Marketing Edge - Turning Your Vision into Reality

SMALL BUSINESS SURVIVAL TIPS NEWSLETTER: September 2009

Thank you for subscribing to Marketing Edge's monthly newsletter: Small Business Survival Tips. In this month's issue I share my thoughts about goal setting and how articulating your goals and vision dramatically increases your chances of successly achieving them.

Beth Goldstein

Does Chance Really Favor the Prepared Mind?
The legendary chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur once stated, "Chance favors the prepared mind." When I think about my career over the past 20+ years, I recognize many times when indeed luck or chance seemed to come my way. Interestingly enough, opportunities seemed to 'appear' when I was most prepared to accept these challenges.

The most notable 'chance' being the opportunity to write my first book. When my McGraw-Hill publisher first contacted me to discuss the opportunity to write a book, I had been working on developing my first online class. My goal in developing this class electronically was to prove to myself that I could indeed translate my live classroom into a written format, giving me the courage to consider writing a book---a goal I established at the age of 5 (although I had assumed at that time that my first book would be about dogs, not marketing - LOL).

If I had not been prepared for this opportunity, I might not have seized it (indeed, I almost deleted the email from the publisher thinking that it was a solicitation to purchase books for my class at BU).

My Father Always Told Me Not to Mumble
How does being prepared for opportunities truly help a business owner succeed? My colleagues at the MassMEP (Manufacturing Extension Partnership) recently shared some interesting statistics with me about the importance of clearly articulating your ideas and how this relatively simple act impacts business success rates.

PDMA (Product Development and Management Association) Research conducted a study to evaluate the impact between clarity of ideas and success and found that low clarity resulted in 23% of businesses achieving success while a whopping 85% of businesses achieved success when they were very clear/articulate about their goals/ideas. When you give words to your ideas and vision....miraculously they have a significantly higher chance of becoming realized.

Since articulating your goals is clearly a method of preparing your mind, then why is goal setting so difficult for entrepreneurs and business owners?

I constantly find myself having to beg, plead and cajole the entrepreneurs in my program to write down their goals in a specific, measurable and actionable way. Why isn't it obvious that this act alone helps increase their chances of success? By putting goals in writing and seeing what they want to achieve, the clarity that arises can make all the difference in the world...yet many prefer to spend their time focused on the day-to-day activities of their business and not define the big picture.

Usually I wrap up my monthly newsletter with a number of tips to work on. Today, my tip consists of ONE message: Write down your top 3 business goals for the next six months --- right now....before you have the chance to get involved with some part of your business that is calling you. There's always going to be another distraction for your attention...always. But if you don't articulate your goals, then your chances of successfully achieving them are rather slim.

Once you have your top three goals for the next six months written down, post them in your office or some place where you will see them every day to remind yourself why you're getting up each morning and going to work (even if that's just down the hall in your bunny slippers).

Feel free to email them to me and I promise to check in with you in six months (if not sooner) to see how you're doing achieving those goals. They'll keep you motivated and focused on achieving your business vision.

Good luck with your business venture. If I can help you turn your vision into reality, please don't hesitate to contact me at beth@m-edge.com or by phone: 508.893.0976.

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