Be Prepared: Not Just A Boy Scout Slogan

Man, it is certainly true that when it rains, it pours. Yesterday I talked about keeping moving and how good things come to those that put in the effort. Today has been a perfect example of the truth in that. It's like the floodgates of business have opened up, which has kind of made me think about how prepared I actually am for this.

Often times, especially when things have been slow, we tend to put all our effort into looking for opportunities. We're on the hunt for new clients, better paying gigs, or bigger and better projects to attach ourselves to, which means that we may not be paying as much attention to how well we can handle the work load that could come from it.

It's not a difficult thing to plan and prepare. It just takes diligence and a realistic, editing eye to what it is that we're doing. Nothing that self starters like us can't handle, right?

What we do here is break down our goals into blocks of time and figure out how many of which types of jobs will fit into those blocks. Then, it's time to figure out your individual rate of conversion. How many bids to submit, emails to send, phone calls to make, or people to visit in order to fill those blocks. By building a plan for our prospecting, it becomes a ton easier to handle the work load once it starts rolling in.

Happy hunting and best wishes for a busy Spring!

Resistance: A Nasty Little Time Waster

Ever notice that it's the most important tasks that seem to take the longest? The ones you have the most passion for? The ones that will make the biggest impact on your life or your career? If this sound familiar than you're a victim of that nasty little time waster, Resistance. Yep, I touched on that a little bit yesterday.

The more we love something, the more we invest in it and the harder it is to let it go and be part of the world. We won't have it all to ourselves anymore. It won't be as perfect as we had envisioned it, as we built it up to be. In short, we start to over think it and we let little things pop up and take the attention away from it. We're scared of it. It becomes way easier to check our email again or go and revamp our filing system, or anything else that takes us away from delivering the goods.

Resistance is a nasty little time waster. It's a bastard. It's a part of all of our lives and it can only be expelled by diligence and force. Only by finding ways to keep ourselves on task and working toward our end goal can we beat it. Setting deadlines for ourselves, finding accountability partners, creating work hours and sticking to them, and making the conscious decision to focus on the big, important tasks first. So what if the filing system is a little weird? Who cares if the desk is cluttered? What matters is that we are doing what we do and making what we make and delivering to the world, for better or worse.

In the words of Richard Branson, "Screw it, let's do it!"

Keep Good Council

This is probably an understatement, but there are a lot of negative and jaded people in the music business. "No, really?" says you. : ) Yeah, and we've all dealt with their undermining little comments, and backhanded compliments. It's hard to stay motivated and positive when you're frequently surrounded people who would probably take a little bit of pleasure in seeing you fall.

It's essential for us to keep good council. To be choosy about who we hang with and especially who we share our visions and goals with. Our very success depends on who we surround ourselves with.

All endeavors start with an idea. Ideas bloom into a vision. Visions lead to plans, and with implementation and a healthy amount of effort and will power, plans become the reality that we envisioned. That is, IF we do the work needed to accomplish the goals and don't let the little needles of doubt get in the way, and unfortunately more times than not, those needles are delivered by the people we trust most.

It's not that they are always intended, in fact they're usually meant to be of help. The well meaning family or friends that want to help keep us "grounded" or "looking at the reality of things". As they say "The road to ruin is paved with good intentions", so how do we avoid this catastrophe? Of course the simple answer is to just ignore anything that doesn't fit into your plans, but saying it is infinitely easier than doing it.

I suppose it might be a little easier if we kept in mind that, while our friends and family may have our well being in mind, they probably don't have the experience or knowledge to make judgement calls on our visions. It's important to have a person or group of people to touch base with every now and then, who is completely impartial to your success. Folks who are not on the payroll, who don't have a stake in your success or your failure.

In business circles this is called an Accountability group. A group of people who's only objective is keeping each other on task and accountable for their successes or their shortcomings.

From personal experience, I can tell you that this is a very effective tool for keeping you on course with the plans that you've created for yourself, and if you find the right group of people they can help you work around the little needles of doubt that inevitably find their way in. By being on the outside, they can see the silver linings on those storm clouds, or they can tell that maybe they're just clouds of smoke that are hiding the road your traveling, and can help navigate you through and get you back on course. I highly recommend the process.

Good luck with your path and I hope everyone has a Happy and productive New Year!

Later,