Small Business Digital CoachGROW REVENUES BY 25 TO 100% OR MORE IN 90 DAYS OR LESS while reducing advertising cost and effort

As you prepare to usher in the new year, I have a question to ask you.

Have you made absolutely sure that you maximized (extracted absolute, maximum, leverage out of) all the resources that were available to you?

And if, upon examination, you conclude that you did not, have you prepared yourself with plans to both appreciate and maximize your blessings in the new year?

Since I will be taking a break from this blog till the new year, I want to share with you my step-by-step plan for How To Prosper in 2010. Enjoy:

1. Count Your Blessings (Past And Current)
About 2 weeks ago or so, I posted a list of my “Teachers” for whom I felt grateful. It was an exercise in gratitude, and an exercise in creativity. I could not think about who they were without examining what explicit and implicit lessons I learned from them.

2. Be A Worthy Steward (Servant) Of Your Blessings
This means that you put your blessings in a “capital” context. The term “capital” has to do with a resource that can be invested in such that it produces a return over and above what is invested into it. Are you investing in your gifts, talents and resources such that they are producing a return over and above your investment?

3. Adopt a Leverage Mindset
There’s a quote from the Christian bible that comes to mind when I think about this point. In 1 Corinthians 3:21-23, Paul advises his “beloved Corinthians” with the following words:

…For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours…

Are you wasting “your teachers”?
Are you wasting Google? Youtube? Facebook? Meetup.com? Jing (Techsmith.com)? Blogger.com? And WordPress.com? All of which are yours?

Are you wasting your social capital? Are you wasting your business networking contacts? Your client and prospect lists? Your vendor relationships?
Are you wasting time that could be better spent in the warm embrace of your friends and family?
Are you wasting your nearest public library? The business resource section? The free reading at Barnes and Noble? The local small business development office? The nearest business association or networking group?

ARE YOU WASTING TIME?

4. Set S.M.A.R.T. Goals
Now that you’ve gone through the steps above, it’s time to apply those to goal attainment. A S.M.A.R.T. Goal is:

S- SPECIFIC
M- MEASURABLE
A- ACHIEVABLE
R- RECORDED
T- TIME-ORIENTED

Set and record goals for your spiritual life, health, intellectual life, financial life, business life (if relevant). All these goals should meet the SMART criteria. Being specific means that instead of saying something like “I’ll be more grateful in 2010″, you can commit to “Sending X number of Thank you letters and notes in 2010″, or “Saying a prayer of gratitude every morning when I wake up in 2010″.

Being measurable means that your goal is concretely observable and track-able. For instance, “200 new clients in 2010″. You’ll either reach it, or you won’t.

Achievable – I struggled with this one when I first learned about S.M.A.R.T. goal-setting. Eventually I hacked out a meaning that resonated with me…If you can’t reverse-engineer your goal into a daily set of activities or investments of time, money and effort, then your goal is not achievable for you. Choose another one. Here’s what I mean. I set a goal to build a million dollar revenue business in 14 months (ending December 2010). However, For me to reach that goal, I have to draw out a plan of approach by which I can see that it is possible for me. That’s what I mean by achievable.

Recorded -This one means you should have it written down, recorded on audio, or even on your blog (like I did above). Some teachers and coaches even say you should tell others about your goal. Although I practice that, I’m not sure that’s the correct advice for everyone.

Time-delineated – “New year” goals tend to have deadlines by default. One year.
However, if you notice that you’ve been a “Serial resolution breaker”, you’ll want to make sure that you decompose your “new year resolution” into Quarterly, Monthly, Weekly Goals And Plans.

5. Forget About Motivation And Think Like Thomas Edison
Forget about “feeling motivated” before you take action. Resolve to “act your way into feeling motivated” instead. Nothing motivates like success and the rewards that come from success.
Stop waiting around for motivation and just take action on the plans you reverse-engineered from your goals. Remember that all things are Yours!
Convert both success and failure into marketing and business epics – Blog posts, videos, case studies, Ebooks. Do you realize you can make people pay you to hear all your “epic setbacks” (or failures)?
Stop thinking “Pass/fail” and start thinking “continuous, systematic improvement”. Every failure is just one more step toward your eventual success. Think like Thomas Edison (Read “Edison on Innovation”) who failed his way to success in finding the ultimate light bulb material.

The road to prosperity for you in 2010 will not be found in “searching for the far off wealth”. It will be in discovering your own wealth (already “here” with you) and mining it for maximum leverage.

As I thought about Tiger Woods, his wife, and the trauma to his family of his actions and the public nature of the revelations, it occurred to me that there are some lessons for small business in Tiger’s situation and how it has played out so far.

I’ve heard in the past, that there are 2 kinds of people we can learn from

Examples (role models) and lessons (“Don’t do that” case studies)

For years, Tiger has been comfortably entrenched in the “role model” category in the public mind. Today, he will have to serve as our lesson of the day.

On that note, here are 3 things you can learn from the Tiger Wood episode:

1. In the Age of Accelerated Information Transfer, there is no place to hide.
This applies whether you’re Tiger Woods, Inc or any other corporation (and yes, Tiger IS a corporation in addition to being a golfer). In today’s world, it’s best to live and do business congruently. Congruence means there should no misalignment between public message and your business strategy. The chances of cutting corners and being able to get away with it are slimmer than ever. Unlike Nike’s famous credo, I say, “Just Don’t Do It!”.

2. When you mess up, ‘fess up…quickly.
Part of the problem Tiger faced was the vacuum left by his absence and by the reluctance of his media management team to deal with the arising facts of the case. Whether you occupy a tiny sliver of the blogosphere, or you’re a Tiger-scale media colossus, the best damage control is to abandon any thought of concealment, confess, rectify the situation to the best of your ability and then get your new found piety in front of the public early and often.

3. Be excellent afterwards.
This final step means that you must continue to be good at whatever brought you into the limelight in the first place. If you were a good president before a misguided tryst with an intern, become an even better president. If you were an all-star basketball player before controversial allegations of extramarital dalliances, then become an all-world basketball player.

Lessons from Bill Clinton, Kobe Bryant and many others tell us that if you ‘fess up to your mess, make the media rounds and become even more “you” than ever before, the American public will largely forgive if not forget. These same principles apply to business scenarios.

Yesterday, I was a panelist at a forum meeting that explored the spiritual and emotional needs and hurts of the women present. It was a women-only group, and I was one of only 2 men present. We (the guys) had been specifically invited to answer some questions from a man’s perspective (How would you like to try answering for over 3 billion people?).

It was a tremendously thought-provoking experience and one that I’d gladly take part in If I’m ever asked to do so again. One of the things that struck me during that talk show-style forum was the fact that wise counsel is almost always within a short phone call away, and yet, most of the time, we hesitate to ask for help from those we know are in the best position to provide it.

For me, I have formed a habit of cultivating a network of “gray haired” friends around me. These are seasoned and experienced people I can count on when I’m facing a quandary. People who by reason of age and experience, aren’t afraid to ask the tough questions or tell you when you’ve been an idiot.

One of the most persistent challenges faced by small business owners who struggle is a lack of trusted and qualified mentors. And it’s a problem that easily solved once you make a decision to seek these people out and act quickly on the advice you get.

One of the most important resources for business success that is available in virtually every market is SCORE – Service Core of Retired Executives.

SCORE is an organization made up of mostly retired or semi-retired executives who volunteer their time and expertise to help business owners grow their business. If you haven’t tapped into a SCORE office near you, I advice you to do so.