The keys to success in any business is to continually be looking for ways to improve not only the business but ownership as well. We as business professionals need to be working to continually improve emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually in order to find balance in our lives. Success in business is not guaranteed, so we need to avail ourselves of every opportunity to learn, grow and improve. A business coach can help the owner with goal setting in these areas.

Interview Transcription

Yeah in holding people accountable and clients accountable, what I found is that they’re very appreciative that I’m checking in on them, that I’m holding them accountable. Often times I hear “yeah, you know what, I haven’t done that yet but I thank you for calling me” or “thank you for checking in. I’m going to get on it.” I find that people are appreciative that I am holding them accountable and because it’s easy to get off track. It’s just so easy to do because there are a lot of distractions. It’s interesting in that I have not one individual that isn’t pleased that I’ve checked in on them and I actually ask them questions on how they’re going progressing towards their goals and their action plans – are they making progress? What can I do to help you? They’re all very appreciative and they’re being held accountable. They know from past experience that they haven’t achieved their goals and their action plans and part of the key piece of that is no one’s holding them accountable.

I think very successful people have some key things that they do. One, they’re very good at focusing and they believe in continuous improvement, not only in their business but their personal life as well. They’re working on not only being emotionally fit but physically fit, mentality fit and for some people spiritually fit as well. They’re working on finding balance in those 4 areas and where you do this continually improve. Very successful people read quite often. They tend to exercise regularly and they tend to focus on those things that bring not only good health and good physical health and mental health as well. So they’re physically fit and mentally fit to be able to handle the challenges that come at them at a daily basis, because every business has challenges and has issues and you have to be physically and mentally fit in order to handle those challenges so I think I firmly believe in continuous improvement in all four areas and in order to find balance in my life is that I have to continually work in those 4 areas in my life and continually trying to improve them. So I read ferociously. I love to read. I exercise every day and I work on those aspects of my life to keep myself physically and mentally fit because I can’t impart something to somebody else that I don’t have. I have to have those attributes and those traits. I have to continually be learning about my own profession but other professions as well so that I can impart knowledge and wisdom to other people. I can’t give something I don’t have.

I don’t think anybody starts out in business to fail. Failure is certainly a part of life and we have to learn from our failures, pick our self up and keep going. The most important thing is not so much what happens to us, it’s our actions and what we do in result of what happens to us that has the greatest impact of ourselves and those around us. We have to keep moving, we have to pick ourselves up and we have to keep moving forward. I think very successful people work at continually moving forward towards their goal and realizing that I got into business because not so like I fail but I wanted to be successful, everybody does. To realize that maybe I don’t have all the skill sets necessarily to be successful, so in order to ensure my success, why wouldn’t I want to learn some of the other skills that I need to be successful? Why would I want to inhibit myself? Why would I want to tie an anchor around my ankle and keep dragging myself? Why wouldn’t I want to take advantage of the opportunity to learn from others on how to be successful?

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In order to be successful we need to develop clarity on where it is we want the business to go. We need to develop goals and action plans in order to achieve those goals. We need to learn to set priorities among competing demands in order to achieve our goals. Being held accountable by a business coach can help you to achieve your goals.

Interview Transcription

In order to be successful and to achieve the results that you want, the goals that you want to achieve, you have to, one: you have to know where you want to go and that’s important to gain clarity and what is it that you want to achieve but then you want to create priorities and how you’re going to get there because if you’re just going to go about it and say “oh this is where I want to go and I’m going to go there” you probably not going to reach it unless you set some goals and some action plans. So you have to prioritize your work.

One of the things that I teach my clients is what I call the STOP process. It’s a strategic time out process and what it is, is you take 15 minutes every day. Particularly in the morning to take 15 minutes of your time and think about what you could do that day that’s going to have the greatest impact on your business and the results that you want, to think about it, to plan it out and then to execute that because if you can step back from your business and say “okay, what can I do today? What can I prioritize that’s going to have the greatest return of my investment, time, energy and money?” and then you execute on that. You’re going to be much more effective, but that’s about setting priorities. That’s about deciding “what do I need to do today that’s going to have the greatest impact and then the focus, because what happens is things happen and you get distracted. You get distracted over here and you get distracted over here and if you lose sight of you priorities or you haven’t even set priorities, you’re not going to achieve that. It’s critical to set what is the goal for today and how am I going to achieve that and then set priorities on how you’re going to get there.

Goal setting is interesting because a lot of people set goals and very few people reach their goals and a lot of times the goals are unattainable. I think the key to setting goals is the old SMART tool – specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and timely. By setting goals in those parameters and then having a matrix to measure what the goals you set, so how are you doing. You set a goal January 1st to do something specific in your business or your personal life, either one. Okay let’s measure it on February 1st and see how you’ve progressed. Sometimes, maybe you didn’t achieve your goal but that’s okay, as long as you’re moving in the direction. Gaining clarify at what you want to achieve and then facing reality that this is where I’m at. And how do I bridge that gap between those two? The way I bridge the gap is to set goals to get there. There’s usually tension between where you want to be and where you’re at and the only way to relieve that tension is to lower the goal, which isn’t very effective, or you move towards the goal. So the most important aspect of goal setting is progress, moving towards the goal and really successful people keep raising the bar. Yeah, they get closer to the goal but as they get closer to the goal, they raise the bar a little further and they keep raising the bar. It’s a matter of progression. It’s more about the journey than the destination and goal setting is about the journey, about making improvements, continuous improvement in your business, in your personal life on a regular basis.

I think probably one of the most difficult things to do for anybody, including business owners, is that you can set goals and action plans that you want to achieve but then they get set aside or you get busy doing other things and you forget about what were those goals that was going to get accomplished and action plans. The beauty of having a coach is that they can hold you accountable and a coach is not emotionally

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The 80/20 rule applies to everything in business. As owners we need to learn to focus on the 20% of our activities that will generate 80% of the return on our investment of time, energy and financial resources. We need to learn to set goals around that essential 20%.

Interview Transcription

My name’s Gary Furr and I own a business called Gary Furr Consulting, which is a business consulting firm. My background is I started my career in an industry and I helped grow that company as operations officer from 3 – 5 million and then I quit that company and started my own company and did that for 6 years and grew that company to be a million dollars in business and then I sold that and went to work for another organization as operations officer and we grew that company from 16 – 40 million at the time I was there. I left that company in November of 2012, reasons of too much international travel and I just wanted to be home and stay around. I left that company and started The Growth Coach because I wanted to help business owners to gain greater success in their businesses.

There’s issues whether you’re small or you’re big. The disadvantage that a small business has is they don’t often have the personnel or the resources to overcome those issues and they’re not proactive and they don’t take steps to correct right away, they can be very costly. Whereas a larger organization, you have resources you can put on a particular issue. You have money to back you up so they don’t have such a dramatic effect but small businesses have issues just like large businesses. There’s really no difference. It doesn’t really matter the industry, all businesses have issues.

Cash flow is the number one problem for any business and even small businesses and a lot of businesses gone bankrupt with a lot of account receivables on their books but no cash. Managing cash flow is a critical issue for small business. The other issue that I tend to run into a lot is a business owner wearing so many hats and they can’t get everything done so they’re wearing all the hats, they’re trying to do everything themselves and things fall through the cracks and they can’t get it all done. That’s a pretty common issue. Probably the third issue that I would have seen most common is too much clutter in their lives. They’re not focusing on that 20% of their activities that will generate 80% of their revenue. They know, everybody knows the 80/20 rule but very few people practice it.

The 80/20 rule is that 80% of the return on your investment of time, energy and money comes from 20% of your activities. If you can learn to focus on those 20%, that 20% that generates the greatest return of investment of time, energy and money, you’re going to be much more effective in your business and many people, like I say know that, but very few people practice it. As a coach, I try to help people to understand “what is that 20% that’s going to bring you the greatest return? Let’s focus on that. Let’s set goals and action plans in relation to that 20% because that’s going to bring the greatest return.”

People are resistant to change. They get into doing the status quo and they get comfortable with that. It’s hard for people to get out of their comfort zone and you really need to get out of your comfort zone to make a difference in your business and be willing to be open to other ideas because in this environment, in this business world, if we think that we can be successful in business based on talent alone, it’s not going to happen. You can’t just survive in business based on talent alone anymore. You have to have these other business skills that are necessary for success. That’s why 95% of small businesses go bankrupt, is because often times a person is very talented, they are very technically confident, they do their job but they don’t have the other skillsets to be successful.

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