Here are four tips to help you get into the habit of doing what needs to be done. You will find that once you make a start and build some momentum, things get easier. You start to form new habits, helpful habits, and useful habits which relentlessly move you little by little towards the achievements of your goals.

1. Share your goal. Sharing your goal will help you to be even more accountable. If you share with a trusted friend they can add to your own resolve when they helpfully ask you if you have done what you committed to do.
2. Make it a game, make it fun. We do things that we enjoy, see if you can have a competition with someone even if that someone is yourself. Two friends committed to go to the gym twice a week. The consequence of not going, of not keeping their commitment to themselves and to each other was a fine. It may be a £5 donation to the other person, or to a local charity or having to take a 30 second cold shower. Whatever it was, it was fun and served to strengthen their resolve.
3. Measure your progress every day. You cannot manage what you can’t measure. The act of measuring will cause you to focus even more on the processes towards your goals. It will turbocharge the effort.
4. Make the results visual. Things that are visual are very effective (think road signs, TV adverts, billboards) so find a way to make your progress visual with a chart, a graph, whatever works for you. Put it somewhere you will see it every day.

It takes repetition to form new habits. In the age of the internet I have found a really useful and free resource at www.habitforge.com which will help you get the momentum we all need through repetition and reminders of any new habits we are trying to form.

Remember be the best you can be always.
“Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable” Coach John Wooden

Ian Kinnery

Well as the year, or month, or week, or day draws to a close that provides a great opportunity to set your goals for the coming period. There are many methods of goals setting. I don’t care which one you choose but I do care if you don’t choose any.

“If you aren’t going somewhere you are, by definition, going nowhere”, so it is time to set yourself some goals, some things you want to have achieved, to have learnt, to have done, by the end of the next period.

Click this link Great Goal Setting to download an article I wrote some time ago which will help you with this really vital task. Good luck on being the best you can be.

Every day starts with a new dawn, every week starts with a Monday, and every year ends in December and begins on January the first. The message of the spiral is when we come right back to the beginning again are we coming back at the same level? Some of us will have grown our selves and our businesses significantly since this time last year, some of us will have stood still, and yet more of us will have slipped backwards.

So you will be circling. It is almost impossible to stand still. The question is, are you spiralling up or are you spiralling down? In fact things are changing and developing so quickly that if we haven’t moved measurably forward I will contend that in these days of extreme competition we will have effectively moved backwards.

I think it was James Rohn who said that “reflection turns experience into insight”. As you sit down this year end, take some time to reflect on where you are and what speed and direction you are moving in.

To help you focus I have listed 12 great questions that you may want to address as you take some time for a little quiet personal reflection. I recommend that you “Think in ink” so take a piece of paper and a pen to note your answers and direct your reflection to answering these 12 questions. Thinking back to 12 months ago….

What do you know now that you didn’t know then about……

1. Yourself?

2. Your Business?

3. Business Generally?

4. Your Competitors?

5. Your Customers or clients as a group?

6. Your top clients individually?

7. Leadership?

8. Sales and Marketing?

9. One of the top leaders in your field?

10. Success topics like self motivation or time management?

11. Marketing topics like direct response advertising, the internet or social media?

12. Methods.. a means, process or technique of doing something useful to you, whether manufacturing your widget faster or making sales presentations more effectively?

The honest answers that you give to these questions will be a greater predictor of your business and personal success in 2011 and beyond than just about anything else.

W Edwards Deming said, “Learning is not compulsory, but neither is survival.”. In these days of rapid change and competition we owe it to ourselves and our families to make sure that our trajectory is always an upward spiral. Watch out for the next blog which will help you plan for a brilliant New Year.

1. IT IS ALL ABOUT YOU! What I mean by this is that the #1 reason you may not be where you want to be in your career and personal life is who you currently are vs the external conditions you might be blaming. It's stunning how our limiting beliefs and core fears sabotage us and keep us small. And here's the thing: because most of them are subconscious, we can't even see the mess they are creating for us.
The key here is to clean up the self-deception in your life. And take a good hard look at why you are where you are. Is the truth that you're scared of failure or rejection or the unknown or success? The more aware you become of how you're the one standing in your own way, the more you'll move into choice. And have the power to make the new choices that drive new results.

2. YOUR NET WORTH NEVER EXCEEDS YOUR SELF WORTH. We get from life not all we want but who we are. To have more, we must become more. The more you can learn, grow and provoke the highest display of your potential on a daily basis, the more all you want will begin to show up. (How do you start this growth? Journaling, affirmations, reading the books of world-class people, associating with superstars, attending seminars+webinars, listening to inspirational audiobooks etc).

3. FOCUS IS MORE VALUABLE THAN INTELLIGENCE. You're smart enough to master your life - and play in the big leagues of success. Here's another thing that may be holding you back: you're really busy being busy. But what's the point of being uber-productive doing useless things?
So much of the leadership presentations I delivered across the planet in 2011 for clients like Starbucks and The Coca-Cola Company and KPMG involved showing people how to make the leap from being busy to achieving results. Two quick ways: turn off your technology for a few hours each day and do Real Work. And second, make your Stop Doing List more important than your To Do List.

4. DISRUPT OR BE DISRUPTED. OK, so here's the reality: the next 20 years will be nothing like the last 20 years. You and your team and your organization can "wait for the up cycle to return". But I think you'll be waiting a long time. I don't think we're in a down cycle. I think the way the global economy+society currently is, is the new reality. And if you agree with me, there's only one choice for any one of us: innovate - or become obsolete.
So, to win in 2012, out-think who you were this year and out-learn what you learned and outwork the way you worked. Read constantly. Iterate daily. And ferociously improve every part of the way you think, work and live.

5. SHATTER YOUR STANDARDS. It's stunning how many people - built to play at wow with their lives - accept mediocrity in their health, finances, work, relationships and mindset (the problem with letting a little mediocrity into your orbit is more starts to creep in until eventually it becomes your new normal).
Right now, I challenge you with my usual respect and affection, to raise your standards. Don't tolerate any form of average. Don't accept Dis-excellence. Don't stand for mediocre. If you're going to settle, then please settle for the absolute best.

6. HAVE SOME FUN. Life's a short ride when you really think about it. Yes, do your dreams while you change the world. But do it with a smile. And a festive heart. Make time for life's simple pleasures (the other day my daughter and I shared Chinese food in the food court of a shopping mall; the laughter and joy we experienced - priceless). Savor life's gifts. Embrace all that's good in your life.
And from me to you, and from my family to yours, have a beautiful holiday season and year end. Thanks for all the tremendous support you've given me this year. Let's keep the conversation going on my Facebook page. And - together - make a difference in the world!

Kindest Regards
Robin P.S.
If this article resonates with you, you'll love my "Master Your Life Holiday Bundle" that I've put together to get you ready to fly in 2012: http://www.robinsharma.com/store/master-your-life

You can also expect me to be unreasonable. Like all the best teachers I won’t allow you to slack, skive or give less than your best. I will do whatever is necessary to help you to perform at your brilliant best more often and more consistently.

If you are prepared to commit to this I can guarantee you success, whatever that may mean for you. Success may be more financial output, less stress or more time to enjoy it, or any one of dozens of other criteria you might choose to apply.

My favourite definition of success comes from John Wooden who said, “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable”

That is what you can expect of working with a great Business Coach. You can expect to become the best of which you are capable, both in your business and in your life. All you need to do is commit to the process, back yourself and go for it.

I look forward to working with you.

Well for many start up and young companies, credit was never a readily available option, so we need to look at them to learn the skills and thoughts that can help us to prosper despite the climate in the world at large. We need to manage our cash and our profit even more diligently than ever before. We need to know those numbers, to understand the difference between cash and profit, to understand the ebb and flow of both. We need to understand how to optimise the balances between price, profit, cashflow, margin and volume. We need to find ever better ways of optimising the margin, retaining our clients and selling to them time and again.

The chances are that whatever we were doing before the recession hit will not work now. Too many things have changed. A little like the driver of a family saloon that suddenly finds himself behind the wheel of a supercar. Things look familiar but everything is so much more critical, so much more responsive; So potentially fatal.

This is not a time for amateurs or enthusiasts. This is a time for cool heads and skilful execution. It is a time when the word maximisation gives way to optimisation, when careering headlong has to give way to balanced progress, when the decisions we make will come under the full scrutiny of the most testing of times. But as the old English proverb states “a smooth sea never made a skilled mariner”

There will be many who can seize the many opportunities that are presented, to build their businesses, to hone their skills, to emerge from this cauldron, with strong, fit, lean businesses that are ideally suited to today’s conditions.

The question is will yours be one of them. I will be leading a free seminar on Wednesday 16th November where I will be discussing the top 5 things we must do to build resilience to recession. Please visit the events page on the website for details and call to reserve a place on 0845 430 9224

 Frighteningly one of the most obvious set of figures we were shown relates to the decline of lending to UK households and businesses since a peak in 2008, proving that the sources of credit available to businesses today are very difficult to come by, if they exist at all.

So what can we do about it? Well for many start up and young companies, credit was never a readily available option, so we need to look at them to learn the skills and thoughts that can help us to prosper despite the climate in the world at large.

We need to manage our cash and our profit even more diligently than ever before. We need to know those numbers, to understand the difference between cash and profit, to understand the ebb and flow of both.

We need to understand how to optimise the balances between price, profit, cashflow, margin and volume.

We need to find ever better ways of optimising the margin, retaining our clients and selling to them time and again.

The chances are that whatever we were doing before the recession hit will not work now. Too many things have changed. A little like the driver of a family saloon that suddenly finds himself behind the wheel of a supercar. Things look familiar but everything is so much more critical, so much more responsive; So potentially fatal.

This is not a time for amateurs or enthusiasts. This is a time for cool heads and skilful execution. It is a time when the word maximisation gives way to optimisation, when careering headlong has to give way to balanced progress, when the decisions we make will come under the full scrutiny of the most testing of times. But as the old English proverb states “a smooth sea never made a skilled mariner”

There will be many who can seize the many opportunities that are presented, to build their businesses, to hone their skills, to emerge from this cauldron, with strong, fit, lean businesses that are ideally suited to today’s conditions. The question is will yours be one of them.

I will be leading a free seminar on Monday 20th June where I will be discussing the top 5 things we must do to build resilience to recession. Please visit the events page on the website for details and call to reserve a place on 0845 430 9224

If there is a drawback with coaching it might be around affordability, the fear that “I can’t afford it”, or “I can’t afford it, yet”.
Even though I would argue, “but can you afford not to?”, I know that sometimes this thought holds back those people who really need to invest in themselves and to back themselves from taking that crucial next step and getting started.

So one of the challenges I have struggled with is how to make the benefits of world class business coaching available and affordable to all levels of business leaders.

I am delighted to say I have found a way to do that in announcing Business Boot Camp.

Business Boot Camp consists of 6 concentrated sessions taking place over 12 weeks. A high intensity, interactive event where we mix a select group of entrepreneurs together in a learning cauldron, where they can learn the quickest, most effective ways to grow their business, their sales and their performance.

Business Boot Camp is designed to give business owners a fast start to grow their profits so they can afford to embark on one to one coaching to really develop themselves and their business.

We will cover
 Launchpad
            The quickest way to grow your profits, income and to grow a business
 Keeping track
            Cash, profit and the vital numbers that will spell success for you
 Organise
            Get the most out of your day, manage your time to make real money
 Finding Customers
            Build products and offers that your customers just can’t say no to
 Build profitable relationships
            With your customers, your team, and your business partners. Reduce your workload and increase your success rate.
 Simply Sales
            Nothing happens until a sale is made, find out how to do so easily and effortlessly in a way that suits you.

To book on or for more information call 0845 430 9224 or visit www.teammassiveresults.com now

They are a unique breed. They have to be. There is only a very small proportion of the population who have the courage, the daring and the “cojones” to go into business, often putting everything they have on the line to pursue their dream.

Being in business provides a unique viewpoint on the world, and it demands a unique viewpoint of the world. Unlike many other positions in life owning a business means that there is no hiding place. If the business doesn’t work, the effects are pretty immediate: the business will cease to exist. There are very few businesses, particularly SME’s, which are able to survive for any length of time if they don’t make a profit, or generate cash, or both.

If a business doesn’t provide value to its customers, those customers will either not buy at all or buy elsewhere.

If a business doesn’t look after its staff those staff members will either go elsewhere, or worse yet, come into work and take the money while giving the minimum commitment for that money.

So running and owning a business has some very specific downsides.

Owning and running a business can be ruthless, immediate and final.

As we enter the second decade of the 21st century the competition is ever more fierce and ever more widespread. We face competition from every corner of the globe and every angle, and yet running a successful business is still the best way to achieve the things we want from life, and running a successful business is not only fun but immensely satisfying.

Often the people who run businesses are passionate, talented, daring and brave but that is no longer enough. To beat the odds, and the odds are that 80% of all businesses will fail within 5 years and another 80% of the survivors will not last the next 5 years, there needs to be something else. Business owners and business leaders need to become professional business people. They need to improve in the business of business, not just today but every day.

As Jim Rohn said “Get better or get beaten”. That means get better at the business of running a business, not just at the technical side of the job.

If you want to succeed tomorrow, you need to be planning and practicing to excel the day after tomorrow.

Action Point.
To understand whether you are in the habit of learning new stuff take ten minutes to write down all of the new things that you have learnt within the last week about, people, how businesses work, how teams work, new theories within your industry, a new practice from another industry you could adopt, and understanding how the brain works.
If you managed to write all of that down within the ten minutes, you might want to think about whether you are learning enough.
If you needed more than the ten minutes, well done. Now go back through the list and mark all the things that you have not yet implemented from your list.

It is worth trying. Take a situation like growing your business.

Now list all of the things that might “smooth the way” and drive you on to grow your business. There will be things like a sense of entrepreneurialism, destiny, necessity and survival. If you are honest there will also be things like hope and desperation too. There will also be certain specific skills on the list.

Now list the things which are holding you back. What are they? If you are honest there will be things like fear; what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?
Inertia. You would like to move to a higher level, but at the minute you just can’t be bothered. You have developed a comfort zone that is just too... well, comfortable. Remember that a comfort zone may not really be so much comfortable as familiar and therefore comforting.
Boiling Frog Syndrome; they say that if you put a frog in a pot of water and slowly turn up the heat, the frog will fail to notice the gradual change and allow itself to be slowly boiled to death. Lots of businesses and business owners are like that, things are changing around them but they don’t realise and they aren’t doing anything about it.
There will also be a lack of knowledge about certain things, like how a business really could perform, how people work and are motivated both individually and as a team, about finances and about leverage. We don’t know what we don’t know, and it is what we don’t know that costs us money, success, and achievement

There will be lots of things holding you back.

Action Point
What can you do today to increase your knowledge? Things like read books, mix with higher achievers, get a coach, take a risk. Start doing something today to reduce the things that are holding you back. When we minimise the things that hold us back, it is like cutting the tethers on a balloon. It just starts to fly.

Sample Forcefield Analysis

Getting In The Way                                                                    Smoothing The Way

Fear Of failing                                                                            Experience
       Of succeeding                                                                    Character
       Of asking for help                                                                Resilience
Inertia                                                                                      Fortitude
Boiling frog syndrome                                                                 Technical Skills 
Lack of focus                                                                             Entrepreneurial Spirit
Lack of direction                                                                        Mission
Lack of purpose                                                                         Hope
Lack of accountability                                                                 Desperation
Lack of a coach                                                                          Necessity
Lack of clear goals                                                                      Pride
Lack of knowledge on
                   The Business of business 
                   People
                   Team
                   Finances
Lack of soft skills
Pride
Belief that I can do this on my own
Trying to fly blind
Only noticing what you notice 

You will notice that some things appear in both columns and this is a fact of life. What smoothes the way in one part of our life can get in the way in another, and any strength that is overplayed can become a weakness.

We live in days of unprecedented change. In almost every way things are changing at a terrifying rate on all sorts of fronts. The ability to be able to move, change and adapt are premium, must have skills. Knowing not just how to survive but to prosper is a definite must have.

We are in times of relentless competition from all directions. Customers have almost limitless choices; they can choose you, or they can choose to do nothing at all; they can choose your local competitor, they can choose to transact with someone miles away, and often they can choose to transact with a machine. Until recently my accounts were processed, very efficiently, and overnight, in India so my local accountant lost out to competition half a world away, how different is that to just a few short years ago?

Ask yourself how well you understand the needs of your customer today? Be sure that they will have changed too. How well do you cater for those needs? Are you listening to him? Do you actually have a mechanism to communicate or will you find out only when he has voted with his feet?

Is your relationship simply transactional, or do you go out of your way to build a well founded relationship which provides increasing value, in your customer’s eyes?

Action exercise. Take some time to work out the three biggest “pains” your prospects and clients face right now. How adequate are your solutions right now? Then look at how they might be changing and how you can enhance the value that you provide in the future. Then do it.

These challenging times will be testing the resolve of many.

I look at it this way; if I worked for someone else what would be the chances that I could grow my income by 25% this year? Probably none, in fact I would possibly be looking at pay freezes or reductions, even redundancy right now. As a business owner though, you are capable of increasing your income by 25, 45 or 100% this year; as long as you know what to do, how to do it and have the courage to get on and actually do it.

Owning a business is still one of the best ways to be master of your own destiny, to be able to take the authorship of your own life and to write your own pay cheque out; Irrespective of the financial climate.

How do we do that? Well it is simple, but not necessarily easy.

The challenge is that most people come into business with a wealth of technical knowledge but the minute they own a business the knowledge they need most is about the business of business.

The current climate makes that so much more important. Businesses, but not all of them, will still grow in tough times. What do you have to know, what do you have to do to make sure you are one of those who prosper rather than perish?

As Jim Rohn said “Never wish life were easier, wish that you were better”.

Now is a great time to be in business. Take some action right now to develop the attitudes, skills and knowledge that will be the difference that makes the difference for you.

I often hear things like, “if we just had more clients, everything would be good”. Or “if we could just market ourselves better, we would be making good money”. I understand the desire to find the difference that makes the difference and the simple assumption is that we are only missing that one thing.

Reality, I have found, is usually very different. It rarely is just that one thing. People pursue “better marketing” to find that they often can’t convert the leads they might generate, or they recruit a sales specialist but don’t know how to manage or direct him or her. They may even step up their performance only to lose their newly gained clients through inadequate production and distribution.

To get some kind of an idea how interlinked business systems are just ask yourself how many problems would your business face if sales were to increase by 100%? How would the current systems, skills, knowledge and attitudes handle that level of increase? It would be like putting a powerful, modern engine in a car designed in the 1950s!

You see there is not one Golden Key to the vault of business success. There are lots of them. If you want to be able to open that particular vault you will need to be able to step up you and your teams performance in lots of areas.

All of that can be done, yes it may take a little time and indeed a lot of effort but the results will be worth it in the long run.

And because we don’t know what we don’t know it is impossible for us to decide what skills, attitudes and knowledge we need to acquire, so find someone who can help guide and coach you through this journey of growth and development to become the business leader you deserve to be.