Very often, and especially at this time of year, the topic of success planning for the next year comes up. Whether you are running a small business or starting your own business one of the keys to success is good success planning.
For the self-employed business owner, taking the time to plan is important. Unfortunately, many business owners do not take the time and wonder as time goes on what happened to that wonderful dream that is self-employment. As a business coach one of the key roadblocks to greater small business success is a lack of success planning.
As a personal business coach, at this time of year, one of the things I do with my clients is to take the time to reflect and evaluate on their accomplishments. Whether you are seeking small business success or greater personal success you must take the time to reflect and evaluate.
Success Planning Is Not About Reacting
More often than not, in today’s hurry up world with instant communication, we end of reacting instead of reflecting and evaluating. Success planning isn’t about reacting. It is about reflecting and evaluating.
Do you want more small business growth in 2011? Are you going to have a new small business marketing strategy? Would you like to experience more personal success? Regardless of what you are seeking you must first know where you are.
Success Planning: Knowing Where You Are At
One of the greatest impediments to success is not knowing where you are at. In coaching success, I have observed that if your foundation is thin and weak, and your success planning is about growth, then the likelihood of foundation failure is great. You are going to put too much weight on a foundation that cannot handle much more.
Here are some success planning reference points to get you started. .
- Know where your business is at.
- Know what it can support now.
- Know what its limits are for the future.
- Know where you are at mentally and emotionally.
- Know what you can support
- Know the limits of your time and energy
Interestingly, when you look at your accomplishments from the past year they will give you a mirror into your past and also and indication of your future. I was with one client, a solo professional, who after listing his accomplishments realized that he was poised for much greater small business growth and he has done his success planning accordingly.
Success Planning: Start With Your Past Accomplishments
There is another client, an entrepreneur, who has had many successes this past year. Yet, when we took the time to reflect and evaluate on his accomplishments he came to the conclusion that he needed to continue to build his foundation in order to support more business.
Part of good success planning is knowing your priorities. The first client knew his priority was growth. The second client knew his priority was to further build his foundation in terms of processes and accountability to support future growth.
In each instance, the success planning process worked because they took the time to reflect and evaluate. Only then, could they set realistic goals. Setting goals is great. Setting too many unrealistic goals is an exercise with built in failure.
And with failure comes a loss in momentum. You also can pay a price in loss of energy and focus. As you reflect on this year and do your success planning for next year reflect and evaluate on you and your accomplishments.
Embrace the process of reflection and evaluation. Understand how you got to where you are at. Very often, truly understanding where your progress has come in the past will give you the path in your success planning for where you want to go.
