The 5-minute mentor

Happy New Year and welcome to the January installment of the “5 minute mentor”.  As previously mentioned, my hope is if you spend 5 minutes reading these posts you will learn something useful that you can apply to your business.

Since it’s the start of the New Year, it seems like a good idea to talk about New Year’s Resolutions. Well actually I don’t believe in them! Why does it take a new year to decide to do some things differently (usually lose weight, join the gym, learn something new or get organised at work, grow my business, be nicer to staff)? And we all know that the crowded gym full of new faces in January will be empty and back to the familiar faces by February! Which just goes to show that setting unrealistic goals/resolutions is not the way to make changes to your work or life.

What I do believe in is setting goals that are achievable and measurable, goals that excite and motivate you, and goals that you therefore stick with. The obvious benefit is that you move your business or life forward but you also feel good about yourself, feel like your making progress and so on. The key is to set small goals that drive to the bigger goal. So, if you want to get fit, rather than setting a New Year’s Resolution of going to the gym 3 times a week (when you have never set foot in a gym before), it would be better to say that you want to look great for your wedding in 3 months time and are going to walk up the stairs rather than take the lift, walk the dog for 15-mins a day etc.

So here are 5 tips to setting and achieving your goals (or New Year Resolution – if you must call it that!). Firstly, one for free (that you all already know: set SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-based):

1. Set a goal because you WANT to do it rather than you feel you SHOULD do
2. Consider a positive outcome for achieving the goal that will make you excited (so rather than “I must grow revenues by 10%“, “If I grow revenues by 10% I can afford to take on a sales director and focus my time on growing the business”)
3. Break each task into small bite sized chunks and schedule time to do each chunk so you can see how day by day you are achieving your overall goal
4. Be accountable – this is one of the key benefits my clients get from working with me (“I’m meeting Rob next week so I need to make sure I have done what I said I would do”)
5. JFWDI – Stop procrastinating and just get on and do it! Celebrate your successes and give yourself a reward at the end of each sub task (even if its ‘I’ll make a coffee when I have made that call’)

Later this month I am running a ‘Ride the Wave’ workshop for the Chamber focusing on the 3 key areas every entrepreneur focuses on to ensure a successful business. So that will be the focus on next month’s blog.

Rob
robert@dacostacoaching.co.uk
www.dacostacoaching.co.uk

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk