By Brian Jackway
When you look at success for business people around the world, clarity is not readily one of the associated traits that come to mind. However when you look deeper, clarity is such an essential ingredient for all highly productive business owners.
Napoleon Hill, in his classic book, Think & Grow Rich, said, “Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” He goes on to explain why having a clear idea on what you want to achieve in business and life is the critical reason for your motivation, actions and success.
So what is clarity and for us business owners how can we use this trait to help us achieve?
I define “clarity” as follows:
Clarity is determining exactly what results you want to achieve and when you want to achieve them.
The key word in that definition is “exactly”. If you don’t make the time to define your goal in exact terms, you are not setting yourself up for success. Instead, you are setting yourself up for a guess and generality rather than clear focused and specific.
For those of us who have experienced not reaching a goal or for those of us who have never set written down goals, it is usually the lack of focus of the wording that is wrong. General words simply do not work. Specific focused and clear intent sends a message to our brains that is motivating, action driven and more likely to be achieved. Therefore clarity is reached when we know exactly what we want to achieve and when you want to achieve it.
So why is having clarity so important?
Without clarity, your business moves from place to place like a ship without a rudder. You tend to drift from one thing to another, without a plan to hold it together. But with clarity, you are focused on specific results or actions, you run your business “on purpose” and you will create amazing results — both for you and for your customers!
This may be best understood with an example. Several years ago I worked with a business manager named Simon who helped manage a company based in Victoria. Simon had some lofty ideas for what he wanted to achieve, but they were not defined in much detail. He wanted to achieve a lot of results in a short period of time, but he didn’t have a clear focus on how he was going to do it. There was no performance management, no written down plan, no key performance indicators – just a drifting from day to day hoping things would work out for the best.
Knowing the outcome you want is part of the answer but ask yourself this: How can you get clarity, motivation and focus to achieve massive results in your business?
Clarity is achieved when you know some or all of these answers below:
What are your specific written down goals?
What one goal would you like to achieve in the next 90 days?
How do you measure success in your business today?
How much money do you want to make this year as profit?
What is your vision (your ideal) for 1 year and 5 years down the track?
What are your specific key performance indicators for your business?
How many enquiries or leads do you need this week or month?
What is your conversion rate from enquiry to sale?
What is the average $ spend of your customers this week or month?
How many repeat customers do you have out of your total customer base?
Do you measure these key areas above?
How many new customers did you gain last month?
In your best month, how many new customers did you gain?
Do you know your break even point weekly and monthly?
Do you have a written down plan of attack that is thought out and simple to execute such as a 90 day (2 pages) action plan?
In my opinion clarity is achieved when you know the answers of the most meaningful 5 questions above. For everyone what questions to answer can be different depending on your industry or expertise.
Some sample answers are:
1. In the last three months, I have gained 82 new customers.
2. I would like to get 100 new customers in the next 90 days. I have never done this before, so this is a very exciting goal for me!
3. When I reach my goal of 100 new customers, I will invest half of the profits into my personal financial freedom account and spend some of the profits on a one-week vacation to Bali with my family.
4. In my best month ever, I gained 40 new customers.
5. During my best month, I think the biggest reason for my success was that I rolled out a marketing campaign to a local community and followed up on every lead that I received.
The key is to work out exactly the most important short term goal. What one specific clear action would have the biggest effect in your business? Specifically, what is it and what timeline do we realistically need to action it.
It is amazing the feeling of clarity we get when we take the first steps towards something you really want. How motivating that is to keep going and to push through the inevitable bumps and challenges that appear in our way. How great is it when clarity is obtained. How great is it when your actions change because you know exactly where you are heading, what actions you need to take you there.
Although often elusive to many, when you go under the hood of the most successful entrepreneurs, business owners and managers, clarity is the essential ingredient that all successful business people live by.
Great job with Step Two, Cindy! Now you’re ready to move on to Step Three.
Are you starting to get the picture and see how easy it can be to develop clarity for yourself? When you focus on the above questions and answer them honestly, you will be laying the next brick in your momentum foundation.
Make some time in your schedule this week to think about your answers to these questions. And if you have a business coach today, also make the time to review your thoughts about these questions with him or her.
Getting very clear about what you want to accomplish in your business in the next 90 days is a very important step to catapult your business into massive momentum. Take action and get these questions answered today.
You’ll be glad you did!
