Category Archives: Next Year

What’s In Your Future?

11.18.15This time of the year many entrepreneurs are in a conundrum about working: When should I work? How much should I work? Should I offer that new service during this time of the year?  After all, entrepreneurs are not immune to the enticement of having fun during the holidays and putting away their entrepreneurial concerns until next year.

It is tempting, isn’t it?  Just let everything go and have fun?  And I say you should have it, but do this one big thing first—plan for next year now.  If you make your business plan now, you will not waste the first quarter of 2016 creating a plan to implement.  You will already have it—ready to go.

You can design a simple business plan by thinking about 2016 as if it is already finished and it was the greatest year ever for you in your business and in your life.

Ask yourself the following questions about your business in 2016:

  • How would you describe your business?
  • What was your mission and vision?
  • What were your financial goals?
  • How did you accomplish them?
  • What new services did you create?
  • How much money did they make?
  • What challenges did you overcome?
  • How did you overcome them?
  • How many new customers did you add to your customer list?
  • What did you do to add new customers?
  • What systems did you add to your infrastructure to make managing your business easier?
  • How is your relationship with your vendors?
  • Are they a referral source for you?

As you develop the answers to the above questions, write down the actions you will take make them happen.  This is what I call, planning the future from the future.

You may want to add or subtract from this list of questions.  Each business is different and has different needs.  The point of this blog is to encourage you to plan now from the future for a brilliant 2016.  You will be ready to go in January with a plan that is solid, and you will know the actions to take to make it happen just as you said it would.

If you get stuck or want to brainstorm, please call me.  I am here for you.

 

Have A Brilliant New Year By Doing This One Thing

1.7.15Welcome to your new year 2015!  Have you been having fun?  I do hope so.  Now that we are finished with the holidays and all of the fun of the holidays, travel, families, presents, New Year’s Eve, it is time to re-enter into work.

And yet, something is not quite right yet is it?  You are ready to plan or perhaps have planned for a brilliant 2015 and yet, all those plans may still seem a little flat or dull to you.  What in the heck is missing?  Completion of 2014.  Yes, that’s right—in order to be fresh and energetic in your work you need to complete 2014, or it will lurk behind you causing all kinds of mischief that you can handily avoid.

Completion does not mean finished, as in done with, or never to be looked at again.  It means, loosely stated, being whole or OK with what has happened in the past.  Danger lurks in incompletion: Rehearsal Exhaustion: constantly referring back to our past to make sure we don’t forget it, and to predict possible future outcomes.  As more and more things are left incomplete, we are more and more distracted and exhausted by the ever-increasing rehearsal (changingminds.org).

It makes sense, doesn’t it?  If something is incomplete, we do continue referring back to it to make sure we don’t forget it.  So to avoid that state of mind let’s just complete 2014 and then be ready to move on to 2015.  This isn’t hard.  It does require some time and thought.  What are the working parts of your business that you may want to complete?  Here are some examples of questions to ask yourself. This list certainly is not exhaustive so please add to it.

Regarding your Business in 2014:

  • Who were you being?
  • What did you accomplish?
  • What did you learn?
  • What do you need to improve?
  • What challenges did you have?
  • How were your relationships with your staff? Clients? Contractors?  What could change?
  • What new products did you offer?
  • How well did your marketing work? What worked best about your marketing?
  • What new marketing ventures did try? How did they work?
  • What product did you sell the most?  the least?
  • What was your gross profit, expenses, net profit?
  • Overall, what was the best thing about your business in 2014?
  • What was the worst thing about your business in 2014?
  • What would you do differently if you could?

By going through the list above and answering the questions, you should be on your way to being complete with 2014 and ready to start 2015 anew.

If you find the list too much, just answer what questions make sense to you.  The effect will be the same.  The idea is to have you focus on completion of the 2014 business.

As always I am here to help.  I look forward to hearing from you in the space below.

 

Image courtesy of [Serge Bertasius Photography] at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What’s Your Plan?

121014Plan“If you don’t know where you are going,
you’ll end up someplace else.”
Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra makes sense.  And yet, although we all know it is essential to make a plan for our business, we hesitate to do it.  Or we do it haphazardly at best.  So what is your plan for 2015?  If that question seems a little too intimidating to you and you are frankly left speechless, let’s begin with an easier question.

What do you want to contribute to your clients in 2015?  Surprised?  It’s not the typical question about how much money do you want to make in 2015.  That question is useless unless you think of your clients first.  To enlarge on the question about contribution to your clients, first you have to trust that if you make a contribution to them, you will be fairly compensated for the contribution.  This is not some airy-fairy “build a field and they will come” type of thinking.  It is solid in that people are willing to pay for what they want.  It is up to you as a business person to provide the answer to a problem that a client has.  You already know how to make a contribution to clients, if you didn’t you wouldn’t be in business.

Doing some thinking about what problems clients have is a very valuable use of your time.  It’s useful to brainstorm about what problems you solved for your clients this year.  Write them down and then project into the future about, what is the next predictable problem the client will have upon solving the present problem?  This is called “getting out ahead” of a problem.  You are presenting a solution to the problem that the client doesn’t yet know he will have.

Of course, to solve the next, yet to be presented problem, will take planning on your part.  You can’t solve all of their problems, and you can solve some of them.  Pick 3 problems that are predictable for your clients.  When you list 3 major problems that your client will have, and that you can solve, that will become the foundation of your plan for that client for next year.

In the comment section below, please tell me about 3 problems that your clients have that you plan to solve in 2015.  As always, I look forward the hearing from you.

 

Next Year Will Be Great! Won’t It?

11.12.14“Next year” is such a comfortable phrase.  It promises hope, new adventures, a renewed entrepreneurial spirit and the future of producing new results.  ”Next year” means putting away past disappointments and failure—a new beginning filled with creation and light. 

We feel good when we say it.  It’s like a universal pass to productivity and success for “not now” but “Next Year”.  With all of its possibility and light, we need to be cautious about that phrase and know what we are saying and what we mean when we say it.  It gets us off the hook for what we can do now and lulls business people into thinking they are being productive when actually they are putting something off instead. 

Unless the phrase and your mindset has been conditioned it can derail you and cripple your progress as you build your business success.  What conditioned means in this sense is to adapt the phrase in such a way that it means something active and conscious as in pinning it down with a “by when date”, with specific actions and expected results.

Without proper conditioning the phrase “next year” becomes something that gets you off the hook for now but will actually cripple your success for the time the real next year rolls along.  Here are some things that clients have said recently that they are doing “next year”: build a new web site, re-write their sales proposition, re-write their business plan, develop a contact management system, and add a new currently undeveloped offering to their clients.  

It all sounds so good on this side of Next Year.  But is it really going to happen?  Doubtful without intentional, truthful conditioning.

This is the time, now, right now, to write down all the things that you are going to do next year and with a 2015 Calendar condition each item with a “by when date”, expected actions and results.  The conditioned list is your pathway to your future that you are creating now.  With a pathway that is clearly marked with dates and actions, you will be way ahead of the business people who are letting themselves relax right now and who are promising themselves that they really are going to do “that thing” next year. 

Let’s start now, in the space provided below, share what you will do Next Year and say by when you will do it as well as what the expected result will be.  I look forward to hearing from you.