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1:03 – Frustration defined
1:41 – So what should you do?
2:10 – The Improvement Cycle
2:27 – Phase 1: Assess!
3:15 – Phase 2: Realistic goals
4:27 – Phase 3: Set activities
5:19 – Phase 4: Get feedback
7:50 – Suggested books to read for 2013
8:04 – Book 1: Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
8:35 – Book 2: Think and Grow Rich
9:59 – Share the books you read with us!
10:21 – Tip of the week
Hello everybody! Welcome to the HVACbusinessgrowth.com podcast and I’m your host Nick Bielawski. This is the very first podcast for the year 2013. It’s the first of January and I think this time of year is a really good time to firstly review what you did in the previous year of 2012 and then also to set some goals and make some big plans for this upcoming year which, as we speak now is 2013. So let’s get stuck into the show.
I’d like to really look at this show as a bit of a pep talk for 2013—the year coming up. So it’s really are the people who are not satisfied with the current state of the business and to put it simply, they’re just frustrated.
What is frustration?
I think that frustration is just basically the gap that is between the expectation that the person has and their current position. If you have a big gap between expectation and your current position, that is frustration. So, if you’re frustrated in business or frustrated in any area of your life, that can flow into the rest of your life—whether it’s the financial side of things, your health, your relationships or the business side of it. So, it’s really important that you try and put a lid on the frustration and look into improving your life.
The big question is: Do you just simply drop your expectation or do you just keep on trying to spin in the hamster wheel and try to improve that way?
The answer is: you do neither. You don’t worry about dropping your expectations. You keep your goals and expectations exactly the same and you work on the things that give you great leverage and have an impact in improving your current and future situation.
One thing that I like to implement into any business and any stage of your life actually is a thing that’s called the improvement cycle. I actually got this from playing golf. What we’re going to do right now is go through the different phases of an improvement cycle.
The first thing that you need to do is make an assessment of where you’re at. Figures here are a lot easier to work with than feelings because it’s something that’s actually tangible and it’s easier to keep score of. You can look at things like profit which is quite a broad measurement. Then you can look at any business thing such as sales volume, the number of customers, the average transaction size, the margin, expenses, etc. There are probably a dozen of things that you can look at to get an accurate assessment of where you’re actually at. You can also build in a feeling of where you are in the business but like I said before, that can be a little bit subjective. Basically, just get the key business drivers here and use that when you’re making assessment on where you’re at.
The next thing that you need to do is to set some realistic goals. When you’re in business, I’m already assuming that you have a long-term goal, whether it’s to sell the business in 5 or 10 years time or 20 years time, or whether you have a profit target or a lifestyle target or something like that. Ideally, you have a longer-term goal that’s going from, say, 3-5 years onwards.
The trick with goal-setting is to break it down into tiny bite-sized chunks. What I mean by this is you might have a yearly goal that’s broken down into a quarterly goal that you then break down into a monthly goal or weekly goal and even daily goals are fantastic.
I really like the saying, “From little things, big things grow”. What this really means is: if you work on the little things in your business or in your life, they’ll add up to some really big things down the track. So, really getting clear on the big goal and then breaking it down into the immediate action steps is really where it’s at.
The third part of the improvement cycle is you need to set the activities that will provide the greatest leverage for you to reach your goals. This is going to be a really silly comment but if you want a different result, then do something different—so, if you have a business idea, a strategy, a tactic that actually feels uncomfortable to you, then it might just be the right thing to do. Human are really really predictable; they have a need for comfort. And usually, this need for comfort is actually greater than the need for growth. If everybody in the world was actually really passionate about growing and moving forward in leaps and bounds, then there would be that many millionaires, it wouldn’t be funny. I think that example alone shows you just how comfortable people get and how set people get in their ways when they’re running their life or doing their business.
The fourth part of the improvement cycle is you actually need to get feedback or accurate statistics or even data to measure progress. Think of it like a scoreboard; you just need to have a scoreboard with some key business indicators in there that are letting you know exactly where you’re at in your business or in your life. On the scoreboard, things like profit is okay but that’s quite a big thing and actually doesn’t break down enough into what is really the key driver in your business. So, like I said before, break things down into tiny bite-sized chunks and look at the key drivers of your business. Obviously, that’s going to be different for every person that’s going to be listing today.
What I suggest that you do is get a dashboard. Think of yourself like a pilot; a pilot will be flying the plane and now have a dashboard or a panel of instruments that are just giving them a lot of the key things that they need. Absolutely, every piece of information about the plane isn’t on the dashboard. They just got the key drivers or things that are absolutely necessary in flying the plane correctly. So put your KPIs or the key drivers in your business in front of you regularly so you can always see where your business is at. You can use things like: computer software or basic Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or even a whiteboard is fantastic for this. Just make sure that it’s really really visible, just a like what a scoreboard would be in a sports ground. It’s also important that you’re measuring your adherence to the process and the KPIs and not just the actual profit-side of things alone.
So I think the use of a dashboard is a really good tip and it’s something that I have on my computer. And also, I have a whiteboard version of it as well just to keep me honest. The whiteboard is actually right above the computer screen that I can see right now. So it’s right in front of me—front and centre.
So I think you can actually use this improvement cycle that we just went through in any area of your life. The most important thing in this entire process is actually you—you are the machine. If you can actually improve yourself, then your business will actually improve along with it. Obviously, the transition between years—we’re on the first of January right now and it’s a great time to rest and reconfigure and rework the wiring that is in your brain.
What I like to do this time of the year is to actually read books. I think you’ll find that, if you spoke to a lot of wealthy people, they are really avid and hungry readers of books.
So I’ve got a few book ideas for you and the first one is: Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. It’s quite an old book actually and it really goes into the way that your brain works and why you’re thinking certain ways. It actually gives you some skills and activities to improve the way that you think. It’s a really good book. Normally you can pick it up for around $20 on Amazon or you might actually be able to find that in your local bookshop if you like to look after the local business.
The other book that I highly recommend is: Think and Grow Rich. It’s by Napoleon Hill. What Napoleon Hill actually did was interview a lot of wealthy people back in the early 1900s I think and just actually find out why they were so successful. They were really in-depth interviews and what he actually did was compile a lot of this information into success principles type of book. It’s quite a difficult read but I think everybody that reads it is going to find some really really key pieces of information that can take their life forward and take their businesses forward.
So, these are just 2 good books that I like to read. Unlike any good book, it’s one of those things that you don’t read just once. The more times you read these types of books, you pick up something new every single time that you read them.
So, one of those things you might actually have a handful of books that you like to read at this time of year all of the time. This helps to settle you down and actually get your brain ticking over and thinking about what you’re going to do in the upcoming year.
So, books like these, particularly ones that are of self-help type are not so much focused on business or marketing but they help to really prime the mind and help you to think more effectively.
The question I have for you is this: Do you have books that you’d like to share? If you do, head over to the website, hvacbusinessgrowth.com, you might actually be there now and just leave a comment in the show notes with any books that you actually recommend and maybe a quick introduction as to what they’re about and what you learned from the book. That would be a great help to other business owners I think.
So now it’s time for the hvacbusinessgrowth.com tip of the week.
This week’s tip of the week is to eliminate anything that isn’t productive in your life or business. This could mean cleaning out the office; it could mean stop running unprofitable ad campaigns; it could mean cleaning out the hard drive in your computer or getting rid of all the equipment in your business that is just getting in the way and taking up valuable time, energy and resources. So if you can do this—eliminate anything that isn’t productive—this is going to enable you to focus on the things that are really important in your business, which are the type of things we’ve spoken about earlier—the key distinctions, the key drivers that actually make your business successful and they make your life work that little bit better as well.
So that’s all we’ve got time for today on the hvacbusinessgrowth.com podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you have any questions or any comments about the 2013 Pep Talk, head over to iTunes, leave a comment or head over to the website—hvacbusinessgrowth.com—if you’re not already there and leave a comment on the show notes and I can clear up any questions for you and answer them either on the website or in the future podcast episode.
Thanks for listening!