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Discipline will not make you successful

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The tortoise wins.

I ran a marathon 30 years ago. While training, my wife, Diane, started casually jogging with me at the end or beginning of my runs. A few weeks before the marathon she ran a half-marathon with me.

Since I had never run more than three miles, I had a five month schedule for preparing for the marathon. I was very disciplined about it, it didn’t matter if it was late at night or raining, I kept to my schedule for those five months and finished my marathon.

20 years later I was only running casually one or twice a week, sometimes less. I was able to keep my exercise going with other sports, but really didn’t have a long term commitment to running. 20 years after the marathon Diane was running four to five times a week faithfully, every week.

Discipline vs. Diligence
I had been DISCIPLINED to prepare for the marathon for five months, but Diane was DILIGENT to keep running a few miles every day, year after year. We hear a lot of talk about discipline, but diligence trumps discipline every time, and is much more desirable in growing a business that lasts.

Tony Robbins says we over estimate what we can do in a month, and greatly underestimate what we can do in a year. Diligence takes the long haul into account and sets us up for long term success. It’s about being the tortoise, not the hare. Diligence keeps us from getting distracted by each new shiny object.

Discipline is motivated by short-term goals. Diligence is motivated by long-term goals, deep values and belief systems.

Discipline is about building a habit. Diligence is about building and sustaining a life and a legacy.

Discipline is about WHAT WE DO. Diligence is about WHO WE ARE.

Things are great; things are not great; things are great…
Why are there so many peaks and valleys in businesses? Too often it’s caused by being too committed to very short term impact (discipline) and not having a good grasp on how to do anything about the long term (diligence).

The priority – the long term
Henry David Thoreau said “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” In business, we get a shot at quiet desperation every time we commit to a short term shiny object that we just got excited about. Emotion and shiny objects are a great for recipe for short term shooting stars, but diligence keeps us grounded, stable, shooting for something significant with our business.

Short term goals that aren’t connected to any significant future for our business contribute to quiet desperation – moving from one short term, random, unconnected objective to another. We can look very disciplined about short term goals and never get anywhere. Longer term objectives for our business get us focused on something significant and create quiet resolve.

Investor owned and publicly traded businesses rarely get the opportunity to actually build a business on what would be good for the long term. As a privately owned business, you have the ability to build something that will make an impact for decades to come and create a great legacy by simply being diligent to make decisions that are best for your future, not just your present.

The tortoise really does win. Keep moving, plod along, never give up, stay the course – be diligent.

Diligence beats discipline every time.

Making Money is not an Empowering Vision

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To build a business that provides you the lifestyle you want, you need a vision that motivates you. And guess what? Making money is not an empowering vision. I know plenty of people who’ve tried it including me.

My friend Eddie Drescher has a client who told him, “After $150,000, it didn’t make me any happier to be making $500,000.” Some people push the numbers up or down, but you get the point—money never makes life more meaningful.

What we do with it can.

I made healthy six-figure incomes for years before I started The Crankset Group. One day a few years ago, while in one of those jobs, Diane, my much better half, came to me and said, “I don’t know how you keep going, because I can’t take this job any more and I’m not even the one doing it.” She was responding to the listlessness, the lack of power and meaning that comes from just making money.

She helped me identify that I hadn’t made any connection between the money I was making and what I could do with it to build a life of success and significance for myself, let alone for anyone else. It was as if making money was an objective that lived on its own and had no way of influencing what went on in the rest of my life beyond buying shiny objects.

But I knew intuitively that there is a deep connection between my work, the fruit of that labor, and how I could use that work to create a life of success and significance. It was the turning point that led to starting The Crankset Group. I make a great living now, too, but with better reasons than just making dough. I get out of bed easier and with more purpose.

A successful business owner eventually figures this out. Making money is not an empowering vision; neither is being trapped as an employee of yourself something you can call a lifestyle. Either way, if you want to be successful you’re going to need to figure out how to build a business that makes money while you’re on vacation, while you’re also trying to make money.

The successful business owners make sure they make money today, but they make sure they are building their future at the same time. And building your future almost never makes you money today:

  1. deciding what your business looks like 3 years from now
  2. putting together a simple 2pg Strategic Plan to get there
  3. Process Mapping your business so somebody else can do it for you
  4. hiring the right people and training them, etc.

None of these things make you money today. All they do is help you build a business you can enjoy for decades. If you’re focused on making money, you won’t get there. If you’re focused on building a business that makes money while you’re on vacation, you’ve got a much more empowering vision.

Are you working to make money or to build a business you can use to create significance for yourself and the community around you?

Make More Money – Stop reacting to shiny objects and winds of change.

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Small businesses with the fastest growing revenue know exactly where they are going. According to Inc Magazines 28th 500 fastest growing small businesses list, approximately 88% of them have a statement outlining where they are going. The other 12% are living dangerously.

That’s no surprise. As simplistic as this next statement sounds, it’s incredibly profound – People moving in a clear direction tend to get somewhere. The rest simply react and respond to the world around them by changing direction every time an outside influence creates adversity or opportunity, wandering and wondering their way through years of aimless business stagnation.

The smaller your company is, the more you need a vision statement, because you are more affected by every wind of change that comes along. A small boat is much more affected by small changes in the weather than a big ship.

Small business owners are so buried in the day to day Tyranny of the Urgent that coming up for air to see where the boat is going is never a high enough priority. Not knowing where the boat should go makes this the biggest issue a small business owner has. He who aims at nothing hits it every time.

Ever wonder why you’re on the treadmill? It’s because you don’t know where you’re business is supposed to take you. What is the end game? As my Irish friend John Heenan says, “If you don’t have a vision for your own life, you become part of someone else’s vision for theirs.”

Start with a vision statement for your business that has the following attributes:

  1. Simple, short and devoid of business-bingo words like “growth”, “success”, “best practices”, and other such fluffy and meaningless business-speak.
  2. Expressing your personal values into your business. Use your business to get you somewhere. The vision statement for my business is “Live well by doing good.” We have a number of very specific, measurable ways we can unpack this in our business, and we know exactly where it is leading us to the date and time (we intend to arrive at Business Maturity on Friday, February 18, 2011 at 10am) It drives everything we do.

Find out why you’re doing what you’re doing and where your business is supposed to take you. Then go that direction – relentlessly, tirelessly, with the will to succeed and in single-minded pursuit of that objective.

Stop reacting to shiny objects and winds of change. Take control of your business direction and you will make more money in less time.

The Law of Intentionality – it’s no secret.

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More often than not, we catch what we pursue, not what we envision. Contrary to a commonly held popular narrative, we aren’t successful by just envisioning what we want. There are three legs to the Success Stool, not just one:

1) Vision

Know where you’re going and when you want to be there. Don’t know that? Don’t bother with anything else. If you didn’t know where you were going on vacation and when you wanted to be there, how would you know when to start packing your car and what to put in it? It’s a big duh, I know. Yet we never think to apply the same duh to our business.

Do you know where you’re going in your business (what does it look like at Maturity), and when you want to be there? Of course not. Yet you’re out there every day packing your business car with no idea where you’re going or when you want to be there. Until you know the outcome you are shooting for a few years from now, can describe it in detail, and know exactly when you intend to be there, you’re not building a business, your just making money.

And making money is killing your business. Stop making money and figure out what your business will look like when it’s making money for you. Put a date on when you intend to be there and watch the fireworks begin. Put a time of day on it, too, that will really get the Business Maturity clock ticking in your head. My Business Maturity Date (BMD) is Friday, February 18, 2011, at 10am. What’s yours?

2) Skill development

There isn’t a golfer on the PGA tour that doesn’t know their statistics, which makes it clear what their strengths and weaknesses are so they can train with a purpose. We call them professionals. We all want to be called business professionals, yet most of us don’t have any numbers we follow religiously, and as a result, have no clue what skills we should be developing. We wing it through every business day, putting band-aids on broken legs and wondering why The Tyranny of the Urgent rules our day. If we were truly professionals we would have a plan for professional development and be committed to it. We all want to be the best in our class, until we actually have to practice to get there. Too many of us are just playing air guitar – we’re faking it.

3) Diligence

Diligence is the mature form of discipline. Discipline is the short-term act of preparing for a marathon by following the training schedule. Diligence is the act of running all your life to stay fit. If you develop the art of diligence and not just discipline, you’ll be much more likely to be successful over the long haul and get to your Business Maturity Date.

Discipline can get us to a short-term objective, but diligence will take us all the way to the end. Diligence breeds quiet resolve toward long-term goals. And it is founded in conation – the will to succeed that manifests itself in single-minded pursuit of a goal (John McClintock’s definition in Self-Made in America).

Vision isn’t enough to get us where we want to go. It’s a map. We still have to get on the trail and walk in the right direction.

Having a plan to develop our skills isn’t of any value if you don’t have a “big why” for doing so, and the diligence to develop them for the long haul.

Discipline and diligence aren’t enough. I know plenty of people who are committed to doing the same things every day who have know idea why, and have never thought about where it’s taking them.

We need Vision, Diligence, and a plan for developing the right Skills. Put all three of these together and that is the Law of Intentionality – I know where I’m going, I know what I need to do to get there, and I’m committed to whatever I have to do to make it happen.

You’re much more likely to get somewhere if you put all three of these legs on your business stool.

Retirement is a Bankrupt Industrial Age Idea

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Retirement is a really bad, bankrupt, industrial age idea that was never a good idea in the first place. It was invented by big businesses to steal the best 40 years of our lives so they could discard us when our good years were all behind us.

What makes it so wrong? A few very important ideas:

1) A goal realized is no longer motivating.

Retirement is a goal that can be realized, and once it is realized, it’s not what we were promised. In the Industrial Age, the average life expectancy for men after retirement was 18 months. No longer motivated. Out to pasture. Stick a fork in them – they were done.

Men are beginning to live longer after retirement, but for reasons connected to Lifetime Goals – they’re finding meaningful things to do after they stop going to work every day (or choosing to continue going to work).

2) The very concept of retirement teaches us to put off doing anything really meaningful and substantial with our lives.

I heard it hundreds of times growing up from future pasture-geezers still in their 40’s – “When I retire, I’m going to….[fill in the blank.] What a horrible way to live – always hoping for a future time when you’re actually free to do something with your life.

3) The other really bad notion of retirement is that you’re supposed to work until your 65, then begin enjoying life.

The not so subtle message here is that work and play do not mix, and that you are really supposed to live two lives – your work life, and your meaningful life (shouldn’t work be meaningful, too?). And the ideal way to do it is to live your work life first, and hope you have time left to live your meaningful life afterwards, when you have no energy left to do so.

Wealth is the freedom and the ability to choose what to do with my time.

The retirement game teaches us you won’t be free until you retire. What a load of crap. Stop living for a future that never arrives. Don’t be that guy who, when you’re gone, others say “Too bad he didn’t get to enjoy his retirement.”

Lifetime Goals give us something to begin to enjoy today that we find meaning in, the rest of our lives. Do you have Lifetime Goals that you’re already living, without any need to be retired to get after them? Life should be meaningful, fulfilling, and satisfying today.

Tomorrow never comes. Carpe freaking diem already.

How to Get Your Business to Grow Up and Run Itself

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Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, understood that to have his business grow up and run itself, he would need to pay attention to all of the Seven Elements of a Business – so he did.

Kids need to grow up and stand on their own two feet without leaning on you – that is maturity. Your company should do the same thing.

We assume we should wait until we’re big enough before we figure out how to make the business run itself, but – where we start is where we end up. No matter what size your business is, you should be manically focused on getting yourself out from behind the steering wheel from the gitgo. Pay attention to all Seven Elements of a Business, like Kroc did, and watch your business grow up.

Element 1: Vision and Leadership

“I was 52 years old,” recalled Kroc. “I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns, but I was convinced that the best was ahead of me.” And when he first saw the McDonald’s brothers’ restaurant, he saw what they didn’t, an opportunity to create an international business, not just a restaurant.

“If you’re not a risk taker, you should get the hell out of business,” said Kroc. What risk is holding you back? Get clarity on your vision to take more risk.

Element 2: Business Development

Kroc had to create the need for his product! Fast food was not an existing market – tough job! He clearly knew his niche, learned how to communicate that niche, and stuck to his knitting – he didn’t get sidetracked trying to make great food. And he didn’t let ego get in the way of making money – a very common disease.

Element 3: Operations/Delivery

Work from the result desired. “I didn’t invent the hamburger,” said Kroc. “I just took it more seriously than anyone else…We take the hamburger business more seriously than anyone else.” He built a small business into an international empire by focusing on the operational details and the desired result.

Element 4: Financial Management

When Kroc was asked “What’s the #1 priority for McDonald’s?”, he responded, “The bottom line!” To Kroc, efficient meant most profitable. He didn’t want the best hamburger in the world, he wanted the one that would make him the most profit per fat molecule.

Element 5: Customer Satisfaction

CONSISTENCY of EXPERIENCE was key, not QUALITY of EXPERIENCE. He didn’t need the best food, just the most consistent presentation of it. And if there was trash in the parking lot, that was “a gross affront to me.” A great customer experience was everything.

Element 6: Employee Satisfaction

“None of us is as good as all of us,” Kroc said. A strong believer in teamwork, Kroc knew his growing company could only grow if he had dedicated people. Kroc treated everyone with respect. Every new employee got a badge with the title “Management Trainee” to let them know they all needed to participate in making McDonalds great. His Suggestion Box was legendary.

Element 7: Community/Family/Self

Kroc was an astute businessman who understood that community involvement was a key part of an effective marketing strategy. This tradition of giving back that Kroc initiated so many years ago remains an integral part of the McDonald’s corporate philosophy. Through community contributions, Kroc also established a corporate tradition of creating a positive presence in society.

What did McDonald’s have going for it? Kroc paid attention to all Seven Elements from the gitgo. As small business owners, we’re usually good at a few of the above, and have big holes in a few. Which are you really good at? Whatever you answered, you’re business probably needs help in the opposite ones.

Your business may not be running itself yet. That’s not the question. Are you setting it up to be able to do that at the earliest possible opportunity? If not, you’ll be babysitting it for years to come, and won’t know why every time you come home, your business is there waiting for you!

Let’s learn how to wean our businesses – pay attention to all Seven Elements of a Business. We deserve an empty nest at some point, with a business that can run itself.

Visionaries Make Money, Dreamers Don’t. Which are you?

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Dreamer – Someone who can describe some future hoped for situation, but has no clear date for when they want to be there, and isn’t actively right now pursuing that vision. A dreamer loves to think about the future and what it could be like, but there is no concrete connection between that future situation and the work that needs to be done today to get there. And a dreamer never puts a date on when they intend to get there. Intentionality is not part of the dreamer’s tool set.

The difference between a dreamer and a visionary is that a visionary has already taken the three steps required to create real and lasting change:

  1. Make a decision (stop talking about it, stop dreaming, commit)
  2. Put a date on it.
  3. Go public

Visionary – A person who does this has burned their bridges; they’ve put themselves in a position where that future reality is the focus of everything they do. They are actively, right now, every day, doing the things that will get them there. Until you take the three steps that create real and lasting change, and get moving toward that clear objective and date, you’re just dreaming, and playing office.

Conation – the will to succeed that manifests itself in single-minded pursuit of a goal. Conation is one of the 1,000 most obscure words in the English language, but it is central to becoming a visionary.

If you have a clear picture of where you want to go, and WHEN you want to be there, and you’ve let everyone know, you’re much more likely to conate (start acting on that picture and date) and actually get there.

Are you a dreamer or a visionary? Do you know clearly where you’re business is going and exactly when you intend for it to be there? If not, you’re just dreaming about something nice that could happen at some future time, if you only committed to what that was and when you expected to be there.

3to5 Club – Is there a Business Maturity clock ticking in your business?

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I know what my business looks like when it’s mature and I know to the day and hour when I plan to get there. And it won’t take as long as you think. What’s your Business Maturity Date?

What we talked about 2 weeks ago is too important to not repeat as a setup for this week’s conversation: We think our purpose in business is to make money when our purpose in business is to BUILD A BUSINESS that makes money when we’re not there. These two things are worlds apart, and almost every business owner I work with is absolutely buried in making money, which will keep them from ever making a lot of it.

Why? Because we can’t find the proper balance between the Tyranny of the Urgent – things we have to do to personally make money today; and the Priority of the Important – building a business that will make money for us w/out even being there.

We never have a problem with the Tyranny of the Urgent. Got to pay the bills – It comes rushing at us every morning like a locomotive with a stuck, screeching whistle, while the Priority of the Important (building a business that makes money when we’re not around) sits quietly in the corner of our minds, waiting to be picked up and dealt with, never screaming; just a subconscious whisper in our ears, “Deal with me now and you’ll have fewer Urgent things down the road.”

It’s immediately drowned out by the screeching whistle, so we get sucked on board and spend another day riding in circles with cranky passengers, smoke in our eyes, shoveling coal and sweating it out, and wondering how to get off this cursed treadmill-like train that just comes back to the same place every day.

Here’s how:

Pick a Business Maturity Date. It’s that simple. What? Yes. Just pick a maturity date. It will change you forever. From a hostage to someone heading straight for freedom.

Two years ago this week, March 6, 2007, I started my business with a Business Leader’s Insight lunch workshop with 24 people in attendance, with the same fear and trepidation every one of you felt the day you opened your doors and for months afterwards – it’s not any different for anyone – don’tkid yourself.

But something is different. I have a Business Maturity Date that will take me past the startup fear and right through the “languishing” that most businesses resign themselves to.

In 3 years, 11 months, 2 weeks, and 22 ½ hrs. from when I started, I expect to be done building a business that makes money when I’m not around. I’ve got a lot of work to do and the clock is ticking relentlessly, the train is screeching, belching, and going in circles, and at the same time I’ve got little time left already to build this business to maturity.

My Business Maturity Date? Friday, February 18, 2011, at 10am – 1 year 11 months and two weeks from now.

On that day I will have a mixed Stage 6-7 business (more another time on the Seven Stages of a Business) with others running the day to day and me continuing on in content development and focused delivery. I know how much money it is making on that day and how much I will take home. It is very clear to me what Maturity means to my business on that day.

At 8:30am on that morning I will have a staff meeting and turn over the business to them to run, have an early glass of champagne with them, leaving the office in good hands, and be out of the office by 10am to pack my bags. At 6:10pm that evening my wife and I will be on a plane to Auckland, New Zealand, her dream vacation, for three weeks of celebration. We land in Auckland at 7:25am Sunday morning. The trip will cost $12,380.

Does it change you a little bit even reading this? Imagine what it’s done to me, and what it will do to you when you make the same commitment. It will change you forever.

There are three steps that, when we take them, we change:

  1. Decide something.
  2. Pick a date for when we will be done.
  3. Go public.

To help us all with this three-step process in building a Mature Business, I’m starting a new “club” that is a big idea and will need to be owned by everyone involved. It will certainly end up with committed, focused business owners in cities across the world. It’s called 3to5Club. The three requirements to become a member?

  1. Make a decision that a) you will stop trying to make money and will become committed to building a business that makes money, and b) you will define and describe for yourself what a mature business means to you (it has to make money when you’re not there as a starter.)
  2. Pick a date for when it will be mature (note: this doesn’t mean you sell it that day; you could sell it, keep it and start another one, use it to fund your lifetime goals, turn it over to your kids, or keep working in it doing just the very few things that make magic for you.) And pick a time of day, not just a day – it will make a Priority of the Important Clock start ticking in your head loudly to help counter the screeching whistle of the Tyranny of the Urgent.
  3. Go public. You won’t really change permanently until you take this step.

Why the name? I’ve come to the conviction that it is normal that any business could be grown from inception to maturity in 3to5 years (investors always want their money back in 3to5), 2 to 7 in the best and worst of circumstances. That doesn’t mean you have to pick something in that range. But if you go out 9, 12, 15 years, I believe the bar isn’t high enough to create the urgency you need to be intentional every day about growing your business. It will be too easy to lapse back into making money, a deadly trap. Be ambitiously lazy, get done quicker.

I believe by using the one motivator and two bosses we talked about last week, that it is quite possible my business will be at Maturity before Friday, February 18, 2011, 10am. But what if I miss that date? How do I deal with the fear I might fail? The head starts spinning. We’ll talk about this next week, and the week after we’ll deal with the hostage comment I made at the beginning of this blog.

Are you in? Will you join me in becoming charter members of the 3to5 Club? We’ll do a website and all that crap later. Let’s get started. I’ve set up a meetup.com group for Denver (http://www.meetup.com/3to5Club/), and we’re going to have a charter meeting on Thursday, March 27 at 11:30pm at PanAsia Bistro in Lone Tree, CO. I would be happy to help you set up 3to5Club in your city as well – just leave me a comment.

I’d love to be the first graduate of the 3to5Club in 1 year, 11 months and two weeks from now, but I’m sure there will be a lot of people who will beat me to it. I hope so.

What’s your Business Maturity Date? What does your business look like that day, at that hour? Go public right here in the comments section and let’s take it from there. Speed of execution. I’m looking forward to “executing” that locomotive as quickly as possible.

Every Business Owner Needs Two Bosses. Do You Have Them?

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Ever feel like you’ve got 11 ping pong balls to hold under the water and only 10 fingers? There is a solution.

Last week we talked about the overarching swing and a miss we make in our business strategy: We think that our purpose in business is to make money when our purpose in business is to BUILD A BUSINESS that makes money. These two things are worlds apart, and almost every business I work with is absolutely buried in making money, which will keep them from ever making a lot of it.

This week we we’ll talk about how to create the proper balance between the Tyranny of the Urgent – things we have to do today to make money; and the Priority of the Important – things we have to do to build a business that will make money for us.

It’s not as hard as we make it.

The wrong focus – A focus on making money makes us reactive, trying to keep 11 ping pong balls under the water in a washtub with only 10 fingers – we’re never done. Every time we get one under control another pops to the surface.

The simple problem –We’re so busy trying to capture 11 ping pong balls with our own 10 fingers that we can’t spend time figuring out how to hold down thousands. Capturing every dollar today keeps us from figuring out how to capture a lot more down the road.

The simple key – Be willing to let a few Urgent ping pong balls get away to build a business that later can hold thousands of ping pong balls under the water without using any of your own fingers.

The simple solution – One motivator and two bosses that keep us moving toward building a business that makes money.

The motivator – Lifetime Goals. We think making money is the goal of business. Wrong. Making money is not an empowering vision, and it won’t get you out of bed when money is hard to make. But having a powerful over-arching reason to build a business will carry you through the tough times. What are your Lifetime Goals that you can use your business to achieve? Get a bigger reason to be in business than make money, or you’re likely never going to make much of it.

The two bosses:

Boss #1 – A strategic plan. Not a business plan – those are for bank loans, then they sit on a shelf. I mean a 12-month rolling strategic plan by which you manage every strategic and tactical move in your business. Four simple components – 1) A business vision (the big why/values) , 2) mission (the big what – your marching orders – the RESULT you get your customers), 3) 1-3 year strategies (how you make money), 4) 12 month measurable objectives (how you measure success at making money).

Once you have the vision, mission, strategies and 12-month objectives, you can easily figure out what to do in the next 3 months to reach those 12-month objectives. This makes it simple to figure out what you need to do this month. At the end of 3 months, plan the next three and push your 9-month Objectives back out to 12-months. Rinse and repeat faithfully every quarter.

A Strategic Plan that runs your business automatically keeps us balanced between taking care of the Tyranny of the Urgent (making money today), and the Priority of the Important (building a business that makes money.) VISIT YOUR STRATEGIC PLAN WEEKLY TO KEEP FOCUS!

Boss # 2 – Outside eyes on you and your business. A strategic plan that runs your business is great, but you also need others from outside your business to help you keep clarity and direction. My business is my baby; I’m subjective about it. Others will have a much more objective view and be able to see things I would never see. Get a peer advisor or better yet a full peer advisory group and meet once a month. GET OTHERS SUPPORTING YOU AND YOUR PLAN!

In the daily Tyranny of the Urgent, you are unlikely to use your Strategic Plan to run your business unless you have peers and/or advisor(s) helping you do so. Don’t fool yourself – get others involved from outside your business or don’t expect to build a real business.

Use your Lifetime Goals, Strategic Plan and monthly peer advisory group to force you to spend time on the Important, on building a business that makes money. If you engage these two bosses to motivate you to build a business that makes money, you’re much more likely to build a business that makes a lot of it, and more likely to get to your lifetime goals.

Next week we’ll challenge each other to get a Business Maturity Date and why that is so important in my business and in yours.

Don’t Be a Mosquito in a Nudist Colony

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Why Lifetime Goals are so important to what I do tomorrow, and why tomorrow is so important to my Lifetime Goals.

The mosquito in the nudist colony is thinking, “I know what to do, I just don’t know where to begin.” As business owners, we might have a similar experience, either not knowing where to begin, or not knowing what to do next to take our business to maturity. We have so little time – prioritizing what to do next is critical to our success.

How do we know what to do next? Frankly, there is no way to know unless we have the end game clearly in mind. Without it, we’re shooting a gun in the woods and calling it bear hunting. Or my favorite – “he who aims at nothing hits it every time.”

How do we understand the importance of tying each day to our future? If we focus on just today, we claim victories that are only imposters. If we focus too much on the future, we get fogged or discouraged by the lack of measurable progress today.

The key – always keep today’s action plans and our future Ideal Situation in clear view at the same time, and continuously make the connection between the two.

Here’s the progession that clearly gives us that connection:

  1. Lifetime Goals – what are the things I want to do the rest of my life that I can never check off? This is why I’m alive and why I do business. I’m using my business to get me to my lifetime goals. If I don’t know my Lifetime Goals, I’ve got no clue why I’m in business. Get clarity on your Lifetime Goals – it is foundational to understanding how today matters.
  2. Ideal Situation – FYI – Retirement is a bankrupt idea. Don’t retire, just get into an Ideal Situation for living out your Lifetime Goals – it’s a lot more fun, meaningful, and purposeful. And you don’t have to wait until your 63. You can arrive at your Ideal Situation at 40 or much earlier if you’re intentional about it.

    Critical to escaping the Mosquito/Nudist Colony problem – WHEN do I want to be at that Ideal Situation? Pick an exact date and work toward it (he who aims at nothing…)

  3. Business Maturity Date – usually the same as your Ideal Situation. Pick it – work toward it.
  4. At maturity, what revenue does my business need to generate so I can buy my Ideal Situation in which I can best live out my Lifetime Goals?
  5. How much time and money do I need in my Ideal Situation? What kind of house, car, boat, plane will I need? Do I have a non-profit or am I working in one? Is travel important? What revenue does my business need to generate over the next 5 years to get me to my Ideal Situation? Over the next 3 years? Over the next year? Knowing this is a huge step toward knowing how today fits into the rest of my life.
  6. One-Page Business Strategy – what do I need to do the next 12 months to get closer to a mature business?
    1. Vision, Mission – the big picture for why I’m in business and what my mission is as a business person.
    2. Strategies – the ways in which I make money (building websites, developing ISP software, etc.) THREE YEARS
    3. Objectives – The measurable waypoints for the next 12 months, next 3 months, next month – 12 MONTHS
    4. Action Plans – The actual actions I need to take each week/month/quarter to get to the one year waypoint, on my way to developing a mature business, that can support my Ideal Situation, so I can focus on my Lifetime Goals. It all comes together here.

If we know our Lifetime Goals, those goals we can never check off, and most importantly, WHEN we want to be in our Ideal Situation for living out those lifetime goals, we can then back into what we need to be doing tomorrow to get there. If you don’t know what the end game looks like, what in the world are you doing in business in the first place?

Continuously connecting your daily activity and your Lifetime Goals is the key to clarity and to knowing if each day is counting. Don’t be a mosquito in a nudist colony. Know what to do, where to begin, and what to do next. Connect your daily activity to your Lifetime Goals and watch the fireworks begin.