In 2007, I was pleased to have accomplished all of my goals.  2008, however, I did all of the experiential activities I'd planned, I didn't stay with the habitual or disciplinary functions I'd hoped to, such as reading on purpose, every day and losing 10 pounds (now 25!).

This year, as I began to think about my resolutions, I was taken back to the different roles I have.  In my case I am:

1. A Husband
2. A Father
3. A Business Owner
4. A Spirit-led person
5. A Person - as in recognizing that I must take responsibility for my own personal growth and development.

The next thing I had to consider was goal-setting.  I realized that if there is a goal, there is probably some end point - a vision, and some steps required to achieve that vision - a strategy.  So, in each of those roles, I decided that my resolutions would actually be visions for each of the roles:

1. A Husband - Make my wife feel unconditionally loved and appreciated
2. A Father - Raise my children without alienating them.  Make them feel loved.
3. A Business Owner - Increase marketing efforts, further establish my expertise, reduce number of hours worked per week.
4. A Spirit-led person - Have greater understanding of spirituality, find transparency between all roles
5. A Person - Have a greater sense of being, be proactive with my health and interests.

Keep in mind - these are vision statements - they don't need to be specific.  They do, however, need to be authentically yours - interests you truly have.  They also need to involve all of the roles in your life, to provide a sense of balance across all roles.

From here, I will set specific goals for each role:

1. A Husband - Have early morning coffee and conversation at least twice a week.
2. A Father - Rotate taking one of the children to Saturday morning breakfast every week.

...and so on and so forth.  In terms of how many goals to make, my perspective is that I have to prioritize responsibility with my goals.  Each goal will have a specific amount of time I must commit to achieve it, over a specific amount of time.  To create a goal and just say, "I'll make time for it" isn't a goal at all - it's an idea.

Here's an example of how I prioritize my roles:

1. I need to bring in a certain amount of money each month in order to maintain my household.  While this doesn't have to be my business, per se, it is what I strive to do through my business.  Notice - I don't ignore the other roles as I prioritize; this is not a segmentation practice.
2. Second might be my personal goals - if I can be complete as a person, I can serve my other roles, better. 
3. Third might be my role as a Father
4. Fourth as a Husband
5. Fifth will be elements of personal and spirit-led person.

Therefore, the best route for me to take in order to address these roles and goals is to commit a certain amount of time to these each week or each month.  For example, I will do one public engagement per month.  To pull this off will require about 16 hours of preparation, which I will do during working hours.  I will commit 4 hours per week for four weeks to develop, produce and deliver each event.  These will go into my calendar.

Notice that my goals are specific, they will stretch me, they have specific time frames, and there is a specific end in mind.  As I mentioned, they are not conclusive.  They will, however, help define the framework for the next year.

I wish you the best of luck in planning resolutions for the upcoming year.

At Aepiphanni Business Solutions, we are a Small Business Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small business owners. We specialize in helping you develop strategies for your organization, and are committed to your success. If you have further questions about creating your strategy or developing your vision, please give me, Rick Meekins, a call at 678-265-3908, or email us at info@aepiphanni.com.

Labels: Extraordinary, Management and Leadership, Recession Buster, Small Business Consulting, Strategic Planning, Transparency

Labels: Business Decisions, Management and Leadership, Small Business Consulting, Strategic Planning

I encourage it.  It is like skydiving or cliff jumping or any of those wonderful experiences we were built for, but are afraid to try.  It allows the spirit to be released and fly and soar and reach new heights untouched by most.

To all of you who have decided that for 2009, you are going to take that leap, I will offer you the following:  Think.  Plan.  Do.

1. Dream big.  As Stephen Covey put it, begin with the end in mind.  As the Bible put it - where these is no vision, the people perish.
2. Don't get hung up on naming your business.
3. Write it down.  It's amazing what one can accomplish when one doesn't know what one cannot do.
4. Keep in mind...there is a way.  Sears started out as a horse-drawn wagon, Papa Johns started by a couple of college students trying to make some extra cash, and Kellogg's cereal started by accident.
5. Learn.  Just like driving that car, parachuting or running a marathon, running a small business  takes preparation, knowledge and understanding.
6. Keep your eyes open.  See what is going on in the marketplace.  See what trends are developing.  Look out for events that could potentially disrupt your business.
7. Have courage.  Fear is natural  Courage is fear that said its prayers at breakfast.  Fear is immobilizing.  Courage is invigorating.
8. Be encouraged.  If someone else is doing it successfully, leveraging their gifts and abilities, think about how you might leverage your own to serve a population you identify with.  Consider the fast food industry.
9. Surround yourself with great people.  Remember - you are great at what you are great at.  Everyone has areas where they need more knowledge.  Find people to fill those gap areas.
10. Know your capabilities.  Know how you work, who you work best with, your personality, your strengths and your weaknesses.  Think about how you can play to your strengths.
11. Know the risks and be prepared to deal with them.
12. Prepare to bring all of what you've got.  Notice, this didn't say quit your job, today and start your business.  It says prepare.  That means understand what it will take for you to transition into running your business.

1. Many people start planning as step one.  Think about it like creating a road map for a vacation without knowing where you are going and what you intend to do there.  Gather information, first.
2. Review.  One of the hardest things for people is being overly optimistic about their business.  "If you build it, they will come" is not the norm for business.
3. Leverage your resources.  Have others in your circle review your plan with you.  Ask them to give you the hard critique.  Be aware of those who are normally nay-sayers - they may be overly pessimistic, but still add value to the conversation.  Be wary of your "yes" people.  "Yes" people will be overly optimistic and should not be taken at face value.
4. Revise.  Don't forget to take the valuable information you have and put it into action.

1. Put your plan into action.   Take it step-by-step.
2. Know the difference between getting off track (distracted) and re-evaluating your plan.
3. Put first things first.  You do NOT need a tax ID and business name before you have completed your research.
4. Don't lose site of the vision.
5. Use your support system.  Ask advice.  Seek out expertise.
6. Be part of communities - the communities you serve, the communities in your industry, communities on the web.
7. Remember - while things might not appear to be exactly as you'd planned, continue to evaluate how it can be done - how you can reach the vision.
8. Focus.  Running a business is hard work and is time consuming, but can be quite rewarding if you keep the end in mind, keep your eyes on the environment and guard your resources.  That doesn't mean be cheap, but rather, ensure that your purchases are needs for the business - as in, will help the business get from here to there.

2009 is upon us, my friends.  Be well.  Do well.  Find your passion and run with it.

At Aepiphanni Business Solutions, we are a Small Business Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small business owners. We specialize in helping you develop strategies for your organization, and are committed to your success. If you have further questions about creating your strategy or developing your vision, please give me, Rick Meekins, a call at 678-265-3908, or email us at info@aepiphanni.com.

Labels: Business Startup, Extraordinary, Management and Leadership, Recession Buster, Small Business Consulting

With the downturn in the market, good staff are still surprisingly hard to find, particularly at the operator level.
A colleague in the hospitality industry, spoke about his challenges:
“Good staff have become rare. Everyone’s competing for the same pool of labour. The young, often with limited education, unskilled and without any career in mind, are just working for a couple of months until they find something they like. Our organisation is understaffed. Sick leave is on the rise, morale is down, productivity and efficiency are low. On top of that, the supervisors are overworked. We are caught in a vicious circle.”

Enjoy the article.  Employ its direction.  Pass it on to friends and colleagues.  If you feel it's value added, why not let someone know by voting for it - http://www.top10salesarticles.com/.  I did.

At Aepiphanni Business Solutions, we are a Small Business Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small business owners. We specialize in helping you develop strategies for your organization, and are committed to your success. If you have further questions about creating your strategy or developing your vision, please give me, Rick Meekins, a call at 678-265-3908, or email us at info@aepiphanni.com.

Labels: Business Growth Strategies, Business Strategy, Extraordinary, Management and Leadership, Sales Strategies, Small Business Consulting

The first thing I needed to do was to define excellence.  According to Dictionary.com, excellence is "the fact or state of excelling; superiority; eminence: his excellence in mathematics." In turn, the definition for excel is "to surpass others or be superior in some respect or area; do extremely" or "to surpass; be superior to; outdo: He excels all other poets of his day."  So, in order to be excellent, I must surpass others or be superior in some respect or area.  It does not say that in order to be excellent, I must be someone else's definition of excellent.  It does not say, specifically what I have to be excellent at.

So, I could be an excellent thinker, or an excellent strategist.  If so, I need to focus my energies on continuing to develop myself as a strategist, and have very specific ways of doing this.

Several problems reveal themselves, however: one cannot truly compare themselves to someone else.  We are all different, have different perspectives based on different experiences.  One can say that some person might solve an equation faster than another, or someone might run faster than another, but does that mean that one is excellent and the other is not?  Thinking in terms of usefulness, is there something that one brings to the table, and excels at that another does not, but rather, has a different gift or purpose that they excel at.  It would be like comparing a lion to a shark - they each have different territories in which they excel - does this make one better than another?  One might suggest that the end results are the same: they've fed, they've reproduced, they've survived.

So, the problem, so to speak, is that in being true to yourself, you must not frame excellence in terms of other people, but rather, in terms of yourself and your purpose.  Additionally, you shouldn't frame excellence in terms of what is, but rather, in terms of what could be.  In other words, if you were on a train going to some specific destination, you would want to frame your plans, actions and activities based on that destination rather than based on the trip, itself.  The trip is not the destination.  It is the means to the end.  You would pack, for example, for what you are going to do when you arrive at the destination rather than for what you are going to do on the trip.

The other part of the equation is "Being."  It seems that with all of our looking out for the Jones', and the (un)healthy spirit of competition we are fully engaged in, we've lost track of being, and lost ourselves to any number of business belief systems that we felt were going to help us be better than the next person.  However, each of us has our own individual purpose and therefore, carte blanche application of certain tactics is not necessarily going to help us excel at being.  Learning about ourselves and honestly being ourselves is what allows us to be.  While conversations about being are not as shallow as this, this is the beginning of learning how to excel.  However, consider it like this: how many people do certain things simply out of tradition rather than pursuing the things that truly help them further refine and excel in their purpose?

If we observe animals, we can see, clearly, what it is to excel.  A cheetah, for example, excels at running.  A fish excels at swimming.  Falcons excel at flying and hunting.  Each understands its being and focuses its energies on being.  They use their areas of excellence to fulfil their individual purposes.

My purpose in life is to help people be the best they can be.  In order for me to excel at this, I need to be able to bring all of myself - my being - into the workplace.  When I say this, I am not referring to emotional baggage and environmental concerns, but rather, the best of what makes me who I am.  In my case this is a combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis, creative visioning and continual progress.  I don't compare what I do to what others do.  My perspective is unique to me.  For me to excel in these areas, I must continue to refine and develop my areas of expertise.  This does not mean that I need to go out and master Six Sigma or other organizational or management techniques, but rather to observe and learn from these techniques. 

At the same time, knowing who I am, and Being - bringing my full self to what I do, I can focus on the types of clients that I work best with - those who are creative and logical, who work to achieve excellence in what they do while serving the communities they touch.  Rather than marketing, these people strive to make themselves available.  Instead of focusing on competing, these people focus on serving their clients, who, in turn, tend to bring more business.

So, in order to excel, you must understand two things: who you are and why you exist.  Knowing who you are will allow you to define and exploit your gifts, talents and abilities in the right environment to serve the right people.  Knowing why you exist will help you focus your gifts, talents and abilities to work toward a specific vision.  Once these are clear to you, learning how to be excellent is simply a matter of bringing all that you are to the table, without excuse, each day.

At Aepiphanni Business Solutions, we are a Small Business Consulting Firm dedicated to serving the needs of small business owners. We specialize in helping you develop strategies for your organization, and are committed to your success. If you have further questions about creating your strategy or developing your vision, please give me, Rick Meekins, a call at 678-265-3908, or email us at info@aepiphanni.com.

Labels: Business Decisions, Business Path, Business Strategy, Extraordinary, Small Business Consulting