Aim High and Realise your Dreams
We are now a few weeks into 2016, so how are your business plans for growth materialising?
Fantastic if you’re on plan, however the chances are, you still have the same challenges and working as many hours as you did last year!
Henry Ford once said
“If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.
As follows are some tips to help you realise your dreams;
Ensure that you are always focused and working towards personal aspirations, be that a special holiday, more time with the family, a new car, skiing trip with friends, a yacht or even a holiday home.
Visualise your dream. Have a picture of your dream on the office wall, fridge door or screen saver on your phone or computer. Keep believing this dream is within reach and sense the feeling of achievement! This will keep you focused and remind you why and when you are going through any pain!
Put a number on it! a holiday say £4,000, car £24,000 or a holiday home £250,000 and set a time scale to achieve this goal, i.e. 1 year or 10 years.
Break this overall monetary value into sizeable chunks, say by months over the period you set. Then stretch this monetary target! I.e. stick 10-20% on the figure you need.
For instance, if you need to generate an extra £1,000 per month over the next 24 months to buy that new car, set yourself the target of £1,200 per month.
The next task is the most important! “Get your business working for you?” Determine and plan what additional activities or actions need to take place to increase sales, productivity and/or gain efficiency to generate additional bottom line profit. These actions need to be realistic, such as completing 2 extra sales calls a day, producing 5 extra products per week or reducing waste in productive time or raw materials. Ensure you share your plans and ambition with employees and get them involved. Once these changes are implemented and the objectives are fulfilled this business improvement should result in increased net profit, hence allowing you to take the extra drawings to realise your personal aspirations.
Top Tips:
- Ensure the target is realistic and by stretching the target marginally you are likely to challenge yourself to step back, look at yourself, adapt and actually do things differently. It is about working smarter rather than harder.
- This will drive you to participate in personal development, looking up new information, researching through business books, seaking advice, asking for support and maybe even being supported through coaching and mentoring, ultimately to become more effective in your role.
- Stay focused and track results on a graph, stick this on a wall. That first month when you achieve the £1,200 extra income, the self-gratification and sense of achievement will actually make you step back again and then take the neccessary steps to challenge and change things even more. Now the big wheel is turning, and achieving £1,250 per month becomes a new personal objective therefore creating further appetite for change.
Note; you do need however to achieve a balanced approach. If the dream and target is too easy, too stretched or unrealistic the chances are you will never push yourself or just give up. Therefore unless the objective is realistic, you won’t challenge yourself to change your way of working and then you will never achieve yours or your businesses full potential.
Achieving a goal is nothing. The getting there is everything. Jules Michelet