By the way, most don’t follow through. A large % of entrepreneurs spend more time planning a vacation than they do planning a successful year. They are otherwise known in the cliche ’the 80/20 concept’ as the 80%. 20% write the business in good, bad or sideways markets, while 80%, with the same training, marketplace, interest rates, pandemic, divide the 20% remaining. Human nature reveals itself. Darwinism in action.
The let down at the end of the year is trumpeted by management and poor producers alike as a softer way (no one wants to hurt others’ feelings) to justify mediocrity. This is not to say anyone is mediocre. This is to say that excuses make it easier to shift the blame of poor efforts and performance. Mediocrity is a choice. So is success. Of the three elements to a result: genetics, behavioral patterns and opportunity, behavior is what we Can control.
What thoughts are taking up space in your head? Do they make you better? Do they bring out your best efforts or do they pander to procrastination and excuses?
Here are some thoughts about turning the nays into yays! this time of year.
If you stay ready you don’t have to get ready!
Having coached a range of beginners to top pro’s over many years in a number of entrepreneurial industries, here are successful, if not new, ideas that will hopefully ring the right holiday bell for you and make a year end and year beginning difference.
1) Work through the end of this year. If you’re going to be around, attend the meetings, the parties, the mixers, the usual and fun gatherings, but do it with consciousness. Be present of whom you’re with. Listen, ask, engage. People are story tellers. Let them tell theirs. During this pandemic, over 70% of the population surveyed acknowledged experiencing loneliness that impaired their personal and work lives. Empathy and trust creates
relationships and business, without even trying. If you stay ready you don’t have to get ready!
2) Make your daily calls to your Sphere of Influence (SOI). Keep up the disciplined pace and rhythm of talking to and cementing relationships with past clients, friends, associates and strangers (those whom you have not yet met). While others justify this time of the year as slow and ‘nobody wants to do anything ‘till the new year,’ stay in touch with your tribe as usual. Your conversations may be more shifted to holiday, parties, family and world events, but strange and wonderful things happen when you make the calls and stay in touch. Show up.
3) Increase the numbers in your SOI every day. While others start going to sleep this time of year, add a certain number of people to your data base every day. Make it a game, a goal to achieve. It’s easier to talk to people this time of year, so talk and ask if you can include them in your informative newsletter or touch base, every once in a while. 2-3 new people each day adds up quickly. This is not just a year ending strategy, but one that should keep your list expanding and you growing continuously.
4) Set goals for social media strategies. Don’t wait for the new year to figure it out. Keep your head in the game and hit the bricks running in January, while most who have procrastinated, have other distractions with which to contend. Learn the social media and internet tools and tricks you normally say you don’t have.
5) Well before the new year, set physical, financial, mental, educational, family, social and spiritual goals. Break these main goals down into bite sized chunks. Those chunks are what go on your
To-Do List. Focus on setting goals that balance you since you are not a ‘one trick pony.’ See and plan for the bigger picture.
6) Mindset is how you approach your goals and how you approach your life. All is connected. Your values create your attitudes which create your actions. Create a mindset that says, You don’t Have To do it, You Get To do it. Replace old mediocre thinking with what you want instead. Start the day stating your affirmations out loud. Basic and ridiculous as this may seen, do it anyway. You are always listening. Do you send your kids off to school with ‘Have a lousy day, don’t pay attention in class?’ Then, why entertain negative thoughts that cause procrastination, poor confidence and performance for yourself? If you stay ready you don’t have to get ready!
7) Change the wiring in your brain. Brain plasticity is the scientific concept that the brain is always changing and processing. Learning at any age is an established fact. So is changing poor habits into positive ones.