"New beginnings..."

New beginnings. This year went by at just the right speed. Sure, parts were fast parts were slow, but the total quality and quantity of life packed into the past 365 days was good and right. 2011 is less than 24 hours away and for the new year to begin, the old year must end. I implore you to take time today to relive the best parts of 2010 and savor them one last time before making your new start; making your new beginning.

Practice what you preach. We've spent a lot of time this year talking by email about goals and achievement. I even get invited to speak about it, so I thought it appropriate to share my use the tools in my own life this past year. As I share the results through quotes and stories, know that there is good news: this stuff actually works when you work at it.

"Begin with the end in mind."
- Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

This year was only the 2nd time in my life I wrote down my goals. This was after re-re-reading "The 7 Hidden Secrets To Motivation: Unlocking the Genius Within" by Todd Beeler. Written goals have a way of clarifying your thoughts and creating the picture in your mind of success before it happens. Beeler promotes the idea that by defining the ending results of your goals you make goals "magnetic".

Clear goals, magnetic goals pull you towards completion. When you "begin with the end in mind", you subconsciously align your actions to get you to your goal. You become magnetized to it.

"You need a plan to build a house.
To build a life, it is even more important to have a plan or goal."

Zig Ziglar, Selling 101: What Every Successful Sales Professional Needs to Know

“He who fails to plan is planning to fail.”
– Winston Churchill

Clear your vision. Know where you are going. Use your goal process to clearly set the end point for your goals. If you want more profit, more time, more vacation, more work - whatever, set it clearly. How much profit? $10,000? $100,000? WHow much time? 3 hours per week? 10 hours?

Set the goals PRESCISELY to clear your vision, so you can see the end. So often I find myself answering questions such as how much money with "more!" Open-ended goals are de-motivating because you can never achieve them. By writing down your goals, assigning real numbers to them with real deadlines you crystallize your thoughts into actions. Choose an "end" when you start and celebrate victory when you reach it.

"People with clear, written goals, accomplish far more in a shorter period of time than people without them could ever imagine."
Brian Tracy

Powerful reasons "why". Goals and deadlines and numbers are great, but if you don't assign a big enough reason "why", you'll never find the motivation to complete the task.

Why am I setting this goal?
Why do you want more profit?
Why do you want more time with your family?
Why do you want more vacation?
Why do you want to pay off the loan?
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Use the family example: you don't want to spend more time with your family because Dr. Phil says you should! You want to spend more time with the kids because they are important to you, you love them, it energizes you, it's important for you to be there for them. THOSE are powerful reasons "why"!

Use the loan example: You want to payoff that loan, not because of the threat to your financial well-being, but because you want to savor the freedom on the other side of the payoff when you get to tell the banker to "shove it!" The feeling when you go to bed without the loan hanging over your head! That's motivating!

Once you set your goals with the end in mind and clear your vision, load each goal with powerful reasons why you want to achieve it. Write them into the same document directly with each goal.

Hammer the last spike. I came across this story in my research for upcoming presentations:

Construction was to begin and certain California people decided that there ought to be a great ceremony. A host of dignitaries were invited to gather at the place where the first rail was to be laid.

One of those invited was Collis Huntington, perhaps the railroad's most important West Coast backer in California.

But he declined, saying: "If you want to jubiliate [celebrate] over driving the first spike, go ahead and do it. I don't. Those mountains over there look too ugly. We may fail, and if we do, I want to have as few people know it as we can ...Anybody can drive the first spike, but there are months of labor and unrest between the first and the last spike."

Wow. No kidding. How many times have you "jubiliated" over "first spikes" and NEVER MADE IT to the last spike?! I know I am guilty as charged.

Live for the last spike. As you prepare your plans for 2011, choose wisely which goals to pursue, then dedicate yourself to live for the last spike. No matter what you choose, see it through to the end of the task and celebrate your victories as they come.

“We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.”

– Aristotle
"READ your statement out loud when you first get up every single morning, without fail. READ your statement out loud just before you go to bed every single night, without fail. AS YOU READ your statement two times every day, see and feel and believe you already have what you desire."
 - Andrew Carnegie

Are you leaving your 2011 to chance? Activate your goals through repetition. You can argue that you don't have time or that it's silly to read out loud to yourself, but Carnegie was, from humble beginnings as son of a hand loom weaver to become on of the richest men in the world. (The sale of Carnegie Steel to US Steel in 1901 earn him $200 million - in 1901!) I can personally attest that this works in focusing you on the days tasks that will lead you to success in your goals.

So did it work for me? YES. Remember, this was only the 2nd time I really took time to write out my goals - in my life. I also read the goals out loud for the first 30 days after setting them.

Results: We hit our attendance and growth goals this year. We hit our maze client growth goals. We delivered all our materials on-time to our maze design clients without rush shipping (which I consider a "mistake expense"). We stayed on budget without chasing random project ideas, products or advertising deals and held costs down. We implemented a solid, consistent social marketing plan. I spent more time with my family and I develop myself along the way.

Written goals were instrumental in focusing our efforts this season.

That said, I did fall down on a number of occasions and come up short of delivering the products and service that I wanted to deliver in some areas. This year, I know what works and what doesn't.

You can bet I'm purposely setting goals to improve in those areas this year. No system is perfect (and I'm surely not perfect!), but what if trying this out helped you completely meet even 50% of your goals? Would that be worth a try?

The best part is that the whole goal-setting system is FREE. Just sit down, work through it, and read your goals once in the morning, once at night.

Ask yourself the same question I asked myself at the beginning of 2010: "If you can't commit to writing your goals down, how committed to achieving them could you possibly be?"

Tomorrow, "jubiliate" and remember all that you accomplished in 2010. Look forward, then, to 2011 with a clear vision as you start with the end in mind.

Take the rest of the year off, and have a Happy New Year!
- Hugh

Reach us at: www.mazecatalog.com


Email me if you'd like to join the Ag Biz Book Club. Our 1st book is:

"Restocking the shelves."

Your personal inventory. I completely believe that we have mental inventories. Like any inventory, you have to buy stock, you sell / turn / churn that inventory; you empty the shelves and you have to restock.

What did you have on the shelves this year? I Your inventory is made up of the things you put in your head. Over last winter, you had ideas. You (hopefully) made plans. You gathered your people and resources. You worked hard to get ready. You got psyched! You stocked your shelves.

Turning inventory. Throughout this season your turned inventory. You brought ideas to life. You worked hard. You picked items off the shelf as you needed them and applied them to your daily life.

As things got busier, you probably noticed that you could restock as quickly as you were turning inventory. You ran that inventory of energy and ideas down. If you ran out of inventory, your supply chain of mental energy snapped. You felt burned out. You had to take a break, even just a small one, to survive.

Just like in retail, if your shelves went empty, you, temporarily, went out of business.

Time to restock. I know a lot of you are still going through the Christmas season, so your time is coming, but the fact remains that you have to restock the shelves. You have to rebuild that mental storehouse to get you through 2011.

Buy yourself something nice. You need to reward yourself for a job well done. Do not create financial peril, as that won't be relaxing, but get yourself something your WANT not something you NEED. If you don't have some reward for all your hard work, your mind won't be as willing to work with you to get through next season.

Go away. My wife plans our family vacation for the week after we close. After (for us) 26 weeks of 7 days per week, up to 18 hours per day, you need to get away. The Law of Diminishing Returns applies to you - you can stay and keep working, but your efficiency and your results will degrade. Go away. Step back. Get a change of scenery.

Read. During the season I reach a point at which I don't have the time or desire to read. I'm overwhelmed already and I can't put anything else in my head. By about the 3rd day of vacation, I start to crave books again. Listen to audio books or read the real thing. No matter how smart you are, you don't know everything and books help restock your shelves.

My great joy this year is re-reading the Harry Potter series to my 6-year-old, out loud in my best mimic of Jim Dale's voices (Mr. Dale recorded the audio books and is THE master.) Reading aloud is an often under utilized skill, but trains your mind in very different ways than reading in your head. Plus, the father/kiddo time is a great recharger.

Incidentally, one of my favorite people, Kristy Leads wife of Rob Leads many of you know them from NAFDMA, suggested starting a businesses-like-ours book club. I'd be more than willing to help her in this endeavor with a separate email list and use of our e-learning/presentation tools we use in our Maze Master Classes for MQ corn maze franchises. If you're interested, drop me an email with "Book Club" in the subject line.
Watch great movies. We limit screen time in our household to 1-2hrs per day, but engaging in good movies, translating the story to your own life is a powerful tool for igniting ideas.

Explore music. Music is proven to affect humans on a psychological level. As the Centre Presbyterian choir director, I get directly involved with making music twice a week, but listening can work wonders, too.

My newest experiment is with Pandora.com. You log in to listen to music for free on the Internet or mobile phone. You then setup your own radio "stations" by telling Pandora a song you like. It's Music Genome Project uses software to create a "Station" based on your music preferences. The stations get better and better to your liking as you vote songs up or down and add more artists you like.

My experiment is to make stations such as "Feel Good", "Traveling Music", "Sad and Lonely", "Angry", "Workout Energy", etc. to explore music without having to purchase it and guess which artists or songs I might like.

Exercise. You have time now, and fewer excuses. I'm a bit of an exercise junkie, but that wasn't always the case. Two years ago I weighed 185lbs at nearly 30% body fat (I'm only 5'6") and making it through a season was a struggle often ending in eating candy bars for "energy".

I don't know what came over me, but I decided I wanted something different for me, my wife and my kids. So I started working out with the stuff I had lying around, made progress and moved on eventually to P90X and other intense home workout programs.

My wife was supportive, but set the rule that it couldn't subtract family time in the evenings, so I had to workout at 530 in the morning. The mental discipline gained from working out like that has been a powerful force in my life and it can be in your life too.

The incremental results in energy and appearance have been a daily source of encouragement. I now weigh 158lbs at 10% body fat and I'm stronger than I was as a high school athlete.

Keep in mind this has been 2 years, year 1 was not as focused as year 2, but STILL. That's a lifetime of lessons in patience and perseverance. It's daily, mental restocking. Exercise time is your personal "me time".
Go to conventions. This is one near and dear to my heart. After my first year in business I was asked to speak at the NAFDMA convention and suddenly I was thrust into a world of other crazy people just like me! It was awesome! The interactions, the friends, the sessions, ideas at the trade show - conventions are a super re-stocker.

Here are some favorites:
NAFDMA - North American Farmers Direct Marketing Association. This is the granddaddy of them all. Maize Quest will be at the trade show, as usual, and I am presenting "A Goal Without A Plan Is A Wish."

For convenience, we plan our Maize Quest Maze Master Summit meeting for the Friday before, Feb 4 this year. Our corn maze clients get an extra kick-off day of sessions specifically targeted to building their businesses. If you want to attend, join the MQ team for 2011 and we'll get you into the Summit FREE.

Canadians - Ontario Fruit & Veggie Convention with Ontario Farm Fresh is a great event as well. This year OFFMA retained me for a FULL-DAY workshop, bonus session and panel discussions. If you are setting your 2011 plans for success, it will be a great day for you to leave with your year's plan nearly completed!

Make a restocking plan. You manage inventory in your business. You probably never place an order without a plan. Plan out your restocking strategy.

Schedule a vacation. Pick out something nice. Go crazy for exercise or just go for a daily walk. Register for a convention. Get some magazines you wouldn't normally read and pick out some books (if you need suggestions, I'm here for you:-). Listen to some music and rent a movie you've always wanted to see.

Restock the shelves. You need inventory for 2011. Your business and family need you to be restocked, too.

Have a great week.

Hugh

Reach us at: www.mazecatalog.com

"Congratulations! Now before you forget..."

Congratulations! I hope you kicked a** this season. Almost universally, reports from the season have ranged from good to exceptional and I hope the report is good with you as well. Once you have closed for the season, celebrate! You deserve it.

Now before you forget... I know the temptation is to run away, I know I feel it! But before you forget, spend some purposeful time remembering.

What should you remember? Write down your thoughts from the season. Here are some brain kickers:

What worked / What didn't?
What questions did customer repeatedly ask you and the staff?
What coupons did you get back?
What advertising campaign was referenced the most?
What soda/candy/bakery/jam/apple flavors sold?
What tour booked heaviest?
When did your systems breakdown?
What was your staff to guest ratio on a big day / slow day?
Where did you save money?
Where did you flush money?
What attractions were busy? Slow?
What food sold?
Which employees worked hard or not?
When did you have a breakdown/meltdown (mentally)?


You will never know it like you do now. Recall works better, sooner. Don't wait to collect the knowledge from this great season. Particularly if you had good traffic through the door, your numbers will be more informative than in a slow year - you have a better statistical sample.

They won't all be like this. I am an eternal optimist, but I know that the seasons will not all be like this one. Take some of your profits and put yourself in a better position for the future. It might mean paying yourself or saving for the future. It might mean paying down debt. It might mean investing in infrastructure.

We're investing in a big renovation of our indoor playground, because we've got parties booked from Dec 5th on - and we've been waiting years to do it. Whatever it is, make sure you take the opportunity to prepare a better future for yourself.

Decompress. We are all in 'firefighter mode' right now. make sure to give yourself a little space to readjust to a more normal pace. You'll drive yourself into the ground, and your staff too, if you pound away in 'panic mode' toward the next project. They need space, and a break from you, just like you need space and a break from them! You need to consciously take time away to decompress before you have a meltdown.

(Just as an aside, you have unconscious coping mechanisms you may not recognize. If you are burning out, there are things your body and mind do to try to help you survive. Can you spot them? For me, when I find myself making excuses to 'go for parts/supplies', I know I'm hitting the wall - I HATE shopping, but it gives me time in the car, in the quiet of my vehicle without the music playing and a change of scenery that I need mentally to survive. You have something you do unconsciously, too. I know you do. Do you know it?)

Replay your victories. Take some time to mentally playback the great moments of the season. Hauling your deposits to the bank. Enjoying time with guests. Paying off bills. That super party you hosted for a great group of kids. That perfect school tour.

This is a joyful activity that recharges your batteries. It's OK to take 1/2 a day to do this. I like to write my favorite parts of the season down. I'm so future focused I often forget to relive past victories.

You NEED to do this. You need to remember all the good that you did for the community, your guests, and people in general by opening your farm to the general public and providing such a great place for families to be together.

YOU ROCK! You deserve some time to store that in your memory banks to use as fuel for next year. We work in the best industry in the world. Be proud of what you bring to your guests, your community, and the world.

Take some time to remember all that was 2010 and all the lives upon which you had a positive impact. Well done, you. I'm proud of you.

Have a great week.

Hugh

Reach us at: www.mazecatalog.com