April Fools Planning

I'm not talking about planning your next April Fools prank.

Did you realize that one quarter of the year has just slipped past? 3 full months! How are you going on your goals for this year? Is it "Oh yeah!" or "Oh shoot!"

If it was the latter, then don't abandon all hope, the second best time to get going is now.

Let's start with your major goal for the year. What year is this?

Is it the year of getting fit, losing weight, finding that perfect partner, improving your relationship, getting to a new level in your business or career, or perhaps it's a house renovation, or an investment or educational goal. Whatever it is, just decide. Now I know you have lots of goals. Do this with your major 'theme for the year' goal first, then you can do it for all your other goals too.

The key to getting started is to take the first step.

Now where do you want to be in relation to this goal at the end of the year? Specifically. e.g. I want to weigh 75Kg. Let's say you weigh 90Kg now. You now have a start point and an end point.

Split that into 3, for each of the remaining quarters, and by the end of next quarter, the end of June, you'd need to be at 85Kg to be on track right? You see, this planning stuff is easy, just takes a little time in the beginning, its all fine tuning after that.

Now list 10 things, in general that you need to do to achieve that, eg. cut down on carbs & sugar, drink more water, take the stairs, etc.

How will you measure your progress? List the ways.

Who and what do you have access to, to assist you in achieving your goal?

How will you celebrate hitting this milestone?

Now rewrite your goal for 30th June. e.g. It is now on or before 30th June, and I weigh 85Kg. I know this is the case because I can see it on the scales, my partner tells me I'm looking good, and I feel great!

Now break the target down to one month, then one week, then list your daily actions that you are going to take to achieve your goals. Schedule in your workouts, plan your meals, etc.

At the end of each day review how you went. If you fell off the wagon, get back on again tomorrow.

Plan out each week in advance. At the end of the month, review where you are at, and plan out the next month.

If its working, keep doing it. If it's not working, do something different.

You don't become a success overnight, its small daily rituals that add up to success.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Reject the Rejection

If you are you are going to be successful, you are going to need to learn how to deal with rejection.

Rejection is a natural part of life.

You get rejected from your friends, at school, when you're dating, when applying for jobs, asking for a raise, making sales calls, trying to get a business going, and the list goes on.

In sales, there is a general rule that you have to contact a prospect 7 times before you get to a "yes".

Your life doesn't get worse when you get rejected, it stays the same. So why worry?

If you ask for a raise and you don't get it, you still have your original salary.
If you ask a girl out of a date and she says no, you are no worse off than before.

SWSWSWSW

Some Will, Some Won't So What - Someone's Waiting.

Some people are going to say yes, and some are going to say no. So what?! There is someone out there waiting for you and your ideas. It is simply a numbers game. You have to keep asking until you get to a yes.

Commit to 100 "No's"

Instead looking for that "yes", how about you aim for 100 "No's"?

You might have heard about Colonel Sanders, who was rejected 1009 times before someone accepted his recipe and business proposal? He later went on to have over 18,000 restaurants around the world.

However I've yet to meet anyone personally who has had to receive that many "No's" before getting to Yes.

Whether its committing to 100 cups of coffee to find the right partner, or making 100 sales presentations, everyone I know has got to "YES" before hitting 100 "No's".

Commitment. Persistence.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Solving Your Business and Goals Puzzle

Success, in whatever field you choose, is not that complicated - as long as you understand how to look at it.

Think about the Rubik's Cube for a moment, a six sided puzzle, six colors, nine stickers on each side, and all you you have to do is match them up. Simple right?

Well what if I sat you down, blindfolded you, and put a mixed up Rubik's cube in your hand, if you started twisting it randomly, how long do you think it would take you to solve it?

Scientists estimate that it could take you up to six billion years! That's a long time.

Do you know that there are guys that can solve the Rubik's cube in less than six seconds?! There are guys that can solve it blindfolded, or behind their back (after memorizing it), guys that can do it with their feet, and even whilst juggling.

Now let's blindfold you again, sit you down, and put a mixed up Rubik's cube in your hand. This time we'll bring in one of these experts into the room. he won't tell you what to do, he'll just say "Yes" or "No" every time you make a move.

Do you think this will shorten the time it takes? Absolutely. This time, to match up all the colors, it will take you less than two minutes!

Your business, or your success journey, is a lot more like that Rubik's cube than you might imagine. It's not that it's complicated, after all the Cube only has 6 sides. It's just that at every twist you are faced with choices. Do you want to spend 6 billion years getting there, or 2 minutes?

Whether you are growing your dream business, or any dream, there is a systematic process that boils down to this:

You need to know, out of all the possible things you could be doing, which are the critically important few actions that you must take. And you need to be doing those few things every single day.

You could spend six billion years figuring those things out for yourself, or you could get a coach and/or a mentor.

To your success,
Trevor Long

Do You Understand Your Market?

No matter how good you are at what you do, without paying clients, you won't be doing it very long!

Love it or hate it, there comes a time when you have to do sales and marketing, which are two very different subjects.

Let's talk about market research, and how if done correctly, can be the ace up your sleeve.

You can use market research to find out where trends are going, and stay ahead of the game.

For example, perhaps you are personal trainer that wants to work with teens, but you find all your clients are middle aged males. Would you still concentrate your marketing efforts towards teens?

One of the first things to do is a Competitive Analysis of successful businesses in a similar field as your own. If you are currently a one man band, still look at what the big companies are doing.

This will allow you get a good look at what it is they are doing to reach those levels of success. There is much to learn from this process.

Also look on Youtube.com, search for your topic, and sort by most viewed, this will show you what is popular and trending. I'm no fitness coach, but you would have to be living under a rock not to see that 'cross-fit' (whatever that is!) is becoming hugely popular. If you are still trying to promote calisthenics, you might just find yourself losing market share.

What’s working for others that could work for you? 
What has not worked in your industry that you can avoid? 

Make sure you are not so focused on your business that you forget to come up for air and survey whats going on around them, or even survey your own clients.

Once you have done your research, use the power of visualisation to create your own simulations of how making different decisions will affect your business.

It's not only athletes that use visualisation as part of their training regime, musicians do it to get ready for performances, and you can do it to for your business. Your coach can assist you with this.

The idea is to visualise your outcome and walk through the steps it will take to get to where you want to be. 

Visualise your business operating at the levels it needs to be to hit your desired level of success.

What do you need to be doing differently or more proficiently?

Spend some time seeing yourself doing it. Then your body will have an easy task of playing catch up, instead of having to figure everything out on its own.

If you haven't already done so, work out your customer avatar - your ideal average client.

Using the example of the fitness coach above, perhaps his could be male, 35-45yo, married, executive or business owner earning over $80Kpa, keen to live a healthy active lifestyle.

Actions To Take:

• Define your Avatar
• Block off at least an hour a week to do market research
• Do a competitive analysis of success businesses in the same field as your own.
• Analyse the data.
• Wrtie down ideas as they come to you.
• Visualise how you would use those ideas.
• TEST - try a new idea,
• FAIL FASTER - try a new idea every week and notice what works.

Yes, I said fail. Not everything you do will work, but don't keep flogging a dead horse, keep trying new things until you find the ideas that work.

To your success,
Trevor Long

I Don't Know What I Want

I DON'T KNOW WHAT I WANT

I DON'T HAVE GOALS

WHAT GOALS SHOULD I HAVE?

I read recently that all clients come to coaching with a Present State (where they are now), and a Desired State (where they want to be), and that it's the coaches job to help them bridge that gap.

In my experience as a coach, and in my personal experience, many people simply don't know where they want to be.




Some are dissatisfied with their financial status, their relationships, their career or business, or their health.

Others on the surface seem to have everything under control and are simply bored and frustrated with the same old same old.





My advice is usually the same for all clients - just PICK SOMETHING! Turn it into a goal, and start heading towards it by taking action steps.

Make sure that the something you pick is fun and/or useful.

But what if I don't know what I ultimately want?

That's fine, because the thing is, if it was right where you are now, you would have found it already!

You've got to get moving towards SOMETHING.

On the way there, you will see signposts along the way that will lead you towards other goals.

Quote - Success is a series of attainment of worthy goals.

There is no Law of Attraction...

There is no Law of Attraction... Without ACTION!

The big thing they left out of The Secret, and they did it so that The Secret would sell better, is that you need to take ACTION towards your goals, otherwise you are just wishing, wanting and hoping.

One of my mentors, Sharon Pearson, calls wishing, wanting and hoping "The three old men of failure".

Who would buy a self help book, or watch a movie, if it entailed, OMG, taking ACTION?! 

Imagine for a moment, that your deepest desire was to become a renowned heart surgeon. You dreamed of it all day long, you meditated on it, you put it on your vision board and you said your affirmations twice daily. Is that going to allow you to be a heart surgeon? I think not. You might have to do some study first, get into medical school, spend many years training and practicing before they even let you near a heart with a scalpel. You would need to take some pretty definite, targeted ACTION.

Whether its health, wealth, relationships, career, business, etc. you are going to have to start doing actions to achieve greatly.

Sure, all the visualising, meditating, vision boarding and affirming is important, as long as you are taking actions towards your clearly defined goals.

If all you want to achieve is get a phone call from a distant friend, or manifest an empty parking spot, then sure, not much action required there, but for anything else... you guessed it... take ACTION!

I think Jim Carrey said it best....

To your success,

Trevor Long

Piss Poor Performance?

There is an old military adage called The 7 P's.

It goes something like this, or this:

Proper Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

― Abraham Lincoln

How much time are you spending planning your next year, quarter, month, weeks and days?
Or are you just going to wing it? Again.

Yes, you are probably very busy, we all are. Do you want to grow, or just keep 'busy'? Just keep breaking even, or finally get ahead?

Do your muscles grow while you are working hard at the gym, or while you are resting, recuperating and sleeping? (Hint, its the latter!)

Similarly, if you are not taking some down time from all your busyness, you are not going to grow. It's in this down time that you can plan, strategise, ideas will come to you, and most important of all spend time with family, friends, and working on yourself.

So how much planning should you do?

• YEARLY - 2-3 days to work on your Vision, Values & Goals, Business and Personal.
• QUARTERLY - 1 day to plan and set goals for the next 3 months.
• MONTHLY - 1/2 day to plan your month and set your business and personal goals.
• WEEKLY - 1 hour to block out your work periods, and set targets for the week.
• DAILY - 10 minutes at the end or beginning of the day, to plan out your day and list your top 6 priorities for upcoming day.

Yes, it takes time. Most people spend more time planning their holiday, or their wedding, than they do their lives. 

DREAM --> PLAN --> ACTION --> REALITY

You wouldn't start you build your dream house without a plan, don't so the same thing with your life and business!

2015 will become a year of new opportunities for you. To ensure you're setup correctly for the new year, we highly recommend you experience a goal setting, strategising and blockage busting session with one of our coaches.

Here's to a 2015 of fulfilment,

Trevor Long