If you knew you had December to make your business highly successful in 2016, what would you do?

“‘Tis the Season to be jolly tralalalalalalalah”.

So the carol goes. But just reading the pre-reporting on the Fitch rating which may see SA Inc achieve junk bond status on 4 December 2015, the “jolly” turns to “golly” in one foul swoop.

So for that reason, at the entree to this beautiful Christmas Season [I really struggle with “the Holidays” so please forgive me], I deem it a good idea to write a trilogy of uplifting articles. Trilogy, because I also need a break between Christmas, that very special Holiday, and New Year, that time when all the resolutions kick in.

If you knew you had December to make your business [read Life, if you will] highly successful in 2016, what would you do? Run for the hills, Dream big, Plan, Act, Take advice, Retrench your dead wood, Drink champagne, Motivate your people, Have a workshop, Write your thoughts down, [Eat, Love and] Pray; really, what would you do? This is the month of determination; in it you set the course for all that achieves success in 2016 – so what would you do?

We don’t know your circumstances, but if you’re reading this blog, you probably are a person who seeks to learn by being informed and challenged. You probably take the smallest scraps of thinking and learning and coagulate them into something you can work with to develop yourself and your relationships and your business. If you’re that kind of person, read on. Below are four major highlights that will define your year commercially and which deserve attention this month before you take a break. Four is not magical and I’m sure there may be more for you. However, dedicated focus on these four things are proven to be key ingredients of success.

First, an anecdote from my days at Nedbank. At one Homeloan conference, a thoughtful organiser put a small card on my pillow that said: To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act. The quote was by the famous French poet, journalist and novelist, Anatole France, who was awarded the Nobel peace prize for Literature in 1921. Another anecdote, which quote by Zig Ziglar I sent to my Son a few days ago, is: When you catch a glimpse of your potential, that’s when passion is born.

1.Set a Vision bigger than you

You see, Anatole was right to call the dream into being. Nothing in the conditionality he places on action detracts from our God-given right and responsibility to dream. There is a thought that if your dream doesn’t scare you, it isn’t big enough. I would say that is extreme but something in there does raise the bar. My school motto is Per Ardua ad Astra which means “By hard work to the Stars”. I like that and wouldn’t if I believed in get-rich-quick schemes. It’s the “to the Stars” part that lifts your chin, drives out your fears and burns in your heart. It is the Vision in you that keeps you constantly thinking, wondering, searching and striving until you find the Confidence that this dream, this Vision, is for you. If you can’t buy the “hyper” in what I’m saying, then think about this – What would you like to change so that you double what you have now in one year? Sales, originations, the depth of a relationship, turnover or money? What would it take to do that versus what price you are prepared to pay? If the formula is acceptable to you, then what stops you from achieving that dream? In the stating of it comes the angst of how I would do it; in the envisioning lies the challenge and the risk. But without the genesis of this thought “any ol’ place” would be good enough. If there ever was a distinction between our soul and our spirit, it would be the deep desire for more that lies in the spirit. You can be content with what you have and where you are or you can begin to thirst for more. Set a Vision that is bigger than you.

2.Determine the time-frame and set the milestones that need to be achieved

Bring your Vision down to earth. Unless you’re a dreamer, dreaming is a beginning but not the desired outcome. Our minds love pictures and can bathe themselves in daydreams and images all day long. Sweet dreams we say to our loved ones, but then they’re going to sleep! Given our December challenge above, there’s no time for sleeping just yet. We can rest later. You need to begin to think out what milestones will direct your achievement and when you would expect to see them on the journey to success. To keep it simple, milestones are quantitative indicators of your achievement. Think of it like this: any salesman loves the “hockey stick” approach to his annual goal. For years I’ve seen that, off target up to September, the super-salesman thinks he can achieve the rest in the last quarter. True maybe, if you’re GM of a holiday resort, but for the rest of us mere mortals, you probably can’t “shoot the lights out” in the final sprint any more than you could in the previous 3 quarters. Salespeople, yes you and me my Originator and Estate Agent friends, love the hockey stick and it’s expected air-punch but, alas, it seldom works. If you’re travelling Joburg to Cape Town in 14 hours, doing 90km/hour for the first 900kms will leave you with much catch-up from Worcester. The problem then is you hit law enforcement, sharp bends through the Hex and more traffic. Life and its achievement is no different and by the time you realise your mistake, it’s too late. From a brain point of view, as you click from the Vision in the right brain, you enter the Reality of the left brain. There you need milestones and a good sense of timing to keep focused on the destination.Determine the time frame and set the milestones that need to be achieved.

Set the goals for the milestones

In point 2 I said the milestones are indicators. Give or take an hour or 30 kilometres, not achieving a particular milestone is not a major issue when you’re on the road. But in business, indications are not enough. Goals are required. If you look at the five pillars of Management Control: Set the Goal, Measure Performance, Evaluate Performance, Correct or Reward and Feedback [into Goal Setting], then you can see that a process is required to control an outcome. “Ag, it’s only 30 minutes” is fine for normal day-to-day driving, but winning rally drivers have their navigators assess their progress by the second, literally. Goals enable the fine tuning necessary for specific achievement. Goals are the hard rock of success. Over is good but Under is simply not acceptable to a Winner. Setting goals is hard work. You need to think and challenge yourself and re-think. You need to drill down into the milestones, decide on the price you’re prepared to pay and then drive out the appropriate, non-negotiable goals you want to achieve. Anything less in a plan is simply wishful thinking and the next time to get to think about it, you’ll be facing the indeterminable “hockey stick” reality. Set the goals for the milestones. Now!

Write down the plan of action

In the Good Book, Habakkuk was told to write the vision down. Hey but it such a cool Vision, why not just announce it and turn it into reality. The reason was simple: We Forget. The plan is the document where you write down the Vision, its milestones and the goals. Then you write down the actions required and mentally rank their level of difficulty so as to understand the obstacles to their achievement. What you need to overcome is as important as prerequisites. You can reach for the stars as long as you like but you better get a ladder or “go virtual”. Not seeing these obstacles to a Plan and dealing them upfront is a figment of the imagination. One word of caution though, as I revert to this almost mathematical process. Entrepreneurs see the vision, the milestones, the goals and the action plan but often choose to ignore the requirements. Sheer passion says I will [read: want to] do this “whatever it takes”. Fundamental to this approach and attitude is that I am a firm believer that Risk and its concomitant action, Risk Management, is fundamental to success. Entering a business, creating a BIHAG [Big Hairy Audacious Gaol], deciding to marry, all require you to take risks and then manage them. Why? Well, on the one hand, little goals are “more of the same”, they’re incremental and risk mitigating whilst big goals need you to jump at some stage. Once you jump, you’re committed; no turning back. On the other hand, you just cannot see all the pitfalls in the beginning. We often read about the overcoming of a Hilary Tensing team, Ford and Edison. The question is would they have started in the first place if they knew what they would face along the journey? You can’t see it all and the bigger the goal, the longer the timeframe, so the less you can see. But what Reward awaits Success! Write down the plan of action.

So there you have it plain and simple. You now have a choice, get ready to go on leave and just enjoy the silly season, or, do the hard yard to revolutionise your circumstances. It’s always a choice and the choice confronts us many time about many things in life.

In our next part of the trilogy, we’ll have a look at Execution. It truly is the sine qua non of Success. It is the as well as act of Anatole’s quote.

Homeloan Junction epitomises what we’re speaking about. It was built out of the ashes of Sub-Prime to be a top Performer in Evo, Ooba’s Aggregation business, in a few years. Why not approach us to see how we could help you turn your dreams for starting an origination business, or multiplying your existing success, into reality?

Yours in Property.

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Jack Trevena

With over 30 years of experience in the banking and home loan industry, my hope it is share what I have learnt over the years with my blogging community, inspire conversation around the subject and in the process discover unique insights into this ever changing environment.