Don't Procrastinate

You Can Achieve Anything You Want In Life

The title for this post comes from a quote by Sidney Friedman, the nationally known corporate speaker; “You can achieve anything you want in life if you have the courage to dream it, the intelligence to make a realistic plan, and the will to see that plan through to the end.”

We’ve had many people in our lives who told us that we can have anything we want in life if we want it badly enough, yet many people struggle.  We work hard to achieve today’s tasks without a clear vision of our end-goal.  A little solitude to consider the “bigger dream” for our efforts is required to determine what we want to get from the gift of our time on earth and, what we want to give back, to enrich those who follow us.

Take a moment now to write down what you want in life for you, your family, and your business.  Stop reading for a moment, think about your big dream, and write it down.  The rest of this article will wait until you’ve answered that question…

Now narrow the focus to just you and your company.  How will you leave your business?  Most owners don’t have a plan for how they will leave; neither in a personal sense, nor in what condition they will leave the business itself.  They toil daily to stay “in” business without the bigger goal in mind, which ought to be, ensuring it continues without them.  When your business is designed to be perpetual, you will get paid for your life’s work (what you get), your successor will realize their dream of ownership (what you give back), your employees retain their jobs (still more you give back), your customers keep their service relationship and the community keeps a valued business (more enriching benefits).

If perpetuating your business is now, or becomes, your career dream, the next step is to have “the intelligence to make a realistic plan.”  Two requirements of your plan are math functions and developing your staff’s skills.  Math provides the framework for solving your profit goal by using your cost of sales, variable and fixed expense ratios to calculate your required sales target.  Developing talent is a critical function of your ownership duties so that at least one of your staff is capable of running your company when you leave.

The last part of the opening quote is “the will to see that plan through to the end.”  Most business owners are incredibly hard-working people, often working 50-60 hour weeks; so, effort is not an issue.  Realize that effort is not the same thing as “will.”  Will is determination and ambition.  It is the relentless advancement to success.

Define your dream.  Create a plan to achieve it.  Pursue the plan continually. Evaluate your progress.  Refine it.  Do not delay.  Succeed!

This quote from Henry Shaw (1818-1885) provides the perfect closing, “The greatest thief this world ever produced is procrastination, and he is still at large.”