  Because I knew I needed his services I never found his call annoying or aggressive. I was in fact glad that he had reached out to me and reminded me of what I needed to do.

Today we are bombarded with information. We are in information overwhelm. But that does not mean someone doesn’t want your products and services. It might be, like me, it isn’t a priority right now as they are fire fighting something else. Staying connected to your prospects is key to converting them eventually.  Sometimes it might feel to you like you are annoying them but rest assured this is rarely the case. In fact many are so happy to hear from you. And if you aren’t sure well just ask your prospect. Get permission to follow up with them in x days or months. Trust me it is so much easier to make those calls when you have got permission to follow up.

So go forth and make calls because the money truly is in the follow up.

You Can Throw Money At Your Fears But They Won’t Disappear

You Can Throw Money At Your Fears But They Won’t Disappear

by | May 20, 2015

Have you:

  • Ever paid for training you never used?
  • Bought books you never read?
  • How about coaching you never implemented?
  • Got a stack of “shelf” rather than “self” development programmes and books on your shelf?

Unfortunately this is not a rare thing–it’s rumoured that 80% of coaching clients don’t implement what they learn.  I have nothing but compassion for these people because I used to be one of them. I foolishly believed that going on courses was the answer to all my problems.  If I just learnt more my business would soar and clients would be attracted to me.

What I didn’t know at the time was that some deeply ingrained fears and childhood programming was preventing me from implementing what I knew I had to do. It was my  mindset that was holding me back.  It took investing in over 100 programmes to realise this (now that’s a lot of cash! and I don’t want you to have to go through that pain).

Initially, I’d blame the program, other times I’d blame the coach.  They didn’t understand me. My business was different. But the truth of it is that I was afraid to address the inner work I needed to do.  I hoped that throwing money at and buying more resources would make my fears go away, but it never did.  Things only changed when I started facing my fears and doing the inner work.

Here are some ways that we avoid facing the fear:

Throwing Money At Things 

Spending time creating a new website, posting on social media or just hiding out behind your computer will not help you bust through the fears stopping you becoming visible and connecting with others. So often my clients say to me that I’ll just connect with them once my website is complete. I used this strategy very effectively for years – and as some of you will know I had multiple websites to keep me busy – but this never works or helps you attract clients. Only by getting out and speaking to potential prospects can you expect your business to grow.

Throwing Money At People

Coaches and consultants are great and I am never without a coach. They can tell you what’s happening, point out patterns in you that you can’t see and give you clarity around what to do next. However, NONE of them can put a gun to your head and actually make you do the thing that makes you cringe or hide under the table. Eventually, you will have to be doing it by yourself and reconcile with your fears and demons. As I constantly tell my clients, you are 100% responsible for your results-good AND bad.

Throwing Money At Events

If you are not willing to be a different person, to act differently than what you’ve always done, what’s the point of spending money to go to networking or training events to grow your business? Buying a ticket and sitting in a seat doesn’t mean you can tick off the marketing plan ‘to do’ list. Are you trying to give advice, connections and friendliness at strangers? Are you willing to help people who look lost and alone? Do you follow up with every single person you were fortunate enough to meet? If you’re not, just stop throwing money at events in the hopes that they’ll grow your business.

Having well and truly busted myself on this, I really help that I have helped you realise that spending money on things without taking ACTION is NOT going to change your life. The only way things will change is to feel uncomfortable, step out of your comfort zone, feel the fear and take action. In fact my best advice would be to use the fear to fuel your action rather than quash it.

Unplugged: The Secret To Maintaining Your Personal Rhythm

Unplugged: The Secret To Maintaining Your Personal Rhythm

by | Feb 17, 2015

Just as business follows the seasons it follows that team members who are part of the business also have a rhythm. This is called this your personal rhythm.  I’m sure each of you can identify certain times in the day when you are most productive.  If you’re like me you might be a morning person. I do my best work first thing in the morning – that is when I’m most creative.  My low point is usually around lunchtime and then I tend to get a burst of energy in the evening.

Joined Up Business Leaders appreciate that each team member has their own rhythm and so allow flexible working hours.  This means that if you are a morning person you can come in early and leave early or if you are more of an evening person you simply don’t come into work until lunchtime and then you work later into the evening.

Operating a flexible work schedule like this means that there must be trust between all parties that the work will get completed. Also, good communication is required by team members to ensure that there is always sufficient coverage within the team to meet the customers’ needs.  And, with business becoming more global than ever, there is a distinct business competitive advantage to having office coverage for more than just the traditional work hours, as you can then more easily service the demands of clients across borders.

In addition to the personal rhythm to your day, there is also a personal rhythm to the year.  Just like nature goes through the seasons, your own body passes through the seasons – having times when your energy level is high and times when you energy level is low.

Vacations are designed to help team members unplug and rest and recuperate. They are the equivalent of the winter season on the farm. They are required so that team members can come back with more energy and focus. Yet according to a March 2012 survey of 952 employees for the job and career site Glassdoor, some 15% of U.S. employees who are entitled to paid vacation time haven’t used any of it in the past year.

Ignoring vacations is a deadly short-term tactic, harming long-term business health.A division of Computer Sciences Corp. (CSC) lost 80% of its revenue, and employees, as burn-out drove people away.  Unused vacation days is a simple metric of a company culture that values short-term benefits over long-term performance, and a culture that supports fear over results.

Recently, Richard Branson, founder and chairman of the Virgin Group, instigated a “non-policy” for paid time off. This decision means that all of Virgin’s team members in the company’s main offices in the U.S. and the U.K. now have open-ended access to vacation time. Branson got the idea from Netflix, another early adopter of the vacation non-policy, along with several other tech firms like Zynga, Groupon, Evernote, VMware, Eventbrite, and HubSpot.

Here are three reasons why team members actually get more done when they have open-ended access to vacation time:

  1. It makes team members less anxious if they have to take time off for family reasons
  2. It implies trust which breeds responsibility
  3. It makes people happier and want to work harder

I’d love to hear what policies there are in place at your workplace regarding vacation policy. As always feel free to email me or leave your comments on the facebook page.

 

Success Starts When You Leave Your Comfort Zone

Success Starts When You Leave Your Comfort Zone

by | Feb 4, 2015

This past week I’ve been working with several clients helping them to create their dream business and 90 day marketing plan. And one of themes that has continually come up of it is that when it comes to marketing our businesses we very often take the easy option.

I know so many of are telling me that you don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done, and whilst I know that might feel true, the real reason is due to the fact that you are not focusing on income generating activities and being visible in your business.

Hey, I get it.  Often it is easier to think we are being productive by hiding our behind our computer and doing activities such as:

  • Updating your website
  • Posting a status update to social media
  • Writing a new article

However, your business is going to succeed and prosper if you grow by getting out of your comfort zone and doing something different. Remember the old Einstein saying:

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them“

So if you want to grow your business you’ll need to learn to step out of your comfort zone. Activities that might be out of  your comfort zone include:

  • Reaching out to a potential referral partner
  • Attending a networking event
  • Speaking either online or in-person

The technology we have available to us is making it easy for us to take the easy option; but yet make us feel like we’re marketing. Hence, the frustration with lack of results.

Whereas the most effective forms of marketing, especially for professional service providers, is all about personal connection and building relationships. Which means you have to take a step out of your comfort zone to do it.

So my challenge to you this week is how can you mix up your marketing so that you’re combining easy with the more challenging marketing activities?  Post your comments on facebook at let me know.

Are bottlenecks slowing your productivity?

Are bottlenecks slowing your productivity?

by | Jan 27, 2015

How often have you twiddled your thumbs, waiting for someone to get you information or permission to proceed? I know that for me that can happen a lot and it can be super frustrating.

You could get so much done if it weren’t for other people, right?

I know it often feels that we can get more done on our own but quite simply that isn’t true.  Our team members have valuable skills that we don’t have and we need them to be successful.  However, when someone doesn’t deliver on time this creates roadblocks as there is work we can’t complete until someone else completes their work. You can’t paint a wall until someone builds it.

These dependencies can create bottlenecks in an otherwise seamless workflow. Unless you want to drown in frustration, you’ll want to actively clear any dependencies that slow the workflow — and you may discover that the bottleneck is as frustrated about the situation as you are.

For example, one of my client’s teams was responsible for producing several lengthy technical reports each month, but it had one overworked editor. The entire group’s productivity was limited until an assistant was hired to lift the purely administrative tasks from her plate.

So here are my best tips on how to get things rolling again when bottlenecks occur.

1. Keep lines of communication open

Make sure your team members know you depend on them. It won’t help to sit there and seethe, only to discover the other person had no idea you were waiting for them to get back to you.

2. Make your needs clear

Tell your team members precisely what you need and when. Don’t beat around the bush: Keep your communications crystal clear, with fair expectations and milestones, emphasizing accountability.

3. Get their buy-in

Once you’ve told team members what you need, get buy-in on the due date. Let them see you write it down or send an official task request. This commits them to action, making them less likely to lose track of it.

4. Offer help

Let your team members know you’re there to help if a problem arises. If someone seems stalled or repeatedly fails, point it out and ask about the pattern. There may be obstacles you’re unaware of that are preventing a timely response, or the person might need help with organization.

The above steps will force most team members into action—and some will be grateful for the help. If nothing else works, develop a workaround, put a corrective action plan in place, or hire a contractor for the task at a site like www.elance.com or www.fiverr.com. These aren’t ideal solutions, but you can’t let someone else hold you back.

Action step:

Keep track of dependencies as they arise during the course of your work. Face them head on, instead of avoiding them or falling into frustration. You can’t allow anyone to slow down the whole operation, so clear any bottlenecks as soon as they appear. In your next team meeting, discuss what slows them down.

My Best Productivity Secret….

My Best Productivity Secret….

by | Jan 22, 2015

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about productivity.  You see it just frustrates me at the amount of time, energy and resources we waste simply because we are not effective and productive and don’t have Joined Up Business practices in place.

For me it has been one of those weeks.  It has seemed like I have not been in control of my schedule. I fell victim to reacting to everyone else’s agenda rather than pro-actively leading my business, and the result is that I’ve been left feeling frustrated that I have not achieved all the things that I wanted to do.

Being a proactive leader of your business and grabbing the reins is so important to ensure success and yet there are times when life seems to take over.  For me this week it has been the ongoing saga with my website that my hosting company took down for nearly 30 hours, just when I was in the middle of a launch!!!  Exasperated does not described how I felt.  Now they acted in good faith because my site was being hacked by bots that were impacting the performance of other website on the server, but still that didn’t help me.

So faced with having wasted loads of time sorting out this issue I found myself up against a few tight deadlines to get work completed. It is then that I remember that old trick that really successful and productive people engage in everyday.  They practice R&D!  No not Research and Development (although I bet they do some of that) but rather Replicate and Duplicate.

When you replicate and duplicate you become super productive as you leverage all the work that you have done before.  By simply re-purposing old content you can instantly create new products and services.

For example:

  • If you have a talk you deliver frequently turn it into a book
  • Convert a book into a workshop
  • Take a workshop and develop a coaching programme around it

In this way one piece of effort leads to at least three new offerings.

And of course you can take content from two or three sources and then combine them to create something completely new.  That’s what I’ve done this week to enable me to create a article for a magazine by their deadline.  I’ve re-purposed and re-packaged some of my earlier work. And I have to say the end result is pretty remarkable.

So how can you maximize your efforts by building new products and services on what you are already doing?

I’m betting you already have a deliverable core to your business and your customers’ needs.  Now let’s turn it into a variety of new offerings by plagiarizing…re-purposing … sections from your original work.

Less work.  More money.  Take this action this month and reap the benefits…income…all year.

If you’d like to more about how to be more productive and effective in your business mark your calendar for Weds 4th Feb when I will be hosting a complimentary training call and sharing some of my best productivity strategies.

Are You Putting The Cart Before The Horse?

Are You Putting The Cart Before The Horse?

by | Jan 5, 2015

One of the many challenges in business today is the rapidity of change. With so many conflicting demands the difficulty for many business leaders today is that they simply don’t know what to focus on.

For example should you:

  • focus on improving your website to get leads?
  • spend time on improving customer satisfaction?
  • give attention you need to give to securing new clients?
  • focus your time on better training your team?

Without any idea about how to prioritize your time you are effectively driving your business blind with no visibility as to what is happening around the corner.

Business leaders are running around like headless chickens re-actively responding to the demands of business rather than leading their businesses to profitable growth. And when this happens business priorities get confused and often result in business leaders putting the cart before the horse.

No where is this more prevalent than in the area of Big Data where time and time again I come across business leaders who are putting the technological demands of the business ahead of the business goals of the organization.

The first thing that all business owners must understand is that any data collected and analyzed MUST align with the business goals of the organization. For far too long IT has driven the decisions on how to deal with Big Data. And yes there are significant IT decisions to consider. But designing business intelligence systems that meet solely technology needs is a huge waste of time and money. Instead I would encourage all business owners to focus on the business needs and then find IT solutions to support this.

However, the data and the business goals are not two separate entities, rather they must be Joined Up so they both integrate and align with the needs of the business. When this happens technology becomes a powerful business ENABLER and not the DRIVER of the business.

If you’d like to learn more about How To Leverage the Power of Big Data in 2015 so that it can support rather than hinder your business, then I invite you to watch this free online training video that I’ve created for you. It’s available at www.businesshorsepower.com/big-data-paradox.