Are you and your team aligned to achieve your big bold goals in 2013?

Happy New Year!

Last week, I had the privilege of hosting a VIP business retreat for a fabulous new client: StringCan Interactive. I want to share with you some of what we worked on so that you can also incorporate these ideas into your business.

The CEO of StringCan, Jay Feitlinger, is definitely what I would call an Inspirational Entrepreneur — he wants to grow a company that delivers tremendous value and care for their clients. He realizes that the best way to do that is develop a company culture that is fun and rewarding for their team. Moreover he also believes in "paying success forward" through StringCan's support of local Arizona charities through their specialized expertise.

The great thing about working with entrepreneurs is they are always full of creative ideas of what they could do in their business to make it bigger and better. And therein can exist a challenge — too many ideas without staff buy-in, alignment and a robust execution plan can just as easily lead to chaos, confusion and less than impressive results. That's why Jay was willing to invest the time, energy and resources into laying a solid foundation and common understanding for a year of what I'm sure will be tremendous growth.

[blockquote author="Jay Feitlinger, Founder & CEO, StringCan Interactive"]“As an entrepreneur who is very passionate about helping our clients and team members solve serious business problems I often find myself getting into the weeds juggling dozens of tasks every day. Working with Vanessa has made me understand the importance of prioritizing and focusing on what's really important. As a result, we've moved into new office space, opened a European office, expanded the team and doubled our income in far shorter time time than anyone expected. Now we're at 7 figures, we're already strategizing to double it again!  I am beyond excited for 2013 and with Vanessa's guidance and my amazing team and clients I am confident we will exceed our business goals. Thanks Vanessa for all that you do!”[/blockquote]

Here are some of the takeaway’s from the StringCan VIP retreat:

• How you work together is just as important as what you want to achieve. It’s all too tempting to dive straight into “action mode” without taking the time to build and nurture important relationships, have a deeper understanding of each other’s strengths and weaknesses as well as addressing the inevitable irritations that can undermine progress. We spent the first part of the day exploring the differences within the team and identifying both strengths and weaknesses. There were several “aha” moments when team members began to understand each other at a far deeper level. Take time to not only consider your immediate team but also key business partners and family members who are crucial to your success.  Investing time and energy upfront building and aligning your team will avoid costly breakdowns later on down the road.
• Get crystal clear on what you want to achieve. It may sound obvious but you’d be amazed to know how many people lack clarity of where they want to be which rapidly leads to confusion. Each team member prepared their own “vision success board” which they presented to the team. Not only was this inspiring to witness, it was also a highly engaging and fun way to get people on the same page. We invested a lot of time defining the overall business goals for the year and getting agreement from the team that these were joint priorities for growth. Success is never achieved through your own efforts alone and it’s crucial to get everyone on board so that you reduce friction and create greater ease and alignment to achieve your big bold goal.
• Turn on the Excite-O-Meter. All of my clients know that I am constantly taking their “emotional pulse” to see if the goals they are setting are based on what they think they can achieve or what is truly in their hearts. High positive energy supported by a strong mindset that a goal is achievable (forget about how you will achieve it for the time being!) is a great start. We defined a goal for StringCan Interactive to more than double their business in 2013 and then laid out a very workable plan to make that happen. Needless to say, the Excite-O-Meter was off the charts!
• Chunk it down. All goals are made up of smaller milestones and the more your company grows you have to be clear on roles and responsibilities of each team member. And for the CEO or business owner, the more the company grows the more you have to trust and empower team members to perform so that you remove yourself from the day-to-day tactics and work strategically. The good side of that is that everyone else gets to step up in different ways. Take a look at how we creatively chunked down the goals into 90-day action plans in the picture above.

If you need help getting a new focus on your big bold business goals, please contact us!

© 2013 Vanessa Shaw