Month: January 2018

My wife and I watched the Eddie the Eagle movie last night- such a great story and I remember seeing him at the Olympics on TV as kid. Seeing Eddie’s unstoppable drive portrayed in the movie linked perfectly into the topic I wanted to write about this week, so more on that in a few paragraphs.

This has been a great week for progressing steps of our Q1 goals. Within the SA business this involves consolidating aspects of our admin, accounting and operational processes in order to build the right foundations for the next stage of growth. It’s been very satisfying this week leading and coordinating our team of Operations Manager,  Virtual Assistant and some local suppliers towards fine tuning and systemising parts of the business. We’re by no means perfect but the vision of a well oiled machine keeps us striving.

Fresh off a recent 3 day property development course with Lloyd and Andi Chris has been putting the powers of google to use to help him identify a long list of potential development sites in our area.

This is just a little snapshot of the week, skimming over any of the more ‘boring’ details and mini fires we typically fight. Next week we will get up and go again, giving it our all, with the enduring spirit of incremental progress. So why are we pushing through what might appear as ‘grind’ to many?

We all know that financial components only motivate and drive someone to a certain point. For long lasting motivation and momentum it’s crucial to tap into an underlying WHY that will continue to drive you forwards, through highs, lows, the mundane and everything in between. Our business acts like a vehicle through which Chris and I can live and express our highest values and best self journeys.That’s what keeps us going and is what will stand the test of time.

The theme of this week’s post was initially prompted by a short clip from Darren Hardy that I’ve seen several times before, and saw again on Thursday. In it, he was discussing the importance of finding your big why. He used the following analogy to illustrate the point, I’ll try to recall and paraphrase it here:

“Imagine I put a 10 inch wide, 30 foot long plank on the ground and said, if you walk the length of the plank, I’ll give you 20 bucks.

You’d do it, yes? It’s an easy 20 bucks.

But, what if I took the same plank and used it to make a rooftop bridge between two 100 storey buildings, would you walk across that sky high plank for the same money now?

No way!

However, what if your child was on the opposite building and that building was on fire with the flames fast approaching them. Would you walk across that plank to save him or her?

Likely your answer would be, absolutely and immediately.

So the first time I asked you to cross the rooftop bridge you said no way, the second time was a yes without hesitation.

The risks and dangers to you were the same so what changed?

Your why changed. Your reason for wanting to do it changed.”

So the point of this little story, courtesy of Darren Hardy, was to show that when the why is big enough, you’ll be willing to perform almost any how. To borrow a quote from him, “The power of your why is what helps you stick through the gruelling, mundane and laborious. All the hows are meaningless until the why is powerful enough. If your why isn’t big enough, the fortitude of your commitment won’t be powerful enough and you will end up like everyone who makes a new years resolution, gives up too quickly and reverts to living a life of mediocrity”. DON’T LET THAT BE YOU.

Circling back to Eddie the Eagle and the reason why he’s made a cameo in this post, is because when you watch the movie, it’s clear the guy had a powerful why. Against all odds he competed in the 1988 Winter Olympics ski jumping event. His goal from a very young age was to become an Olympian, despite being told on endless occasions that he wasn’t an athlete, he would never qualify, he’s not cut out for it, etc etc. That’s why this line from the movie, and likely a real quote from Eddie, stood out and resonated with me – Eddie said,

“I love ski jumping, almost as much as I love proving people wrong”.

Have you found your reason why?

Here are some resources I looked up that might help those interested to find their why:

https://startwithwhy.com/find-your-why/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/margiewarrell/2013/10/30/know-your-why-4-questions-to-tap-the-power-of-purpose/#38a48aec73ad

https://www.success.com/blog/john-addison-how-to-find-your-why-in-life

Last week’s post seemed to be really well received (thanks for all the kind comments), so I thought I’d follow up with a part 2 focused on the implementation of your goals.

First a quick summary of week 3. Alongside wrapping up my own goal planning work, there was a big focus on optimising occupancy across our existing SA portfolio. As many of you know, January is never the kindest month in the SA industry so even more reason to dig deep. We took a 3 pronged approach:

1) Do what we can to optimise presence on OTA’s (from tweaking pricing, to adding any new through our kigo channel manager);

2) Go back through all past guests and companies that could potentially book again and make contact

3) Explore brand new avenues in our areas ie any sources that may attract people to our local area that we haven’t spoken to yet

Whilst we know some of these avenues will be slower burn opportunities I feel like we had a pretty successful week, securing a few longer stays, some extensions and a some short stays.

The other curveball this time of year can throw at you when managing multiple properties are potential boiler issues. We’ve had our fair share of boiler challenges but each of the team have learned/are learning how to repressurise boilers and restart them. Most importantly however is to have a reliable engineer who can respond when you need them. We’ve also learned it’s worth investing in some back up electric heaters to have at the ready, just in case.

So, onto the meat. In the last post I wrote about how to set psychologically optimised goals that are congruent ie your conscious and unconscious mind are aligned in relation to the goals you set.  People can get pretty excited about setting big goals but when it comes down to the nitty gritty of the ‘doing’, this is where they can let themselves down, telling themselves they’ll come back to it later. DON’T BE THAT PERSON!

Instead, you need to take your Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and translate it into a project plan. This part of the process is uncomfortable, which is why people skip it but having a plan will keep you aligned, in the zone and knowing what you have to do next. BHAGs don’t manifest on their own, it takes real intentional work to dream them up, plan the road map, and then of course execute. When you do invest in this however you can expect benefits like:

# get clarity by doing this planning

# can connect the dots between your seemingly unattainable BHAG and the day to day

# the promise of not sitting at your desk wondering what you should be working on to hit the goal

# knowing what you have to do acts as an antidote to feeling overwhelmed (sounds strange but it’s true)

# ultimately, all this good work now build the foundation for your year

Here’s a quick summary of the process for goal implementation I’ve been taught and use each year.

STEP #1: taking everything into account, list 5-20 projects that would have an immediate impact on your business. With this list you are thinking up all the various strategies and tactics you want to try that would/could result in a net positive to the business. So if the project has a cost, like a marketing/advertising cost, the net outcome is a degree of profit based on leads coming in and converting a proportion into paying customers.

STEP #2: Now eliminate all but 3, and ask yourself:

– are you able to complete each one in a 12 week period?

– can you complete these with your current resources ie time, people, money?

STEP #3: Now for each project, build the outline for your implementation plan by completing a handful of answers to these 4 key building block questions:

For project 1

#1 What specifically needs to happen…to get started? To continue? To finish?

#2 How can you measure progress? (ie no. of viewings/offers per week. Booking revenue, occupancy by month..) When answering these questions think about what can be ritualised/repeated.

#3 What deadlines need to happen within 12 weeks? Think it through and allocate deadlines you can put into your diary.

#4 How can you stack multiple layers of accountability onto this project. In other words, who all can you inform, involve, make a pledge to etc that will help you follow through on your promise. Think mentors, family, advisors, peers).

Do the same for Projects 2 and 3

STEP #4 12 WEEK PROJECT PLAN
The final stage to this is creating your 12 week project plan where you literally create a grid with 84 – 91 days and then populate it with dates, specifics and deadlines (as per your answers to the Q’s above) to work to each day and week. Schedule this stuff in using the mechanisms that work for you, phone, outlook calendar, a wall chart or whatever. Allocate sufficient time and protect it in your diary.

And there you have it.

Have a great start to next week.

Hello again. After some amazing time off in Australia with my family I’m back in the saddle, and although battling the jet lag, I’m eager to start executing on 2018 goals.

You’ve no doubt heard the wise quote from Brian Tracy that. “Every minute you spend in planning saves 10 minutes in execution”, right?

Similarly, I’ve heard it said from one of my mentors that even if much of the first week of a quarter is taken up with planning, it frees your headspace to then execute fully on the plan for the next 11 weeks.

There is a pretty rigorous reflecting and planning process that I learned from mentor Peter Shallard and have been using for a few years now. As I become more practised in it I’m recognising some of the crucial keys to high performance goal setting which many out there may appreciate a heads up on. Whilst I can’t go into the entirety of the process with all it’s juicy details (we’re talking 7hrs+), I can at least share some key takeaways that could level up your ability to set and execute on your BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals).

Ever noticed how gyms are packed for the first 2 weeks of Jan but come the end of Jan the ‘new year new you’ hype has sort of fizzled out? Same goes for big financial goals plucked out of the air. These wishes that one might set and hope that they are magically manifested are typically lacking in some key building blocks of goal setting.

Now I’m not saying that I’m in anyway perfect but the goal setting process I referred to earlier that I do has been a key component to the results in our business over the last year. At the beginning of 2017 Chris and I set out to add 100 bed spaces to our SA portfolio. Although we fell a little short come 31st Dec, we will be within 7 beds of that target in Q1 thanks to the units secured in the pipeline.

So, without writing war and peace about goal setting, here are a handful of key learns that will no doubt be of value to others out there.

#1 BEGIN WITH INTELLIGENT REFLECTION because it forms a powerful foundation for planning, here’s why:

• Being a business owner makes you very tough on yourself, but intelligent reflection offers a way out of that.
• It gives you energy and inspiration to continue marching towards your goal, even in the face of feeling you’ll never be done.
• Most entrepreneurs have a lack of awareness of how much they’ve actually done and achieved in a year (in other words we get caught in the trap of looking at the out of reach summit of the mountain rather than congratulating ourselves on looking back and seeing how far we’ve come).
• It acts as a powerful post mortem analysis on mistakes that you can take valuable learning from
• It’s a way out of the ‘insanity cycle” i.e. doing the same thing and expecting different results
• You can surprise yourself with some easy wins i.e. getting clarity on something that got you great results and can be replicated going forwards.

Here are a few of the intelligent reflection questions (thinking about your 2017) to get you started:

1. How did your beliefs or values really steer you right?
2. What belief of yours got seriously challenged or tested?
3. What behaviour(s) really caused you to win?
4. What capability was lacking or let you down?
5. What environment did you find or create that contributed your success?

#2 ECOLOGICAL GOAL SETTING

This is the real gold dust. This is the stuff that’s been taking me a while to embed but I’m really starting to see the power in it. You may wonder what is meant by ‘ecological’ in relation to goal setting.

Meaning of ecology from dictionary.com

‘the branch of biology dealing with the relations and interactions between organisms and their environment, including other organisms.’

In the context of goal setting, the purpose of ecology is all about alignment between the conscious and unconscious mind. Here’s why it’s so important – the unconscious mind has one sole job, to move you toward pleasure and away from pain. A lack of alignment is when your unconscious mind has a different opinion to your conscious mind.

In other words, self sabotage arises from setting certain goals when the unconscious mind doesn’t get the same excitement as the conscious mind, because it’s worried about pain.

Having also learned about highest values from Dr John Demartini, I liken this alignment concept to that ie knowing your highest values and either working in your areas of highest values or at least linking what you do to your highest values.

When alignment is in place motivation isn’t something that you need to hope and will into existence. With alignment, motivation shows up to help you execute on your vision. This is the BIGGEST SECRET of setting ecological goals.

So, here are some questions for layering in ecology to your goal setting:

1. What specifically do you want? Write it out in positive terms, with specificity and in the present tense ie ‘It is 1st Jan 2019 and I’m sitting in (x location)….reviewing …numbers/financials.’ It’s super important to have your conscious mind aligned with your unconscious in all of this.
2. Where are you now? It’s essential to document your present situation in relation to your outcome. What are your resources and numbers relative to what you want?
3. What will you see, hear, feel when you have it? (This is super important for your unconscious motivation). Specify your outcome – how will the external world tell you it’s happened? What is it internally you will feel/tell yourself when you have it?
4. What will this outcome get for you or allow you to do? Again, make sure this is aligned.
5. Is it initiated and maintained by you? The goal must be entirely in your control. A well formed outcome must be entirely your responsibility and under your complete control.
6. Is it appropriately contextualised? In other words, where, when, how and with whom do you want to experience achieving this goal? How do you bring your family, business partner, your health etc into this outcome?

You can see this is a whole different level to approach goal setting. Thoroughly thinking through the goal like this is designed to set your unconscious mind building a map, a reference place and foundation for what’s involved in achieving these goals.

I appreciate this is a lot to take in so if you got this far, well done. Even better, if you choose to act on this and implement it with your own goal setting you will be doing the work to set yourself up for a great year ahead.

As a closing note/tip, be sure to specify your very first step towards the big goal, and make it achievable. One of the fundamental requisites for change is to take action, and that’s easy when you know the first step!

Wishing you all a 2018 of good health, growth and fun.