My overriding experience when I was on holidays in Italy for example was just how spontaneous people were in showing affection for small children. They would pat my son on the head. Stop and talk and generally dote over them in a way that just isn’t acceptable here in Ireland. Is that a good thing. Is it rational?

So to in business. When we look rationally at some of our fears and challenge them we develop a new sense of courage.

FEAR; You can’t export to the UK. The market is too big. You don’t have any contacts. You don’t have experience. You don’t know the market.
RESULT; You stay at home and limit your potential.

But let’s argue this fear out on paper.

Is the market too big, or is it just a collection of smaller markets? In other words, can I start with Manchester first? It’s only 30 minutes by plane, so I can get there quicker than I can get to Cork (If you live in Dublin that is).

Your contacts. Are you serious when you say to yourself that you don’t know anybody who has expanded in to the UK before? You just need to sit down and write out a list of those people you DO KNOW and talk to them about how they did it.
You also have numerous government agencies, trade agencies and other sources of help and knowledge at your disposal. Many of these are free.

You lack experience. Who cares? Really. You lacked experience as a business owner before you became one. You can do it again. And remember you can leverage the experience of others. There are literally thousands of entrepreneurs who have done it before and successfully built businesses in the UK. Call the ones you know and ask them about their experiences.

You don’t know the market. Again this is easy to overcome. There is never a shortage of information available to you. You can get plenty of information on markets simply by using Google.
Sometimes you don’t need to have an in depth knowledge of the market. Sometimes the market isn’t there to know. You have to create it..

The principle here is simple. Argue with your fears. When you argue with any fear, you can overcome it. How? Well if you can give me one example where a business challenge has never been overcome by someone else, then I’ll walk on fire.. (actually I’ve already done this). And yes I feared it. And yes I overcame it. How? Because I was with a team of others and we overcame it together. I had the support and the precedent was there. Others had done it before me. Therefore it was an illogical fear ( the fear of being burned)

Actions,
Write down your biggest business fear. And why you fear it.
Now write down in a logical format how you can argue against the fear. Find out who else has done it. And learn from them.
This simple process alone will build your internal courage to break through any fear.

Best of luck.
Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.

How many times have you felt this way? Or rather how many times this week have you wanted to kick your own a**e? Too many to count.
You are not alone.

If 90% of your thoughts are negative. And you have anything between 50,000 and 80,000 thoughts a day. Then you are probably spending more time beating yourself up, than you are focusing on what you’ve achieved.
Human nature it may be, but it is very destructive.

How many of you as leaders spend more of your time beating up your team for not doing stuff? Well you may simply be reinforcing a negative, and ensuring the behaviour is repeated.

Those of you who have kids know how deeply affected they can be by criticism. They show it when they hurt. Adults are maybe just better at cloaking it. But adults don’t differ too much in this regard.

When you spend your time focusing on a negative. You get more negatives. Simple as that. It is totally counterproductive to your mental and physical wellbeing. So stop it.

Focus on what you have accomplished. Stop rushing to beat yourself up. Stop telling yourself that you never get things done.
How you may ask? Well it’s really simple. Let’s take a very straight forward example.

Most of us in business need to sell. Do you love to sell? Probably not.
What you tend to do is attend meetings and make calls and count up the numbers of NO’s you get. And yes beat yourself up over it. And make yourself feel even worse. Great result.

But sales is all about percentages. Only a small percentage buy. The majority will always say No. Fact. You can’t change that fact.
But you can live with it.
You can accept it.

You can praise yourself for taking incremental steps towards your next sale. The more you try the more successful you will get. And the more you encourage yourself or your team, instead of beating yourself up. The better your results will be.

Just imagine if you sat every week with your team and only focused on what you did well that week? Would your mood be better? Would you be more positive. Would you be more motivated to do more?
You know you would, so why choose to do the opposite.

Stop trying to sprain your ankle trying to kick your own a**e. And learn to give yourself credit and praise.

Actions.
Track your wins daily. At the end of your day write down what you did accomplish today.
At the end of your week review what you accomplished as an individual and as a team. Focus on what you did do. And just be conscious of how that makes you feel. Does it give you more energy?

Best of luck.
Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.

Here are 3 really simple and very powerful ways to control your lost time. They work. Please take my advice as someone who has genuinely studied time management for 20 years. I’ve tried every system going and these just work.

Think on Paper.
I love my technology. I have an IPad, an IPhone and a MacPro. I love my APPS and my software. But they can be a real source of distraction if you allow them to be.
Don’t get me wrong technology can really enhance your ability to control time, but it can also get in the way.
Every morning or last thing at night simply write out the following
My TOP 3 priorities this week. This is critical and write this in RED.
The other stuff you have to do the next day and during the week.
Now go to your diary and Allocate time in your day or week to the TOP 3 priorities. In other words block out the time needed to get the 3 actions completed. I know you’re going this is too simple. Well no it’s easy to block the time out. You have to adhere to your schedule.
Worry about the rest once you’ve completed the 3 Top Priorities. Yes I said worry about them later. You are not paid to get tasks completed. Your job is to get the High Level Tasks completed.
Minimise interruptions.
Is this your biggest impediment to getting everything done? Well it is generally the most problematic for most busy people. And you have to take action.
I have two offices one at home and one external. When I am at home it’s so easy to be interrupted. I have 2 kids. How can you avoid it? Well with ground rules. And a good lock and key…
Seriously you have to set ground rules for yourself in your office. You have to ensure that any meetings you have, start and end on time.
You have to remove the chairs from your office to prevent people getting too comfortable.
You have to schedule time with your team and stick to the scheduled times. You don’t have to be an open door manager. Close the bloody door and get your priorities done first.
Turn off the technology. Turn off the distractions and focus on getting your real work done.
I promise you the world won’t end, and nobody will die.
Are you the type of leader whose philosophy is always the customer is always first? Well if you are you are likely to answer phone calls from customers regardless of what you are doing? Right? You will take a call during a meeting. You will take a call during your downtime. You’ll respond to that email and be late for a team meeting. And you’ll justify your behaviour by claiming it’s all necessary in order to keep the customer’s happy.
Well you are setting a precedent for yourself and your team. And that precedent is that you will never value your time above everything else. The best businesses will value team meetings more that client meetings. This may seem like sacrilege to you, but it’s true and it completely justifiable.

Keep a daily, weekly and monthly view to hand wherever you go. Why? Because if you become obsessive about how you trade your time, you’ll constantly look at your week and month and move your commitments to maximise your time effectively.
What do I mean by this? Well for example when I travelled 4 days a week in the UK, I became obsessive about my time. I would constantly review my week and re organise meeting times and venues in order to minimise my travel times. It worked. And transformed my productivity.

Actions;
3 simple and unbelievably effective strategies to control lost time.
What one of these could you start doing next Monday?

Best of luck.
Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.

I had lost control of my numbers. My bank balance. My debtors. My sales numbers. My profits ( or in my case my losses).
And guess what. It’s too late to wait a year for your end of year results to make the changes you need to get back on track. A year is a lifetime in business.

So eventually I copped on. As a Sales Manager, I learned the power of measuring my teams, calls, appointments, strike rates and average order value. Every week. Yes every week on a Thursday religiously my team called with their numbers. It was unbelievably powerful. And it got phenomenal results.

As a Sales And Operations Director I learned to realise that the relentless focus on our sales numbers, our operational costs, our weekly hours (effectively that’s what we sold and managed), always paid dividends.
At our monthly all numbers were scrutinised, crunched, questioned and reassessed. And you know what? They grew every month consecutively.

What gets measured publicly get’s done better.
What gets measured publicly get’s done even more effectively.
Keep score, and do it publicly.
Let everyone be aware of their own scores. And the team scores.
This is amazingly effective. It is both motivating and illuminating. Illuminating in the sense that it literally shines the light on underperformers. And acts as an additional incentive to raise their performances.

And if you are a professional, or sole trader and there is no team to publicly share results. Track your own numbers zealously.
Maybe you can et someone to hold you accountable to the numbers. Your partner. Your best friend. A business colleague. Just get someone to hold you accountable to this vital task.

Of course you could hold yourselves accountable. And that works for you doesn’t it? If not you are not alone. Being alone in business can be a challenge. And tracking your own performance can be an obstacle.
But you’re made of stronger stuff and you know deep down that you will reap the rewards. It just requires a little discipline.

Actions;
Contrary to popular belief a new habit takes 58 days and not 30 to become ingrained. This is a habit that requires real discipline.
Firstly set yourself some targets or objectives for the next 90 days. Just focus for now on the next 90 days.
Break those targets down in to daily numbers. For example a daily number of sales calls. Daily number of customer service calls. My suggestion is to initially on focus on 5 key numbers that are relevant to your business.
And … create either using a Whiteboard, Flipchart or Excel sheet a simple tracking sheet of your daily results.
You MUST track these numbers daily. And review them weekly.
Put a time every week in your diary where you sit with your team and go through the numbers. Make this time sacrosanct.
This is a GREAT TRADE OF YOUR TIME…..

Best of luck.
Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.

No I haven’t lost my mind. Paranoia is characterised as both suspicion and mistrust. And let’s be honest is generally not to be encouraged. However, I can’t help feeling that a healthy sense of paranoia can be a decent personal strategy.
Let me explain..
Running a business as you know is always a challenge. Success is a major challenge and when it’s tough it can be very tough.
Success can breed complacency and complacency can be lethal to any business. Just ask Nokia or Sony.

I think you can overcome complacency by having a healthy sense of paranoia.
Being suspicious of your competition, can raise your alertness and can also make you more competitive.
Being a little mistrustful of your largest clients can also be helpful. Mistrustful in the sense that they may switch loyalty and move to the competition. It happens everyday. And maybe, just maybe that slight mistrust may create a new level of urgency. And attention to detail. And a greater willingness to listen. And a higher level of innovation and creativity.

We’ve all been guilty of this little failing. We get on a roll in our sales, and we get really busy. So we slacken off on our efforts. We relax a little. And this always has a consequence.
What if our paranoia never allows us to relax. Keeps us focused. Makes us realise that we will lose customers too. And therefore we need to be every vigilant.
Makes us be more attentive to the market changes that happen so quickly these days. I mean I never use a pen and paper. I have no need. I use an APP on my IPad to write everything.
I was almost a zealot with my Moleskine notebooks. And now they gather dust. All in the space of 6 months.

What if you developed a healthy sense of paranoia to the extent that you always believed that the market you’re in will no longer exist in 5 years time. Would that drive you and your business to be more creative. Would you create more new products and services? Would you be in a better place for that?

What if you looked at your team regularly and had a healthy suspicion that they’re not engaged. That they’re sense of purpose is diminishing or just non existent. Would that make you more determined to either get the right people, with the right sense of purpose. Or would it persuade you to create a more engaging environment for them to work in…

These are just my thoughts. It might be wise to treat these with suspicion too….Or not?

Best of luck.
Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.

I also learned a gem from him which he shared with me. A gem of information that he in turn had learned from his mentor Bob Proctor.

He asked me was what I spent my time on, a good trade? Let me explain.

Time as we know is a finite resource. We give it away easily and we never get it back. So how did you give your time away last week as you worked?

The hours you spent on idle conversations with business colleagues. Were they a good trade?

Put another way if you had traded your time better, and had focused on the high impact tasks you have, would it have been a better trade of your time?

Would the extra meetings you held in the week been a great trade for a couple of extra hours with your children. Would that time have been a more fulfilling couple of hours that you’ll never get back. And you’ll never get it back, that’s irrefutable.

Isn’t this just a great way to put a value on your time and your effectiveness?.
If you spend 10 hours a week dealing with meaningless tasks that add no value to your business, is that a good trade? 10 hours a week. 520 hours a year. That’s 52 days a year (assuming you are a business owner and work at least a 10 hour day). That’s 7.5 weeks a year of your life, you’ll never get back. It’s an eye opener. What could you have done with that 7.5 weeks?

I have met countless numbers of business owners over the years who spend innumerable hours on low value tasks. They work really hard, but they never get the results they feel they deserve for their efforts. Maybe they are just simply poor traders when it comes to time?

I have also met some unbelievably successful people in my time. They will only give you time if you have a something good to trade with. Otherwise they move on to something much more important to do with their time.

They just seem to have an ability to trade their time better.
You can too. It isn’t easy but it is simple.

Actions.
This week recite this affirmation daily repeatedly. “I trade my time for high impact and high income and high relationship tasks”.
“ I am a highly effective leader who trades time wisely”.
Rather than focus on changing your behaviour immediately, focus on the awareness of what your behaviour really is. In other words are you selfish with your time, or do you trade it poorly.
Awareness can then lead to actions.
This week if you want to, you can trade your time better. And best of luck..

Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach and Managing Director of The High Achiever’s Club
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.

No problem. You are probably focusing on what your service or product does. And nobody really cares about this. Why because there are lots like you ( that is in your prospects mind). Your customer doesn’t have time to assimilate all of the wonderful features and gizmos your product has. Your customer doesn’t have the inclination to read about all of the cool additional services you have built in to your package.

Your customer needs a VISION of a better future. That’s it in a nutshell.
If you can create in the mind of your prospect a CLEAR VISION of the results your product or service can bring. If you can conjure up a VISION of how much easier your customer’s life will. Or how much more money they can make. Or have much safer their business will be. Or how much more competitive or innovative their business will be.

Then and only then will they want to learn more about functionality and the great features.

Sell the VISION first. Then sell the service.

The question is are you 100% clear on the VISION yourself. Is it written down. Is it consistent across your business and your team. Is it easy enough for a 6 year old child to understand (if not then it’s back to the drawing board).

Great presentations create great visions. Great sales outcomes are dependent on creating great visions for your prospects.

By the way, a vision is much easier to sell than any product or service. Vision always excites and motivates.

ACTIONS
You need to create a VISION of the results your product or service delivers. You need to focus on the outcomes of what you deliver, not what you deliver. You need to paint pictures that address your customer’s desire to make more money, be more compliant, be more competitive, be more secure, be more respected, be more reactive.
Take out your pen NOW!. And write. If you aren’t spontaneously filling that page with a clear VISION. Then you are lacking one. And you are missing out on huge opportunities to grow your business.
Start writing, rewriting and rewriting until you have a clear VISION you can convey to anyone with ease. Just you wait and see the results you get from this exercise.

Best of luck.
Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.

The inevitable outcome for a lot of business owners like you is. More stress and more hours worked.
Many of you are stretched to capacity and like a rubber band you have tremendous capacity to take that strain. But when you apply too much strain to a rubber band we all know the consequences can be far reaching. So to for you.

Do you really need this? We instinctively know the answer is no. But what to do?
Firstly recognise what your habits are? How? Track what you do for 1 week. Yes for 1 week every hour look back and track what you actually did. It will astound you.

For example did you start your day with a Prioritised Task List, only to find that the first email you open has an attachment you can’t view?
Did this lead you to immediately deal with this seemingly urgent task? Did it involve you calling your IT manager to get an expert opinion. Or did you just Google to search for a quick fix?
Did you just spend 20 minutes on a completely irrelevant task and end up running in to your scheduled meeting under prepared?
Was the result of this minor incident, that you forgot to prepare a pack for the meeting. Or that you left a document behind you?.
Were you late for the meeting as a result?
Was the document worth the impact it has had on your day.
Are you now behind schedule. Under pressure. Conscious that you are behind on your plan. Thinking about how to cope with the schedule.
Oh no. Did the day just pass you by. And you hardly noticed it.

Well you’re not alone. But let’s have a little perspective on the day. Perspective is the key action here. Did the day run you, or did you run the day?
Come to think of it when did you last run the day? And isn’t that the point of being an Entrepreneur? That you run your day, your business and your life. And not the other way around.

All of this stems from habit. The habit of being disrupted easily. The habit of reaction always winning over intention. I intended to do my most important task, but work got in the way.

Why not create a new intention? Become intent on gaining more control over your day, everyday.

Actions;
Track your daily habits. Be honest about where you lost time. About how you lost time. About how you allowed others to steal your time. About how you allowed an errant email to completely throw your day into chaos. Or how every email results in a shift in focus.
Focus. Where and how often do you lose your focus.
Write this all down for 1 week. That’s a small ask for a large problem to be overcome.
Now resolve to deal with ONE of these habits this month. Just ONE. Maybe it’s to only check your emails 3 times daily. Just for this month.
Track your results. You’ll be astounded. Then you can tackle habit No. 2 next month. One simple action per month. And you’re no longer stretched to capacity. You’ll find you have extra capacity. Capacity to stretch again on your terms.

Best of luck.
Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.

Sorry to disturb you.
Sorry for taking up your time.
Did I interrupt you? I’m sorry.
Sorry for what?

I’ve been to hundreds of events over the years. And it amazes me how many people apologise to their audience, before they start speaking.

It is not uncommon to hear “sorry for boring you with this”.
“Hopefully I won’t put you to sleep”.
“I’ll try not to waste your time”.
“Sorry for talking about such a serious subject so early in the morning’”

The list is endless.

Why is this?
I believe it is a deep rooted fear of being seen to be “selling yourself”. God forbid if people think I’m selling myself or my business. They might not react well. They might be offended. They might be threatened.

Well I’m sorry. This is just rubbish. This is just in your mind. NOT THEIRS.

I absolutely believe 100% that people love being sold to. That is by people who have genuine belief in their product or service. Who have passion and commitment. And are sincere.

Are you in this bracket? If not well then, now we are getting to the root of why you are apologising. You don’t believe in your product. You don’t have undiminished pride in your service. You are kidding yourself.

If you have a great product or service then SELL with pride. SELL with joy. SELL with enthusiasm. Why? Because you are making someone’s life better! That can’t be a bad thing.

You are helping make more money
You are saving them money
You are helping them or their business become more effective
You are helping their business become more compliant
You are helping them make better decisions
Your are helping them gain a competitive advantage
You are helping them become more innovative

What are you helping them do? Do you really know?

Actions
Define how you are helping your prospects and customers clearly. Really clearly as this will motivate you and give you a sense of belief that by selling to them you are really helping them.
Helping is never something you apologise for. So NEVER apologise.
Take action now and watch your language. Be proud to sell. And sell with enthusiasm. You’ll get the results you need.

Best of luck.
Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.

Fears are not unique to the limited few. They are pervasive and hold most of us back from our goals at some point in our lives. Fears are mostly irrational but nonetheless they are very real. And destructive.

So how can you learn from your kids about fears? Well firstly you don’t have to have kids to learn from them.
I have two kids. One three and the other five years old.
It may be anecdotal but I talk to a lot of parents of two and they confirm my own experiences.
Generally the second child has less fear. And in my kid’s experience I get 100% validation of this theory.

Why because they leverage the experience of others (in this case, his older brother) and learn from them.

Let me explain by using a simple example. My eldest son when we first started taking him to a playground was terrified of most of the rides. Even a slide was a major obstacle. His fears were so strong that he’d hurt himself, that he wouldn’t participate. It took a huge amount of cajoling and nurturing to enable him to take the first leap of faith.

Not so my second son. And I firmly believe that he looked to his older brother, realised he wasn’t phased or fearful. And simply accepted this as the norm. So he just got stuck in.

This type of incident has been replayed over and over again in our household where the younger son has leap frogged his older brother’s progress at an earlier age. He simply has had less fear, because in effect he had a mentor.

So how does this relate to you and your business.
In a word Leverage.
For every challenge you have had in your business, someone has overcome it before.
For every fear you have about the future of your business, someone has overcome it before.
For every personal fear you have about your own future, someone somewhere has overcome it.

All you need to do is emulate them. Just find out how they did and copy the steps. Not only can you be assured with full confidence it can be done. You’ll have the proof it works, by either reading about it, or better still talking directly to the person who have done it.

Leveraging other people’s knowledge. And other people’s failures can give you enormous confidence about moving forward. Just as my youngest son, simply followed in the footsteps of his older brother. You can follow in the footsteps of those before you.

You have NO reason to feel alone or alienated. You just focus on finding the proof that what is seemingly impossible, can be done.

As you know I am a great admirer of John Boyle of Boyle Sports. He has built a €1billion business from scratch. And he is unashamed in admitting that he did so by following the structure others taught him. He looked at what successful people did. Emulated them step by step. And got results.

You can do the same.

www.ronankilroy.ie

Actions;
Write down now your main fear.
Now challenge that fear directly and with determination. Argue against it. Find the evidence of people and businesses before you who have overcome that fear or obstacle. And simple disprove your own doubts with hard evidence.
Follow in the footsteps of those who’ve done it.
Yes learn from your kids. You were a kid once. Who did you emulate?

Best of luck.
Ronan
Ronan Kilroy Certified FocalPoint Business Coach
Profitability, Productivity, Possibility.