Leadership & Goal Strategies With Rich Nicholls

Free 10 Page Goal Setting Kit. Click the Picture Above!

Goals. We all hear about them, some people talk about them, some even set them, but how many of us achieve them?

What is a goal? Goals define our purpose. When we want to achieve something it becomes a goal. And, theoretically, we aim to accomplish it. When we achieve it we see that particular journey as a success.

Did you know that setting goals is an intellectual process? No-one is born with goals in mind. That probably sounds ridiculous, but what sounds more ridiculous is when people blame others for not being able to set, or reach, their goals. People who can set good goals have learned how to do so.

The first problem people have when setting goals, is that they think logically. Goals are not meant to be logical. If you want to set a good goal, you need to take the lid off, and dive into your imagination. Figure out what you want and go for it. Do not use reason to create a goal, or try and justify your goal. If you are a very reasonable and logical person, take some time out to just think about what you would really want if money and time were not a contributing factor. If you do that your imagination will start to run and you will come up with some magnificent goals. Other people should laugh at you when you have set your goal that you want to achieve. This is the size of the goal we are talking about.

When you use reason and logic to justify your goals, you are basing your decisions around your current circumstances. Your goal is something that will remove you from your current circumstances. Put all of that aside, there is a time to consider that, but not just yet.

Once you have decided what your goal is and have set it firmly in writing, you can work towards achieving your goal. This is when you think about your current circumstances and situation. You now need to position yourself to achieve your goal. What is positioning yourself? Well, this is where you decide what it will take to achieve your goal. You need to take your big goal, and break it down into smaller goals and then break down the smaller goals into even smaller goals and keep doing so until you have bite sized chunks. When you look at your main goal, it will look like it is something that you cannot achieve at all! That is why you need to break it down, writing down every smaller step, each piece building off the previous.

The first step you need to take, is to actually take a step! Act now. Don’t wait! Stop setting a goal to right your goals down, and just sit down and start now!

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Free 10 Page Goal Setting Kit. Click the Picture Above!

Goals help us maximize our success. Napoleon Hill, one of the Grandfathers of personal development said, “Goals are anything we want to do, be, have, or achieve.” This is a very broad statement. But it covers goals perfectly! The great thing about goals is that there is not just one kind of goal. No two goals are alike. Sure, you and the person next to you may want to earn $50,000 a month, yes, I do mean ‘a month’, but your journeys on how to get there will be extremely different.

Our individual journey to set and achieve goals is almost as unique as a finger print! The moment you try mimic someone else’s journey, is the moment you move away from your own. You can absolutely take tips and advice and implement strategies given by someone else, but it is important that you are flexible and willing to slightly adjust what you are doing to suit your character and your strengths!

Jerry Bresser said, “There are no unrealistic goals, just unrealistic time frames.” Your goal is not the problem. Make sure you are giving yourself a realistic time frame. If you are incredibly ambitious, set a time frame to suit. Bill Bartmann set a time frame, when he was bankrupt, to make it into the Forbes list of richest men in America within 5 years. Did he make it? No! But he did make it in five and a half years! Find the time frame that suits you, put it on paper, and go for it.

Don Hutson says, “Writing your goals on paper triples the chance you have of success. Setting a time frame and writing it down next to the goal increases your chance of success by TEN times!” Less the one half of a percent of employees in the work force today write their goals down! What does this tell you? Well, it tells me that if you were to put your goals in writing, you would be amongst the elite! You would start succeeding!

Our behavior is a result of our beliefs, and therefore, when we write our goals down and start believing what we are capable of and what we can do, our behavior starts to take after our belief system. In short, if you write it down and believe it, you can make it happen!

If you have not written your goals then right now, go get a pen and paper and write them down. Typing won’t do, you have to write them in ink on paper and keep them somewhere you can access them easily and review them daily. Keep motivated! Keep Strong!

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Free 10 Page Goal Setting Kit. Click the Picture Above!

Have you ever done something just because you would like to tell people about it? One of my decisions in life was that I would live the kind of life that when I have grand children they will be captivated by my life and will want to hear over and over again. But this means I have to live an exciting life. I love new challenges, I love being part of a story, I love creating the stories for others to be part of!

Everyone wants to be part of a story. Why is it that when a World Cup is won in football, soccer, rugby, or when the Olympic team returns home thousands of people come to greet them at the airport. You can watch video clips of these teams arriving home to cheering, singing, dancing, people so happy to be at the airport. They don’t care about the weather, the distance they have to travel, they just want to be part of the story! Why? The game is over, the trophy is won, but they still want to be involved.

What story are you creating? Is your story for you, and only you? There is a great book/movie called Scrooge. Remember it? All about the nasty old man at Christmas. Does your story encompass your family and friends? This is where most people live their life and it is a great place to be! There are a very few number of people in life that make the decision to become part of a great story. The decide to impact strangers in their story. They help, teach, train and inspire others to be able to live a better life. You need to make a decision to live this kind of life! It won’t just happen, it takes action.

John Stephen Akhwari. Recognize the name? He is an Olympic marathon runner who ran in 1968. If you Google ‘marathon winners 1968s’ you won’t find him. Why? Because he didn’t win, in fact, he lost, and badly. I put ‘Olympics 1968 marathon’ into Google. The first result- John Stephen Akhwari. Why is it that the world remembers this man, who lost so badly, more than they remember the winner? Well, it’s because of his story. He fell during the race. He injured himself, yet this Tanzanian kept running! The race had finished, the crowds had mostly disappeared. Only a few people remained and cheered as he finished. It was clear that he had no chance of winning, he limped across a finish line and a reporter asked why he had not given up. Looking confused he replied, “My country did not send me to Mexico City to start the race. They sent me to finish.”

This man’s commitment to finish the race has made him famous. It didn’t even cross his mind to give up. His story is phenomenal. Those that stayed to cheer as he came in are part of that story. They were impacted by his commitment.

I challenge you today to go and create your story. Go and live your dreams and don’t give up. It may look fruitless, but if you even live half of your dream rather than none of it- don’t you think your life would have a huge impact and be even more worth living?

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Free 10 Page Goal Setting Kit. Click the Picture Above!

Following on from my last blog post, Your 1 Degree Difference, are these 8 Principles For Inspired Action from Ron Finklestein. Of course, I aim to dive a bit deeper and add my own twist, but Ron definitely gets full credit.

1. Intelligent Self Interest
When making decisions make sure that you are taking your own situation into account. You have the same amount of time in your day as everyone else. You have limited resources, and you have limited money. Understand what is within your best interest and choose to take action.

2. Learn to say ‘No’
Learning to say ‘No’ allows you to go from successful to significant. Most people really battle setting up boundaries for themselves. It is possible to let people down gently by saying ‘no’. Don’t burn bridges, and make sure you stick to your firm boundaries. This is one of the hardest principles to act on. People generally like to be liked, and fear that if they say ‘no’ people will stop liking them. That is why this principle can take you from successful to significant. Once you have it perfected, you will respected, trusted, and rapidly moving through life focusing on your goals. This isn’t to say don’t help others. But make sure you are not taking on any more responsibility beyond your capacity.

3. Ownership- Legal right of possession
Take ownership of your actions. You either did the task, or you did not do the task. Stop trying to find excuses. You may have a perfectly legitimate excuse, but then how much time do you waste talking about it and feeling sorry for yourself. There is nothing wrong with not completing a task, just take ownership, and make sure it gets done as soon as possible.

4. Measure Results
Find out what works for YOU. Don’t worry about everyone else. Find you strategies. If something is not working- then stop! Different people have different strengths. Make sure you build on yours. As you go you will build new strengths, then you can start building on those too.

5. Discipline
Learn to create successful habits. Don’t talk the million dollar game if your actions are giving you million dollar habits! Set up event goals and not results goals. An example of this could be: Result goal- recruit 1 person into your team a week. You have no control over this. But, as you do track your results, you know that on average it takes 20 phone calls to recruit 1 person into your team. An Event goal would therefore be making 20 phone calls a week.

6. People
Your success is completely 100% dependant on how well you coach, counsel, motivate, persuade and influence others to take inspired action. You need to understand what is important to others and why they would want to do business with YOU and not someone else. What sets you apart from everyone else?

7. Persistence
Persistence can be defined as a continuing effect after a cause has been removed. Even when things are tough keep going for it. Anything worth having is worth fighting for. How far are you willing to go to reach your dreams?

8. Action
None of the above principles are any good unless you take action. You need to decide for yourself to take inspired action. Make the most of every decision you need to make. Decide wisely, and if you chose to go for it, then REALLY go for it!

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Well? What is it you want to be doing and why aren’t you doing it? It so easy to dream but never do anything in life to get there. In today’s world we want everything NOW! But it doesn’t work like that. If you want to live on a beach or retire young, you need to start positioning yourself today.

If you have the ‘tomorrow’ syndrome you are an underdog right off the bat. I’ll start tomorrow. I’ll study tomorrow. I’ll build my business tomorrow. That will get you nowhere in life. Start today!

I was having a coffee with a friend last week and he mentioned how most people, including himself, talk about doing more in life but never do. Do you fit into that category? He went on to compliment me on acting on my ambitions. I can see why most people don’t, it does take hard work and time, but once you are moving with it I guarantee you it is incredibly rewarding!

I decided I’m going to start my own business using the internet as a tool to let people know what it is I’m doing. It’s great because I have people contacting me from ALL over the world to find out about my business. I also have people contacting me asking for help, so I have also now moved into a coaching position teaching those just starting up and I love it!

If you don’t know where to start, or what to do, then just get hold of me. I’d love to help! But above all, just START!

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It is so easy to get caught up in everyday life and watch your plans dissipate to nothing then suddenly get a burst of energy again and give it another go for a day before life takes over again. So many of us repeat this cycle over and over again. If you are trying to build your business this is the absolute worst way to go about it.

It is incredibly important to do the simple things daily. It is better to spend 30 minutes 7 days a week than 5 hours on a Saturday working on your business. If you can’t do 7 days a week, aim for every 2nd or 3rd day. But just keep it consistent!

Focus on the simple things. This is particularly important if you are battling for time. Do not spend what little time you have trying to figure out the ultimate strategy and then never get anything done. Rather go to Twitter every day and build on a daily basis. It does not take to much effort to get 300+ followers a day on Twitter. All it takes is a simple strategy and consistency.

Above all DO NOT GIVE UP. If you expect results in your business tomorrow from something you start today, you are in the wrong business. These simple strategies take time, they are long term strategies. But 6 months down the line, or 2 years done the line when you have over 50,000 followers on Twitter, your business will be booming from doing the simple things consistently and focusing on them.

And be consistent in your methods. It may look consistent to spend 5 days a week working on Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, Twitter, Blog, Articles, etc spending a day on each, but you need to pick one or two strategies and focus on those.

Good Luck!

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Have you ever wondered what a mathematical formula of ‘you’ would look like? If you answered yes, maybe you need to get out more? Think about it? I am someone who decided to put a maths formula on each and every one of us. This formula follows:
You = decision ^ x (you equals your decisions to the power of x. X being the number of decisions you make)

This formula states that you are a result of the ALL your decisions. Sometimes circumstances leave you in a terrible place, or position. Sometimes where you are is due to someone else’s decisions. But that is not WHO you are. WHO you are stems from the decisions you make to get out of those circumstances.

Do you ever think back and think that if you had done something five years ago, or ten years ago your life will be completely different? Maybe it was doing night school, or taking a different job. Well, nothing can be changed about that. Right now you are in a position to determine your future. You are in a position to create a defining point in your life so that in 5 years time, or 10 years time you will not look back regretting making this decision. You will look back on today as a defining point in your life where you started to determine your own course by actively making life changing decisions.

Start today and make a decision everyday to improve your circumstances. Those decsions will accumulate and create a synergy that will be so strong you will propel ahead in life.
Go for it!

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I thought I would write a bit about what it takes to commit to goals. We all have our goals and dreams in life, and it takes a whole lot of drive and determination to reach them. At least for those of us who set unbelievably ambitious dreams. I for one set dreams and goals that I feel far outweigh my capabilities. But I find that is the best way to grow and increase my skill set, getting as far as I can outside of my comfort zone.

We all have the best intentions when setting our goals, but after a long days work getting home and finally relaxing makes it tough to get going again. This is what sets the successful people apart from the average, the world class from the norm. The average person once finally relaxed at home fails to get going again. This behavior tends to become a pattern. It is absolutely fine to relax every now and then, as long as this does not become a pattern. Pattern is just another word for habit, good or bad.

Successful people may not even sit down and relax as it is easy to know what will happen if they do. They are committed; they are devoted to what they want to do. They make sure that the most important things come first. The most important things are without a doubt family and friends. As I stated in a previous blog, having healthy relationships behind you is the difference between putting jet fuel in your engine, or low grade gasoline when propelling success. Once those healthy relationships are there you have your support structure to help accomplish what you are aiming for.

When it comes to committing to your goals remember to remain to consistent. Above all consistency is the key. Doing the simple things daily makes a huge difference in comparison to doing the odd complex thing every now and then. I can share a personal example from my own life I am currently experiencing. I have set quite ambitious goals for myself. Fortunately there are tons of training calls and webinars that I can participate in. The only downside is that these training calls and webinars are in Eastern Time, and I am currently living in the UK. I spent most of this year in Canada, so had no problem; but now that I am in the UK these training calls are anywhere from 1am-3am! I have made the decision that I will get to at least two calls a week. Of course I will do more if I can, but I’m going to start small by committing to two calls. Once I’ve committed and accomplished I can look at moving on to the next step in my set of goals.

If you think you will battle then break your goals down and tackle them in more sizeable chunks. Even if bed seems more appealing than anything else, think of the end results. Where will you be if you keep on reaching your goals! Imagine how exciting life is going to be!

So set yourself apart! Make sure that you put yourself into the world class category and your life will never be the same!

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