Stay on Track

According to Coach Tom Landry (Cowboys Football coach from 1960-1988), coaching is getting someone to do what they don't want to do, so they can be who they want to be.

As a Business Coach, I tell people, current and perspective clients, that there isn't anything that I can tell them that they can't find somewhere else - either on the internet, in a book, through hiring a consultant or going back to school. Unfortunately, most people simply don't do what they know they should do, because they tend to forget why they are doing it. They end up spending nearly all their time thinking how they are going to survive today, and forget that they actually had a dream they were trying to accomplish when they set out on the adventure of business ownership.

It seems to me that it is common knowledge that if you start a business, you need a Business Plan. But yet 80% of all small businesses in America operate without a Business Plan, or any strategy at all. Sure, they may have written one when they started, so they could get a loan from a bank. But, once they got their loan, they have never looked at it again. They normally just run and make it all about doing, doing, doing - never stopping to figure out if they are on the path to achieving what they want.

So, let's stop and think for just one minute - that is if you are a Small Business Owner. It's the middle of 2009. And you only have half the year left to reach your annual goals. What are your goals for the year? What do you want your business to be when you celebrate the beginning of 2010?

These are not trivial questions!!! Nearly (*) every great accomplishment in life has occurred because some ONE followed nearly exactly these steps, of which setting goals is the first and most important:
- Envisioned it occurring, creating the goal
- Figured out a plan on how to achieve it
- Set down a planned path to achieve it
- Ran into roadblocks along the way
- Modified the plan to correct for things they hadn't foreseen
- Repeatedly corrected their plan until they reached their goal.

There is nothing magical about it - it just takes fortitude and the ability to adjust the plan when things don't exactly as go you thought they would. Because they NEVER will.

So rather than just surviving, go out and make your goals a reality. And then the key is to STAY ON TRACK!

(*) I say nearly every great accomplishment because someone will always throw Sir Alexander Fleming's name out there because he accidentally discovered penicillin. But it was his goal to discover a way to kill bacteria - penicillin was an accident, but finding the most effective substance for killing bacteria was NOT!