• It's great to be back. The time off was fantastic but I'm ready to dive back into work. I hope you are too. Taking time completely away from work is a necessity for many reasons. But before pressing on here's a reason you probably never thought of, and more importantly what it can tell you about yourself and the business you are in... If your business is the ideal business for you - you should've noticed a certain feeling over the break. With each passing day away from work you should've felt a tension drawing you back to work. It keeps building with each passing day away until you just couldn't take it anymore. Finally to simply keep your sanity you NEED to get back to work. If you have no idea what I am talking about, odds are you are in the wrong business. If you took a (long enough) break and weren't itching to get back - you need to evaluate your business and determine if it's right for you. If your business is not calling you back while you're away, it's likely your not playing to your strengths. I've written about playing to your strengths often, so I am not going to dive deep today - but hopefully the whole reason you decided to go into business (aside from the money) is do something you love doing daily. To put this issue to rest, here's a plug for our product that gets great reviews from our clients - Strengths Mastery - It's designed to help you know exactly what your strengths are. This way you can build a business designed to leverage your strengths - so you make more, and you love what you do (because you're good at it). Too many entrepreneurs find themselves in improperly designed businesses and it's a real shame. If you're not sure what your strengths are, and how you should build your company around it, you should really check out Strengths Mastery. Alright, enough plugging, let's get back to the real purpose of this post: Why almost everyone struggles more than they should and how to easily fix it. I discovered long ago if I wanted to continually improve my company and my own performance I need to leverage my past experience for all it's worth. Stated more simply - To make 2008 the best it can be, you need to analyze what took place in 2007. You need to identify every nugget of knowledge your past performance offers and leverage it for all it's worth. If you do, you can count on 2008 being the best year of your life. Unfortunately the vast majority of people and companies don't learn enough from their mistakes or their accomplishments. It's like everyone is simply plugging along with their heads down. Similar to the pattern Bill Murray's character, Phil Connors, in the hilarious movie Ground Hog Day. But, instead of repeating the same day over and again, both companies and individuals seem to repeat the same outlook, approach, and strategies. Look, no matter how good or bad your results - we can always do better. Yet, the single biggest key to improving both your performance and your results seems to go ignored by almost everybody. If you want to be at the top of your game you absolutely must learn from what has already happened. I am going to share with you how i do it, this way you can make 2008 your very best year (so far). All you need to do is answer five questions. If you're serious about your success then you should do this today! Ready, set, go....

    Q: What Were Your Greatest Accomplishments In 2007?

    Even if 2007 was the worst year of your life, odds are if you look close enough there's something somewhere to be proud of. If 2007 was a great year for you, then this question is even easier. Here are a three business ones from my list this year:
    1 Writing both the attention age doctrine 1 and attention age doctrine 2 2 Creating the business acceleration program 3 Developing the strengths mastery program
    Now, if you were to see my notes you'd see several takeaways under each of these. You should do the same. So, after you've identified each and every accomplishment, go back to each one. This time through identify what you learned or were reminded of by each of them.

    Q: What Were Your Biggest Disappointments Of 2007?

    Practically every company and individual resists analyzing their mistakes. That's a shame because this is where the best learning comes from. No matter how great everything in life is going - we all make mistakes. The trick here is to really analyze them, what preceded them, what could you have done differently, and how can you prevent them in the future. Even though 2007 was the best year of my life so far - I still had my share of disappointments both personally and professionally. I won't bore you with the details but once you have your list - once again, identify the big takeaways.

    Q: How Did You Limit Yourself Last Year and How Can You Stop?

    Were there certain actions you took or didn't take that came back to haunt you? If you're even the least bit honest with yourself you'll be able to build your list. In order to make sure you don't limit yourself again - you need to bring these self-defeating actions to the surface, shine light on them, and most importantly determine what you must do differently to make sure you don't make the same mistakes all over again. Here are just a few of mine...
    1 not reviewing my goals daily 2 not sticking to a daily sleep schedule 3 hoping things would work out well in a few situations where my gut told me not to
    Of course, just like you did with the earlier questions, identify the takeaways. For example, one of the big takeaways for myself (even though I know better) is when I don't review my goals daily I get sucked into what's currently happening and easily get distracted from what's most important. That caused me to miss the mark on a few goals i had set out for myself in 2007. I now know I won't make the same mistake this year. What about you? In what ways did you limit yourself and what can you learn from it?

    Q: What Did You Learn from the Last Three Questions?

    This is where it all gets interesting. Remember the goal of this exercise is not simply to know yourself and your business better but to actually to use the information to make certain 2008 trumps 2007. What are the big takeaways from answering the first 3 questions. What do you know about yourself or your business that you didn't realize or weren't thinking about? Here's are two random nuggets (from my complete list of 62) i gleaned from the exercise...
    1 Creating products, programs, and free material to help entrepreneurs and their businesses grow consistently gives me my greatest feeling of accomplishment. Therefore I need to spend time daily on creating these materials and not let the fast growth of our business pull me too far away from what I do best. 2 For strategic profits to positively impact even more small business owners we have to religiously stick to our schedule of introducing new front end products. We cannot allow ourselves to deviate from the schedule no matter how great things are going, because client acquisition is the lifeblood of any business.
    You should shoot for as many distinctions as possible because it's here that the rubber meets the road. It's these distinctions that'll practically guarantee that this year is the best year of your life. Obviously, having this list isn't going to do it all (although it'll do a lot all by itself). You still need to take this new knowledge and USE IT! Fortunately, that's what the last question is centered around. And here it is...

    Q: How Can You Use This Information to Make 2008 Unrivalled?

    The idea here is to build in to your schedule, your interactions, your management style or whatever else you've surfaced in question 4 and build yourself a new better approach. For example, I've already scheduled into my daily routine 2 hours a day of content creation, and 10 minutes every morning to review my goals. Plus, I've already slotted on my calendar a weekly 20 minute appointment with myself to surface and then analyze whatever concerns I have. Of course, I have a lot more - but you get the point. Besides, it's not important what I am going to do to make 2008 great - it's what you are going to do yourself to make 2008 great. So, once again the questions are:

    Q: What Were Your Greatest Accomplishments In 2007?

    Q: What Were Your Biggest Disappointments Of 2007?

    Q: How Did You Limit Yourself Last Year and How Can You Stop?

    Q: What Did You Learn from the Last Three Questions?

    Q: How Can I Use This Information to Make 2008 My Best Year?


    Ok, now that we've ensured 2008 will be the best year of your life, here's a quick update: The Business Aceleration program was a smashing success. We hit our projected sales targets in just 32 hours. And i've got lots to share with you about it. But it'll have to wait until tomorrow.

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    Like I said, I've got lots to tell you that you won't want to miss. But first you tell me... What do you think of the process i just shared with you and what new observations did it spark for you? Till tomorrow...

    To higher profits,
    Rich


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