Just a few months till 2020 – The end of the decade! Here we go, we are about to finish out the 2010 to 2020 decade!

This is a Big Deal – Remember 2010?

Where were you in life and in business at the close of the last decade with the start of 2010? What was going on in your life 10 years ago? How old were you ten years ago? What did your family look like 10 years ago? How about your income, your amount of free time? How happy were you? Are you smarter now than you were 10 years ago? How many quality relationships did you have 10 years ago? Do you have more now? What did your business look like 10 years ago versus today? Have your mentors changed in the last 10 years? Fill out this little comparison sheet:

Biggest Business Lesson Learned?

Looking back, what’s one of the biggest things you’ve learned about the business that you wish you could tell your past-self 10 years ago? Think about that for a moment. A few answers come to mind for me:

Seek Wise & Professional Council – I realize how much I don’t know and seek out those with experience in those areas.

Share Failures – everyone is human. Sharing your failures allows people to see you as a fellow human. You create better bonds with people and they respect you more knowing where you fell and how you got back up to move forward to where you are today. You learn more from failing than you do from winning. Learn a little more and share those experiences with others.

Stay in Your Best Lane – this will bring success – show some persistence for the right things. For me, working on and staying in the right business is key. Finding those business lanes that I enjoy and that can be run without me is key. That brings me to the final thing I would say to my past-self…

Be a Business Owner NOT a Business Doer – you need to set up a business that makes a profit without your involvement. A business that has no daily operations for you.

So what would you tell your past-self from 10 years ago?

What Can You Change to Finish Strong?

What have you learned from 2010 to 2020? What went right, what went wrong? What were those few daily or weekly disciplines that made the difference in your life and business? Did you raise your fees/prices successfully? Did you build a team of people around you to delegate your daily duties and elevate yourself into working ON the business instead of IN the business?

What will you accomplish? Will you start a new habit that you carry into the new decade? Will you shift or transform? In what ways can you phase up your business to finish strong?

What’s Your Biggest Opportunity?

Between now and end of the decade – what’s your biggest opportunity? For your business, is it developing more lead sources? Is it opening up a new practice area? Improving operations, set rates, show rates, hire rates? Streamlining workflow, using simplification, automation, and delegation to make your business run better. How can you set in motion the plans to completely free yourself from the daily operations of the business?

Micro Plan these Final Few Months!

With these final few months of 2019 make them count. Resolve to engage your business goals like never before. Make it a Sprint to the Finish for the rest of this year. What could you do to finish strong? Some suggestions are in the “Finishing the Decade Strong” Box. One of the keys would be planning out your days, every day. I like to do it the night before, I call that NDP – Next Day Planning. Never let a day end without planning the next one!

You could schedule some Time Blocks (high priority non-interrupted appointments with yourself) each day to work on the highest value and most leveraged tasks. Make a clarifying decision about what you want to do and how you are going to do it. You could Mastermind more with peers and mentors. You could create a new routine or habit. You could create a Stop Doing List of the things you will stop doing like checking email first thing in the morning. You could decide to simplify, automate, delegate. You could focus on the 20% that creates results and drop the 80% that does not.

Actionize Your Decade Sprint

Now is the time to act. To take action on your plan to all-out sprint to the finish line of this decade. Pick ONE THING to Actionize this week from your list of things you could do. Pick just one and take action on it this week. I’m going to build a team to do the work I should not be doing and free myself up to do higher valued tasks. This next week I’m going to build the list of things to simplify, automate and delegate. Then begin the process of building the team. Look out 2020 – we are going to be ready for you!

Make the Commitment – Take the Oath

Ok rubber meets the road and you need to commit to your next action step for this week. Raise your right hand and repeat: “I promise and commit”… “To (fill in your action step for this week)”. Say it out loud so you can hear your own voice committing to it. Now write it down, schedule the time in your calendar and make it happen.

Your results matter. Take control of your final months of the decade and make it a great day,

Blaine

Blaine Oelkers is a lifetime entrepreneur, a graduate of Purdue University and Stanford University’s Entrepreneurship program. He’s achieved over 100 Million dollars in sales and has coached 1000s of business owners. He’s America’s Chief Results Officer® (CRO) helping business owners and their companies get results. He can be reached at blaine@selfluence.com.

Blaine is America’s Chief Results Officer® and the world’s greatest creator of doneness. He knows your results matter and he can help you get better, faster and more long-lasting results. Get started with one simple and elegant results technique that activates your mind with your top goal over 100 times a day. He explains it in a short TEDx talk he did which has been viewed by over 120,000 people! Your results matter – get access immediately at www.BlaineTEDx.com