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We Don’t Find the Sandbars With An Anchor in the Water

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Our desire for safety is paralyzing. We’re so afraid of hitting a sandbar that we’re willing to just sit in the harbor for years on end. Then we have the audacity to wonder why our business never grows up.

Think of the Steering Wheel on a boat as “Purposeful Direction”, and the Engine as “Commitment”. I’m a big fan of both commitment and purpose. One without the other is of no value. Nothing is more important to how quickly you will get where you’re going than the size and fitness of your engine combined with ongoing attention to the helm. Most of us don’t pay attention to either. We’re just sitting at anchor most of the time.

The single biggest factor in getting somewhere is the steering wheel of your life and business – a purposeful direction (see last week’s post). But if you know where you want to go and you aren’t committed to getting there, I mean fundamentally sold out to that end game, the journey will take a very long time and you will likely lose steam before you ever get there. If your engine of commitment isn’t big enough it’s likely you really don’t have a clear understanding of where you want to go – the steering wheel has no direction.

The only way to find the sandbars in life and in business is to get the ship moving and then start taking soundings. And if you’re commitment is big, you’ll get where you want to go a lot faster and easier than those who are puttering around with little outboard engines.

It’s all about committed movement in a purposeful direction. Lack of committed movement is failure.

Are you fully committed to moving in order to find out what works, or are you sitting around wondering where the sandbars are?

Planning won’t even get you a good plan, let alone success.

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Stop thinking. Get moving.

Planning does not create success or even the best plan. It also doesn’t create action. Most planning just creates paper, spreadsheets, complexity, doubt, paralysis, and dream-dampening. There are two things that create a far better plan than planning itself.

If you believe that meticulous and detailed planning of every possible contingency is the best way to create success you won’t like this post. To make matters worse, I’m probably going to accuse you of living in a dream world.

How many SUCCESSFUL businesses were started from a highly developed business plan? Next to none. And of the very, very few I’ve found that were started from a business plan, when asked how that worked out for them, most laughed but none said that reality had followed their excel spreadsheet plan.

Yet we keep slavishly promoting an antique practice that has almost never done anything for anyone except get someone an “A” in an MBA class on how to build a business plan. Oh, and it will get you into debt, because banks are still requiring business plans so they have a teddy bear to hold while they give you money. None of those work out either, but most banks haven’t figured out there is a much better way to see if someone is going to be successful.

This isn’t a blog on the attributes of success (maybe I’ll do that one next week), but creating a 30-page business plan isn’t one of them. To the contrary, the simpler the initial plan, the better, because it’s going to change anyway.

I advocate a 2-Page Strategic Plan (never do another classic Business Plan unless you have an antique bank asking for one). A simple 2-page Strategic Plan is set up to change, adapt, and be clarified every one to three months – you know, sort of like life.

It shouldn’t take more than a few hours to do it because, again, like life, it’s going to change very quickly. The only part that is likely to not change is the objective – what do we want to see as a result? The rest of it is up for grabs – anything that gets us to that result will be added and anything that isn’t will be removed.

Once you’ve got a simple plan, the two keys to making it into a great plan are:

  1. Commitment (to the objective, not a plan)
  2. Movement (in a purposeful directions toward the objective, not “activity” based on a plan)

It is NEVER how good your plan is that creates success, but how committed you are to the bad plan you’ve got and how willing you are to get moving on it NOW. As you move with absolute commitment in a clear direction toward the objective – that commitment and that movement will work together to make your so-so plan into a world class one.

Commitment and movement create success, not a tortured 30-page document. And a simple 2-page plan will become brilliant over time if there is enough commitment to the objective and enough movement to inform you what to keep doing and what to keep changing.

Stop thinking, get a clear objective and get moving with abandoned commitment toward that goal. Use the movement to make the plan better all the time. You’ll make more money in less time by committed movement than you will by sitting around trying to figure out what might go wrong.

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.

Bad Plans Carried Out Violently Many Times Yield Good Results. Do something.

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This was my Marine Corps soccer team’s motto 30 years ago. It has since become a key business practice for me. It’s also the title of a book I’m writing and the basis for Carrie’s great story below.

We plan, research, and think things to death when all the evidence says that the #1 indicator of success in business is not how smart you are, how much research you do, or even how good your product is. The #1 indicator of success is speed of execution. Period. Want to be successful? As Larry the Cable Guy says, “Get ‘er done.”

One of my clients, Carrie Roberts, took this to heart – here’s her story to me in an email yesterday. This one will make the book. FYI – the following blur of activity took place in only two weeks that included Christmas and New Years:

“Holy Sh%#!!! (like I said, excuse my french:)

I hit my goal somehow – actually – even exceeded my goal – and your voice keeps resonating in my head – Bad Plans my friend!!!

I finished writing my product Blueprint last week – cut out some things that I didn’t have finished, changed the price to $47 so that I could get it up through click bank, set up a hosting account, set up a separate email account, set up an auto-responder account, hired a web guy – web guy finished the site yesterday, got final approval from click bank yesterday at 6pm, got everything set up through them and listed on their site, and everything went live by 9pm last night.

Set up a google adwords account and placed an ad, signed up with Tweet Later and set up auto-responder messages for Twitter, chose 20 new people to follow and was in bed by 11.

I made my first sale this morning at 9am

I cried

I don’t know where this is going – it’s a bad plan – but it is a great way to start 2009!

couldn’t wait to share – Happy New Year!!!”

What else is there to say?

Just one thing – the fine-tuning on my “Bad Plans carried out violently” principle is:

“Implement Now, Perfect as You Go.”

I know Carrie well enough that, having worked her rear off to get something up that wasn’t perfect, she will begin immediately to make it better. And having it already up and running will allow her to perfect it much quicker than if she was continuing to perfect a theoretical business plan.

She will definitely perfect her Bad Plan as she goes. This ought to be good. Way to go, Carrie!

What Bad Plan do you need to carry out violently (with total commitment) that you’ve been dinking around with for months? The best way to make it better is to go live and let the world inform you how to perfect it.

Carpe Diem, Just Do It, and all that stuff.

Got a great “Bad Plan carried out violently” story? I’d love to hear it. It could make the book. Tell me AFTER you implement!