A Plan For Success In Unsuccessful Times

 

It's easy to start the year with planning, looking at your existing numbers and saying, “ok where to from here?” But, I bet you’re using old, outdated data to create your future. 

This happens for a few reasons which I will get into, but first, you have to want to change. Everyone says they want more success, but then they keep doing the same thing and making the same excuses. People who aren’t growing use old information and targets, and the same strategies to hit those targets. I am going to guess, if you’re still reading this, you want more than success, you want fulfillment, to be able to give-back, and to experience everything life has to offer.

I caught up with a business owner I worked with a few years ago. She wants to scale her business by attracting a new type of client. However, she is using the same business development strategies with the same sales scripts she used in the past because that always brings clients in. When she tests any new approach, it feels uncomfortable, and it doesn’t land a sale as often as the old approach. She used this excuse to stop implementing the new strategy and go back to the old. This means, she goes back to gaining undesirable clients. The money is there, but she hates her business. This is so common. It’s terrifying letting go of the practices that served you for years, let alone the income. 

Another business owner, who furloughed his entire team, shut down his office, and watched over a million in booked sales disappear overnight in Aprll of 2020 has already booked 2 million in sales for 2022. He could set that as his target, but the goal is to 4x. Last year, he tested outsourced marketing and sales, he went through a rebranding process, and he hired new team members. Outsourcing was unsuccessful. He had to let go of a new hire. In all of this he learned new ways of doing business. He had to ideate, implement, learn, repeat. Now he has more success than he imagined. 

So how the hell do you convince yourself to not just try something new, but stick it out, when it’s not (yet) delivering the results you seek? Especially when your livelihood, your family, your debts, and your future depend on YOU? A new success strategy, one where you create entirely new levels of success, demands perseverance without proof.

Like everything in life, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer. Your preparation for and approach to success will look different than mine. After working with 100s of business owners, and in over 50 different businesses, around the world, while researching this very question for decades, here is what works best and is an adaptable strategy you can apply to your experience. 

Try each step, try skipping some steps, hell - jump to the last step, but start to build your own blueprint for testing new strategies. 

A Plan For Success In Unsuccessful Times

Step 1: Start right now, with what you know

• Just do it, indulge the ego, the resistance, all of the chatter in your head
• Use old numbers, old data, and safe targets
• Create an annual goal, with a few milestones in your business, and divide that into quarters and months, based on the seasonality of your business 
• Once complete, lean into that feeling of certainty and ease - its done, ego satiated

 Step 2: Sit, quietly, with the best way of taking notes ( for you - voice memo, pen and paper, computer, etc), Give yourself 20+ minutes to relax and imagine - feel free to do this at night, in a bath (maybe ditch the computer), with your beverage of choice - this part should be fun!  

• Skip to this day in 12 months in the future, imagine calling me up and telling me everything that happened in your business this last year. EVERYTHING. 
  • All the sales. 
  • All the growth.
  • The crazy hard stuff you overcame.
  • The new, amazing hires. 
  • The invitations and recognition (in an ideal setting for you). 
  • The accolades. 
  • The online metrics.
  • The customer numbers. 
  • The vacations you took. 
  • The health goals you achieved. 
  • The investments.
  • Your family and/or communities pride in you.
  • The impact, and give-back.
  • ALL OF IT. 
• Know, in this imagined conversation, this has all happened, and you’re bringing me up to speed on your outstanding, astronomical success.
  • Imagine the look on my face. 
  • Hear the tone of my voice. 
  • Are you upset I am not surprised by your success, or are you amused?
  • Are you shouting? Are you crying?
  • Are you excited? Is your heart racing? Are you surprised? 
  • What does your drink taste like? Are you hungry, full, or just right?
  • Is the sun shining? Or is it cold and grey out?
  • Are you pacing around or sitting?
  • What's the temperature? What are you wearing? What shoes do you have on your feet?
• When you hang up the phone, how does it feel to know you did it, you actually made it all happen?

 Step 3: Use that exercise to set some new targets for you and your business

• Pick 3 overarching goals or themes for the year based on what you imagined you told me has already happened
• How will you know you have created those experiences by the end of the year (ex. I will have a cohesive team I can rely on to run my business even if I am away <12 months from this date>)
  • List out the resources you need <list out contractors, employees, job titles>
  • Pick quantity or quality to measure (ex. 5 new hires, or 10 tested SOPs, or I took a week off and everything ran smoothly)
  • Decide on a basic budget
  • Look at existing financials, create a spending plan
  • Then establish thresholds to start investing and resourcing
  • Develop andtest the workflows, processes and infrastructure to succeed 
• Start to dial in quarterly and monthly milestones
• Redirect focus from tacking progress to predicting and overcoming obstacles
• Use monthly check-ins to evaluate targets and/or move the milestones to reflect your real-time execution

 Step 4: What’s not working

• This is the step we avoid, use as an excuse to throw this entire process out the window, or gloss over so we can default to using what we know and what is familiar (which will only ever deliver past results, not future targets)
• Accept the fear, the avoidance, and the resistance. 
  • I don’t have the income to justify … 
  • I don’t have the resources to …
  • This is impossible …
  • I am to old / tired / burnt out / jaded to …
  • I’ll never be able to … 
  • I'm not like … so I can’t … 
  • I don’t want this business, these goals, or this pressure! 
• If you’ve truly given yourself permission to give up, and gone so far as to explore and discuss what quitting looks like, you’ll shift.
• Read that again

 Step 5: Step Out Your Success Plan

• Now that you realize success isn’t about a finite win or loss, it’s about taking daily action towards your milestones, then reviewing those steps to see how close you got, learning what effort or direction needs to change, or what milestone needs to move to ensure you’re on track, it's simple, doable and empowering.
• You can’t fail when you’re asking questions like; Should this move faster OR slower to be successful? Should this take more OR less resources to be successful? Am I on OR off track, and how do I course correct (including, how can I shift the destination so it’s in alignment with my success)?
• Let's openly discuss the potential obstacles and plan FOR them, including the admission that if X were to happen, we would stop this plan altogether and create something entirely new (go back to step 1)

I am not the first to tell you it's about the journey not the destination, the ends do not justify the means, and if you’re not enjoying yourself right now, what’s the point? Our ego and logical mind hates change or anything new, because it is a risk. Risk equates to shame, pain and death. We have to consciously and purposefully push past our justification into uncertainty. Hold yourself accountable by having something BAD ASS that you can talk about in 12 months. You need a definition of success that LIGHTS YOU UP. This is how you fuel your fire! By defining your success and creating measurable targets so you have certainty around achieving success, you can distill that definition into actionable, tangible, daily steps. When you invest in your success each day, you can not fail. You simply take one more step.