At this time of year, franchise business owners are setting goals, making New Year’s resolution and the challenge is, that come February, most of these goals and resolutions have been put to the side.
Why is that?
I don’t think it is because franchise business owners (Franchisees or Franchisors) are lazy or don’t want to achieve the goals, I think that it is because often times they have been set because that is what they ‘think’ they ‘should’ be aiming for, not what they really want.
Did you get that?
Often as a franchise business owner, we are setting goals and making plans to achieve things because these are the things you should be setting goals for like making more revenue, doing new marketing strategies, getting more customers, but is this what you really want?
Is more revenue, more sales what you want or is it more profit?
Is it more customers or is it more customers you LOVE that you want?
Is it more revenue or sales or less stress and more time off?
The ‘to do’ item or plan might be exactly the same – eg. make more sales or revenue – but it is the outcome that is different – the goal is different. It is the why behind the activity.
For example, you could say you need more customers this year. Great, let’s go out and get you a stack of customers, but maybe that isn’t going to give you what you want. Maybe you want more profit in your business, but instead, you go get more customers that are more work, more demanding and in fact, like to buy the lowest profit margin items you have on offer. So you have to go and get 100 of those customers (as an example) to make that extra profit you want.
But what if you said, I want more of “XX type” of customer – who buys your highest profit margin offerings, refer other customers, are a delight to serve in your business and are never a problem…. And then what if we said you only need 10 of these types of customers to make that extra profit you want?
Often times we are just not digging deep enough on our goals to make them really valuable to us and our business.
I’m like a three year old, because I keep asking ‘but why?’ and I think you need to start doing that too.
“I want more customers.”
“But why?”
“To make more profit.”
“But why?”
“So that I can have more time off to spend time with my kids.”
“Buy why? “
“Because they are growing up fast and I don’t want to miss out on being with them.”
“Will more customers, 100% solve this for you, help you reach this goal?”
“No”
“But why?”
“I don’t need just any customers.”
“But why?”
“I want to find customers that give me more profit with less work, otherwise I’ll have to work EVEN MORE to make the profit, so I’ll have the money, but no time so I won’t get to spend time with my kids even though I have more customers.”
Don’t just say this to yourself or even out loud…WRITE IT DOWN! When you write it down and then read back over it, it will become highly obvious what you need to do.
Look at the above example. We took simple goal and really discovered that the goal itself was too general. We needed to drill down to what it meant to achieve that goal, what was the reason for it and then we worked back through the goal to redefine it so that this franchise business owner would achieve success which was more time with their kids.
Do the same thing for what is success for you? Write it out and then simply ask ‘But why?’ and you might just discover that success for you is not making $XX in your business, maybe it is having every Thursday afternoon off to pick your kids up from school and to take them to soccer practice every week. Maybe it is even being the coach of their soccer team or maybe it is as simple as taking your kids for ice cream.
Get out of the trap of thinking that success is what ‘everyone’ says it is and redefine success for what you want it to be …. FOR YOU!
Tracey
PS. Check out my free quick guides and workbooks – choose the ones that suit you – all available from the home page on my website at traceyleak.com