Hi everyone,
Hope you are having a great week and I thought I would share a great little concept
I learned a while back during some sales and marketing training.
Working for yourself can be very challenging, and it certainly takes a certain attitude or ability to make it work. All skills are learnable but when there is no one there to hold your accountable it can be challenging.
Working for someone else is easy, in comparison as you have to be there at certain times and hopefully are monitored for your work output. You are held accountable otherwise you won't get paid or worse with the dreaded fear of being let go always looming.
But for those who are self-employed or freelance there are certain techniques you need to employ to get the most from yourself and be fair to your business goals. You need a structure and routine, one thing that has helped me is this method.
Imagine a man who is very smartly dressed and wealthy comes up and says I will pay you 100k a year if you do the following things.
You need to work 8-10 hours a day
You need to make sales and work hard at your business
You need to be committed to make it work
obviously it will be different for each of your business, but its the concept here I want to share rather than specifics.
So John says sign here, and you agree to my terms to earn 100k a year.
So you go ahead and sign and the next day, Monday your laying in bed tired and instead of starting work at 8.00 am you decide to have a snooze until 10.30 instead.
You go into the bathroom to have a shave or put on your lipstick for our ladies here and suddenly John is stood there when you look in the mirror. He casually asks why did you start at 8.00 as we agreed?
We go through our day and meet a friend downtown and end up spending the afternoon tiling over old times over a few beers on the way home.
We call a cab, and John appears sat alongside asking how many sales or leads have I made today towards earning my 100k a year salary.
I could go on and give more examples, but you get the point, John, who is your imaginary boss, is a method of holding yourself accountable. He is like your virtual assistant. When you plan on doing something but don't follow through, he's there.
Using this method as a mind game, gives you the culpability. If your not doing what you should be doing making calls, making sales or marketing your business. We all can justify being busy, but there is a huge difference between activity and productivity.
I have known people who have a written agreement to themselves and signed it displaying it clearly where they see it every day. Some have worked it down to monthly, weekly, daily, hourly rates.
The fact is if you don't set an income goal for the year then it will be hard to aim at all. Solid businesses have predefined targets be it sales profit margins, key indicators of profit to strive towards.
So imagine the scenario and make some form of commitment to your conscious on what you're going to do to achieve your goals.
If you are losing motivation or focus, just imagine your other self saying you're not honouring our agreement to get there. Although some may pay lip service to this, being over simplistic, it works. You need to be responsible and hold yourself accountable; the pain of regret is far heavier to bear than the pain of effort.
Hope this helps you out
kind regards
Simon
