Life
In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox made a profound comment. Life, he says, is wasted on the living. Life should be all about living and achieving things for oneself and for other people. Life incorporates values, health, spirit, relationships, creativity, community, integrity as well as “play”. Far to often we are so consumed with business, time pressures and money worries that life is literally wasted on us.
Most of us would like to leave our mark on the world in one form or another. However, many of us get stuck in ruts in life. We are scared to move out of our comfort zone and develop our true potential. We are prone to cling to the past and its certainties; these feelings and fears are integrity blocks and the concept of “letting go” is an important part of moving forward
The starting point for life planning is working out our deepest and most profound goals and values and this in itself provides the energy and motivation to move onto a different plane. However, life needs both time and money, probably more of the former than the latter and it is surprising when we work out what our true goals are how little cash we actually need to achieve them
Maria Nemeth poses an interesting question. Which epitaph would you prefer on your headstone: “He died with his in-box empty” or “ Here lies an adventurer”?
One of the dangers for the busy entrepreneur is that it is
often difficult to find the time to devote to maintaining good family
relationships. Many relationships break
down as a result of the time devoted to working long hours in order to ensure business
success. Here, at Planning for Life, we
believe that devoting time to our spouses and families is an essential aspect
of success. What’s the point in running
a successful business if you no longer have your family to share the benefits
with?
What is happiness? How do we as a people define what makes us
happy. More often than not when asked
this question we think of money, a new car, a bigger house, etc. But we forget that these are transient things
and do not truly impact on what touches our hearts and brings out true happiness. Based on information from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the UK ranks in the ninth place (together with
Venezuela) in the happiness
stakes. It seems that happiness is
not all about material wealth and living with all mod cons – the people of the
Philippines rank higher than the people of the United States! Read on to learn more about happiness in the
UK and find out how you fare in the happiness stakes. We try to define what it is that makes us
happy – how to achieve it and how to avoid the pitfalls of false happiness.
In this age where money talks louder than just about
anything else, we need to take a step back and consider money and our attitudes
towards it.
We may think that having large amounts of money will give us the freedom we would like to concentrate on the things we enjoy doing, but it’s not quite as simple as that.
Life can be a rollercoaster for all of us as we deal with emotions such
as shame, envy, anger, fear, guilt, jealousy, sadness and even despair in our
day-to-day lives. Of all these strong feelings, anger, fear and sadness are
probably the most powerful emotions – and they often lead to physical symptoms
of anxiety. The aim of this
article is to deal in more depth with these emotional obstacles which can
prevent us from achieving the goals to which we truly aspire.
In an earlier article we talked about how to establish your core fundamental life goals. That, in itself, is an energising exercise because having a clear idea of where you are going can certainly bring energy and vitality to your life. The next stage is where the “rubber hits the road” so let’s discuss how we start turning that emotional energy into practical energy and physically doing things to achieve our goals.
In our previous article “How to create goals that transform your
life” we looked at the importance of writing down the goals that you
chose to help guide your life. Getting these things down on paper is perhaps
one of the most important steps you can take in any goal setting process but it
can be tough to decide exactly what is important to you.
There are a couple of useful ideas that you can put to work when it comes to formulating your goals. The first one was developed by the “father” of life planning, George Kinder, and asks you to be very specific, and to think in incremental “milestone” stages.
The Kinder method focuses on just three powerful questions which help to shape your thinking about just what it is you want and need from your life.
In a previous article we stressed how vital it was to create goals for your life. By this we meant real goals, the kind that motivate you and push you along life’s path, even when things get tough.
The trouble is, it is not enough just to know that you have to develop goals. Too many people write out a few goals that are perhaps attractive, perhaps meaningful. However, it is another thing entirely to write goals that help to give your life meaning. This article will show you how to do just this. But before we get into the nitty gritty of how to locate those all important, life changing goals, let’s differentiate between fantasy and goals.
Apparently no more than ten or fifteen percent of the adult population think seriously about their life goals. Of those, less than a third actually write them down. But those that do are the ones who would claim their lives are most fulfilled.
At Planning for Life we spend much our time helping people work out their life goals. From a financial planning point of view this is necessary. Goals normally involve costs and by developing and clarifying specific goals we can develop expenditure plans and a life-time cash flow. This in turn becomes the foundation for the financial architecture that we put in place to meet the very different needs of our clients.
New Year resolutions are easy at five past midnight on New Year’s Eve, especially if the champagne has been flowing, "but how long do they last?" asks Jeremy Deedes
The New Year is a traditional time for resolutions but there is nothing to stop us picking an arbitrary date – the beginning of any month or our birthday. And they don’t have to be major resolutions to be life-changing – they may be small steps on a long path.
We’ve come up with some key points that might help you stick to your plans – whatever they are and whenever you make them:
Time
Entrepreneurs view time as their most valuable resource, and also their most scarce resource. We can’t do anything to change time. We can’t slow it down, we can’t speed it up. At the beginning of our lives time is plentiful, but as we get older it becomes scarcer and scarcer and therefore more and more valuable. Whilst you can’t manage time, we can manage ourselves to make time work for us in the best way possible. Time is a resource we need, not only for our business, but also for our lives. All the things that we want to do require time as well as money.
In many ways time is much more important for entrepreneurs than it is for those in the corporate world. Employees have limits on their time set by corporate governance and the corporate culture (hopefully). However, entrepreneurs don’t have those constraints and, particularly at the start of a new business, all of their time is taken up in their business rather than anything else.
Just as junk expands to fill the available space in a house, so work expands to fill the available time. It is necessary to plan our lives first to achieve personal goals, so restricting time for work and thus forcing a concentration on high value tasks.
Are you overwhelmed by the sheer amount of stuff that needs
to be done? Do you feel bogged down by
all the different things you need to do to make sure that your business runs
smoothly?
A recent study reported that the
average modern mother gets just 26 minutes per day to devote to “me” time. It would be interesting to see a similar
study done to determine just how much “me” time the modern entrepreneur manages
to set aside! In this article, we look
at the concept of “me” time and find ways of integrating the idea into our busy
lives in order to make our “me” time work for us in a more meaningful way.
At Planning for Life we encourage our client to develop
plans for spending their money. It is a way of maintaining control over their
money, but in a more positive way than “setting budgets”. Similarly, we also
encourage our clients to set plans for spending their time, plans that are often
more about what not to do than what to do. We start by looking at the concept
of getting something for free by doing or making it ourselves. So what does “Free”
really mean?
In
two of our previous articles in this section here and here
we looked at the concept of valuing your time and how to make sure that the
things you do are things that are actually “worth” doing. We also talked about the secret of how
to list the tasks that you undertake in order to understand which ones are
worthwhile for you to continue to do personally. This results in several tasks left over and we now have to
start thinking about how to prioritise them and what to do with them. As we discovered in the last article, you
now have some choices on how to move forward with these tasks:
If “I don’t have time!” is your most frequent cry, then
perhaps the way you use your time is to blame. Facing your workload head on
could be the answer.
Previously we looked at creating your very own personal time policy by looking at your earnings goals and then using a mathematical formula to calculate, literally, how much your time was worth. This method is particularly effective for those professionals who feel that they are not achieving enough or that the work that they are doing is something that can be done by someone else.
This article is the first of two that will show you how to face your workload head-on. This involves clarity and focus, and can result in you having more control over your time than you have ever had before.
In our previous article "Valuing Time - The Goals Approach" we have talked about
the importance of addressing how you spend your time,
particularly as an entrepreneur where time is one of, if not, your most valuable
assets.
We have also looked at ways of valuing your time and this is a key exercise that you need to carry out before you can go any further. Giving a value to your time helps you put it in perspective and budget time in the way that you budget money. It allows you to work out what your real priorities are, rather than being side-tracked by activities which don’t add value.
Once you have put a value on your time, you can then start to develop your own personal Time Policy. Write down how you are going to spend time and what you are going to do with it.
As an entrepreneur, time is of the absolute essence.
The more you spend doing stuff that is a waste of time, the less you will have to use on the processes and actions that bring you results. There are a number of good resources on the Internet to help you to get started on the road to true time management for entrepreneurs, and we point to our earlier articles:
http://www.planningforlife.org/coffee-shop/magazine/features/time/item/5-a-simple-market-based-method-of-valuing-your-time
and
http://www.planningforlife.org/coffee-shop/magazine/features/time/item/4-do-you-value-your-time?
as good sources. But this article is concerned primarily with how you use your time in direct relation to the kind of money you make. In other words, filling your time with meaningless or trivial pursuits is the very last thing you want to do.
If we cannot put a value on our time, how do we know if we are spending it wisely?
For entrepreneurs, it is fundamental and important that they develop plans for spending their time - their most precious resource - in much the same way as sensible individuals and families develop plans for spending their money.
To do so, the entrepreneur's (or solo-preneur's) time needs to be given a monetary value and one way of doing this is to calculate a market based valuation.
Time is constant; unless you are Dr Who you cannot speed it up or slow it down and it is our most precious thing because we all know we don’t have an infinite amount of it.
However, although you can’t manage time, you can manage how you spend it. Time needs to be budgeted in the same way we manage money. It’s a question of managing yourself and managing your objectives.
A good place to start is by valuing your time by putting a monetary value on it. This does three things:
Money
Money is to living as air is to life. Both are necessary; both are to a degree taken for granted. Without air we die; without money it is very difficult to achieve anything. Money is a constant presence in our daily living. Few are the days when we don’t handle money in one form or another.
On the other side of the coin, much of our lives are spent earning the money to pay for the living that we want. Money is the means that we use to barter. It’s a mechanism that we have deemed in this civilisation will be the oil that makes the markets work. Money is the mechanism to put a cost and a value on everything, including our time. Money is also a store of wealth; having money enables us to go and do things and buy things. Not having money prohibits us from doing what we want to do.
On the one hand money is a straight forward numbers game – money in equals money out is a balanced budget. Expenditure exceeding income must result in debt whereas income exceeding expenditure results in savings and an increase in wealth. On the other hand, money is a deeply psychological and emotional factor in our lives. Money can cause huge pain but conversely money itself doesn’t necessarily provide much pleasure. Many of our decisions in life are coloured and influenced by our attitude to money and our attitude to money itself is often formed by our childhood experiences as well as the bombardment of messages that we get from advertising, the media and other people.
The first four Navigator principles all dealt with the human side of money. The fifth is the first to deal with money directly through spending plans and cash flow. Cash flow is the mechanism that enables you to merge life plans with financial plans to support your life goals and give clear direction to your financial strategies. It helps you to measure and balance the twin goals of leading a fulfilled life now with long-term financial security and responsibility.
The first three Navigator steps - letting go, self knowledge and planning - have been about setting the scene to achieve life goals. Unfortunately at this point, when the rubber hits the road, obstacles start to appear and have the potential to throw plans off course.
Last month we introduced the second step in Planning for Life’s Navigator system to achieving freedom and an authentic life – getting to know yourself. This should have left you with a clear vision of your deepest and profound goals, the values you want to live by and your own personal resources for getting there.
Last month we introduced the
first Navigator step - “letting go” to clear space for thought and to engineer
a blank sheet of paper on which to build the plan that will achieve our
profound life goals. The second
Navigator step is, unsurprisingly, to explore and discover ourselves.
Over the course of the last few decades the financial services industry
has focused on separating money from life. However, in the last few years a
handful of financial planners in the United Kingdom, including Planning for
Life, have emerged whose core proposition is that money and life are inextricably linked. It is not possible to develop a life plan that
does not put in place a financial architecture that will support and lead to
the the achievement of profound life goals. Similarly, a financial plan that
sets financial goals without reference to life goals is superficial and doomed
to failure.
In life, the process of clinging on does more harm than good though we
do not see it this way initially. We hold on to possessions for sentimental
reasons such as a pair of old shoes given to us by a loved one. The shoes have
no grip, are uncomfortable and allow water to gush in but you are unable to
throw them away. This inability to let go spreads to intangibles such as deeply
held beliefs. In our naivety, we believe the nice woman on television who
advertises a certain dietary product designed to rid you of those stubborn
extra pounds.
We buy into the idea that it is a great product and its failure to work is down to us. Growing up, we may have had this idea that big brand companies only wanted what was best for us. Deep down, we knew there was no substance to their claims but our belief in them never wavered. This is because these long held beliefs gave us comfort and security. They enabled us to somehow shield ourselves from life’s painful realities.
Whether we are in the process of accumulating capital whilst working or
using our capital to live off in retirement, we need to invest it in such a way
as to deal with the two core investment risks.
These are volatility and inflation and we will be talking about these in
much more detail next year but it is worth just taking a look at these now to
provide some background to future articles in this arena.
Cash flow planning is all about cash flow management. Cash is King. There is nothing worse than running out of cash. And budgets are, to a certain extent, an
intellectual exercise; with the resulting practical aspect of budgets being
cash flow planning. It is budget
and cash flow planning that can deliver a life of freedom or a life of pain,
depending on which way you use them, which we will be discussing further in
this article.
In our last article "Budgeting - the emotional side" we looked at the emotional side of financial
management. We discussed how it is sometimes quite difficult not to feel a
little upset at the state of our finances and to become disillusioned when we
look more closely at how we are spending our money and just what we are
spending it on. It is not easy to see ‘how we are’ as people, and when it comes
to money it is no different. In "Budgeting - the emotional side" we looked at the value of putting together a spending plan and how this
could help us to gain some objectivity when looking at our own expenditure.
This article takes a more practical approach to budgeting. Because of the way the world is, it is almost impossible to plan your expenditure to a high degree; we all face an unexpected expense at some point and this can make our plans redundant. For example, a huge car repair bill can come out of the blue.
There are ways around this.
The personal budget is something that generally makes many people a little bit nervous. Having to define and maintain a budget is not easy, and some people spend their whole lives avoiding the task.
What makes the whole process of budgeting particularly painful for many though is the fact that, far from being a numbers and facts game, it often becomes something that impacts upon our emotional life. We cannot help but reflect upon our lives when we are looking at them through the lens of money. For example, by looking at our spending on our social life, we begin to think about how we are socially. If we need to get out a lot and spend a lot of money on fun and escapism for example, it may mean we are missing something in our life.
Setting and sticking to budgets is not the most popular pastime amongst the UK population. Some do it, indeed do it well, but our experience as financial planners from those coming to Planning for Life for an exploration meeting is that they are in the minority. Many simply hate the practice and do not subscribe it.
But there are real financial benefits to be gained from setting
and sticking to budgets (or call them “spending plans” if it make it any
easier).
In financial terms, it helps to know the difference between income
and expenditure (no need to repeat Mr Micawber here). When income
exceeds expenditure cash is available for investment towards long term
financial security. When its the other way round the result can only be
increased levels of debt if there is no other capital on which to fall
back, or the depletion of existing capital.
Last year underlined to many of us that the UK is, increasingly, inextricably linked to the global economy and what happens elsewhere has a ripple effect not only on the national economy but also on every individual.
2010 should be the year for investing globally. The UK accounts for a very small percentage of the global equity market. The telecoms sector is the sector with the largest UK share but even then that is only 13 per cent.
Most of us are hoping for a more stable year in 2010 that builds on the 22% rise in equity markets in 2009.
However, not all the portents are good
Business
The final of our four elements is business, and for entrepreneurs, particularly in the early stages the business will be a net consumer of both time and money. However, the art of entrepreneur-ism is to develop a business that is a net producer of both the time and money required by the entrepreneur to live the life the entrepreneur wants to lead. As Michael Gerber says "the primary function of a business owner is to create more life for themselves".
It is important therefore that the main starting point for a business is the entrepreneur’s personal objectives, which will fashion the shape of the business. It is interesting that Ali Brown in one of her courses offers nine reasons why entrepreneurs start their own businesses. Of these nine, only two relate to money, and one alone refers to increasing wealth. Many of the reasons for starting a business relate to personal objectives, such as becoming more creative, helping to change or build the community or personal advancement or growth.
Business skills are crucial to creating the time and money to achieve our personal objectives, particularly designing, developing and costing our products or services, building systems and processes, and developing a marketing "funnel".
Find out what the Mission Statement can do for you!
It was all the rage in the eighties and nineties, but with the turn of the century, the Mission Statement seems to have fallen out of favour. Startbucks provides the classic example of how the Mission Statement was reduced to a one-liner describing the purpose of their organisation:
"We inspire and nurture the human spirit — one person, one cup, and one neighborhood at a time."
The world of work and the way we work is undergoing radical
change and entrepreneurs need to keep up with these changes in order for
business to survive, thrive and grow.
Many of these changes have been brought about by the internet,
especially in the areas of the Three C’s: Communication, Community and Content.
The concept
of Avatars has gained ground recently as a result of the success of the 2009
film directed by James Cameron. However,
the Sanskrit word Avatar has been used since ancient times to refer to a
manifestation or appearance of a Hindu deity.
In modern times, Avatar is a computer user's representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games, or a two-dimensional icon used on Internet forums and other communities. The term "avatar" can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.
The word Avatar has been gaining ground recently in marketing terminology as the “perfect client”. From a marketing point of view, when developing an avatar, we need to look at a number of different aspects when identifying our perfect client.
Today, both
businesses and consumers want more out of the products or services they buy.
Consumers want to know how they are going to affect their lives, the environment,
their advantages and disadvantages. Businesses want to know how the product or
service will impact on their bottom line. Businesses that have added value to a
product or service are far more likely to be successful than those that simply
sell a product.
The other day I was in a
restaurant with friends. The restaurant itself was owned by another
friend of ours who happened to have gone away with her family to the Caribbean
for three weeks. Someone at the table asked how on earth she could have
managed to do that, given the nature of her business and her family
commitments. Like an arrow, the answer came back, “She’s got systems”.
For an entrepreneur, it is very hard to overstate the
importance of good branding. If you want your product or service to become
something that establishes itself, branding becomes a key issue.
An old adage state that ‘your brand is what people say about you when you are not there to listen.’ In other words, a good brand can work for you, and ultimately sell for you. Get your brand right by cultivating it with integrity, and you will have something that people trust. If you treat it carelessly, your customers won’t give it much respect.
Niche marketing is becoming the single most effective way to streamline your product and service offering. For the entrepreneur, niche marketing allows for absolute focus in designing, creating, and then marketing a product or service. It enables you to know your customers and their needs with high precision, so neither time nor resources are wasted. In simple terms, niche marketing is about selling to people who want to buy.
All businesses have extremely active, and never-ending back office work. You may want to focus on sharing your gift with the world, but you still have marketing to do, office management to contend with and the client pre- and post- sales process to manage. At some point you realise that you just can’t do it all alone. Of course you know that picture; you have seen it every day of your life.
Technology has grown exponentially over the last 20 years and has made a tremendous impact on how we grow our businesses, so lets take a look at some great on-line tools for your business
Cloud technology. There are a plethora of services that are based on cloud technology. "Cloud" is really a metaphor for an internet network and its underlying infrastructure. Typical cloud computing providers deliver common business applications online which are accessed from a web browser, while the software and data are stored on servers. These servers construct a server network which includes the cloud computing provider as well as the users.
This has provided us, the small business owner, with some extremely useful and robust business applications and at Planning for Life we wanted to share with you our top 3 applications: