Aspire » Goals

What you’re thinking about is expanding

Shawn Kinkade — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 04:00:02 +0000

Have you ever had the experience of shopping for a new car, where you finally decide on THE car that you really want to buy. Let’s say it’s a new Honda sedan…and at that point, you suddenly started noticing all of the Honda sedans on the road – they are everywhere!

The reality is that the number of Hondas on the road didn’t change from one day to the next, you just tuned your Reticular Activating System!

The Reticular Activating System is the part of your brain that helps you filter out the unimportant stuff going on around you…and conversely focus on the important stuff. Without that filter, you’d be overwhelmed with stimuli and likely lose the ability to function, so it’s an important part of your brain that most of us don’t know anything about!

However the good news about the Reticular Activating System is that it can be programmed. When you were buying your Honda, you decided that Honda sedans were important and by doing so you set your filter and you started noticing the Hondas that were out there…whereas previously they didn’t make the cut!

Another good example of this phenomena is the ability that we all have to hear our name spoken from across a crowded room, despite a dozen conversations going on around you at the same time. Your name is important to you, and therefore your filters are set to pick it up…even in noisy circumstances, picking out that one unique sound out of hundreds being processed every minute.

You can experiment with this sometime – come up with a specific image that you likely could see during your day. Maybe it’s men wearing a red tie, or a woman with a gold watch, something plausible but not common. Fix that image in your mind and write down the description on a piece of paper 2 or 3 times – then count the number of times that you notice that imagery as you go through your day. I think you’ll be surprised at how often you see things.

What you focus on expands

There’s a universal truth saying out there that ‘What you focus on expands’ which ties directly into the programming of your Reticular Activating System.

If you are focused on negativity and problems, you will find more of the same.

However if you are focused on opportunities and positive outcomes, you’re going to see more of those as you go through your day.

The kicker is that you are limited to the number of things that you can key on…so if you choose to focus on the negative, you lose the option of also focusing on the positive (and vice versa). In other words, if you find yourself feeling negative and noticing all of the problems in the world, you can make the conscious choice to notice the positive and turn things around!

On a more tangible level, you can also train the filter to help you notice specific things that might otherwise go unnoticed. As an example, let’s say you are looking for a friendly banker to build a relationship with in the hopes of borrowing money in the future for your business. If you create a specific goal to meet a friendly business banker (and write it down…because that’s how you train your Reticular Activating System) then you will start noticing more business bankers that might have slipped your notice previously.

What are you focusing on? Do you consciously choose to look for opportunities? Do you hang out with people who are negative or positive? You get to choose what you focus on…and by consciously choosing you set yourself on the path of doing important things!

Napoleon Hill said it best when he talked about this a long time ago when he was working on Think and Grow Rich:

“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. “

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this – have you ever seen examples of deciding to really focus and look for something and being pleasantly surprised when you found it? How about your thoughts on the importance of a positive outlook versus a negative one? Let me know what you’re thinking in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business CoachSimilar Posts:

The bridge between goals and accomplishments?

Shawn Kinkade — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 03:45:06 +0000

photo by paul dex

“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.” – Jim Rohn

I had a great discussion the other day with a client and their frustration with simply not getting enough things done. This is a pretty common issue for most people – but it especially impacts business owners because they likely have a wider variety of things they have to do and more than non-business owners!

In this case, part of the problem was not having clear priorities…they had a lengthy list of things that needed to get done, but all of them were equally urgent. Another part of the problem was a lack of organization…this list of things that needed to get done wasn’t literally a list on a single piece of paper, it was a chaotic set of things ranging from emails to post-it notes to stuff that was just held in their head.

Yet another part of the problem was the lack of any kind of system to help them stay on top of this crazy, chaotic set of important things to do. Every day was a new day without any time set aside for laying out the time, place and resources to help them get things done!

However…the biggest problem and the root of the issue overall was a lack of discipline. They knew what needed to be done (even if it wasn’t organized or planned) they just didn’t carve out the time and stick to it long enough to get everything done.

Now I’m not suggesting that the answer to all of your problems is to just put your head down and plow through everything on your plate and crank out 16 to 18 hours a day to get things done. There are times when that might be the only option…but a little planning, prioritization and simply saying no can help you cut down on the size of the pile that you need to deal with. However once you’re smart about what actually needs to get done…then you must have the discipline to just do it!

It’s easier said than done, but if you can shut off the distractions (phone, email, Facebook, TV, kids…) and get into a habit of cranking out the important stuff, you’ll be amazed at how easy it is to be disciplined and what a difference it makes.

Are you disciplined when it comes to getting work done? What’s your secret? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

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Revisiting – What are your Real Goals

Shawn Kinkade — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 16:31:00 +0000

photo by Esparta

I was revisiting some of my older blog posts and I found one that I felt was really worth while. The original post is called What are your Real Goals and it covers a powerful exercise that will help you look at what you want to do differently.

One of the traps that we all fall into is more of a wish fulfillment state rather than an honest and actionable set of goals that actually mean something. “I want a lot of money” is not an actionable or even inspirational goal…however something like “I want to be free from concerns about money so that I can do the things I love” might generate more direction and be more inspirational.

Take a few minutes to go through the exercise (actually write things down) and I guarantee you’ll get something out of it. Here’s a link to a form you can fill out for the exercise: Real Goals Worksheet

Now – go and find out what your Real Goals are.

Shawn Kinkade Kansas City Business Coach

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How do you eat an elephant?

Shawn Kinkade — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 01:00:30 +0000

When you’re trying to make big changes, personally or in your business, they can often be overwhelming. In fact that’s why a lot of New Year’s resolutions fail – they’re too big to tackle all at once (and more than likely there are too many of them).

Pamela Slim, who has a great blog at Escape from Cubicle Nation has a great post here about setting yourself up for a 4 day win.

Basically the idea is to take those big resolutions and break them into small pieces that you can successfully complete in the next 4 days. Then take the next small piece and get it done in the next 4 days.

3 guys, a camera and 4 days…

The video linked below is a fantastic example of doing the unimaginable by breaking it down into small components.

Imagine recreating the D-Day invasion of Normandy – with only 3 people! It’s a 4 minute video, but it’s well worth the time.

Here’s a link to the Youtube page.

What elephant are you trying to eat?

You eat an elephant 1 bite at a time – it seems overly simplistic, but by fully planning out all the steps that need to be done and then doing something to move forward every day, you can get through the entire thing!

What elephant are you trying to eat? Share your challenge here – I’d be glad to help you think through your next steps.

Shawn Kinkade www.aspirekc.comSimilar Posts:

Are you sitting on the next big thing?

Shawn Kinkade — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 03:59:34 +0000

I’ve been having a great ongoing discussion with a couple of friends on a business opportunity that one of them is facing. Over the course of the last 10 years or so, this friend has been doing sales transaction analysis and consulting for small to medium sized companies.

What’s really interesting is that he’s uncovered a set of patterns and commonalities across more than 50 companies that are extremely consistent, despite different sizes, industries and situations. This data contradicts conventional thinking on how to approach sales and growth for companies and can really pinpoint how to improve results.

In short he has a repeatable process that can make a substantial positive impact to a client’s bottom line for a lot of business clients. Additionally he has a unique situation and approach – he’s been working on this for 10 years…it’s not going to be easily duplicated.

The problem he has is that it’s just him – he’s been making a decent living doing this in a one-off consulting approach but he has the opportunity to really turn it into something much bigger.

The question that we’ve been ending the discussion with is “Where do I go from here?”.

I believe the partial answer is “It depends…” (helpful right?)

It depends on what he wants. Remember, your business is simply a tool to get what you want out of life. You get very different outcomes if you want a reasonable income, interesting work and time to spend with your family versus substantial wealth creation and building something bigger than yourself.

Here’s what I think the next steps are for any business that is looking to grow:

Define success. Decide and document as clearly as possible what the vision of success is 1 year out, 3 years out and 5 years out. Not only is this important to get things straight in your own mind, if you’re going to bring other people on board it’s critical that they understand what you’re trying to do.
Identify a repeatable process / product. If you’ve been doing the work as a consultant with a different approach for every client, it will be very difficult to have others implement the end result in a consistent fashion without building a solid, documented framework of all the work that needs to be done to satisfy a client.
Where can you centralize or outsource on that process? Once you’ve got the process, you need to figure out if it always has to be done in parallel or if you can develop repeatable sub-cycles. As an example, it’s pretty common to have an invoicing process that’s shared across all clients. Once you decide what to bill, the actual process of submitting the invoice, collecting and processing the payment can be standardized (and probably outsourced).
Find the bottlenecks to the process. After you’ve taken out the common steps, you’re left with things that will require some sort of personal attention with each client. If you suddenly sold 10 clients at once, where would you run into problems in terms of fulfilling the products? If there really aren’t any bottlenecks (i.e. most of it is automated with data feeds…) then the bottleneck is likely going to be the sales process.
Identify the best way to address the bottlenecks. This could be as simple as hiring additional salespeople, or it could require reworking part of the process so it’s automated.

My recommendation is to take it slow for the first few clients and really prove out your assumptions and refine the repeatable process. This will also allow you to establish a revenue stream and get some history under your belt so if you have to borrow money to expand, you’ll have a story and some facts to borrow against.

I would also suggest bringing the first few people on carefully and slowly, making sure they’re on board, have clear cut roles and a way to measure success.

It’s a great opportunity, but it’s not going anywhere. In the long run planning a careful rollout and expansion will allow much stronger growth than just jumping in with both feet (and it’s a lot less stressful…).

What are your thoughts on growth and planning for a significant change in your business? What have I missed? What would you add? I’d love to hear from you.

Shawn Kinkade www.aspirekc.comSimilar Posts: