Did you make a New Year’s Resolution this year?

If you did, well done!

Question – Did you believe you will achieve it?

Now, I’m not knocking Resolutions – far from it. The dictionary defines Resolution as a ‘Firm decision to do something’ and I’m all for decisions and implementation of those decisions.

If you didn’t make a resolution this year the chances are it’s because you’re fed up setting yourself up to fail even before you get to the end of January.
If you did make a resolution many of you will have done it ‘tongue-in-cheek’ knowing that it’ll never last.

We are now in the 4th day 2012, how many of us still even recall our New Year’s resolution?

However some of you will have made your resolution with good intentions and seriously want to make them happen. Even so, to the question ‘Do you believe you can achieve it?’ Many of you will have answered with a faltering ‘I hope so…’

The thing is that this experience starts at a pretty early age with our mums and dads asking us on New Year’s Day to make a New Years Resolution. For most of us we are then left to our own devices to achieve them. No Support, no encouragement – nothing – until next New Year when they ask you to make another.

Think about that… Every year from when we were kids we experienced our ‘decisions to do something’ failing.

Its little wonder then, that a firm commitment to taking action happens so rarely in Small to Medium sized businesses. We’ve learned from repeated experience from an early age that they don’t get results.
Yet we all know that in business it’s absolutely critical to on-going success to build in time to review past performance and plan future activity for improvement and then to act on the plan.

So how do we break that pattern?

How can we turn our Resolutions, both business and personal into results that we can be proud of, regardless of what time of year we make them?

Here are some tips and ideas which have helped ‘break the pattern’ for the clients we work with.

• Avoid self-blame, which is a prime predictor of failure.
• Expect slip-ups but avoid falls. You know what I mean, missing one exercise session should not put an end to the entire exercise regimen. Use slip-ups to strengthen resolve. Not an excuse to quit.
• Make realistic, attainable goals along with a plan based on real activity and tasksn. Make sure you share your plan and your resolve to carry it out with others who have a vested interest. (That’s doesn’t mean tell your Gran , you’ll be a millionaire next year!!)
• Cultivate a support network or a buddy system. Getting other people to hold you accountable to your Resolutions massively improves your chances of success.
• Track progress. Always measure progress, this strengthens resolve.
• Reward success with a reward established in advance.

Remember, your resolution, your activity plan, is a marathon, not a 100-yard sprint. It will take three to six months before a change becomes routine. The first month is usually not the problem for most people.

One last reminder, its about activity planning, NOT good thoughts and intentions. To paraphrase a saying, regardless of how much positivity I put out there, the only way I’m getting a Pizza for dinner is either cook it myself or pick up the phone and get someone else to do the work for me…

As we like to say here at Templeton Green, The only constant is change; what change will you choose today?

The Return of the Business Coach

I’m going to start with a statement that seems counter productive to my profession;

Business Training is largely a waste of time and money.

The easiest way to explain this would be to recall a quote from one of our previous clients, Francis:

 Training in any form largely concerns itself with the transfer of knowledge. Unfortunately many of us will know the things we ought to be doing more of but we fail to understand the importance of key tasks.

This is where coaching comes into play and in particular Business Coaching. However we are dealing with an unregulated industry, so we as a company dropped the term “Business Coach” two years ago. Why? Because ask your self, every time you go to a networking event, how many coaches do you meet. As many as Graphic/Web Designers I would wager. Most of these coaches are life/NLP or confidence coaches, or worse still Accountants who claim to offer a coaching service, but in fact offer a business advisory service, which again deals with a transfer of knowledge.

So in all this murky water, what is a Business Coach and why on Earth would you need one?

Simple really. A Business Coach is a professional that has the necessary understanding of what works commercially and has the skill set to communicate that knowledge in such a way that, simply put, you ‘get it’ enough to take affirmative action which leads to results, both commercially and personally.

I’II give you another example, a client of mine, was sent on a 4 day management development course that is part and parcel with large corporate enterprises. 3 months down the line, she was still grappling with line management delegation. Having the good sense to pick up the phone we had a coffee and to quote her:

Now I won’t lie, I was very flattered and because she ‘got it’ perhaps in her enthusiasm she exaggerated a little. I simply helped her translate knowledge she had picked up from the course into a level of understanding she could use.

So we made a decision last month, we are reclaiming the title and setting a new bar that all “business coaches” must adhere to give themselves credibility.

If you are working with a Business Coach, then they ought to be able to agree to the following:
1. Inspiring the need to develop both yourself AND the business
2. Motivating you to take/find the internal resolve that leads to affirmative actions that drive the business forwards.
3. Lay business processes in place that move the enterprise away from an owner operated model to one that operates with a strong management board
4. Lastly and most importantly, is prepared to guarantee if they fail to educate, inspire and transform your business, then they will return their programme fees.

So ask yourself, ‘How big is the well of your business knowledge?’ And then ask, ’How much of this do you actually use day to day?’ If you actually did all of the things you ought to do, what would be the result?
The excuses of time, money, the economy are I’m sorry to say just statements of denial. Just look at our results http://www.templetongreen.com/our-results/ and you’ll see that we cut thru the quagmire of denial and excuses and help you gain the necessary understanding to move your business forwards.

With our new Programs Launching this month, we offer a money back guarantee, if it does not deliver a strong commercial result in line with the results we have shown above, we will give you a full refund at the end of the course. So finally I ask you, does the benefit of working with a Templeton Green Business Coach out weight the risk of staying with the status quo.

Get in touch for a needs analysis to find out which of our new programs are best for you and with training grants available, the investment becomes extremely attractive for you to push forwards the business and gain the commercial success you deserve.

Lastly as we say at Templeton Green, in business as in life, we have choices, what will you choose today?

There is a famous story by Napoleon Hill. It goes something like this:

There was a cat who liked to sit on the stove. One day he accidently sat on the hot stove. That cat never sat on the hot stove again. In fact he never sat on the stove when cold either. He simply got out of the business of sitting on stoves… He ‘over-learned’ from experience…

So why recap this story? Last week, I was treated to lunch by two successful business owners who both appeared to share traits with the cat in our story and herein lies the truth of the past few years.

Regardless of industry, the overwhelming majority of us have had to adapt to how we do business. We’ve seen our markets move, the strength of business relationships tested and the need to be less cavalier about spending.

The danger of over-learning from our experience is we begin to see everything we do as a prelude to disaster and walk the cautious path. We all know this path, the prudent and careful one, forgetting that it was the opposite of such behaviour that lead to our entrepreneurial desire and success. So we willingly move from one extreme to the other under the justification that we’re in tough times.

So what’s the result? We create a business that is starved of success, creativity and most importantly joy. With the green shoots of recovery becoming evident (go on, I dare you to take off those pessimistic specs and take a REAL look), we are all in danger of being the cat that tentatively goes back into the market place, that slows growth and confirms our worst fears, we’re not ready. We’ve forgotten what a calculated risk is. We just see the problem in things.

So how to improve? How to find a balance between caution and the cavalier? Here are three tips:

1. Write down your optimistic and pessimistic expectations for the task ahead.
2. Clearly write down the risks to success. Now this can be hard to see. We can be in denial about the real risks, so explain it someone who is not directly related to you business. Someone’s whose opinion you trust. If you can explain to them the task without using jargon, then you are more than half way there.
3. Look at both the Profitability and the cashflow requirements of the task. These are different. If a new venture/product/service has a high gross profit but the customer payments are delayed, you could find yourself out of business.

 Lastly as we say at Templeton Green, in business as in life, we have choices, what will you choose today?

The story of jack and beanstalk is as old as days; however as a story about business, it is equally, if not a more powerful a story.

We have Jack, and employee who works for his mother, the manager. Jack does what he’s told and regardless of what happens that day, his mother, the manager ensures his dinner is on the table.

So Jack, works hard, and will always have the security that he’ll always have his dinner that night. (An employee will always get paid, that’s their security)

His Mother, the manager is solely concerned about getting enough done to run the house and ensure Jack’s dinner.  She sometimes feels she runs the house (biz) for the sole purpose of providing a lifestyle for her son (the employee).

Then one day Jack, on another mind numbingly boring task, of insanity, meets a man, who plants an idea in his mind. Have the freedom of working for yourself, take charge and go fulfil your dreams. So in a euphoric rush of blood to the head, he frees himself from his mother’s apron strings and flies solo with magic beans in hand (now self employed).

His mother mocks him and sends him to bed without dinner. The truth of freedom is you may not have dinner each and every night. (In self employment, nothing is guaranteed).

However our enthusiastic Jack, inspired by his hunger devises a path of growth and after overcoming his fear of heights, climbs the beanstalk (walks the talk).

After overcoming many obstacles he finally gets his head out of the clouds and sees a rival business owner with a goose that lays the golden egg (The Business Owner). The giant doesn’t even look after the goose (biz). His minions do; all he is concerned with is the golden egg (profits). As it’s from this egg, he amasses his wealth.

Jack inspired by the giant, wonders what it would be like to have a gaggle of geese laying multiple golden eggs (The Investor e.g. Dragons Den). Jack first attempts espionage then simply harvests the idea in order to obtain his very own golden goose, so he too can live off the profits and not simply continue to work the sweat off his own brow as either the employee or self employed person that trades his time for money. He wants the profitable business that works without him… He wants the lifestyle running a business was supposed to bring, as promised to him, the moment he pulled himself free from those apron strings.

 So in this entire story, the question, who was the Entrepreneur? The answer, why the man who sold Jack the magic beans (the idea). He made money regardless of the risk to him. He is in the business of ideas. The investor and true business owner crave the golden egg. All of the other protagonists in effect have jobs either making money for themselves or in return for cash flow security someone else.

This path is common for most. It’s not about getting to the top, but achieving your goals. My penultimate question, is as you read this article, which role(s) have you occupied this week already?

As we say at Templeton Green, in business as in life we have choices, what will you choose today?