The CEO Elite

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Check Back – Evaluate Now – Plan Forward

While you are celebrating the incoming year it is important that you look back at what you have done, evaluate what you have accomplished, and make plans for the future. It is important if growing your business over the next year is part of your vision.

Check Back

Look at your accomplishments over the year. Look at your accounts, your sales, your clients’ results, your product turnover, and include your personal and business achievement. Use your calendar if you have to, to remember what you have been doing over the year, where you have been, who you have been networking or doing business with. If this feels like a lot of work, then try keeping track during the year. Create an accomplishment list, a list you add to every time you achieve something, so you can simply review it at the end of the year.

Evaluate Now

What were you expecting to have accomplished this past year? If you wrote out your goals at the end of last year then go back and review them. Do any of your accomplishments meet or exceed your goals for the year? Create some metrics around your results.

  • Percent of your goals met.
  • Percent of each goal achieved.
  • Areas where you did not achieve expected results.

Plan Forward

Now, start looking forward. Look at where you need to get help (check the “areas where you did not achieve expected results”). Create goals based on last year’s results and try to match or exceed them again. Look at new areas of growth. Create your Goals for the next year in terms that you can understand and measure at the end of the year. Add the phrase “All this or better” to the end of your goal list and then make sure you review them during the year.

Don’t let the year go by while you hope to achieve this great list you created; evaluate, make adjustments, put in new effort, bring on more help, do what needs to get done to meet or exceed your goals and next year you will be singing your outstanding achievements to your inner circle and receive the accolades you deserve because you did the work you committed to do.

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Let Go of Perfection – It Won’t Help Your Business

Perfect Example_Not Perfect Video

Yep, this is my live video. When I went to do my video on letting go of perfection, this is what happened. I had to let go, what else could I do.

Perfection is an unrealistic construct of our culture that makes us believe that somewhere in this universe there is something that is perfect and we are able to recreate it. With a more personal perspective, we look to what we do, have, or wish to become as a journey to perfection. Perfection is not about the journey, it is about the destination. Life is about the journey. So if you are focused on perfection, you are not living a life that is full and filled with purpose.

What is perfection NOT?

  • Perfection is not someone else’s idea of you, your life, or your business. The challenge is we give our power away when we look at someone else’s life and think, I will never have that, I can never be that good, I can’t afford it, etc. It is not yours, stop envying things others have.

Who gets to define perfection?

  • You do. Your goals to get to your perfection are set by you and are influenced by what you think other people expect. If you set your goals to your own standards and forget what other people think, then you can create a journey that is in line with what you truly want.

Why do we do this?

  • Because we want to belong. It is our natural state to want to be a part of a family/pack/group. We want to be accepted, understood, welcomed, respected, and loved. To do this, we look for ways to look and act like the people we wish to be around. There is nothing wrong with being liked by them unless you expect to be exactly like them.

Is it achievable?

  • Some goals may be achievable, but they are never sustainable when they are not yours. If you are not totally passionate about doing the work you will lose the motivation to keep going when it gets difficult or boring. Remember, even the stars eventually burn out and go dark and they ARE doing what they are supposed to do.

What is better?

  • Work towards the goals that align with your purpose.
  • Stop judging yourself on your perceived idea of perfection and measure your actual accomplishments.
  • Celebrate what you have achieved. Evaluate what has not worked and re-adjust your plan.
  • Surround yourself with amazing people that you align with, that can see your brilliance and will celebrate your accomplishments with you.

Entrepreneur Awakening: Making the move from employee to business owner

Want more insight into running a business like the successful entrepreneur you are? Check out my book Entrepreneur Awakening – Making the Move from Employee to Business Owner.

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Where Expertise is Born

art-pottery-wheel-hands

You spend a lifetime studying, training, attending lectures, learning, reading, practicing, working, going to conferences, hiring coaches and mentors, and it is not until you make the mistake that you understand the big picture of what you can do. The failure is where true expertise is born.

Experts have experience in their area of focus, but they also know where things go wrong, because they have experienced the failures as well as the successes.

The challenge for so many business owners is to figure out how they can call themselves an expert. I have had so many people say to me, “well I don’t want to sound arrogant” or “I don’t like to talk about myself” or other statements that show they are afraid to admit to their expertise. There are likely one of two reasons for this: 1. They don’t think they have learned enough to be an expert or 2. They don’t feel they have the right to name themselves an expert. It may also be because they know people that are not experts that have given themselves this title and they don’t want to be lumped in with “that type of person”.

The problem is, if you don’t believe you are an expert, no one else will. So to get you started on believing you are the expert at what you do I want you to make a list of your failures. When have you failed and what did you learn from it?

Failure What I learned

Learning is important.
Doing the work is important.
But like the potter who molds the clay into pots and bowls on his pottery wheel, it is the empty space inside the vessel that makes it useful.
You mold your life with all your experiences, but it is your failures that makes your expertise useful to others.

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The Decision Matrix – Making Decisions Easier

Doors_decision

In my book the Entrepreneur Awakening – Making a Move from Employee to Business Owner I describe several rules and tools of decision-making. One tool I use all the time for helping people make any type of decision is the Decision Matrix.

The decision matrix is basically a way to evaluate your choices and their potential effect on your values. You get a score for each decision that will more clearly reflect how you feel about the option and how it may affect your life.

To use this tool, you need to know all of your options and all of the possible outcomes. I recommend you brainstorm ideas with a friend, colleague, or your accountability partners to ensure you get the full picture of what’s available.

The important point to recognize is that the numbers only apply to you and no one else. It is your decision and your outcome.

Start by drawing a table with five or more columns and rows. Down the left side of the matrix are the items that are important you and that will affect your decision. For example:

  • Avoid working on weekends.
  • Must be available to pick up kids when the husband is on shifts.
  • Cannot afford to buy a second car.
  • Pays well

Or other items about your business and your life that will be affected by the decision.

Across the top of the matrix is a list of all your options. When using this type of matrix, you must have more than two options. Look for all of the outcomes that could apply to you so you get a broad understanding of your expectations and your needs. For example:

  • Work from home office for self
  • Work from home office for someone else
  • Commute to city for job

Now we look at how each of your options affects each item that is important to you and rate it out of 10. For example:

“Commute to the city for a job” vs “be available to pick up kids” is likely less valuable to your desired outcome so you would rate it lower.

“Commute to the city for a job” vs “Pays well” is likely more in line with your desired outcome.

Use a higher number for combinations that are more desirable and a lower number for combinations that are less desirable.

Work from home office for self Work from home office for someone else Commute to city for job
Don’t work on weekends 2 4 10
Pick up Kids 10 8 2
Must pay for a second car 10 8 2
Pays well initially 2 7 9
Unlimited potential income 10 1 1
Totals 34 28 24

When you have completed the evaluation you simply need to add up the totals for your options. After doing the tally some options become front-runners and some are easily removed from the list.

This does not make your decision for you, it shows you what you see as valuable and how you rate your options against what is valuable to you in your life. If you still want to take the option that rates the lowest, then you need to justify that choice. When you do, you will likely have another “item that is important to you” to put in your matrix.

Check out my book for another decision tool and the other rules of decision-making.

Entrepreneur Awakening: Making the move from employee to business owner

Entrepreneur Awakening

Making the Move From Employee to Business Owner.

Now on Amazon (also in Kindle format)

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Align Yourself with Purpose

A life’s purpose is sought by all humans. I believe it is one of the things that makes us human. Animals don’t look for their purpose, they simply live it. We, as humans, spend a great deal of time andcareer-firefighter-relaxing-job-purpose effort trying to decipher the meaning of our lives. Having meaning allows us to live in our purpose.

But how does living in our purpose actually benefit us and our business?

When we don’t have a purpose we stop things from happening. If you are trying to grow your business, open a new market, reach new clients, create new products, attract an advisory board, raise your rates, etc., without purpose it is harder and takes more effort to make these things happen.

Related Article – Spiritual Business: Beyond Balance

If you are not aligned with your purpose you will not have a “Desired Focus”. This desire helps you find the one thing in your business that is important enough to hold most of your attention and take more of your investment of time and money.  Without it, you continue to give to all aspects of your business with the same time, attention, and money. If you try to do all things equally you will likely not do any of them well.

Without Focus, there is no endpoint or destination. How will you know you have met your target? How will you know when to hire, fire, invest, rent, stay open, etc.? How will you know when you should give up and stop investing? How can you have any metrics at all?

Without a destination, there can be no strategic plans. Plans are like the GPS that tells you when to turn, how far to go, and when you have arrived. There is no way to get a GPS to give you directions until you have entered a destination. Strategic planning is the same. Once you know your destination or goals for your business, you can then start making the plans to get your business there.

Purpose Pointer_right Desired Focus Pointer_rightDestination Pointer_right Strategy Pointer_right Success

There is no way to a truly successful business without first understanding your purpose.

Want to hear Barb explain this further? Watch this video