Where do you get your best ideas?

Where do you find you get your best ideas?  I’ll bet it’s not when you’re looking for them! 

I was  working with a client the other day on his marketing plan for the next 12 months.  He said something that made me realise he hadn’t read the notes from our previous meeting. 

So I did what any good coach would and asked him a couple of questions to find out why.  For me, it was one of those ‘duh’ moments (not as good as an ‘a-ha’ but often just as illuminating!).  This client does not like reading, so my carefully written notes had passed right by him.

Without saying anything, I started to use a Mindmap to illustrate the strategy we were discussing.

The difference was quite amazing.  My client became quite animated, asking lots of questions and making some suggestions of his own.  It was a very productive meeting.

Afterwards, when I came to put together the notes from our meeting, I drew a mindmap to summarise (using software from smartdraw.com). 

With written reports it can be easy to ramble on with too many words.  Mindmapping helps you get straight to the point!

Are you relying on luck?

Do you buy lottery tickets or enjoy the odd flutter on the dogs or horses? Perhaps you play a bit of roulette or blackjack? What about your business? Are you gambling that it will succeed too?

If that’s your strategy, then the odds are stacked against you and you’re likely to end up out of pocket and looking for a job.

And yet this is just what I see so many business owners doing. They don’t know how they’re going to get their clients or make sales. And they’re very busy being busy but they don’t know whether what they do works because they don’t monitor anything.

If you don’t have a proper business plan AND a marketing plan, you are relying too much on luck to carry you through. Here are some of the other results of not planning:

• You don’t know if your cashflow is enough to keep you going through a lean patch
• Budgeting doesn’t exist – you just spend as you need to
• You don’t like opening letters from the bank or credit card companies

“Successful people plan on paper” – I can’t remember who said that, but it’s so true!

Do you think people like Bill Gates or Richard Branson achieved their success without planning on paper? Sure, maybe in the very early days they winged it. But as soon as their businesses started getting serious, you can bet they started writing down their plans (or they got someone to help them).

Perhaps you believe you’re too busy to take time out and write your plan. So you wait until you’re less busy…. with less clients on your books, and less money coming in….. Or maybe you don’t like making plans or targets because then you might just have to do the work it takes to reach those targets.

Running your own business should be a combination of fun and work. To get that balance you need to rely less on luck and more on planning. You need to add a healthy dose of self-discipline as well.

One of the problems I’ve found through working with entrepreneurs is that they often aren’t sure what they need to plan (and they don’t like to ask for help because they think they should know). The guidelines given by banks and some other agencies can be so wordy and vague that they just add to the confusion. They also seem to call for very long (and boring) plans. In my experience, the more pages in the plan, the less likely it is to be looked at regularly.

It is possible to have simpler plans – as long as they include the essentials. What are you selling? To whom? How many? and How much? Then think about HOW you’re going to achieve this, what marketing tactics will you use? Pick just a few to start with and measure their effectiveness.

Make your plans, write them down and review them at least once a month, ideally look at them every day – this will keep you on track and working harder to reach and exceed those targets. Don’t let your business go to the dogs – get planning and increase your odds for success!

© Louise Barnes-Johnston, 2008

Louise Barnes-Johnston is “The Business Accelerator”. She provides business coaching and mentoring for entrepreneurs and owners of small businesses. Get a copy of her FREE report “10 Ways to Boost Your Business” at http://www.frontline-results.com

Shifting the Business Model

The last few days have been really amazing! I now have a new coach who is really going to help me do for my business what I do for other people's. She really understands the business model that I want to use and has already got me working to it.

Another exciting thing that has happened is that, on Friday, I took delivery of a home study Training Program I've been longing to do. It's from a truly inspirational marketing mentor I've been learning from for over 2 years. It is the most expensive program I've invested in so far, and I just know that what I learn and implement from it will take my business to the next level.

While I was debating whether I could justify spending so much on training, my inner critic was telling me that there were other things the business needed and I shouldn't do it. But my own personal 'inner coach' reminded me that I'd been wanting to do this program for the last 2 years and that, if 2008 is to be the growth year I want, then it was high time I stopped procrastinating and got on with it.

So I went ahead and took the plunge. After all, if I coach my clients about the need to invest in themselves, how can I do any different?

One of the lessons I've been reminded of is that it's important to make decisions quickly and act on them. So I did the right thing! I'm looking forward to learning more - and to taking more action.

Excuses, excuses

This is going to be a bit of a rant. I'm getting really fed up with business owners who keep coming up with excuses for why they aren't more successful. See what you think.

"I can't afford it." is a favourite excuse. Used for just about everything, but especially when trying to justify not using specialist services that will take their businesses forward, like marketing, book keeping and, of course, business coaching! These same people think nothing of quaffing coffees at Starbucks on a regular basis (or wherever), or buying books and CDs on personal development that end up gathering dust on a shelf.

"I haven't got time." is heard over and over again as a reason why they can't do some forward planning on their business. Apparently watching TV and spending hours on the Internet looking up 'stuff' doesn't qualify as using up time, for some reason.

I will confess to making excuses in the past, but then I got fed up with the sound of my own whingeing.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm not an advocate of new year resolutions, but I have made one:

Whenever I catch myself saying "I can't", I'm going to add "How can I ....?"

If we change the way we regard a problem or challenge, we will usually surprise ourselves with a solution!

So, how are you going to ....?

Blogs can really take over your working day!

Yesterday’s workshop was a great success. I really enjoyed myself –the delegates were really great, and they worked so hard! I’m kicking myself a bit though because I took a camera with me and then completely forgot to take any shots (doh).

Today I’ve been catching up and getting ready to market the next workshop. I’ve also to listened to a couple of very interesting teleseminars about business building, including one about internet marketing and blogging. This one caught my attention because, as you might have guessed, I’m really into using a blog as a marketing tool.

As well as writing this blog, I also subscribe to receive and read several blogs I find interesting. Some are about coaching, some about marketing, copywriting, the internet, even about blogging itself – all kinds of information that might be useful for my business coaching clients and that I can share with them.

I’ve set up my iGoogle page so I know when something new has been posted on them. One small problem! Like incoming emails, seeing a new post arrive and then just having to read it, is rather addictive and very time consuming. I’m having to ration my visits to iGoogle so as not to get too distracted.

No wonder there's so much information overload!

Do you or don't you?

The looks I get from some of my business coaching clients or when I'm giving a talk to groups of small business owners are so expressive! They usually say "You have got to be joking!"

You see, what I suggest to them is that they plan their marketing activities in advance, that they write down what needs doing so that it doesn't get forgotten while they're busy fire-fighting. You'd think I was asking them to do something bordering on illegal!

What I've found over the last few years is that there are some small business owners who are very disciplined and organised. Then there are those who love the freedom that running their own business gives them and don't want to be constrained in any way. The remainder fall somewhere between the two extremes.

Now I'm really not trying to be a killjoy. I've personally experienced both the effects of planning vs. not planning and I know which is most effective for my business. Without a written down plan I just drifted through the days doing a bit of networking here, writing an article there. But, once I started to really focus on my marketing and planning what I was going to do each month, things really started to happen. I got more business coaching clients because I was actively marketing for them. My workshops started to fill up because I had a plan to follow.

Business success is very rarely accidental, it is usually the result of planning and action - exactly as I've been trying to tell my clients!