Your Most Important Meeting

Founders, creators, entrepreneurs, lend me your ears; I come not to bury your dreams to but to praise them! For 'tis nobler in the minds of men and women to suffer the slings and arrows of non-believing friends and family, to strive for autonomy (if not outrageous fortune) and achieve the real American Dream.

OK, enough Shakespeare, let's talk!

Let me ask you a question... How's it going?

How is your business...your dream business?

Is it still dreamy?

Or is the shine starting to wear off a little bit?

Are you stuck?

Or struggling?

Are you worried?

Could your business fail?

Or end up mired in mediocrity?

I have started multiple businesses, and like the statistics so often quoted, many of them failed.

1. Lemonade stand...lasted one day, or maybe two. (Relaunched several times with different products, but always the same result.)
2. Martial Arts school...a couple of years.
3. Network Marketing...a few more years.
4. Contract Software Developer...nearly a decade.

But clearly not all businesses fail.

So what makes the difference?

What will make the difference for you in YOUR business?

One key ingredient I've learned is to stop fooling yourself (cue the synthesizer, STYX fans )!

You can't last very long in business without sales.

It is easy to confuse activity with progress, and this dooms many a great idea to being an expensive hobby instead of a profitable business.

• I was busy writing posts on social media to build credibility and a following.
• I have to engage with my followers!
• The product needs a little more tweaking.
• I read this great book on how to be successful in business!
• I signed up for this super-successful coach's online course! (He had pictures of himself with a supercar in front of a mansion, so he must be successful, right?)

All of these actions might be helpful and could be elements of your future success, but none of them are the heart of your business. None of these items will make you successful, if you're not also doing the core business-building activities.

If you're struggling to get started in your business, you need sales. You can't last very long in business without sales. And so you need to focus on those basics.

If you've had some success, maybe even a lot of success, but you've hit a ceiling and find yourself stuck, you need to check where you are putting your focus.

So what is the answer?

A meeting.

I know, many of you, like myself, spent so many long hours and days in boring and unproductive meetings, and the reason you started your own business was to get away from that insanity.

I'm not talking about that kind of meeting.

You need to hold a leadership accountability meeting.

Every Week.

It doesn't matter if your leadership team is just yourself, or you have a dozen Senior Vice Presidents reporting to you. This is the most important meeting you will have all week.

Every week.

Hold a Weekly Team Meeting and perform an honest assessment of your results. Are you doing the daily and weekly activities that are needed to accomplish your goals?

Do you have a scorecard to track your progress week to week? Without an actual scorecard, it is easy to tell yourself that maybe this week wasn't great, but last week was good, so we're still okay.

How many weeks in a row have you been saying that? Fooling yourself!

I use a tool called Ninety (affiliate link) to track my scorecard and run my weekly meetings. It also includes Vision, Values, Quarterly Goals, and much more. But you don't have to use software. You could sketch a scorecard on a napkin, in a notebook or on a whiteboard.

The important thing is that you have one and that you're having the meeting, holding yourself accountable and tracking results over time so that there is no fooling yourself.

This is the most important meeting you will have.

And you must do it every week.

If you want help putting this together, schedule a call . I can help you. This is what I do.