It’s a bright and shining new year, and you’ve got a clean slate. What will you do with this opportunity?
Here are some ways to ensure your business success this year:
1. Keep your business moving forward
If you haven’t set your goals for 2003, decide what you want NOW. Take out a notebook, put today’s date on the top of the page and write out your business goals.
While you’re at it, you may as well create some goals for self- improvement and family and relationships. To make the most of your business in 2003, you’ll not only need to be healthy, but you’ll also need the support of others.
Leave some space on the right side of the page for a “Due Date” column. This is the date by which you want to have achieved each goal.
The next step is to create an action plan for each goal. Don’t spend too much time on this, but make sure that you’ve broken down each goal into small, manageable steps, and have translated those steps into daily tasks.
Write or type: REVIEW GOALS into each day of your daily planner, and then do it. Look at it this way: you’ll never achieve what you want to achieve unless you try. So try, and give it 100 per cent of your energy.
2. Expect to be successful, and repudiate your doubts on paper
Do you expect your business to be a success? Are you positive that your business will be successful? Are you so determined that you’ll be a success that you’ll do whatever it takes?
I hope you answered a loud and heartfelt “Yes!” to all three questions.
If you have doubts, write the doubts down. Most of your doubts will be trivialities and hypotheticals. You’ll see how ludicrous they are once they’re in black and white and you’ll be able to laugh at your fears.
If a doubt has real substance, by writing the doubt down, you’ll be able to make a plan so that you can work around the challenge. Once you’ve made a plan, you’ll get a huge surge of confidence and relief.
Remember, writing your doubts and repudiating them on paper is vital to your success.
3. Don’t sweat the small stuff (it’s all small stuff)
Keep your eyes on the prize: that is, the achievement of your goals. The bumps and bruises of life will only steal your enthusiasm if you allow them to. Things will go wrong. Expect this. Handle each challenge, and get on with working towards your goals.
4. Close your office door
Block out at least two hours each day in which you can work without interruption. Close your office door, and let the answering machine or voice mail take your messages.
5. Do what makes you uncomfortable
Do at least one thing that makes you uncomfortable every day. Maybe it’s making a dozen cold calls to drum up some business. Maybe it’s clearing up clutter in your office. Maybe it’s giving a presentation to a new client.
Successful people force themselves to do the things unsuccessful people don’t do.
(No one said this was supposed to be easy.)
6. Market your business every day: repetition counts
Marketing your business never stops. Your prospects will need to hear your message many times before they remember your name.
You’ll need to get in touch with current clients consistently too.
7. Trust your intuition
Always go with your gut instinct. In fact, make it a rule that you never sign an agreement without sleeping on it first.
If you’re thinking that you don’t have intuition, you do. Everyone does. To access your intuition, start paying more attention to the feelings in your body as you go through your day. The tightness in your belly, the crick in your neck, and the pain at the back of your eyeballs are trying to tell you something.
Your intuition lives in your body. It’s your (un)common sense. Pay attention to it.
8. Trust your dreams
You can access your intuition about your health, other people, and life situations more easily if you pay attention to your dreams.
You don’t need to become a New Age flake, but if your dreams consistently feature floods, fires and earthquakes, it may be wise to pay attention to the warnings you’re being given.
Consider your dreams your early-warning radar.
9. Don’t buy into limitation
How are you limiting yourself?
We all place limits on ourselves. What would you do if you knew, absolutely, without any doubt at all, that you could not fail?
Write down five things you would do if you knew you couldn’t fail. Can you turn them into goals and make plans to achieve them?
10. Stay passionate
If you’re not passionate about your business, you might as well be working in a regular job.
So if you’ve lost your passion, get it back. Do some thinking and writing. Write down the answers to the following questions:
Why are you working in your own business? What do you hope to achieve? Where will your business be next year, and in five years? What are you grateful for? What can you offer others? What do you love?
(The writing part is important.)
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