A small business owner client is in the process of turning his family-owned business around into the black.  Way black, making a good profit. As you can imagine, he has many, many goals and tasks that he must (wants to) accomplish each day.  In the three months that I’ve been working with him, he’s made an excellent start.

As a Coach, I know that assisting someone in setting achievable and attainable goals is key.  If the client doesn’t meet his/her goal continuously, likely as not they’ll probably give up somewhere in the process.  But herein lays the brush because what I might consider an achievable and attainable goal, you might think is very unrealistic.   Right in here in the nitty gritty is where we each have to get as honest with ourselves as we possibly can.  We also have to know ourselves pretty well.  We have to know things like what we’re capable of doing, where the end of our rope is, can we handle burning the candle at both ends and if we can, how long before we crater?  What has worked for us in the past?  Where have we gotten in our own way? Not to mention knowing our values, standards and needs!

I was fascinated to learn that this client has figured out a structure and process for knocking out great proposals that attract new clients and business to an art form.  Many businesses have failed because of sending out weak proposals in an untimely manner.  We were able to look at this aspect of his business and find a way to apply it one of his goals which continually nags at him which marketing for new business.

Instead of the marketing being done in one fell swoop like a proposal, it needs to be divided into chunks that can be done and delivered, monthly, weekly and daily.   For most business owners, especially small business owners, the marketing for new business tends to go way down the list of what they get done even though they know it needs to get done.  I  got an inkling during our session that for my client, it was a matter of instilling the same level of respect to his marketing process as he puts into his proposal process.

Because I’m a runner, I can so relate to being able to accomplish a huge goal in one fell swoop because I can see where it begins and ends, such as running up a big hill. And I also know that paying attention to my body while I’m running, making sure I stay hydrated, paying attention to my gate, if I’m slapping the pavement with my feet and how I am breathing can be tedious because I’m doing it all the time and won’t have an end to it till I reach the finish line but all those things are equally as important to my completing the run without injury as making it up a steep hill.

If you have a handful of goals and all of them feel like they are at the same level of importance, practice giving yourself some perspective so that you can see each of your goals for what they are and how they can best be accomplished.  Some goals will be a chunk of time when they come up, such as delivering a proposal to an interested customer. Others will need an on-going series of actions but remember that it doesn’t mean that your whole life has to be turned over to that one goal. Instead, think of it as spreading out the big-one-time-goal into bite-sized pieces that can be accomplished a bite at a time.  Even if it turns out that you’re applying only 30 minutes a day to that goal, if you are focused with your intention that half an hour can be worth its weight in gold. And hey, it’s sure better than spending no time on it!

We have the power with our own mind and spirit to accomplish many things that many people would deem impossible!