The calendar page flops over in a day and you’ll be starting month number seven of this year in your business. July signals the rounding of the far turn in the business race and the start of the sprint down the homestretch to year end 2007.
If you are like most people in business, January is your major goal setting time of the year. And odds are close to even that you renewed old and set some new business goals at the start of this year. Written on paper or etched in your mind, 2007 is the year things will change and progress and more profit will be made.
So I want you to ask you to ask yourself this question, “How am I doing with my goals for 2007?”
If you are struggling with making changes, taking risk and maintaining confidence in your ability to do that which you signed up for at the start of the year, you’re caught in the mid year slump. After your goals were set at the start of the year, enthusiasm and energy kept you on track for a few weeks, but gradually old habits and attitudes took over and the slump started. You slowed from a hand gallop to a walk over a course of weeks not because you wanted to, but because the many forces of resistance pulled you away from your intent.
If you name the problem mid year slump it is a problem half solved. What is the other half of the solution?
Admit you’re slumping and forget about the past six months and start over. The fact that the month will be July and not January to review and rekindle your goals is no reason to postpone what you set out to do. Both months start with J and that’s close enough. J is for journey, too, and if your journey has been a shortcut to old habits and negative thinking, change it.
As each day is a new start, start July like it was January and begin again to do the things that you want to do to change your business and personal life.
Maybe your goals include some of these:
- Design a year round marketing plan for your business and put it into action
- Have a difficult conversation to solve an ongoing problem that won’t fix itself
- Hire a bookkeeper; get your records on real accounting software like Quick Books
- Call professional horsemen you don’t know well and make them a part of your network
- Start an organized personal physical fitness program away from the farm
- Raise your rates to reflect rising operational costs
- Take a vacation
- Sell or find homes for horses that no longer fit in your program
Continue to make changes and
- Take a regular day off
- Let the help go that doesn’t fit in your business plan
- Specialize in what you do best and stop doing everything
- Get enough sleep
As usual, timing is everything
The right time to set or reset goals is always. . .Now.
And the right time to start achieving goals is always. . . Now.
Everything else is the wrong time.
See you in the starting gate.