Six Tips for a Successful 2015

With Christmas and the New Year fast approaching, it’s time to think about what we can do to have a great 2015. Without a clear direction for our business, it is unlikely we will achieve the results we desire. The best way to have a great finish is to have a great start.

Recently I gave a talk on the importance of having a clear vision and setting goals for our business if we want to be successful in 2015. Without a clear vision of our desired future and written goals, chances are we will not reach that desired future.

In addition to a having a clear vision and specific goals, here are an additional six tips to help ensure your success in 2015.

1) De-Clutter: Take a look at your life and your business. It’s important to clear your office and business of useless clutter, but it’s also important to de-clutter your schedule. Are you focusing on unimportant tasks? Is that holding your business back? Figure out what tasks you need to focus upon and which you need to delegate to someone else. Focus on the 20% of activities that generate 80% of the results.

2) Implement Team Huddles: It’s crucial to take time to meet with your managers and employees throughout the week. Try having 15-minute team huddles once a week to discuss your goals challenges and accomplishments of the week. Having everyone on the same page will provide the whole team with clarity and empowerment.

3) Focus on Marketing and Selling: Even the very best technician can’t run a successful business without realizing that we are in the business marketing and selling. What are you doing to market your business? Consider what affordable marketing strategies you can implement over the next year.

4) Stop Worrying: They say you are what you think about, so if you’re worrying, you can’t be focusing on making your business the best it can be. Successful business leaders focus on what they want to happen, looking ahead toward their vision.

5) Become Less Important: If you can’t take a vacation from your business, you’re too important. You should own a business, not just a really demanding job!  We can help you figure out what changes you need to make to free you from your business, including implementing stronger business systems.

6) Learn to Say No: To become a more effective entrepreneur or business owner, you must learn to say “no” to people and tasks. You shouldn’t be a chief everything officer or someone who wears every hat in the business. We should learn to work on our business not always in it.

If you need assistance in creating and articulating your vision for 2015, and developing goals to reach that vision, we can help you. Make the decision that 2015 will be your Best Year Ever, and make an investment in coaching and consulting to ensure your success.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

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 MAKE 2015 YOUR BEST YEAR EVER!

As we start a New Year, it is a good time to reflect on 2014, and ask ourselves some serious questions.

Our goal is to make 2015 a much better year then 2014. But we can’t keep doing the same things over and over and expect different results. We have to think differently. Taking time to reflect on the past year and planning for the New Year is the best way to get better results. If we have a good start to the New Year, we will most likely have a good finish.

Questions to ask ourselves:

1) What went well this last year?

List the things that you accomplished.

Compare the list to your goals that you set for last year.

How did you do? What can you do better?

2) What didn’t go so well this last year?

What can you improve on moving forward?

What strategies have you already tried to improve your business that worked or didn’t      work?

3) What do you want to accomplish in this New Year?

What is your vision for 2015?

What will be your goals to help you accomplish your vision?

What do you think you need to do to double your business this year?

4) How can you develop more clarity of direction?

5) How can you become more focused in your business?

6) How can you become more disciplined to accomplish your goals?

These are just a few of the questions we can ask ourselves to ensure that we have a prosperous 2015. The number one reason that closely held businesses fail is due to lack of clarity. They don’t know where they are going. Don’t be that company. We can help you clarify where it is you are going and help you set the goals to achieve greater success in 2015.

I am here to help you achieve dramatic success in your coming year.

Click the link below:

http://achieve-success.businesscoachingportland.com/

 

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We Need to Focus on High Value, High Priority Activities

Recently I gave a talk on time management to a group of 60 business owners in Salem. The jest of my talk was that true wealth was not money but available free time. We can always make another dollar but we can’t make another minute of time. When the clock strikes 12, that’s it, we are out of time. And unfortunately many of us come to this realization late in life and wonder where did the time go?

So if time is a limited resource as is our energy and for many of us, our money. Are we using our time, energy and money wisely and focusing our efforts on the activities that are the highest and best use of these limited resources?

I believe that time management begins with Clarity of direction as I have discussed in previous blog posts. We must know where we are going in our business and personal lives.

Otherwise if we maximize our use of time, energy and money and we are headed in the wrong direction, we will have spent some valuable resources for naught.

We’re all working hard and most likely working a lot of hours to make our businesses successful. But are we focused on the right kind of work? Are we focused on the 20% of our activities that will generate 80% of the return of our investment of time, energy and money? Many times as business owners we get caught up doing low-value, low-priority work, the 80% and not the 20%. We must learn to focus our efforts and spend our time, energy and money on high value, high priority activities that will bring the greatest ROI of our investment of these important resources.

If you would like assistance in making dramatic improvements in your individual and organizational effectiveness, give me a call I am here to help.

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               THE RELUCTANT PILOT

In my previous career, one of the requirements to perform my job with efficiency was to learn to pilot a small plane. We had multiple locations across the state of Oregon with one of them being 4.5 hours away by car in eastern Oregon. Each location had a landing strip and in order to save time I needed to learn to fly a Cessna 182.

There was just one problem. I didn’t want to learn to fly. Most people when you tell them you fly an airplane say they would love to learn to fly. Not me, I had no desire to learn.

But thanks to the help of an amazing and patient flight instructor I acquired the skills to fly and logged many hours of flying time while serving as COO for this large company.

One of the many things I learned was that even though I would set the GPS on the destination airport identifier, it didn’t mean I would fly a straight path to that airport in a timely and efficient manner. The GPS would certainly point me in the right direction but often due to cross winds the plane would be blown off a direct path and it required constant monitoring and adjusting to stay on track.

It’s not much different in our businesses. We can set a direction of where we want our businesses to be in a year, two-years or more, but if we don’t monitor our course on a regular basis and make appropriate adjustments along the way, we may not arrive at our intended destination in a timely and efficient manner. In fact, we may never arrive at our destination. Our businesses need clarity of direction as to where we want to go, an intense focus to help us get there and the discipline to stay on track. Much like flying an airplane.

If you would like assistance in clarifying your direction in your business and the help to monitor and adjust along the way to ensure that you arrive at your intended destination, we can help you in so many ways. Just give us a call. 503-312–3145

“Gary is probably one of the premiere leaders in his industry in Oregon and beyond. He’s thoughtful and strategic and he knows how to take a big vision and make it real. Possibly most importantly, he’s a great communicator and he has a way of bringing people alongside him and helping everyone to learn together. It’s inspiring.” Elizabeth P.

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              The Ability to Solve Problems

As mentioned in the previous post “The Reluctant Pilot”, I logged a number of hours flying to eastern Oregon to a location the company had out there. Many times the weather would be somewhat marginal and I would drop down into the Columbia Gorge to make my way out east, and once past Cascade Locks often found favorable weather.

One such return trip I encountered very poor weather conditions and the clouds were getting lower and lower. I had passed Cascade Locks and ran into very severe weather and could not go any further, so I turned the plane around and found that the weather had closed in behind me as well. Now this was a serious problem. Lucky for me, I was well aware of the small landing strip located at Cascade Locks. I had to swing out low under the clouds to make my approach and skimmed just above the treetops and below the clouds to make my landing. It was a scary situation and required my focus and complete attention. It was something I did not want repeated and was a valuable lesson learned.

Problem Solving in Business

In business, problem solving is a continuous process. In almost all cases organizations are formed to solve problems, to bridge the gap between current state and the desired future. In recent years it has become common practice to avoid using the word problem and to call them opportunities. In my case of running into poor weather in the gorge, was not considered an opportunity, it was a problem and calling it an opportunity wouldn’t help. It’s not much different in business. Attempting to hide or avoid problems by calling them opportunities tends to waste everyone’s time and energy. Remember organizations are formed to solve problems and there is nothing wrong with calling a problem what it is. Great organizations are not afraid to acknowledge that problems exist and do not fear calling them what they are.

If you would like assistance in clarifying your direction and solving problems in your business, and the help to monitor and adjust along the way to ensure that you arrive at your intended destination, we can help you in so many ways. Just give us a call. 503-312–3145

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                    Jump Start Your Revenue

 Is your business not generating the kind of revenue that you would like? 



Are you achieving the kind of success that you dreamed about or have your results fallen short of your dreams?



Would you like to gain greater success in your business and your personal life?



Why settle for okay results? Why continue to struggle making your revenue projections. 



Jump Start Your Revenue Growth Today!



Jump Start Your Profits!



Achieve Dramatic Profit Improvements this year!



Attend the Jump Start Your Revenue Workshop being held on Saturday May 30th from 8:30-Noon.



Find out how we helped one of our clients make a 322.23% improvement in their cash flow within one year. 



Learn Gary’s Five Steps to Accelerated Growth.



Click on the link below and sign up today. Don’t wait any longer to make a difference in your business and you personal life.



Growth Coach Revenue Bootcamp

We are experts at Dramatically Improving Your Individual and Your Organizational Effectiveness. 

What are you waiting for?

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                                      WHY ARE YOU WORKING SO HARD?

                                STOP IT!

YOU DON’T HAVE TO WORK SO DARN HARD TO MAKE YOUR BUSINESS A

                                                        SUCCESS

So many business owners and executives today are working harder and harder, running on the treadmill of life that just goes faster and faster, and they can’t work any harder or run any faster.

We don’t have to work harder and harder to make our business a success. Putting our head down and plodding along hoping that it will change is not a good strategy. So stop it. Stop thinking that if you just work harder and harder your business will improve.

I am here to tell you that you don’t have to work harder. But you do need to learn some key principles that will help you work smarter and more efficiently.

In order to do that, we may need to slow down. This may sound counter intuitive, but we need to slow down and step away from our busyness and take a 30,000’ view of our business. What does it look like? What is our current state? What is our current reality?

Then you need to decide what you want your business to look like in the future. What would you like your business to look like five years from now? Then work backwards. If this is your desired future five years out, what must your business look like in three years? Then in order to attain the three-year vision, where must your business be one year from today?

This is clarity of direction, a vision of the future. This is the first step in my Business Growth Acceleration Loop that can dramatically improve your success and has helped my clients achieve 30% to over 300% improvements in their business success.

What to make a dramatic improvement in your business today? What are you waiting for? Stop working so hard and call me today.

http://www.thegrowthcoachportland.com

503-312-3145

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               I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW!

                   Having a clear vision is critical to our success

In my last blog I admonished my readers to stop working so hard. That putting our heads down and working harder and harder isn’t the path to business success, but instead, we need to slow down and take a 30,000’ view of our businesses to determine our current state or our reality. Where are we in our business and personal life? Does it look anything like what we envisioned it would look like when we started our business? Are we where we thought we would be in our business both personally and professionally?

Once we have a clear idea of our current state, what does the desired future look like for our business and our personal life. And I do stress, both personally and professionally. We need to consider both. It’s not like we have a business life or don’t have a business life, or that we have a personal life or we don’t have a personal life. We have a life, and more often than not the two are enter-twined.

In order to see clearly, we need to determine what we want our future to look like. We need to create a vision of the future, 5-years from today. I discussed working backwards from five-years, to three-years, then to one-year. What does the future of our business and personal life look like? If we are not clear and don’t determine where we want to be in our business and personal life, it is very unlikely that we will attain the desired results.

Success in business and our personal life starts with a clear vision. We need to be proactive in order to change our current state into our desired future. It’s not likely to fall into our lap. So dream big, be bold, think amazing and visualize the future. We are the roots of our own success. Imagine the future state and write it down.

This can be your greatest year ever, but it starts with clarity of direction. Seeing clearly where it is you want to go professionally and personally.

Need help with developing clarity of direction? Then contact us. We are experts in organizational development and helping our clients to create their future success.

 

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                  WHAT ARE YOU FOCUSED ON?

Once we have clarity of direction for our business and our personal life, and have created a plan of action to achieve the success we desire, we then need to develop an intense focus on the plan of action.

Many people that I run into underestimate the power of focus and the need to develop an unapologetic focus on our plan of action. We need to eliminate the distractions in our lives that prevent us from achieving success. What is the highest and best use of our time, energy and money? How can we focus on applying these assets to achieve the maximum results? We need to start thinking more strategically about our business and elevate our focus, thinking and actions to a higher level. Business as usual will not do.

The challenge is our own human nature. Over time we get distracted and become consumed with non-essential, low-priority stuff, which causes us to get overwhelmed, and then we waste our time, talent, energy and money on the wrong type of work. We get busy being busy and we lose sight of what is most important to us in our business and personal lives. As such our lives become complex, cloudy, confusing and stressful.

We all have only so much time, energy and money. Once we have a clear vision and a plan of action to take us from our current state to our desired future we need to be intensely focused on the vision and the plan to make great strides in our business. Focus is the ability to direct our thoughts, attention and action towards our desired results.

Focus is a necessary condition for outstanding performance and greater success in our business and personal lives.

Are you in need of clarity of direction and a plan of action on how to bridge the gap between your current state and your desired future? Do you need help focusing? Give us a call. We can help to dramatically improve your individual and organizational effectiveness.

 

 

 

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                       IS DISCIPLINE OVERRATED?

Absolutely not! The genus of all successful people is rooted in discipline.

I’m not talking about the kind of discipline that is synonymous with punishment, but the kind of discipline that produces the desired outcome    of an organization on a regular and continuous basis.

Aristotle said; “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.”

World-class athletes, famous musicians, elite military teams such as the Navy Seals all have the same thing in common. They express their talents with predictable precision, which is achieved through disciplined and repeated practice. They are in the habit of practicing over and over until they get it right.

In Jim Collins book, Good to Great, he asserts that great companies have a strong culture of discipline. If discipline leads to greatness, then the lack of discipline leads to chaos, confusion and unpredictable results.

Successful people have the discipline to stay at it and work to continually improve on what they are doing. They practice the discipline of continuous improvement. they don’t give up.

Successful business owners have clarity of direction, a plan of action to bridge the gap between their current state and their desired future. They have intense focus on working this plan and they have the discipline to stay with it each and everyday, working to continually improve on the plan to achieve incredible results.

Are you lacking clarity, a plan of action and focus? Do you need help developing the discipline necessary to achieve dramatic improvements in your individual and organizational effectiveness? Call us if you want to eliminate the status Quo and make significant improvements in your success.

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