Well, guess what? It was one of my biggest mistakes. I should have just jumped right in and got at it. As a result of my inaction I wasted a lot of time because the majority (90%) of the research I did was never used. It meant absolutely NOTHING. Experience is the best learning tool you could ever have. That is why I constantly tell entrepreneurs to dive in head first and learn to swim.

Failure

People get immobilized when they think about failing. Some people cannot face failure head on, but successful entrepreneur’s can! Failing is a part of life. It’s a huge part of finding out what works and what does not work. That is why I tell entrepreneurs to fail as fast as possible so they can find out what is working. The more times you fail the faster you find out what works!

Change

There are few absolute guarantees in life and change is one of them. Many wannabe entrepreneurs fear change. Charles G. Koch, the founder of the worlds largest private company, Koch Industries, has continuously embraced change. He has learned to adapt his strategies to embrace change and lead his company to greatness. We encourage you to read more about Koch’s Market Based Management philosophy. He has also published a book about MBM which is a great read!

Economic Uncertainty

You probably think that right now is a bad time to be thinking about starting your own business. Don’t worry, many people feel this way. However, a poor economy creates several opportunity’s for entrepreneurs. In fact a lot of successful companies started and grew significantly during a recession or depression.

One of my favorite examples of this is Jim Koch, not to be confused with Charles Koch of Koch Industries. Jim Koch is the founder of Samuel Adams beer and the Boston Beer Company. He began his journey during the 1980’s recession, which just so happened to be perfect timing. There used to be 1,000’s of brewery’s in the United States but when the recession hit a lot of them flopped. Mr. Koch saw an opportunity and went for it. The recession was a perfect time to enter the marketplace.

Now, think about what business’s were in abundance before the recession and have rapidly declined because of the recession. The biggest one that comes to mind is banks. What else can you think of?

Your Business Will Consume Your Life

You want to start a business but you also want to have time to spend with your family and friends. Many people think that starting a business will disable them from having a social life. Well, this is preventable. Don’t let your business run you. You need to run your business!

The bet example I can provide is from Timothy Ferriss book The 4-Hour Work Week which is basically about increasing your efficiency as much as possible and then outsourcing the rest of the work. The principles apply to every type of business and the extent to which they can be applied varies across business’s. However, you will find it extremely useful.

Fear of Being Your Own Boss

When first starting out it can feel like you are wasting your time or that what you are doing is really not that important. It feels like you are running a lemonade stand on the corner of the busiest street in your town, no one is stopping in  and everyone is laughing at you. It can really be discouraging.

Furthermore, starting a company is not exactly going to provide you with a sense of security or stability. This is often really hard for people to deal with. I know it was for me as well. That is why it is important to set goals. Set goals that can be done in a short time period to give you confidence in yourself and in your new business venture. The absolute key to overcoming this fear is setting goals!

Now, some people would also say something like this: I want to be a fireman, be successful and have lot’s of money. Note the “successful and have lot’s of money”. Inherently, even as children our subconscious separated the difference between money and success. I think it is pretty well understood that monetary wealth is not correlated with success.

For example, think of a lottery winner. It’s great that they won the money and now they are some of the richest people in the world! Well, does this now make them successful? How many times have you seen on the news, stories about lottery winners that are now filing for bankruptcy? All the time! Success is a lot more than having money.

There are many examples and definitions for what success is. I choose to measure success based on someone’s passion. Passion is what drives people and that drive is what makes them successful; even if other people don’t consider them to be. The best example I can give is of someone that is very wealthy and doesn’t need to work, they don’t need any more money, and they are not doing it for the money. They are doing it because it is their passion and they would do it with or without money. Can you think of people like this? Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, etc. How about people in your own life, that you know personally?

It’s easy for those that become successful and wealthy to get caught up in the fame of what they do. They begin to lose sight of why they started in the first place. They lose the motivation and the passion that they once had and they begin to crumble. This is what sets successful people apart from everyone else. They are not willing to trade in their values just to make a little bit of money now. They are always helping others, and never lose sight of the long-term.

It’s important to stay in touch with your values as you progress through life. In the long run the only thing that is going to matter is what’s right. What’s right for you, your family, your community, business partner’s, etc. In business, everything you do affects people, even if they are not a part of your life. In business you have the ability to do good things and bad things as well. It’s important to never lose sight of where you came from and where you are heading.

How do you measure success?

I also like to establish business goals for each one of my business property’s. These are a little, albeit, a lot different than my personal goals. It’s important to set goals periodically so that you can go back at the end of the goal period and find out if you have accomplished the goal you set out to accomplish. This is why it’s really important to write down your goals and keep track of them. Putting all of your goals in a 3 ring binder is a very easy way to keep track of everything.

We will focus on setting business, professional, or career goals but this same process and information can be used to set your personal goals as well.

What’s the point of setting goals?

Goal setting forces you to take a look in to your future and determine where you want to be in a year, three years, five years, or longer. This allows you to come up with a vision of what it is you want to do in the future and turn that vision in to a reality.

You will know exactly where you want to go and you will know precisely what you need to do to reach it. Not only will you think about where you want to be in the future, you will also think about what obstacles you may face along your journey; before experiencing them.

Goals are great for motivational purposes. This is why almost every sales firm, and business for that matter, establishes goals that are obtainable. Your motivation will be at an all time high once you actually achieve a goal. You will become addicted to setting goals and making sure you reach them. You will notice that your self-confidence is much higher once you achieve the goal than it ever was before.

Before we go any further I would like to provide you with a simple Goal Sheet that you can use. I recommend hanging it up on the wall over your desk. Unless you have a lot of goals, than use a binder.

Using SMART To Establish Goals

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timely

Specific - Be as specific as possible about what it is you want to achieve. Specify exactly what it is you want to do, why you want to do it and how you plan on doing it.

Measurable - Simply put, if you can’t measure it than you have no idea how it’s working, right? You want to be able to see changes happening before your eyes or you will lose motivation and think that your goal setting efforts are failing miserably, when they could actually be working great!

Attainable - When setting up goals you need to be able to stretch yourself a little and get out of your “comfort zone”, otherwise the goal will not need your attention and you will not have a strong commitment towards it.

Realistic - Sometimes I see people set goals that are simply unrealistic. The goals set should be do-able. You want to make the goals hard enough that you need to push yourself to achieve them, but not completely out of your league.

Timely - Setting time frames are extremely important, otherwise the goal will never get accomplished (procrastination minus the time commitment means it will never happen). So set goals to be established in a timely manner, make sure they are attainable and realistic.

Goal Setting Steps

1) Vision - This is where you want to be in the future, your company or your website, etc. No matter what it is you are focusing on I’m sure you have a vision for what you want it to become; we all do.

Example: Rich Kid’s Campus wants to provide high school student’s, college student’s, young entrepreneur’s and anyone else that would like to start and run their own business’s, a community that they can come to for encouragement on taking the next step in their career’s. We envision a group of like-minded individuals working together to form a community that shares in a wealth of information.

2) Goals - Goals are more general, but still specific, and can often be unmeasurable.

Example: One of Rich Kid’s Campus’s goals is to get more targeted traffic to our website so we can build a strong community.

3) Objectives - This is where your vision and goals become a reality. They are the bridge between your forecast of the future and what you have envisioned. These are specific and are measurable.

Example: We want to have over 30,000 visitors a month on Rich Kid’s Campus by the beginning of 2011.

4) Tasks - This is where you really get specific. Basically you want to outline the methods that you will use to meet your objective. These are concrete and can easily be measured. Furthermore, if the tasks are not carried out than you will most likely not meet your objectives or goals.

Example: Use Twitter, Facebook, and other social media outlets regularly to increase traffic and build a strong community.

5) Time line – This is the real key here. If you wait until a month before your goal needs to be achieved than you will never meet it! So, it’s important to set up a time line for when your tasks will be started and it’s also a good idea to establish how often the tasks need to be worked on.

Example: We will have our task list implemented before the end of January, 2010. We will focus on these tasks on a weekly basis.

6) Followup - This is the control portion of setting goals. You need to check your measurements periodically to see if you are on target to achieve your goal. If you are not on track than it’s time to make adjustments to your plan. Maybe you were overambitious, or you have not had enough time or your techniques are simply not working.

Setting goals are pretty simple really. Here is a Goal Sheet to get you started right away!