Entrepreneurship – Essence of Business Milestones
Published March 30, 2012 | 
It’s never really been about just doing the best we can, but doing what is necessary to show successes along the road to reach the final successful achievement.
Focusing on the essence of milestones for your business, write down the objectives that must be achieved before you can consider having reached your goal, and these very objectives are the essence of your milestones. An example may be, if you want your unique gift store to reach the goal of a monthly profit of $20,000, milestones would be making monthly profits of $5,000, then $10,000, then $15,500, then $18,000. Also, if you want your floor janitorial company to make the make the switch to being 100-percent green-friendly, the milestones may include finding a couple of affordable suppliers of green cleaning products, and then developing your own commercial cleaning solutions.
Going further, you should organize the goals and milestones in sequential or chronological order including short-term, medium-term and long-term. Understand that a well-organized list allows for much easier change, adjustment and revisions as needed. But, try not to revise your milestones and goals unless your business significantly changes and you have to take action and make the changes.
So, assume that your business experiences a loss of 10-percent in profits after the second quarter of the current year. That is the time to make the adjustments and revisions to include new goals and milestones relating to the action of gaining new customer accounts or lowering operating costs or both, rather than continuing with the original milestones on your initial list. 
You should consider that reaching your old goals and milestones may not be possible until your business recovers a bit after you taken the necessary actions.
You should make it a practice to refer to your list of milestones at least every six months to ensure that you are on track, but most entrepreneurs that are dialed in to the “Lean Business Planning” process will check progress weekly, monthly and quarterly. As you reach each milestone, cross them off or highlight them, or signify in some clear way that you have completed an important step toward accomplishment of your goals.
Finally, a list that is either laminated or placed in some sort of document protector and posted in a prominent location in your office can serve as a daily source of motivation for your entire team, the simple effect on everyone can be priceless.
Entrepreneurship – Goal Realistic
Published March 22, 2012 | Part of the question of achievement possesses the capabilities of setting realistic goals, but that often proves extremely difficult because you don’t always know exactly where you’re going, and the path you need to be on.
Always make your goals realistic, and if you or the team looks at a goal and feels compelled to roll your eyes, rest assured the proposed goal may be in serious trouble from the very start. For instance, establishing a goal to be the #1 anything in an area is a good goal on the surface, but looking at it realistically, just how can you accomplish that if you’re currently a 1 or 2-person operation? In this specific case, a more realistic and highly-attainable goal might be to become a Top 10 anything during your first year and make adjustments going forward.
You have to understand that this is not a synonym for “easy.” Far from it, realistic, in this case, means “do-able.” It also means that the “learning curve” is not a vertical slope; that the specific skills needed to do the work are most certainly available; and that the project matches the overall strategic goals of the organization. A realistic project may test the level of skills and knowledge of the people working on it but it shouldn’t be more than they can handle.
Devising a path or a way of reaching the goal makes it much more realistic. It is also important that the goal needs to be realistic for you and where the organization is at the moment.
Be absolutely sure to set goals that you and your team can reach with some effort! The fine line not to cross is “too difficult” and you set the stage for obvious failure, but then again, too low and send the message that you aren’t very capable. So make sure that you set the bar high enough for an affective and meaningful achievement!
Entrepreneurship – Process-Oriented Goals
Published March 19, 2012 | You should always look for people with an unbounded capacity to not understand what can’t be done.
Now if you’re like most people, you always tend to selectively delay or put some things off until the last minute. A very true observation once made and often repeated goes, “If it wasn’t for the last minute, nothing would ever get done.” To illustrate, imagine a mom needing to take the kids to an event like a ballgame, and the dad is right in the middle of changing the car’s oil.
Obviously, this is the result of poor or no planning on their part, which the result is more often than not much less than desirable.
I think everyone will agree that with even a little planning, the dad could have achieved a simple but extremely important goal of keeping everyone happy, by accomplishing the oil change earlier in the day.
Now picture your business, where all too often we fail to master effective lean business planning and set process-oriented goals for ourselves and our business.
Understand that an early step in the dynamic lean business planning process is to set the right process goals. This can be broken down to a two-step process since it’s necessary to 1) always set process goals for the business in general, and 2) always set process goals for ourselves that allow us to reach the business goals. Neither step can be neglected without detriment to the other and ultimate failure to achieve the most optimal process and path to the desired goals and success.
Functions of Process-Oriented Goals
Direction is simply moving in a direction with no finish line, but continued momentum means dynamic movement and processes with emphasis on maximized efficiencies. It’s not about the finish line, but the journey to reach it, and you enjoy every step of the way.
Effectiveness of process-oriented goals is simply the product of metrics and analytics to carefully gauge the impact of your actions and processes. You should just think of measuring sticks.
Progress is similar, in that process-oriented goals provide milestones, so you know you’re moving in a direction somewhere. 
Remember, it’s not a finish line, just a passing point.
Articulation of process-oriented goals gives you needed enhanced focus, without being burdensome.
Motivation is a sign or pointer that gets you on a path that is enjoyable for you to be on; process-oriented goals characteristically generate much greater motivation for action.
So, the main distinctive characteristic between result-oriented and process-oriented goals comes down to the simple fact that result-oriented goals are pure mandates, while process-oriented goals are signs. And, with result-oriented goals, you either succeed or fail, that’s it, nothing more and nothing less. By way of process-oriented goals, you succeed simply by getting on the path, and it continues past milestones, all the way to the moment you reach your goal.
Gratitude and Goals for You and Your Business
Published November 24, 2011 | 
Today is Thanksgiving or Turkey day in the U.S. where flocks of turkeys everywhere are being prepared for this day’s traditions. Their time is definitely up today. If we’re all lucky in America, we will all enjoy the results of hours of preparation and eat those birds along with many other traditional delicacies. Most of us will be sharing precious minutes with our loved ones around the table or on the phone.
Now, if you haven’t already figured it out, then let me break it to you that the turkey, although nice, is not really important and what it’s all about today. Many thousands will be eating tofurkey, or even bologna sandwiches, and doing so with the same or even greater level of thanks.
Relationships are what powers us and makes this wonderful world go round. Clearly understand that you and I can’t possibly begin to know who we are, can’t possibly learn and grow, and can’t possibly 
experience the joys and sorrows of life, and pursue elusive happiness, without other people there to help us along our life’s journey.
We ARE the 100%
It doesn’t matter that we either agree or disagree with recent Occupy Wall Street protests that attempt to divide us into the top 1% of earners and everyone else. You and I, along with everyone who actually earns bazillions of dollars are in reality, ONE big living organism. The enormously important element to remember from all this, is what we do as individuals matters to the whole. And as an individual, entrepreneur and business owner, how you live and operate your business matters to the world.
You might think of yourself as small fish right now, but if you’re smart and innovative, can visualize what you want to do, with a little bit of luck mixed in, you’ll grow your business into something as BIG as you want it to be.
Be Grateful and Visualize
So understanding that all of us are affected by the state of the world today, are you totally grateful for the way things are? Would you like to change up a few things?
Most of us don’t start thinking about the tradition of setting goals until New Years. But why wait? There’s no time like the present to take action, right? So be sure to soak up all that gratitude today, and count your blessings!
You can even share your vision for what you’d like to accomplish. Have some fun and enjoy the day’s moments. Use the power of relationships to move forward with the understanding that collective visioning is one of the most powerful things unique to us. And answer questions like, “What would you like to be grateful for this time next year? And how will your business make a difference?
Great Web Entrepreneurs – Life Lessons for Entrepreneurs
Published May 6, 2011 | 
“Life is short and if you’re looking for extension, you had best do well.” – Ben Harper
“Life is short, the art long.” – Hippocrates
“Life is short, so enjoy it to the fullest.” – John Walters
Life teaches us so many lessons entrepreneurs use to successfully start and operate their businesses. We just have to observe and notice life events as they occur to determine what can work in the entrepreneurial business world. Here are just a few life lessons I have observed that entrepreneurs might be able to look closely at, and apply to business with success:
Make sure you always have the right tools. 
No matter what your task is you always need tools to accomplish what you set out to do. Of course, many times people begin a task unprepared with sometimes even no tools, and they have to stop and go through the process of determination of the tools needed and then gathering the tools before proceeding. This takes up valuable time and effort that we can never recover.
Delays caused by not having the right tools can and do ultimately cost the unprepared entrepreneur the success they want badly and are striving for. They should also clearly understand what’s needed and carefully include in the plan the right training, knowledge and skill-sets as well as actual tools.
Set goals. 
It is important to select only one to three important goals on which you can then focus greater attention. Understand that if you establish too many goals, in most cases you will be unable to dedicate enough energy, and more importantly time to each. The common result from too many goals may be failure to achieve some of them, or even worse yet – any of them.
So your understanding should be that if you limit the number of goals and are very specific in the details of each one, you significantly increase your chances to be more successful. The more often you experience success, the more committed you will become to the plans and processes you have developed to achieving success.
The achievement of success in both business and every area of your personal life will become easier if you use the same principles for the determination and establishment of goals. And when you are able to frequently enjoy consistent levels of success, you will take pleasure in a much greater sense of satisfaction.
Always practice your skills a lot in advance of the real business performance. Many times you will be unable to practice and perfect your business skills under the same circumstances as in the live business. A great example of this is when you are to make an important presentation in the very near future it’s hard to account for the same pressure of the live presentation in front of your prospective customers or clientele. 
But if you are able to practice your pitch enough times in front of a soft friendly audience, your presentation skills will improve.
I have always found it fascinating that the fear of speaking in front of any size group is the number one fear on any list of fears ranking survey. Believe it or not, most people fear public speaking even more so than the fear of death.
Make sure to always have fun. Success in life is all about working hard and having fun. I’m know there are countless people who want to own a business, but don’t. They create excuses that they can’t find time to develop many skills and the knowledge needed to be successful, and they are just way too busy with work, or school, or any number of other things they let take their valuable time.
You should understand clearly that while the journey to your success is relatively long, not only do you have to be happy when you get your destination of success, but even more important, you have to enjoy the journey as well. So work hard, but remember to make sure you have a lot of fun too along the way. As they say, life is short.