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What we're going to be doing now is we're going to be going through a review of all
of the past six strategies and how they play into all of this. You'll see "overview," "vision,"
see Strategy 1. One of the characteristics of successful people is that they have their
3-year vision in place.
Planning, which comes from Strategy #2. One of the characteristics of successful people
is that they take time out to plan and review their lives. We talked about business development
time, right? Well, in that business development time, if you're reviewing your 3-year vision
once a year at the 1-year planning mark, then you're going to be reviewing your lives. But
you don't want to just review your life once a year, right? So that's when you're having
family meetings and you're reviewing what your vacations are. Remember back in Strategy
#2, when I was mapping out your calendar for a year ahead that you put all your vacations
in in advance? Of course, that comes from a family meeting, not just a business meeting
for yourself.
How frequently will you review your free, focus, and buffer time, and to plan time out
for personal planning and reflection as well? Why not quarterly? Just go away as a couple;
if you've got children, just go away, a couple's trip to strengthen the couple and talk about
the next three months of your personal time, and the year ahead.
Follow-through, from Strategy #3. One of the characteristics of successful people is that
they can be counted on to do what they say they will do. When will you stop telling stories,
making excuses, justifying, rationalizing? Has everybody heard the little joke about
rationalizing? It's a "ration-a-lies." A ration of lies. That's rationalizing. So when will
you become that championship leader? From there is where you lead your all-star team.
And reserves. One of the characteristics of successful people is that they have reserves,
and we talked about that in Strategy #4, where you need to have a three month financial reserve
so that if the *** were to hit the fan, the worst case scenario, you have no business
-- well, you've got the money to keep the business afloat, and now you've got the time
to go out and seriously market and sell in those three months. And then we talk again,
because that's feast or famine, and I've talked to too many contractors over the years -- but
not only contractors; any small business owner -- they're so busy making the sales, they
get a lot of work, and now they're so busy dealing with the work, they're not making
any sales, and now they're back to so busy having to make sales because they have no
work. It's a rollercoaster ride, the feast or famine. However, nonetheless, you do need
to have reserves in case something big were to happen.
Have you created a life in which you have much more than you need of time, energy, space,
money, love, skills, support, nourishing relationships, and meditation? I'm not sure if I've spoken
about this before, but meditation is huge. It's huge. It could be something -- our snow
is gone, kind of, and we had this beautiful snow happening out here that looked like one
of those balls that you turn upside down. You could just look into that and just study
the snowflakes. Five minutes of just turning your mind off of business. And as I was talking
about, the way you do that is by filling your mind with something else, like these beautiful
snowflakes.
The most important characteristic of successful people is that they make decisions quickly
and take action immediately so that they are non-negotiable decisions.