3 Simple Tweaks to Reach Your End Goal

Today marks the first official day of Autumn for 2016. The end of the year is well on its way and I am certain you have goals to reach. Take a minute to be honest with yourself and really think … what have I done TODAY to reach my goal?

It’s 11:00 am central time so chances are you’ve been at work for a solid few hours today. Let’s go with 4 – that’s 240 minutes. That’s two hundred and forty opportunities to reach your end goal. Did you take them? We all have limited time and most of you already know to make every minute count. Sometimes, though, it’s easier said than done. Let’s talk about a few ways you can tweak your minutes spent so that you’re truly on the right track to reaching your goals.

The Tweaks:

1. Know The Cost

   Productivity comes at a price. Write down your end goal and then make a list of everything you are going to have to give up or “spend” to reach it. Maybe there’s a major client and they can only meet during your weekend trip to the cabin. The cost is giving up your weekend of fun (but hey, closing a big deal is fun in our eyes). Maybe you want to take a seminar to develop a skill. Your cost is giving up the three hours of time you could be working on your other project. Whatever it may be, knowing the cost ahead of time will help you, when the situation occurs. Instead of being disappointed that your plans are suddenly foiled, you know you thought of this and made a choice. You’ll already know what to do and know it’s worth it in the long run.
   

2. Hide Your Inbox

   How many of your 240 minutes today have you peaked an your inbox or instantly replied to an email because “it will just take a minute”? You’re wasting your time! Now, replying to emails in a timely manner IS important. Communicating and following up is something we do every single day at our company. BUT, if you send an email and get a response within the next 4 or even 8 hours, are you happy? I am! (“Thanks for getting back to me same day – that’s speedy!”) The problem with keeping your inbox open at all times is that you lose focus on the important projects. It might only take one minute to reply, but it takes several minutes of your attention away from that clear, in-the-zone focus you should be executing on your important work. Put the inbox away and set one or two designated blocks of time each day to dig through it. Your un-scattered mind will thank you later!

   

3. Start Doing

   Learning and knowing everything about your line of work and your life is amazing and, in my opinion, important. I soak up valuable content like a dry sponge thrown into water! However, reading this post and reading all the incredible books from leading executives and reading inspirational content to get you motivated is not going to help you at all … if you don’t actually do anything. You took 10 minutes to read this post (thanks, by the way!) when you should have spent 10 minutes making that follow up call to close the deal. The truth is, you’re probably not going to be successful unless you fail. Try and learn. Then try and learn again. Then again. The only way to get the success is to stop fearing about the failure and do something. Take action to reach your goal. Stop planning and start executing, right now.

   

Too much to read? Here’s the gist:

• First, know ahead of time what you will have to give up to reach your goals, so that when decisions get tough, you feel confident that you’re making the right choices to reach your goals.
• Second, set one or two designated times to check your emails and hide it the rest of the day so you don’t lose your in-the-zone focus on your really important projects.
• Third, having knowledge and finding inspiration is great, but you will only be on your way to success if you actually start executing your plans, rather than strategizing about them.

We want you to be successful as much as you do. We are constantly working to improve on existing and create new tools to help you execute and reach (surpass) your goals. Please, take advantage of us to get there. If we’re not doing something that we should be to make your life easier, tell us!

Now, get doing and have a wonderful, productive day!

 

Who Needs Luck?

You might believe in the luck of the Irish, but we believe in creating our own success. Maybe you have noticed that lucky people are found by luck often – this is no coincidence! A lucky break is really someone being prepared when an opportunity presents itself, and having the confidence to go after it. Instead of dwelling on your “bad luck”, get prepared for the next opportunity!

Follow these 7 lucky steps to create your own success:

1. Define your goal

   Be specific. You need to know exactly what you want in order to achieve it. If your end goal is to close a sale, what does that look like? A happy customer, first-class service, constant communication, positive reviews, active listening, knowing your potential client inside and out …

2. Decide to reach it

   Make the decision right now that you are going to reach your goal no matter what! Nothing can keep you from succeeding if you have this mindset. There might be set backs and failures, but that is a part of life. You need to learn from them and move forward towards your goal. The people who always get what they want, never quit trying to achieve it.

3. Outline your steps

   This is where you get prepared for an opportunity. If you want to close the sale, don’t just hope you do the right things. Do your research. What exactly do you need to do to be ready? If you know the customer wants a green market, how are you going to give it to them? Step one: learn who the customer is and what they want. Step two: research green initiatives. Step three: … If you don’t know where to begin, find someone who has been successful in the same or a similar situation and mirror the steps they took.

4. Educate yourself

   There is some training required for every goal you have. Surround yourself with people who have been successful at achieving your goal. They will help you figure out what to study. Maybe it’s time to go back and finish your degree. Maybe you are ready to take on your Master’s. Maybe you just need to brush up on your sales techniques and can do this with an online training course. Whichever the case, make sure you find a program that is well-known and has been given the best reviews. If you purchase a course, buy it from someone who is successful at the topic, rather than from someone who is good at marketing the course. Investing in education is one of the smartest decisions you can make – it always has a return.

5. Do what you love

   Creating your own success is hard. It takes lots and lots of work. How do you plan on effectively doing lots and lots of work if you hate the work? Find what makes you passionate and set your goals around that. Maybe right now, your end goal is to find a passion and one of your steps includes trying something new every week.

6. End negativity, create positive thoughts

   If anybody gets in the way of you achieving your goals, stay away from them. You don’t need to waste your time on negative people who don’t support you. Surround yourself with other successful people and you will adopt the lifestyle that creates success.
   If you get in the way of achieving your goals, make a change. Negative thoughts are natural. When they strike, instead of letting them stew and grow, redirect your thoughts to something positive. Positive thoughts need to be created. Do this, and do this often! Visualize reaching your end goal. What does it look like? Feel like? Smell like? Sound like? Who is involved? Who is not there?  Think of this often and it will motivate you immensely.

7. Know that “having it all” is NOT shameful

   There are people who believe that successful people only became successful by stepping on others and acting with greed. I bet these are the same people who believe that luck is left to chance. I have not met a single successful person who didn’t work their fingers to the bone to get where they are. If you work hard and relentlessly strive to achieve your goals, you DO deserve to have it all. Remember that you having everything doesn’t stop anybody else from having it all, too.

Don’t wait for St. Patty’s day to find a little luck. Get prepared for the next opportunity that comes your way and create a lifestyle that welcomes “lucky breaks” – Do it TODAY!

Change – the word we hate but need for success is really less than a minute a day of change

The late legendary coach Herb Brooks said in essence “change is something nearly everyone hates, fails to embrace but it is mandatory for success”.  I find that daily I find in both our great employees or valued clients, we are always faced with that conversation: “What do we need to change? Will it be successful? Do I want to do it?”

Well I see change a lot differently than most. If you break down your day and the decisions we make, they likely account for less than 60 seconds of our time daily. Whether we decide what to eat, when to sleep or awake, exercise, work, work smart, work hard, screw off, blow off a new process, try a new route home, listen intently to our spouses, etc., the list is very likely very long. But the amount of time spent processing the go left or right is a fraction of a second.  And this is where you as a leader, employee, spouse or aspiring “let’s get in better shape” adult succeed or don’t. 

We all know that if we wanted to have a utopia life, whatever that utopia is defined as for your individual life, it comes down to our current life is a summation of our prior decisions and our future will be determined by the sum of decisions made starting RIGHT NOW.  If you read the next sentence you purposely or subconsciously decided “I want read on – this is good stuff” or “I am going to read this as this guy is full of hot air and I want more humor”, or the last option, someone stopped reading this. 

The reality is if you want to change your path in life, you are given infinite opportunities to start changing every day.  You want to be in better shape and it is the middle of the work day?  Decide you want water right now versus Diet Coke.  Decide to stretch your legs right now and every 30 minutes so that when you get home you are ready to go for a walk rather than crash on the couch.  Want to be more productive, decide not to check Facebook right now versus making that next critical sales call.  

Reality is that there are infinite paths to walk on daily.  Your daily resting point in the journey of life tonight is controlled by you.  Don’t like your health, change it – if you have cancer that isn’t in your control but if you are out of shape, that is all you.  You don’t like your boss, look in the mirror first and ask if he/she is the problem or does your attitude have something to do it.  More specifically, is the choices you are making leading to poor performance that your “prick of a boss” is really doing you a favor? Or, is your boss or his/her boss simply an ass clown and it is time to be happy and pursue success elsewhere?  A Harvard Business School study found 54% of the time someone doesn’t succeed at a job has zero to do with the employer: it resided solely on the poor attitude and attitude skills one brought to the job. Is the boss an idiot or are you?

The reality, if you are lacking success in any aspect of your life or business or job, the opportunity to change is immediate. And when your break it all down, if you can improve the 60 seconds a day of decisions you make, you will see immediate improvement. 

Last, you may ask, how do I improve my decisions and make the change happen?

1) Slow down and breathe.  Notice I said breathe, not think.  Many bad decisions are made because people are not of a calm mindset to even think. Decisions made in this state are often influenced by anger, fatigue, being hungry or just being lazy.  So, take a deep breath first and prepare to think and analyze. 

2) Know the opposite effect of what you are about to decide. If you are seeking change, than your reality is the opposite effect you are seeking – what is the opposite of that? Know both, then make the decision based upon the desired outcome.  Case in point: You are working on growing your sales but have had a lousy day in sales.  Yet, you know your results have been slacking because you have spent more time on Facebook and fantasy football picks than working your lead management system.  So no one has answered after 24 calls: you can hit Facebook or you can make the next call.  You are at the intersection of success and not.  You can stick with your current results and Facebook routing and enjoy your current paycheck or you can knuckle down and go after the next prospect?  

The reality, achieving success and not is that simple.  60 seconds of change is not hard – make simple yet disciplined changes and you will see the results.  

Create success today at every opportunity.  

Patrick 

Do You Know The Opposite?

Know the opposite of your goals?

It probably includes: lack of success, frustration, regret, missed opportunities and more adjectives that have nothing positive associated with them. Want to hit your goals for 2015? Not only have your goals written down but also have written the opposite down so you can see which path you are on. There is still plenty of time to reach your 2015 goals!

Change is hard. Success isn’t comfortable. Listing your self-defined opposite of success will immediately tell you if you are taking the right actions every minute, hour, day, week, month and quarter.

Find out how you can reach, or better yet, surpass your goals with Three Square Market on our website!

Perfection – what else are you striving for

As a continuation of our Blog on Principles of our company, Perfection is next.  We are big believers in Jim Collins book, Good to Great.  He says as one of his principles “are you good at it?”  We took it a step further: can we perfect it?

While perfection is something rarely achieved, seeking it should be a constant in your life, let alone the product you produce and sell. Failure to means you are accepting average.  Seeking it means you are constantly looking to improve it, how you service it, how to stay ahead of your competitors and more.  Failure to think this way means simply that, you are likely to fail, whether sooner or later.  

As part of seeking perfection, we seek like minded business owners who strive for the same.  People who want to be the best.  Business owners who can sort through the smoke screens of marketing gimmicks and fancy displays for hard core performance facts and profit measurements.  In having like minds, we can together, seek the best avenues to provide a superior end product.  In return, we achieve jointly our profit goals, the core of each business’ ability to thrive. 

We look forward to seeing our clients in Vegas at NAMA next week in our market business.  Until then, have a great business today. Today is 20% of your work week….make it count. 

Patrick 

Principles, Who We Stand For

Over the next few weeks I am going to post blogs about the Principles we stand for.  While these are the standards we live by, we welcome the chance to learn about yours and your feedback on ours.  The term “mutual” is something we believe that these principles to be – our #1 Principle is Profits.  Some at first may say “whoa” if you are…..stop.  What it means without our business partners being profitable we don’t exist.  So, in that spirit, we have Ten Principles and our first starts with you.  

When we all started in business, we started  with a mindset we need to make money to survive.  We need to pay bills, fund babysitters, a car payment, the mortgage, and as time grew, dreams.  Making dreams become reality starts with having a bottom line number that you need to hit whether it be grow your business, add that second delivery truck, build a new bulding, buy a competitor, let alone expand, fund your retirement, provide improved benefits for your employees, build a bigger home, the list is endless.  

This starts with profit and we must provide you the impact on your business to grow it.  We stress to our staff daily we need to ensure what we do daily helps our business partners, the people and companies who buy and employ our products can deliver a profit to themselves.  Doing so ensures they continue to be our client, expand their business and more. 

We must provide you the value added service and bottom line reliability you need in daily performance of our product.  We need to deliver world class technology, service and guidance so that each penny adds to profit whether it be in incremental growth due to an enhancement, process improvement that equates to expense savings that when multiplied, equates to record profits for the client. 

In return we EARN our price that in the end funds our bottom line and allows us to continue to provide World Class products.  Our price funds our product development, employee growth and every facet of our company so that we continue to provide the best product that our clients buy again and again.  

So, we all know what we need to do to be mutually profitable and know from the get go our #1 principle starts with ensuring you reach your profit goals so that you are our client for decades to come.  

Stay tuned….more to come.  Let me know how we can help you improve your bottom line.  

Patrick 

What does Success Look like? How can you become more successful?

Over the last few days we’ve been focusing on ways to assist operators in being more successful in their business, and a couple of our latest stand out operators came to mind …

Rome Refreshments has been an operator with us for almost two years now. Rome goes the extra mile with everything in their markets – from their attention grabbing kiosk design to the attention to detail in all of their market’s features. If you haven’t seen one of their markets – then you haven’t looked at any of the 32M marketing material. Rome definitely has one of 32M’s most stand-out locations!

Another reason why Rome Refreshments really takes it to the next level is their use of the entire Three Square Market system.  Rome leaves no report, setting, or feature un-touched. Rome uses every possible part of the 32M system to its fullest extent … and their operation and progress over this time really shows!

A&H Vending is a relatively new operator to 32M.  What they may be lacking in time as a 32M operator, clearly doesn’t show from their extensive knowledge of the 32M system.  Like our previously mentioned operator A&H utilizes every feature possible with the 32M system to absolutely maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of his market.

A&H leaves no slacking in looks of their breakroom markets!  From the story, it is safe to assume that Jim & Bridget (A&H) would not go into their latest location without some serious renovations – review the before and after pictures to see the change.  The new A&H market in this location is such a hit the President/CEO has decided, with the help of A&H, to put the breakroom markets into all of their locations in the next few months. David, the President/CEO of the location, even blogged about the success of their new breakroom – which has brought about a significant amount of market requests for Jim and Bridget to go through!

Both of these examples clearly show operators that success can be made by simply doing it right vs. doing it fast!  32M extends their gratitude and major congratulations to both of these operators for their commitment and excellence!

For answers to any questions, or additional help and training on the 32M system, please put in your requests by emailing MarniV@32Market.com, DanH@32Market.com or MichaelT@32Market.com. Or schedule a training at http://threesquaremarket.schedulista.com/

Know the opposite of success to have success

Know the opposite of your goals? It’s called lack of success, frustration, regret, missed opportunities and more adjectives that have nothing positive associated with them. Want to hit your goals for 2015? Not only have your goals written down but also have written the opposite down so you can see which path you are on.

Change is hard. Success isn’t comfortable. And listing your self defined opposite of success will immediately tell you if you are taking the right actions every minute, hour, day, week, month and quarter.

A Success Anthem – Go Achieve in 2015!

I read this tonight and thought it was right on to what we are all looking to do as operators, distributors and at 32M, if we are growing our businesses.  The difference between success and other results centers upon this anthem:

All people have the same desire to succeed.  Even if all have the same desire to succeed and do similar things, is the ones with the proper mindsets who succeed the most.  Their minds can deal with any obstacle.  The ones who kick ass are the ones who can see themselves kicking ass, who truly believe in themselves, what they are selling, remind themselves how much they want to kick ass and helps others kick ass, makes themselves better and more.  These elite folks are excited about being compensated for selling and have no limitations other than doing something unethical, and certainly have no limiting or subconscious beliefs holding them back.  The ones who feel weird or who worry that pushing for a sale or a successful outcome of their efforts, are potentially annoying someone, or believe they shouldn’t succeed, WON’T.

Which path are you on?  Think about it.  It is one or the other and there are no but’s.  I always said to my kids when they were young “I don’t know who But Dad is”….. there are no if’s, can’ts or but’s on the way to success.  Believe as the anthem above says and you will kick your goals for 2015 in to high gear.

Go get it.

Patrick