In this blog, I'm sharing the essential ingredients to help you have your best year yet in 2021.
With the summer holidays over and many business owner's returning full time to their desk, I wanted to unpack some of the essential ingredients to make 2021 your best year yet.
Discipline
This may feel like a paradigm shift as you quite possibly started your business for "freedom". And for that reason, you may not have considered the important role discipline has in your business.
| You can not have freedom without discipline.
You see, as a business owner you're faced with hundreds of decisions to make each and every day. And the choices you make will either have you drifting away from or striding at full speed toward your goals.
I encourage you to reframe any negative beliefs you might have around discipline. Because discipline is the conduit to results and in turn freedom.
What do I mean? If you're going to reach your goals, you'll need to make tough calls along the way, that may feel less enjoyable in the short term, but will ultimately bring you closer to where you want to be.
Think about it like this, if you set yourself a goal to "get fit" in 2021 - you need to take action towards achieving this goal. So, when the alarm goes off at 5.30am, you'll be faced with a decision - do you hit snooze or do you get up and get the workout done. In that moment you might think that the 20 minute lay in is what you want, but by being disciplined you'll get out of bed and do the workout, leaving you happier in the long run for taking action towards what you really want (to be fit).
It's the same with business, you know where you want to go, now it's up to you to have discipline to get there, this means sticking to your plan, guarding your yeses and no's and aligned decisions as you take action.
Focus.
Before you dismiss this as something fluffy, please read to the end, it may just get you thinking about how to be more focused in your business.
Focus was actually one of my "words" for 2020. To be honest, I actually started working towards focus in late 2019 after reading The One Thing by Gary Keller.
When you focus on who you are, who you serve, the problem you solve and what you offer everything changes:
👉🏼 You're less distracted by the distractions
👉🏼 You know what you stand for and so does your audience
👉🏼 You know who to work with (and importantly who not to)
Importantly you become relentless in aligning your actions to your vision, mission and values, which means you ultimately build a business on your ideals, that you truely love.
If your curious to know how I "focused" in 2020, check out my 2020 in review blog.
Failure.
I'm sure you often hear the saying: "What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail"?
I challenge you to consider, what’s possible if you knew you would fail. What could be learnt, what could be gained, what could be achieved?
Failure's not to be feared, failure should be embraced. Without failure, you're probably not pushing beyond your comfort zone nearly enough.
| Failure is essential for growth
The greatest success stories of our time didn't bypass failure, they experienced success because of it.
As human beings we want to resist failure because it hurts.
We take failure personally and it conjures up feelings of unworthiness.
Frankly, who wants to bring more hurt into our life, so our limbic brain keeps us safe with fear in the hope we won’t do anything to cause us to fail.
Fear of failure is not just a problem for as adults, it's become somewhat of an epidemic in our schools - teachers having to manage children's fixed mindset (evidenced by a resistance to failure and perfectionism tendencies - a willingness to only give it a go if they know they won't get it wrong). I wonder if this could be a result of a generation of parents who they, themselves don't want to fail.
What are your own feelings / beliefs around failure? How could your fear of failure be showing up in your business: Importantly, does it prevent you from taking action that could see you achieve your bold vision?
I have failed (in small ways and epically) and honestly, it took a lot of inner work to understand that the mistakes I’ve made don’t define me as a failure, but rather led to achievement. More than that though, past failures opened doors that wouldn’t have existed had I not failed to begin with.
Now when I fail I don’t beat myself up, I stop, I pay attention, I listen, I reflect, I learn, I adapt and importantly I try again - a little bit closer to the target next time.
Systems.
Systems may not be a sexy topic, but systems are sure as heck important in your business (life too, but that's for another day).
Systems (like, discipline) create freedom.
Systems create a positive customer experience.
Systems free up your time to focus more on what you love and less of what you don't.
Systems allow you to scale your business.
Systems create consistency.
Systems help you support your clients in a bigger way.
By systemising your business you can focus on doing the necessary work needed to grow your business to the next level.
If you're serious about moving beyond solopreneur / freelancer and building a bigger business (and revenue) in 2021, systems are an absolute must!
Plan.
The two mistakes I see business owner's make when it comes to planning:
Over planning: spending too long planning all the details for the next twelve months, only to save their plan and let it gather dust in the deepest darkest part of dropbox. Planning can be a form of procrastination.
No plan at all: And then wonder why they haven't achieved their goals. Not having a plan can lead you down the garden path, glaring at all the bright shiny gnomes on the way.
Instead, I highly recommend focusing on building out a plan for 3 to 6 months. I have developed my signature Plan on Page, which is an incredible tool I use with my clients and also inside my own business. Whatever plan you choose to implement in your business, be sure to make it accessible and actionable.
Get Support.
No matter what stage you're at in your business investing in your personal and business growth is essential.
Whilst there is a lot of great free information on the internet, it can be overwhelming and difficult to know how it all fits inside YOUR business. And so, investing in getting direct support by way of an online course or 1:1 business coaching is what's going to get you results faster.
If investing in a 1:1 business coach, here are the two ways in which you and I can work together;
In person day : Business Strategy Workshop
6 months Coaching : Business Accelerator Program
You have all the lessons of 2020, a fire in your heart and a business to build. I hope that today's tips help you reach your 2021 goals.
Do you have any other essential ingredients to add to this list, let me know in the comment's I'd love to hear them.