The Business Growth Blog by Rob Cuesta

Are you a Journeyman, a Guru, or...

The coaching and consulting industry have traditionally been built on two ways of getting clients. And I think BOTH of those models are broken.

Six-Figure Blueprint Brief 23: get accountable

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In this Six-Figure Blueprint Brief, I discuss how to make sure you keep working on your business objectives

Six Figure Blueprint Brief 22: Automate

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Setting up your coaching, consulting or training business so it can run without you is the subject of today's Six Figure Blueprint Brief from marketing expert Rob Cuesta

#PRACEXPLOSION Quick Growth Tip #14: Get some accountability

It's time to stop making excuses, stop justifying why you're not making progress, stop rationalising why you're not where you wanted to be, and stop lying to yourself.

You have to hold yourself accountable for everything – the good and the bad.

There is no such thing as luck: getting “lucky” is being in the right Location, Understanding what's going on in the moment, having the right Connections and Knowing the rules of the game.

Everything that happens (or doesn't happen) in your business is the result of your work or lack thereof.

Everything. The buck stops with you.
 
When I turned my business around in 2005 it was because I started to hold myself to a higher standard. This year I've increased my income significantly despite the recession, by holding myself to an even higher standard.

So how do you get accountability? Well one way is to get a coach and mentor. Every coach should have one anyway - how can you expect people to buy your coaching if you don't buy coaching for yourself?

And I don't mean swapping coaching with someone else.

I mean coaching that you pay for.

Otherwise why should someone pay for your coaching?

Quick Growth Tip #8: Who's Coming To Your Tribal Dance?

The days of going out prospecting are far behind us. People don't want to be sold to any more - after all, in most western countries we're lucky enough to lack for very little. We get a whim and we satisfy it.

The biggest hole in people's lives these days is LEADERSHIP.

We're all looking for someone to help explain the world, someone to show us the path that avoids all the traps and pitfalls, someone to make our problems and challenges and questions just go away. Someone to be our leader.

Quick Growth Tip #3: Get Things Done

How do you create and maintain *visible* accountability for your projects? Here's one approach.

On the wall of my office there's a whiteboard divided into three sections labelled "Do" "Doing" and "Done".

When I plan a new project, I write the name in the "Do" area and an approximate deadline.

When I start to work on the project, I move it to the "Doing" area, and give it a definite deadline. Every week I review progress on the stuff on my "Doing" board.

Finally, when I complete the project, I move it to the "Done" area and keep it here for 4-12 weeks, so I can acknowledge what I've achieved, not just what I haven't done yet!

It's a great way to keep yourself on track

Quick Growth Tip #2: Manage Your Time

In recent weeks two of my clients - both partners in a major global consulting firm - have asked me for advice on making the most of their time.

Time management is one of the key skills for anyone running a business. Without it, time can slip away like sand running out of an egg timer, so I thought I'd share the technique I gave them.

I believe it's one of Stephen Covey's tips from The 7 Habits. Certainly I can't lay claim to it myself - 'though I have used it for many years now!

How much is your time REALLY worth

I was at a meeting of the mastermind group I belong to today (yes, even coaches have coaches. Or should that be "Above all, coaches have coaches") and one of the topics that came up was procrastination.

We were talking about ways of prioritising tasks, and how to spot the things that take us away from what we should be doing.

As I was driving home I was struck by a simple way of putting "busy work" into a new light. Want to know what I came up with?

Why recruiters have it all wrong - part 2

Have you ever worked with someone who, on paper, looked like the perfect person for a job, but over time it turned out they just didn't have "what it takes" to be successful in the role?

In the previous post we looked at some of the pitfalls of the traditional hiring process, and why it can be fatal for a company that is hiring in order to grow. The reality is, most interviewers are great at spotting people with the right skills for a job, but not necessarily the few who have "what it takes" - especially if the interviewer hasn't, themselves, done the job they're interviewing for.

So what can we do to avoid those pitfalls? How do we know if someone will have "what it takes"?

Why recruiters have it all wrong

Whether you're an entrepreneur hiring your first employee, or a corporate manager filling a new post or backfilling a gap created by the departure of an existing memebr of your team, recruiting the right people is essential to growing any business. You need to know that the new person will fit in the organisation, and you need to know they'll be able to do the job. Hiring the wrong person isn't just a potentially expensive mistake: put the wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time and it could kill your business completely (RIP Barings Bank!).

The problem is, most recruiters - even agents, whose job is solely to find candidates for other companies - have their focus all wrong when it comes to finding the right person. And the reason for that isn't hard to find.