Now motivation and procrastination are quite closely related, aren’t they? I’m thinking about finding and maintaining the motivation to do the difficult jobs or the big jobs, the ones that will build you that lovely business you want. 

And I’m still obviously thinking about managing your head and managing your ability to do the right jobs. So I want to ask you to look at what it is you want for your business and from your business what is it you’re trying to build? What are you trying to achieve and how are you going to measure your progress from here to there? 

Checking in with your vision, your end goal is important of course. You need to have one in the first place, don’t you? 

In our coaching program, that’s the first thing we do. We think about what you think, about what you want your business to be like in three years’ time in the future. And most people are looking to grow and make more money, more profits. 

They’re looking to reduce their stress and they’re looking to reduce the amount of work they do. I’m going to pause here because it’s also the question of doing quality work, work you’re proud to put your name to and the question of doing the right thing for your customers. 

They’re both important, aren’t they? Now both of these are written in our vision statements and my client’s vision statements. In fact, our vision statements, that’s the statement of what you want your business to be like in three years’ time, your goal if you like. 

They cover four things, four stakeholders in your business: 

1. You – what do you want for yourself
2. Your customers – how do you want your business to serve them
3. Your team – what’s in it for them
4. Your organisation because it needs to run smoothly and you need to return to that in your strategy

Now, it’s important we focus on these things and that we make a plan to make things happen but they’re not that easy to measure, are they? 

It’s hard to measure. You could measure customer satisfaction I suppose. What we do, we tend to focus on measuring a few things. We measure the money when we’re coaching, that’s important for a few reasons. 

It’s easy to measure, that’s helpful, we all like that. It’s in your accounting system so that’s nice and easy to measure. We can graph it and everything. It contributes directly to your well-being as well, doesn’t it? 

If you have more money personally, life is nicer. You can have more toys and more freedom and it’s also less stressful. You’re less afraid of things not working out. 

If there’s more money in the business, things run more smoothly and there’s less stress there as well. And you can afford to hire people so you can work fewer hours. 

So money contributes to all of the reasons. Most people hire a business coach or most people do all of the things, most people would want to improve for themselves in their business. 

We also can measure the hours you work, your stress levels, morale generally in the business, and how you’re feeling. 

This is a big thing for me and my clients, your personal confidence, general feelings about how your business is going, and general happiness and enthusiasm for work. 

And you notice I’ve not mentioned quality or customer satisfaction, we’re measuring money, stress, and time and how you’re feeling because they’re the things that affect you, us. 

They’re the things my clients usually want to improve, so of course, we measure them. Why don’t we measure the quality of work or customer satisfaction? And the answer is that in my experience, it’s not something we’re trying to improve. 

It’s usually something non-negotiable. You do what you’re proud of already, you need to keep doing good work but you don’t need to improve it. 

And you won’t do sh*t work in order to grow probably. What’s happening at the moment is you’re doing good work but you’re doing it by working harder and making sure good work is done. 

So we’re trying to fix the problem of you having to work so hard to maintain the quality of work or trying to help you grow while maintaining the current quality of work. 

Does that make sense? I hope so. And it’s the same with looking after your people. You’re either going to do it or you don’t care about them, we don’t need to measure if you don’t care about them. 

You’re probably not hiring me as a coach either but we do measure money. We measure revenue and profit so we see growth in both and we keep an eye on your stress levels and your working hours because most of my clients are telling me that stuff’s important. 

And if you see all these improving, this is back to motivation. If you see all improving, it’s much easier to keep doing the scary things or the difficult things or doing the hard work that takes you outside your comfort zone because you can see that this sh*t is working. 

It’s like a big feedback loop, isn’t it?

Now request the guide to procrastinating if you want it and we’ll send it to you. Just comment or reply ‘procrastinating’ below the video.