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One thread I’ve noticed for all those I admire the most, the professionals with careers that make a difference and bring success is their abilities to achieve excellence was sewn together with hours and hours of practice.

A little research and I found an online qualifier for how long to learn to play the piano.  (I couldn’t locate a test for most other things!)  The test consisted of questions like, how well do you want to play level 1 – 10, how fast do you want to learn, what kind or quality of teacher are you willing to invest in, how much time per day and how many days a week are you willing to commit to practice?  Learning to play at level 10 takes 4 – 8 years and many hours rehearsing each day, every week.

What about your craft?  How many hours of rehearsal does it take to become outstanding in your field?   In the New York Times best-selling book “Outliers,” Malcolm Gladwell shares that mastery of most fields generally requires 10,000 hours of practice.  For example, practice four hours per day five days a week for ten years to reach level ten. 

This time commitment is called the 10,000 Hour Rule.  

It’s easy not to do the very things we know we should.  Plans to reach our goals can easily be ignored by reaching for the habit that already provides comfort.  Sitting down instead of exercising, turning on the TV instead of reading, going to the same old job instead of taking control and learning new skills.  Creating new habits takes dedication and time, time to practice over and over until the desired action becomes a habit.

Plan to be consistent.  If the habit you are trying to develop is something you’ve been doing at home, on your computer and a trip is coming up, plan ahead.  Get your laptop out and get it ready to help with the task on the go.

Most of us fail to reward ourself.  Don’t treat yourself worse than a dog.  Don’t we all pat a dog on the head or even give it a treat when performing a new skill for us?  When we do a planned task, something we want to make a habit, we should celebrate.  No, not go out and have drinks but acknowledge the success.  Say something like, “I did it” with excitement and emphasis.  Create a rewarding feeling.

It’s our habits that create outcomes.  Start the small patterns that will lead to the success you want.  Solid habits are the key to our success.

Develop Solid Habits.

Throughout the weeks, people come and go, we meet them but rarely take the time to get to know them.  If you like me, have a good conversation, hand out a business card and get a business card, all that’s lacking to create a relationship is follow up.

What would happen if that stack of cards in your desk drawer as an example, instead of just putting the next 100 cards aside you follow through?  It may be difficult with that old pile, but you can start anew.

We get all caught up with social media, hoping to attract business through our outreach, but we often miss the old-fashion handshake meeting and developing a connection that’s right there, right now!

Here’s my connection plan;

1. Follow up by email within 24 hours

2. If they respond – Ask to connect on LinkedIn

3. If they reply positively – Send a Thank You – Email

4, With that positive return, I ask them to Check out my YouTube Channel

Be sure to return the connection, follow them, support their work, and you’ll have a friend and a customer waiting in the wings for life.  Not everyone is our customer, but everyone knows someone who knows a person who could be!

People Come and Go in our lives; it’s up to us to connect!

 

What do you do to get moving when an overwhelming feeling sets in and you feel frozen in place.  When I need to get through less than ideal daily duties or deal with difficult tasks, I listen to a favorite youtube video, usually a documentary on someone’s success and occasionally a favorite motivational video, one that in some way I can relate to and while listening I start the tasks at hand.  I get moving.

It’s amazing what getting started can do to help us push through and finish the task.  It’s not the whole project we should focus on, but it’s the beginning.  There’s an old saying, getting started is have the task, and it’s true.

Find your trigger and Get Moving!

How long has it been since you hit your goals?  You’ve taken some hits, had some losses and managed to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and once again develop the faith that you can do the work and succeed this time.  But, is it enough?  Is your plan big enough to get you over the hurdle this time?

Most of us underestimate the cost of doing business.  A small business can be like a hungry monster eating away all the profits.  The amount of work that we often do as owners and have our spouse help with and not receive pay is often ridiculous.  Having stronger faith, more belief and working harder is not an answer to building a business.  It takes business size ideas!

Starting a business on a shoestring budget is not the problem.  There’s story after story that proves this.  Starting with a plan that has no way to transition from a one-person practice to a company where all the work is delegated to various players and enough money rolls in to pay everyone plus the related costs and still make a profit, now that’s a business with promise but is that step in your plans?

I’m currently working for a man who has a business with more than 40 locations.  Each location takes an average of half a million dollars to operate each year.  There’s no profit until hitting this level.  His average revenue per location is over two million.  He doesn’t work in the businesses, obviously that many places he couldn’t but he did at first.  He instead runs his business as an owner.  The difference in his business plan and so many is the profit far exceeded the cost of doing business, and the work was all done by others as a business should be.  This business has a profitable structure that allows the owner to run the company not just work.

What are you doing?   Can it transition into a profitable enterprise?  Is it simple enough, easy enough that a workforce is available to support it?  Can you make enough as a practice to transition?  Will the development be possible without the cost of expansion consuming all the profits?

Is It Enough?

 

 

If our skill set is old, weak or behind the times, and has not been as productive as we would have hoped, in other words, we haven’t gained the success we’d like to have had using them, it’s time to step up and develop then perfect a few new skills.  Our financial success from this point forward depends on it.

What five skills would revitalize your career performance by perfecting them?  You and I know we can’t achieve more tomorrow without becoming more today.  It’s the work on ourselves that will get us to the next level and then the next.

Here’s my list of five;

1. Follow through.  It’s easy to set a goal a week in advance, but I found follow-through the complete the tasks more difficult.  Follow-through is a skill and must be mastered to achieve success in almost everything.  Setting bigger goals and moving up can mean doing things beyond our work habits.  A new level of follow-through may be needed.

2. Writing.  Wow, my junior high school teachers wouldn’t believe I’d ever have admitted this.  In a blog post, I quoted Bill Gates who said: “Content is King.”  That said, who knows our content better than ourselves.  Learning to write has become an essential skill like few others.

3. Marketing.  Yes, marketing.  Even if it is not for the company, we must know how to market.  If we learn other skills, we have to put them to use for them to be productive and this may take marketing those skills.

4. Estimating the Difficult.  Now, this may not have anything to do with you and your work or success, but it’s a great example that there’s always something that’s unique to our work, usually something we’ve wrestled with for a long time that we need to perfect.  What’s your industry-specific skill that when improved tenfold will dramatically change your game?

5.  Fearless Selling.  Ok, here’s the truth, the four above seem exciting to attack but fearless selling just thinking about it causes me to hold my breath.  You see it’s easy for me to sell the mundane in my work, I’ve developed skills that allow me to do that with ease.  Fearless selling is about selling the products and services that are at the highest level.  It’s selling to the most extreme clients without fear.

Make a list of your five most important skills to advance and get to work.

Your Financial Success Depends On It. 

Everyone trying to reach a new level needs a coach.  If it’s to improve our personal life it’s called a life coach, for our professional life, an executive or career coach may be the best choice and so on.  Tony Robbins is considered the father of coaching and now has a team of hand-picked coaches to provide this service to many.   Tony’s first coaching customer admittingly was himself!

Maybe there’s an answer for us all in this acknowledgment.  Tony instead of spending money on outside coaches had a mentor, Jim Rohn, and with an understanding of how things worked, Tony set outrageous goals and focused his energy into becoming the person he is today.  If he can do that, why can’t we?

If you can afford and find a qualified coach who can help you move forward, that’s probably the best way but if not, what’s wrong with going back to the way personal coaching came into existence.  Here’s the secret to Tony Robbins’s success in self-coaching.  It’s also one of my favorite quotes authored by Jim Rohn, Tony Robbins’ mentor and that quote “Work harder on yourself than you do your job.”  It is the most empowering phrase I’ve ever heard.

That quote is the simple answer to all our problems and it has never been so easy to apply.   Training on how to are readily available online on nearly every subject, and mentors or people with specific knowledge love to help people who are moving up in expertise in every field.  I know, I love to work with capable people in my industry if they want to learn more and keep moving up.  Knowledge and capability make us all more valuable.

“Work Harder on Yourself than You do on Your Job!”

Be Your Own Coach!

In the process of marketing our products or services, we must realize that the perception of outstanding varies dramatically in the minds of our customers.  An exceptional product or service to one is economy to another, and the exclusive product or service to the other is outlandish to the one.

This fact allows us to provide products and services that vary dramatically in cost and dollar value and yet each is the very best for a particular clientele.  It enables us to offer excellent products at various price points increasing the potential market in a given demographic area and yet not violate our standards of high quality.

The advantage of knowing this allows us to expand our market and grow our business without increasing our marketing volume.  The words and graphics we use can attract a variety of clients all having the common thread of high quality in mind.

One word of caution, never mix product choices too strikingly!  When your product selections seem exaggerated in range to your customers, your marketing could come across as misleading and will not bring the confidence we seek when building loyal customers.

Remember that “Outstanding Varies”.

 

Coloring inside the lines is easy.  That’s what must of us do we stay in the comfort of the rules others make for us, and we remain where it is easy and comfortable.

As business owners, it’s critical to create products or services that do more than what’s already known and provided by others.  To offer products and services that excite our customers is more difficult and it’s much like being an artist.

What is your business?  What are your product lines?  Can they be recreated to be of more value to customers?  Can they be more stylish?  Can they be made of higher quality materials?  Is it possible the way you serve them could be improved five times over?

Keep mindful that we don’t need to please everyone.  It never ceases to amaze me that Rudy’s BBQ created a second business selling hamburgers in a city filled with companies already established selling hamburgers, but they did, it’s called Mighty Fine.

How did they do it?  They came up with a better way and talked about it.  Do they get all the business in town?  No, but they have all they can handle and a higher rate of repeat customers than most, and by doing this, they created a successful secondary business.

They became Artists while others stayed within the rules and colored between the lines.

What do you know how to do?   What do you enjoy doing and wish you could do exclusively to meet your success goals?  Make note, write it down and then think for a few minutes how great that would feel.  Others and your thinking may have devalued that thing you would do, the one thing that you enjoy doing the most.

Change that thinking, start believing what you do has value.  Maybe not to everyone but does that matter?  Do you need everyone to understand the value you bring in the work you do?  That could be an impossible goal, and impossible goals die hard.

There would never have been an Aston Martin, a Bugatti, the Ferrari, a Lamborghini or even a Voltswagon if the creators of those cars devalued their ideas based on others lack of value thinking.  Those creators knew it would have great value for someone.  It is very likely that what you do has value too.

How much market share do you need to make it a viable business?  When I asked myself this question and realized how few clients I would need each month, it was a wow feeling.  You too may have a wow moment when you understand how easy it could be if you would do it.

The key to your success is to find a way or ways for those who will see great value in your product or service to do so.

You must know that What You Do Has Value.