Archive for the ‘Goals’ Category
Staples to Help You Stick to Your Goals
Have a hard time actually following through on those new year’s business resolutions? Want some accountability in meeting your current goals? Staples, one of my favorite companies, has teamed up with another company called stickK to help you meet your goals.
The Staples stickK to it! Business Challenge is an interesting program. It is a free service for businesses, or anyone really. What it does is this:
First, you pick a category for your goal. The categories are: Get Organized and Increase Productivity, Green the Office, Improve Working Environment, Maximize the Bottom Line, and Professional Development and Marketing. Within in each of these categories is a series of goals that you can choose from. I chose to work on the Business Plan goal in Maximize the Bottom Line.
When you choose your goal, you are asked to agree to a commitment contract. The idea is to buy into the fact that you really need to achieve your goal. The deadline for all goals with this program is April 12th of this year.
Once you pick your goal, you can select a referee. Since this is a free service, you need to come up with your own referee. This should be someone who you are close to who can report on the status of your goal. You can also invite friends to support your goal. Referees and supporters will be asked to set up their own account and will be able to monitor and comment on your progress.
The experts at stickK have developed this program with your psychology in mind. They know that if you have a goal, if you have accountability for that goal, and also if there are incentives tied to meeting the goal, you are far more likely to reach said goal.
For this program, the goal must be chosen from the list provided by Staples and stickK. While this is a little limiting, there are a wide variety of choices, and you can better define each goal yourself.
The accountability is provided by your own friends and colleagues. To that end, it is important that you find people that will check the site weekly and who will stick with it. I imagine the best scenario is to team up with a friend who will have his or her own goal and then referee each other.
As for the incentives, Staples has stepped in to reward EasyPoints for hitting different aspects of your goal. For instance, sending in your weekly report on time may get you 5 EasyPoints. These points are redeemable at Staples for office products and services.
If you are looking for something a little different to help you achieve a goal, I really think you should check this program out. It takes advantage of a great system of contract, accountability, and rewards. It is a system you may want to apply to more aspects of your business. If you have employees, why not get everyone involved? You can referee and support each other. It will be a good community building experience and will help you achieve important business goals.
You can sign up for this free program at staples.com/goals. Want to monitor my goals progress? Leave a comment or email me and I will invite you to support my goal.
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Bradford Shimp helps small businesses succeed at BroadRiverCreative.com
Avoid Starts and Stops – Have a Plan
Do you ever feel like you are the king of the world one day, with things just clicking in your business, only to find yourself wondering what you are doing and where you are going the next day? I have been personally struggling with this of late. The problem comes from having a general idea of what you want to accomplish with your business, but having no real, day to day, plan of how to get there. Call it non-planicitis.
You Need a Plan
The truth is, without some kind of plan, you have a much harder time staying on task. Staying on task directly relates to meeting your business goals, so it is very important.
You need to know where you are going if you ever want to get there. So, if you feel like you are hitting walls pretty often, or if you find yourself constantly changing direction, stop everything. Take the day off and work on a plan. Thats what I am going to do. Its time to refocus and really get a handle on where you are going.
Track Your Progress
Once you know where you are going, you need to put in place markers along the route so that you will know that you are still on track. A good plan includes a step by step map that takes you from where you currently are to where you want to be. Draw the map, and then trust it every day. For me, I think my map will include some non-blog writing every day. I really want to create some info products, but in order to do it I have to work on it a little every day. Your daily tasks will be your own. Your job is to make sure that you know what to do every day to get you to the goal.
Learn the Power of No
Just as important is knowing what not to do every day. I, for one, am easily distracted. Because I am in the beginning phases of my own business, I could take it literally anywhere. If you are in a more established business, you are already a little more focused. But it is still possible to take your business off the path if you are not careful. Say no to things that aren’t going to move you toward your goal.
I think the only way to keep things moving forward daily, and to avoid rabbit trails and walls, is to have a good plan. Read my article on business planning for some advice on how do that. Or just think of your business path as a map. Figure out where you are going, and then put in place the steps and the daily activities that will get you there.
Happy planning. I hope you have smooth sailing.
photo credit: Horia Varlan
Why is Business Planning So Hard?
Most people agree that creating some kind of business plan is important. But sitting down and doing it seems to be a weak spot for many business owners. I myself struggle with this. So I was wondering, what is so darn difficult about writing a business plan?
I think there are a bunch of causes. For one thing, small business owners aren’t as good as they should be taking time off working in their business to work on their business. The client job will always come before the meta work of the business. Beyond that, many people don’t know where to start. You may get caught up on how to structure the business plan, what to include in it, and all of those details.
I’ve picked up a few tricks and discovered a couple of resources that may be helpful in setting up your business plan. I will recommend them throughout the article. One thing that you may need more than anything else is a little motivation to write your plan. Perhaps the best way to do this is to team up with another business owner you know and to hold each other accountable and help each other through the process.
Here are my thoughts on the process, why its difficult, and how you can get through that and succeed in building a great plan for your business.
Writing It
When you sit down to write your business plan, you are confronted with a blank piece of paper. This is no good. You don’t know where to start. What you need to do before you even think of writing out a plan is to find or develop some kind of structure. Determine first what you want to include in your plan. Do you want a detailed plan that you can show to investors and bankers? Or would you rather get your plan down on 1 or 2 sheets of paper?
The simplest of plans simply includes your company goal. From there, you can put in place some ideas and systems that will help you reach that goal. More complex plans include detailed goals for each aspect of your business, current financials and future estimates, market research, and the whole nine yards. A good case can be made for both types of plans.
Mike Michalowicz, author of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur
Tim Berry is on the other side of the argument. He is the founder of Bplans.com and has developed a great software program for writing a business plan. He advocates thinking about all aspects of the business while writing your business plan. While his plan is more complex, he also stresses the importance of crafting a living document that you keep looking at and adjusting as you grow. I really recommend using the Business Plan Pro software if you own a more established business and have not ever successfully created a usable business plan. Throughout the process of writing it, you will be challenged to do some research and look hard at your business and industry. You need to do this as you position to build for growth.
I have used both of these programs and recommend both. The nice thing about Tim Berry’s approach is that is provides a step by step process for writing a more detailed business plan. On the other hand, it is fun and easy to write your prosperity plan as prescribed by Mike Michalowicz. Either of these tools will put you on the path to actually getting some sort of plan written.
There is another option. This is an idea that I picked up from Mark Joyner, the creator of Simpleology. The process is called backward planning. If you know what your business goal is, you can easily create a plan for getting there. You just go through the process backwards. Start at your goal and then write down the thing that will happen right before you reach that goal. Then repeat the process, all the way until you reach the point that you are at right now. This will provide you a step by step plan for reaching your goal, which is what a business plan is really all about, isn’t it?
Writing a business plan is a valuable process because it forces you to think about your business goals and to work on ideas for actually achieving them. Having a good plan in place makes it easier to make decisions, to decide when and where to grow, and to keep your business on track and not get stuck behind roadblocks and waylaid by distracting opportunities that just don’t fit the plan.
Using It
A business plan is only good if you use it. Writing a good business plan and not using it is like having a map to someplace new but not looking at it. You end up lost and frustrated. Think of your business plan as a map or GPS designed specifically to help you reach your business goals.
So, how exactly do you go about using your business plan? Well, for one thing, you need to look at your plan regularly. Stop to take breathers along your trek to business success. Review your plan at least monthly, perhaps even weekly if things are moving fast for your company.
In reviewing your plan, you should be looking to make sure that you are on track. If your plan includes projected numbers, are you hitting them? If your plan says what your next step should be, are you taking that step? As you move forward, the plan should not just tell you what your future should look like, but it should give a pretty good picture of your past. Make notes, highlight important dates where goals were reached. If you fall short, think about why and write it down in your plan. Then gear up for next month.
The other thing that needs to come out of your business plan are measurements. Mike Michalowicz calls them metrics. These are the key numbers or events or activities that you need to keep track of weekly or daily. They will be your dashboard to tell you whether or not you are succeeding with your plan.
Every business will have different measurements. For one, it might be number of meetings held. For another, it could be size of average customer. Your specific measurement should come directly out of your plan. Look at your goal and then figure out what your best measurements will be to determine whether you are meeting that goal. So, if your goal is to ultimately serve larger customers, the measurement of size of average customer would be a good one for you. If your goal is to be in more markets, you want to have a quick way to measure where your business is coming from. You may need to play around with different measurements until you find the ones that will give you the best picture of your business health and the progress being made toward your goal.
Revising It
The business plan is a living document. It is your map to your goals. But it is also a map that you crafted. Maybe you thought you could go one direction, but discover a deep ravine that you cannot cross. As you move forward with your plan, you need to be ready to adapt it. Sometimes you need to make major changes, but if you put a lot of thought into it when you crafted it, the changes will likely be minor adjustments.
Don’t be afraid to make changes to your plan as you progress. The goal is to keep your business plan as a usable map. If you don’t adjust, it will probably become obsolete and be of no use to you. Imagine if we were still using the same maps of the world as we did centuries ago. At one point, people assumed the world was flat. Brave explorers changed that idea. Africa’s interior used to be largely a blank spot on the map. It is only through exploration and moving forward that we can fill in the blanks and improve our plans.
One word of caution. Don’t be quick to change your ultimate goal. Try hard in the beginning to connect with why you are in business and what you want to accomplish. Then stick with it. There are times when you may have to change you big goals. Markets change, you change, it happens. But for the most part, try to see your plan through until you reach your goals.
To that end, perhaps you should think of creating short term business plans. Take a year at a time and look at the goals you want to accomplish for the year. Let your overarching goals feed this yearly plan. At the end of the year, look at what you accomplished, and then start a new plan.
It is Still Hard
The fact is, writing and sticking to a business plan is still hard. It will sometimes just take a dogged commitment. Chet Holmes calls this pig-headed discipline. It is something that is necessary if you want to achieve real success in business. If you don’t have a plan, you may even have a hard time knowing if you are successful or not. So, do the work. Write a plan, follow it, measure it, and keep adapting it as you grow.
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Bradford Shimp helps small business owners build successful companies at BroadRiverCreative.com.
Without a Goal You Will Stop Short
When you exercise, whether you are doing some sit ups or going for a jog, it is worthwhile to have a goal in place. When you set that goal, you always put it at a place that you know will be a challenge, but still within the realm of possibility. If you don’t set a goal, you will not push as far. Instead of doing 25 sit ups, you might just punch out at 10. When you have a goal in sight, you are much more likely to push a little extra to reach that goal.
The same concept works in business. If you venture out each day without a plan, without goals, you will just be bushwhacking your way through a jungle without a compass. You need to set goals if you want to move ahead and even achieve greatness in your business.
Daily Goals
To help yourself stay on target, you should start each day by writing down some goals for that day. I take this a step further and create a series of tasks and the times I expect to be doing them.
Having these small goals will help you keep each day focused on the important stuff, and not distracted by what just comes up. Give a little time each day to the unexpected, but if you wish to move your business forward, you had better spend the majority of your time working off the plan.
Monthly Goals
Your monthly goals are more like guideposts. They help you stay on track with your long term goals. You should build tracking into these monthly goals. If you want to sell more units, be sure to track that and check it each month.
Your monthly goals will also inform your daily goals. If you know what you need to accomplish by the end of each month, it will be easier to pick the right daily goals to get there.
You can use your monthly goals to bring about great change in your business one step at time. Or you can use them to simply stay on track. Ultimately, your monthly goals should not bounce around from month to month. There should be a clear pattern, leading up to something.
Yearly Goals
Every year, you should be recalibrating your business. Hopefully, you have met the goals of the year before and are ready to become even more successful. If you don’t have goals, then you will never know if this is the case or not.
When making yearly goals, think ahead to what monthly and even what daily goals you can meet to achieve your yearly goals. Remember, your goals have to be challenging, but within in the realm of possibility.
If you don’t have a plan for the year, you won’t be able to have very good goals for each month. You need to know where you are going in order to get there.
So take some time to think ahead to where you would like your business to be in a year. Lay out some achievable big picture goals. After that, think about what you can do this month to get you closer to those year end goals. Set in place good tracking so you can know all year long whether you are on track to meet your goals or not. Finally, take a moment to make some goals for today. Get your busy work done, but be sure to have at least one goal that will move you toward meeting your monthly goals.
Remember, with good goals and a little bit of grit, you will shape your business into anything you want it to be. With no goals, you will always pull up short, stopping at just enough. Go write down some goals.
photo credit: popofatticus
Bradford Shimp writes on small business topics and helps small businesses and professionals create a web presence designed to generate sales. Check out broadrivercreative.com for more information.
How to Get Anything Done in One Hour or Less
Getting things done. For some of us, that is the holy grail of business. Each day, small business owners get up early, work hard all day long, and still feel like they are not accomplishing anything. Why is this? Often, it is because they use up all of their time in responding to issues, hustling to make sure there is enough money coming in to cover the costs going out, and just doing the daily work of owning a small business. The feeling of getting nothing done comes from the desire to build the business into something more than a job, into something truly great.
When you have big ideas, but don’t have the time to devote to making them happen, it is frustrating. You may find yourself putting off projects because you don’t see any way to make them happen right now. You are just too busy.
The secret to getting those big projects done, right along with everything else that needs doing at your business, is to break down the project into a series of goals. Think about your main objective, and then work backward, writing down stepping stones you need to get from where you are now to where you want your business to be.
Each of those objectives should be broken down into manageable steps. Each step should take an hour or less to accomplish. You are creating a road map to get you to your big picture goal. You are going to have to spend an hour to set up the road map. From there, do what you need to do for each objective, spending no more than an hour at a time.
Getting the plan is a very important part of getting those big things done. Just as important is taking the time. You need to work 1 hour windows into your work day. The best results will be if you can do this every day. Whatever you do, make sure its on a schedule and that your hour for the big picture is given priority. This means you don’t take phone calls or anything for that hour.
If you create the plan and devote no more than one hour per day, you will be amazed by how much you can accomplish. What was once an unattainable dream will come closer and closer to reality. All in one hour or less per day!
