~REALIZE YOUR DREAMS BY SETTING GOALS: Part 2~

REALIZE YOUR DREAMS BY SETTING GOALS: Part 2

Note: read part one and “Your Personal Treasure Barge” before reading this article.

Personal Goals

A mature adult is an individual who accepts responsibility for his actions. This means that every person should react rationally when presented with the facts on an issue.

Many adults behave like children when it comes to accepting the responsibility for the development of internal discipline. For these persons, internal discipline does not exist.

For example, every cigarette carton says, “Warning: The surgeon general has determined that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health.” A political campaign was waged years ago to have this warning placed on every advertisement and cigarette carton with the feeling that rational people would stop smoking. It worked. The thinking people, a small minority, did quit, but the majority of smokers continued to puff away. A person without internal discipline needs someone to tell him what I to do all his life. The government must pass laws requiring automobile passengers to wear seatbelts in order to help save their own lives. A boss is required to tell his employees what to do each day. A spouse is required to direct the family life. They often need a doctor to inform them that they are overweight and must go on a diet, although that fact is apparent to everyone around them.

We all see these poor helpless adults around us every day. Occasionally one of these individuals may attempt to go into business, but since there is no one to tell him what to do, the whole thing can only conclude in a hopeless shambles.

How organized are you? If you feel your life is highly organized, you are very likely a person with internal discipline. When you assign yourself tasks, perform undesirable work and maintain a regular daily routine, you have internal discipline, one of the absolutely necessary requirements for obtaining incredible wealth.

Basic activities you engage in are likely to be: Being on time for appointments, completing work on time, going to sleep at a regular hour each night, maintaining a constant weight for your body and having a pleasant and cheerful disposition most of the time.

If you can do these simple things, obtaining wealth is merely a matter of setting up a long range goal for yourself and applying internal discipline skills which will assure that everything gets done as you have planned it.

Your goal will eventually become a regular part of your daily routine. In time your mind, body and spirit will be acting in unison to obtain the goal.

During the critical growth stages you will rise to the occasion and pull your enterprise through the rough waters.

An individual who wishes to achieve goals can very easily set up a self-evaluation system as a natural part of his own internal discipline. When minor mistakes are made, mental notes are taken.

For example, I often forget the names of people I meet for the first time. I use that person's name at least twice during the first minute. If my attention is diverted, when I see that person again, I will mentally note that person's name until it is firmly in place in my mind.

The success of any goal will depend, in part, upon your own personal performance. The better your performance, the easier it will be to achieve your goal. Your enthusiasm and cheerfulness are contagious, and your employees and teammates will follow your example in most cases.

The way you walk and talk indicates your attitude and sets the stage for the way everyone around you will conduct themselves. If you have high standards for yourself, others will set similar high standards for themselves. Make your best performance a habit, and everyone around you will be performing at their very best at all times.

A Small Goal Road Map

Seek out information about your goal before you become completely dedicated to it. Once your goal is under way and you feel committed, it will be a difficult decision to abandon your chosen course.

Therefore, read books from your library (or find information on the internet) and make sure that your goal is everything you believe it to be.

Seek out current information in any way you can, which might include talking with knowledgeable experts. Educators, government information services, data centers at large colleges, and business persons will help you with information, free of any charge. Make sure that any information is fairly up to date.

Books that have been out of print for more than five years may contain outdated information. Your local library may be linked to a larger data base, and your simple inquiry may give a wealth of information. Watch for upcoming programs on the public broadcasting network. It's very likely that programs will be scheduled that will provide valuable information. If you have a video recorder, record the broadcasts of interest to you for future reference. Keep in mind that all costs for research are tax deductible, if you eventually set yourself up in business. Keep all your receipts.

Whenever I seek information about a promising business that I may pursue, I will talk to people who are already in that field. If I think there is any possibility that I may one day compete with any of these individuals, should I choose to enter the field, I visit a nearby community where I would not be in competition and consult the business people there.

I realize that, in some cases, I want inside information that I have no right to unless I'm in the business. I choose my questions very carefully so that others will not respond negatively.

Most often I want to know what the gross receipts of a business are, but this is a very touchy question for an outsider to ask. On one occasion, I felt a confection store in the Detroit area might fit into my string of stores. I found one for sale one day in the classified section of the newspaper. I called the owner and he talked me into seeing the establishment which was a hundred miles down the road.

He would not discuss figures over the phone but indicated that he had a real moneymaker for sale. When I arrived at the establishment, the place was in a shambles. After about an hour of my talking to the owner, he finally admitted that the gross receipts were around $40 thousand dollars. He was proud of the figure but, from my experience, it was ridiculously small.

A business associate was always telling me how great his antique store was performing. One day he wanted to sell the establishment and proudly opened his books to me. Yep! Sales were up twenty-five percent this year with an all-time annual gross of $19 thousand dollars (very poor sales).

Obtaining an accurate estimate of the gross sales of a business from statements like, “Good year for business,” or, “We're making big money here!” won't help you. My personal rule-of-thumb for whether or not a business interests me is, that the gross receipts must be a minimum, of $1 hundred thousand dollars a year (updated to $2 hundred thousand dollars for 2011) unless the business is badly managed. I often find that if I talk to an owner for a while and gain his trust, I can wrangle some important financial figures from him with statements like, “This is very impressive store—the best store I've ever seen—you must be proud—I bet you take in over a thousand dollars a day!”

The owner will beam with pride and tell me that his operation does two thousand a day or forty thousand a month, and of course, I must take an oath not to reveal that information to anyone.

If you are unfamiliar with the business goal in which you may wish to get involved, you'll need this type of information to determine if the activity is actually profitable.

Not all activity is profitable. Remember that you may very well enjoy a particular business activity, but if it isn't likely to earn profits, you would not want to get involved.

Small operations which do not require any special skill or talent are often not profitable. Since almost everyone can operate a business of this type, the owners are very often people who will simply work for very little.

Good examples of this would include Mom-and-Pop grocery stores, various boutique and gift shops and gas stations. These people are involved in “busyness,” not business, and would very often go bankrupt if they became ill one day and had to hire an employee and pay minimum wage.

1. At one point in my career, my success team closed down one of our smaller teen dance operations in a small agricultural town because of the small gross receipts. Shortly afterward, I received a phone call from a woman who said she was thinking about opening up an entertainment establishment similar to our enterprise in that town, and what would I recommend? A brief discussion about our gross receipts and net profits was more than enough information for her to calculate that the endeavor would be a wasted effort. A simple phone call to the right person at the right moment can save you hours of useless work. If you know of business persons who are failures in their endeavors, ask them questions and find out why those failures occurred. Very often it may be because of the shortcomings of the owner himself, but he isn't going to tell you. If there are inherent reasons that a particular business often results in failure, it is important for you to know why so that you can prepare to overcome these major obstacles. If you talk to several individuals and they all describe the same pitfalls that caused their failure, you'll either figure out a plan for overcoming these pitfalls or abandon the project.

Wealth Goals

Your goals to obtain wealth should be directed toward developing an enterprise. There is a direct relationship between your effectiveness and your potential to acquire wealth. Do not be concerned if you are operating an efficient system and cash is not generated during the beginning phases.

Think of your wealth-building system as being a dam holding back the water. Your equity may build up without any apparent effect until one day the cash will burst forth in a giant explosion of wealth.

Continue this article in Part 3

◊Order paperback Born to be Rich now.

◊Order Kindle Born to be Rich now.

◊Order How to Think Small for Big Profits now.