Tag: Abundance

Posted on June 15th, 2021

Achieve Massive Business Growth by Setting Goals

  • Business Growth
  • Entrepreneur
  • Goals
  • Strategy

Let’s talk about goal setting. I mean both setting the goals and making sure you are actually achieving them.

Many articles and books are written about achieving your goals. But what was tested by actual people? What works?

I recently joined the board of an entrepreneurial organization run by volunteers. The leader, an experienced business person, helped us adopt a goal-setting framework. I think it is absolutely amazing because it kept us on track and we achieved what we set out to accomplish. 

I’d like to share the framework with you so your group, and you personally, can become better at achieving your goals. The example below is designed for interactive groups, but the concepts can also be used for creating individual goals. 

 

Use The Goal Framework

The Goal Framework consists of several elements. 

The two main elements are yearly goals and quarterly goals.

In addition to your business goals, you can have personal goals.

In our group, we established our yearly and quarterly goals, and each person chose their own goals. We went around the room, and each member talked about their goals. 

Typically, you would have three to seven goals. These could be yearly goals and quarterly goals you want to accomplish as a group. 

The key to creating a plan for achieving your group goals is to establish what they are as a group, but then funnel them down to an individual level. 

 

Set manageable goals   

 

Set up three to seven concrete yearly goals

Why three to seven? It’s a good number. Manageable. Achievable. 

You don’t want to set up 20 goals. That’s too many. And you don’t want too few goals either. So three to seven is a good bracket. 

The group has to agree on the goals. Choose the big goals you would want to complete within a year. 

You will also have your personal goals. Those are the objectives you want to accomplish over the next quarter as an individual member of the group. 

Choose a reasonable number of goals you want to achieve in a specified period of time. I can easily put down 200 goals on one list, but it’s not very realistic for me to accomplish those.

Next, define all your goals in specific and concrete terms so you know how to determine whether you’ve achieved them.

 

Set up the scorecards

Every goal, whether group or personal, yearly or quarterly, has to be measurable. Determine how you will measure each goal.

Here are some examples of measurable goals you might have:

  • Hit $1 million in revenue this year.
  • Retain 100% of our clients.
  • Bring on 100 more clients. 

Whatever the goals are, they become concrete once you write them down. Use the scorecards to clearly define your goals and then keep track of them with regular frequency, e.g., over the month, quarter, and year. 

 

Prioritize your goals

Chances are you’ve seen a few viral videos on Facebook about the rocks, pebbles, and sand in a jar. 

The moral of the story is if you fill the jar with sand first (least important things in your life), you won’t have space for the bigger stones. But if you fill the jar with big rocks first (most important things in life) and then add pebbles (next set of important things), you will still have plenty of space for the sand – your least important, but perhaps fun, things.

Apply that metaphor to your goals. Look at what you want to accomplish from an annual, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily, or even sometimes hourly perspective. 

 

Your big goals are your rocks. What will they be? 

 

Keep yourself accountable 

When you’re running a business, it’s hard to keep up with all the tasks. 

A year may go by, and you might find yourself thinking, “Oh my, I didn’t even get to one of these goals, let alone seven!” 

Having this framework will help you keep you on track. 

If you set your goals and store the list on your computer or in a file cabinet, nothing will get done. That’s why you need scorecards. 

 

Scores cards will keep you accountable.

To make sure you are keeping on track with your goals, you have to check in once a week, month, quarter and once a year with your team and/or with yourself. 

It’s good to get in the habit of checking things off monthly. I like to check my quarterly goals monthly. For monthly goals, I like to do it weekly. 

It’ll help you keep a pulse on your business. It doesn’t mean you have to do something in particular, but it helps you see where you are with your goals. Put an actual date and time on your calendar to check in, and review those goals to see your progress. 

For example, if your goal was to have 10 new clients in a month, you can check your scorecard after the month lapses to see whether you’ve achieved your goal. Did you get 10 new clients? If not, what happened? What can you do better? What are the next steps?

Checking in with yourself will allow you to stay on top of your goals. If you see you are not achieving them, you’ll have a chance to choose a different course of action or adjust your goals accordingly. Either way, you will keep moving forward. 

 

Conclusion

Goal setting is necessary to accomplish what you want in life. But if it’s done as loosely as new year’s resolutions, you won’t achieve much. 

If you are a solopreneur and don’t have a peer group to help you with your goal setting and accountability, this goal-setting framework is your solution. 

Having a framework for setting manageable, achievable goals and then keeping yourself accountable for achieving them is key to both your business and personal success. Set, prioritize, monitor, and enjoy your accomplishments.

«
Posted on December 10th, 2020

Being An Entrepreneur is A Marathon, Not A Sprint

  • #transform
  • Business
  • Business Goals
  • Business Growth
  • Entrepreneur
  • Goals
  • Mindset
  • Strategy

Becoming a successful entrepreneur is a marathon, not a sprint. It requires a lot of endurance to reach your goals. 

If you treat the process like a sprint or like you’re only in it for the short term, you may end up losing in the long run. Sprinting is a lot different from running a marathon. 

The process and experience of training and running a marathon is much longer. You do a sprint in 10, or 20 to 30 seconds. It’s much faster. You put all your energy and effort into that just that short timespan. 

With a marathon, there are potentially many pauses and breaks. You have to stop and rest. You have to hydrate–you actually stop or slow down for water. You may even slow down enough to eat something because you can’t run 26 miles without having a piece of nutrition to fuel your body. 

There are points when you speed up, and then there are points when you have to slow down or stop.  

Business has spurts of growth and endurance

As entrepreneurs, we will have spurts of excitement with projects that we push forward, to which we give all our energy. 

After each project or campaign is done, we slow down. We take a break because it’s not sustainable to be running all the time. 

It’s not sustainable for your physical health or your mental state

Sometimes you have to slow down or stop

Sometimes you have to slow down or even stop.

This can be really hard to do sometimes, when you’re in the middle of a project or you have a big, demanding client. You want to accomplish everything or as much as you possibly can. 

But as the saying goes, “you have to take 1 step back to take 2 steps forward.”

And there are a number of ways on how you can slow down:

Yoga 

I’ve also been practicing restorative yoga. It’s more like stretching and holding poses for several minutes versus the regular Vinyasa yoga which we’re all familiar with. The stretching really helps me because I do a lot of running and outdoor activities. 

Meditation

I’ve also been trying to meditate every day for just 10 minutes. It allows me to think of my goals, to look at the big picture. Visualization is another piece of this practice. Where do I see myself? What do I want to accomplish?

Getting out in nature

I love hiking, biking, snowboarding and snowshoeing. Ever since moving to Colorado, it’s become a way for me to de-stress, re-energize, and get back into it!

 

These are just templates of what you can do. These tools have helped me center myself to be a better entrepreneur, a better manager, a better leader, and a better person, overall.

«
Posted on December 3rd, 2020

Abundance vs Scarcity Mindset

  • #transform
  • Business
  • Business Goals
  • Entrepreneur
  • Goals
  • Mindset
  • Strategy

How’s your mindset? Tactics and strategies are very important when it comes to growing your business, and my content is full of them. I find that most entrepreneurs focus on the strategies and tactics, the marketing, occupying the digital space, posting on social media, but not very much on their mindset. 

And I have encountered, and spoken to, and worked with over a thousand entrepreneurs at this point in my business so I speak from a place of experience.

Most of us grew up with a mindset of scarcity

I’ve been in business for nearly a decade, and I’ve found that one’s mindset is a critical factor, and it requires a critical paradigm shift to experience growth.

Taking a step back here, most of us have come from the corporate world. Most of us probably didn’t grow up in a very affluent society, or a very affluent community. Some of us might have, but I certainly did not, and I can definitely relate to that. My parents didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up. 

It isn’t uncommon that we then have a certain mindset growing up in a middle-class community, and just going to middle-class school, living in a middle-class neighborhood. There is nothing wrong with that, absolutely nothing.

But typically our mindsets are around the practices of the middle class. They’re not about abundance, they’re not about massive amounts of growth. They are just about getting a job, getting by, going into the corporate world.

That’s just how we were taught by our parents’ generation. Entrepreneurship wasn’t big for our parents’ generations, and so the mindset that they had was one that they passed along to us. And we, of course, adopted that mindset, and we are now living with it.

So what we inherited is not the mindset of abundance. And I will readily admit the fact that I used to do just that. I used to have a scarcity mindset myself because that’s how I grew up. 

Like I said, my parents didn’t have a lot of money. We were middle class, and my parents would always say, “Hey, get a job. Earn a steady paycheck. Have a steady income. Don’t rock the boat. Just get things done, and live the middle-class life.” 

I think for our parents’ generation that was the dream. For our generation, our dreams are much bigger. 

For growth, we need to shift to a mindset of abundance

Because our dreams are bigger, the mindset of our parents’ generation doesn’t fit. 

But because it’s what we grew up with, we need to consciously take action to change our thought processes. I want to share a little story with you that illustrates how the change in my mindset has occurred.

In March 2020, I bought some land up in the mountains of Colorado. 

Now, I live in Denver. It’s always been my dream to buy land and build a house in the mountains of Colorado.

I finally found a piece of land that I really liked. And it was the right price. 

I bought this land with cash–not with financing or through a mortgage. At one point, I had to wire the title company tens of thousands of dollars to cover the land. 

Tens of thousands of dollars went out of my savings account. Naturally, I started thinking, “Wow, that’s a lot of money. This is a big chunk of my savings that I’ve been putting away for the last several years.” 

I was very excited about the land and the house, but at the same time, my mind was going, “That’s a big chunk of change.” 

The scarcity mindset started to brush up against me, but I decided, “No. This is not the way I want to view things. I have to think about it in terms of abundance.”

  • First of all, I’m deploying my capital. 
  • Secondly, I’m following my dreams. My dream has been to buy land in the mountains of Colorado, so that’s following my dreams.
  • I can earn back the money. I believe in my capabilities to do that. Yes, I had spent tens of thousands of dollars on land in the mountains, but I have no problem earning that money again.

And that’s how millionaires and billionaires think. They think with abundance. 

They don’t think, “Oh, I just spent a bunch of money! Where am I going to get the money to replace that?” 

Instead, they think, “That made me happy. And it’s no problem to earn it back. I’m spending money because that’s just a part of consumerism and a part of deploying my capital. But it will be easy for me to get more. There are infinite amounts of money out there, and there are always opportunities to get more.”

It’s absolutely true. 

What’s your mindset like? 

I encourage you to ask yourself this question. 

Where is your mindset now? When you need to spend or invest money, are you still thinking in the scarcity mindset framework? Or are you thinking big!. 

Check your own mindset. You might not be aware of it. Once you discover it, change it. Shift to an abundance mindset. It will give you confidence in pursuing your dreams and goals.

«