5 ways to perform better in the new year - Siimon Reynolds

1. WORK ON YOUR SELF BELIEF DAILY.
The great business mentor, Dan Sullivan, has long stated that in his 35 years experience, confidence is the single most valuable attribute to succeed in business. But most of us aren’t just born confident, we need to work at it. One of the best ways to do this is to spend a few minutes daily being your own mind coach – talk yourself up, convince yourself that you have what it takes to achieve great things this year. After all, as Dr Maxwell Maltz’s research proved over 30 years ago, we usually perform in accordance with our self identity.

2. GET CLEAR ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT.
After studying successful people for over three decades, high performance expert, Brian Tracy, concluded that the most important element of achievement is Clarity. Where do you want to be in 12 months? In 6 months? In the next 90 days? Write it down and read it every day – it will triple your chances of making it a reality. You don’t have to be a genius to achieve big things in business. You usually just have to be very clear about your aims, then work hard and intelligently to reach them.

3. DEVELOP WHITE HOT DESIRE.
Strong desire is common amongst all great business titans. If you are half hearted about your goals, then mediocrity is assured. As top performance coach, Steve Hardison, put it, “If you’re not totally committed this ship is sinking, it’s just a matter of when.” The good news is that personal desire can be increased quickly – by thinking incessantly about your goals, reminding yourself constantly of why you want them and remaining cognizant of how good life will be when you achieve them.

4. DEVELOP SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE.
In 1937, Napoleon Hill identified a lack of specialized knowledge as one of the primary reasons people fail to achieve their dreams in business. What specifically do you need to learn to succeed in your line of work? What areas of knowledge have the top people in your field learned that those at the mid level haven’t? Think about this carefully, then make it your business to become expert in those areas. Steve Jobs needed to know how to manage people (and boards) better before he could achieve lasting corporate greatness. Investment guru Leon Black had to learn the intricacies of high yield bonds from Michael Milken before he could strike out on his own. What specialized knowledge do you need to learn to make this year an outstanding one?

5. DO WHAT’S REALLY IMPORTANT FIRST.
Having spent almost 30 years studying time management, if I were asked what is the single most critical productivity technique, I would say it’s this one: whatever is the highest value activity on your To Do List, do it first. Then do the next most important task second, and so on.
You can ignore all the other hundreds of efficiency techniques and still become extremely successful in business, if you master this one. Yet not one executive or entrepreneur in a hundred does this consistently.

So there you have it, 5 simple tips to making this year a superb one. Why not try them for the next 30 days and see how much better your results become? In the long run, success in business is no accident, it stems from doing a few key things well, again and again. Starting with the ones above.

A Brilliant Method To Generate Ideas For Your Business - Simon Reynolds

The future of your business depends on just two abilities.

Firstly, being able to come up with excellent ideas to expand your business. Secondly to be good at implementing those ideas.

There are thousands of books and articles about the implementation part, but comparatively little about quality business idea generation. Over the last 25 years I have made my living coming up with good business ideas and over time I developed a system that allowed me to do so quickly, efficently and effectively.

Below is a quick ten step methodology that will allow you to speedily generate lots of different ideas for your company. Whether you’d like to conceive new income streams, fresh marketing concepts, breakthrough positioning strategies or novel product ideas, this system will get the job done.

Here’s how it works. Spend ten minutes on each of the questions below. During the ten minute period endeavor to come up with as many answers to each question as you can. Only after you have completed each question should you review your solutions. At stage one, it’s all about quantity – the more answers you come up with, the higher your chances of generating something wondrous.

Stage two is the sifting process – picking the gems and discarding the rest.

Follow this process and you’ll have no shortage of excellent ideas to use throughout your company.

QUESTION ONE: WHAT’S SOMETHING I COULD DO THAT’S REALLY EXTREME?
This question forces you to think more laterally than most of us usually do. Often when we brainstorm, our ideas are merely tiny changes to what’s already there. The danger is that if we think too safe and small we often will end up with solutions that have no hope of making an impact. By choosing to conceive ideas that must all be extreme we have a chance of coming up with ideas that, with a little tweaking, could be something really special.

QUESTION TWO: WHAT COULD WE ADD TO SOMETHING WE ALREADY DO TO MAKE IT MORE EXTRAORDINARY?
This question can lead to some wonderful ideas. By simply adding to an already successful concept you can take it into a totally different and vastly more profitable area. Is it not true that many of the most impactful concepts in your industry were only slightly better than what everyone else was doing? Take ten minutes to brainstorm additions to your existing best ideas, you may well be delighted by what you come up with.

QUESTION THREE: WHAT COULD WE STRIP AWAY FROM WHAT WE ALREADY DO?
This is in many ways the opposite of the previous question. When you look at an existing product or industry, you can often come up with something novel by just reducing the core idea to something simpler. For example, when Bic produced the first mass produced disposable razor it was merely a simplified version of the traditional version. Toyota did the same with cars, decades ago. What could you strip away to create something more unique, novel or marketable?

QUESTION FOUR: WHAT IDEAS COULD WE TAKE FROM OTHER INDUSTRIES AND APPLY TO OURS?
It’s amazing how little cross pollination there is between industries. Yet, one of the quickest ways to come up with a break though idea is to examine what other industries are doing and see if you can apply those concepts in your sector. For example, software sales people could learn a lot from the best real estate sales people. TV writers could learn a whole range of new techniques from advertising writers. Don’t just navel gaze inside your own world – take a look at the industries around you and see how their old ideas could become your new ones.

QUESTION FIVE: WHAT COULD WE STEAL FROM COMPETITORS AND MAKE A SLIGHT CHANGE TO?
Picasso said “Good artists borrow, great artists steal.” Steve Jobs once remarked, “We are shameless about stealing great ideas.” If these so called original thinkers were happy to steal from their competitors, maybe you should consider it too. By stealing, of course, I don’t mean outright IP theft, I am suggesting that you look at products and strategies your competition is using with success, alter them a little then try them yourself. Generally speaking, if they work for them they’ll usually work for you. A case in point; Indian Motorcycles has grown a breakneck speed in the last three years by copying many of the marketing strategies that have worked for Harley Davidson.

QUESTION SIX: WHAT WILL THEY BE DOING IN OUR INDUSTRY IN 20 YEARS?
This question sparks loads of intriguing ideas. Don’t look forward 12 months, have a go at foreseeing two decades. You may not predict accurately but you are far more likely to come up with interesting ideas and directions for your company. After all, the future is often dominated by those who can envision where an industry is heading, rather than merely looking at where it is currently. For instance, TV exec Barry Diller made himself a billionaire by successfully predicting 15 years ago that the internet would become a major advertising platform.

QUESTION SEVEN: WHAT WOULD WE BE SCARED TO DO?
This question is all about pushing the envelope. How far would you go? Could you go? The answers will often up all kinds of intriguing ideas – and possibly create entirely new sectors. In the education world, the recent rise of MOOCs – Massive Open Online Courses that deliver high quality education to millions for free, shocked the industry. But that scary idea is currently creating several super fast growing enterprises. As the British Special Air Service commandos say, ‘Who Dares Wins.’

QUESTION EIGHT: WHAT WOULD STEVE JOBS DO IN THIS SITUATION?
Or John Paul Getty? Or Andrew Carnegie? By trying to guess how great entrepreneurs would handle your business situation, you free your mind up to think in different ways. How would they disrupt your industry? What direction would they choose to give them a chance of dominating your sector like they once did theirs? Pretend you’re them and find out.

QUESTION NINE: WHAT’S THE FASTEST THING WE COULD DO?
This is another out of the box way of thinking about your business. If the usual product cycle in your industry is 12 months, how could you get a product out in 12 weeks? Don’t just say it’s impossible, force yourself to think more laterally. James Patterson is one of the world’s most successful authors. When most authors produce a book every year or two, last year Patterson released twelve! How? He asked the speed question and came up with an entirely different way of writing, using teams.

QUESTION TEN: WHAT’S THE CHEAPEST THING WE COULD DO?
The vast majority of successful companies were started with less than $25,000. Many have been begun with a few hundred bucks. Contrary to popular opinion tiny budgets often increase creativity, not inhibit it. So think cheap, really cheap. What could you create for a song, if that was your only option? Stick with that question for awhile and I guarantee you some exciting solutions will emerge.