The old ways of following a career path are gone, and the timescales with them. Technological advancements, evolving working habits and a global pandemic contributed to every professional on the planet being able to do more with less, should they choose to. Someone retiring in their thirties used to be unheard of, now it’s a frequent occurrence.
For every ten people who binge Netflix and scroll the news, one is getting intentional about putting this era’s gifts to work, and taking full advantage. Which will you be? Here’s how to achieve your business goals in half the time.
Cut out the nonessential
Either be relaxing or making money. There is no third option. Take note of everything that doesn’t fit into these camps to work out what is stealing your time. Obligations, admin, and things you just don’t want to do have no place in your life, especially if winning big is your plan.
Time track your day, recording what you did in ten minute increments. Notice how many of those are spent flitting the time away, not progressing towards your goals. Outsource, eliminate, delegate and automate everything you can. Remove the people, places and things that cause you stress without making you money. Free the space in your schedule and reallocate it wisely.
Dream twice as big
If you’re not heading towards achieving your goals at breakneck speed, perhaps they aren’t the right goals. Uninspiring, small feats won’t capture the imagination of you or others because they’re just, well, boring. Let go of small goals. Let go of legacy goals, those ones you feel like you should do because an old version of you wanted to.
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Make new goals. Dream twice as big to go twice as far in half the time. Find goals that are so big they scare you. When the reality of the colossal task ahead hits, you’ll need the excitement and passion to keep you on track. Play bigger games and win bigger prizes.
Play with thought experiments
Everything that we now take for granted once entered the world as an idea. Most ideas sound silly at first, but eventually we wonder how we ever lived without them. Allow yourself to play to come up with ideas that leapfrog career progression and fast-track your goals.
Start with thought experiments. Grab a notebook and a willing friend and have some fun chatting, conceptualising and putting silly ideas out there. Imagine what you’d do with unlimited resources, if you controlled time, or were bestowed a magic wand. Imagine that every door upon which you knocked would open. Whose door would you knock, what would you ask? Playing leads to ideas and ideas lead to breakthroughs that change the game of businesses.
Find people a few steps ahead
Whilst we could all learn plenty from Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, they are so many steps ahead that their advice might not be right. Instead, find people a few steps ahead of you in terms of business size and career stage. The real value lies here: these individuals are well-versed in your challenges but solved them recently. Listen to what they did and learn from their mistakes.
Not only are people a few steps ahead aspirational and admirable, but they are often more accessible, and probably willing to engage. Find a millionaire mentor who knows what you’re going through by reaching out, introducing yourself and inviting a response. Their pearls of wisdom could unlock the breakthroughs you’re looking for.
Learn like crazy
I don’t mean begin that university course and I don’t care how many letters follow your name. The concept of learning, to an entrepreneur looking to make leaps in their business, doesn’t mean academia. Learning means books. Biographies, business books, old conceptual texts. Learning means from other people. Entrepreneurs of past and present. Case studies, data, best practice and what not to do.
Being hungry for information that you can apply is the secret sauce in doing more with less time. Not content with travelling the slow lane, piggybacking off the minds and work of those who have gone before means entering the fast lane. Application is key. The goal is not to be great at trivia, or have a brain stuffed with useless information. The goal is to apply alternative frameworks to how you approach your challenges, especially those that involve growth.
Build a scalable entity
Most businesses are possible to scale in some way, you just might not be doing it. Most business owners are so caught in their day-to-day that they never think about how their business might scale. With the right game plan, one coffee shop could become ten. One ecommerce store could IPO, one manuscript could become an international bestseller.
What would your business look like at a scale of one hundred times what it is now? What about a thousand? If that doesn’t excite you, start something that the idea of scaling does. The fields of artificial intelligence, automation, 3D printing and infinite computing hold business ideas that could scale beyond your wildest dreams. If your small business doesn’t have that potential, find something that does.
You are not going to live forever. And neither would you want to. If you do it right, living once is more than enough. You’re not here to drag your heels and build uninspiring companies, you’re here to make an impact, make a difference, and make a killing.
Forget the beaten path, forget the standard pace, do it your way. Cut out the nonessential, dream twice as big, play with thought experiments and find inspiring mentors a few steps ahead. Learn like crazy and focus on scalable entities to achieve your goals in half the time.