MA Business Success 72: How to Review, Analyse and Plan for Success

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Phil: Welcome back to another amazing podcast of Martial Arts Business Success. I am Phil Britten.

Graham: Graham McDonnell as always.

Phil: As always, and we're here to kick start your year with an absolute bang. Give you guys some motivation, some inspiration maybe some tips on how you can start your year with an absolutely massive bang. Graham?

Graham: Well, this is something that's dear and near to both of us, Phil, because I guess you've gotta remember where you come from and you've gotta appreciate where you've been there. Look, with any success story, and they talk about, "Wow, you're an overnight success," they don't see the 20 years of blood, sweat, and tears behind the scenes. So I guess we're starting this year from a point of appreciation, of gratitude. We're being thankful. And just understanding for you to grow this year you gotta be thankful for where you are right now. Now, for some of you, you may be entering a phase of growth or you maybe you know had a great year last year. For others, you're at a level platform or someone may have had a pretty tough time. Either way, you're still around. You're still alive. You're still above ground. So, things can only get better as long as you apply them. So, we gotta be appreciating where you're at and then take the steps to obviously build and move from there.

Phil: Something that comes to mind as you were just speaking there, Graham, is that when you drive a car and you have the big windscreen and you have a little rear vision mirror and a couple wing mirrors. Why is that? Because you should 95% of the time be looking forward to the future, but every now and then look back at where you've come from. Because this is a very smart thing. Don't anyone look back and dwell. That would be what would be happening if you're looking at the back all the time and you go, "Whoa, know all this happened and this happened." You wanna look back occasionally but look forward to the future. Because you know what, you cannot get time back. You can learn from your experiences. You can learn from your failures, and you can learn from your successes and then you can use those stepping stones. As I've said before, everything that's ever happened in your life good or bad has been a...is a stepping stone to the success that you are gonna have in the future.

So, where you are right now is where you're meant to be, whether that's somewhere that you like or not. I'm sorry if you're not but if you come from a place where you believe that I am right now for a reason and you look for that reason, search for it. Why am I here? Some reason and you'll learn this lesson, whether it's a business lesson, a life lesson, whatever it may be. But I am here today and I'm gonna take control of the position I am, look back and go "Okay, what can I learn from this experience and how could I use it to drive forward?" Because in our years of the partnership, we've had some situations where we've partnered with some people, lost a hundred grand here. Tried this program, didn't work. You know, opened this studio, didn't work. Did these, amazing results. Did that and you look back and you go "hmm." You know what, it's actually made me the business person, the Martial Arts instructor and the person that I am here today. Right there and then it's fricking hard to understand it but if you can look at a helicopter view and look down on yourself you go, "What can we learn from this?"

Graham: Well, you've really hit the nail on the head there, Phil, by summarizing, gratitude isn't always saying the nice things that have occurred. "Wow, I've got this. I've got this." No, no, no. Sometimes your gratitude is I've got given an opportunity to learn a lesson. And sometimes those lessons have been a like a right-cross. For you guys in martial arts, you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes that right-cross is the one lesson you learned that...

Phil: It makes dizzy.

Graham: I don't want that to happen two or three or four times. So, it's the things that you look back on and appreciate, "Wow if that hadn't happened, what path would I have gone down?" I know that we've often looked at situations that from the outside in and even while you're in it, it's a negative until you give yourself a moment to go, Oh, oh, stop. What is the lesson in this? And I should be thankful that I'm in a place and a space that I can actually learn from this." And then build to make sure it doesn't happen. Which is, why we're talking to you about this. [inaudible 00:03:59] mindset thing this podcast because you've got the perfect opportunity where one year's closed. You've got the next year as a blank slate. And it's up to you guys, to whatever lessons you learned last year, take them, run with them, and learn from them and apply those new success strategies that are gonna make 2017 the best year ever.

Phil: I'm gonna just kick off two things that I think are two mindsets or two things that you need to do if you wanna set yourself up for success in 2017. One is, what is your reason? What's your reason for doing martial arts? And don't lose sight of that. I think what happens in doing any business, in particular, is you get too tied down to money. You get too tied down to the business operation, and we forget the reason behind getting into it. And I...just think about it right now. Why did you get into martial arts? Literally, why did you get into the business of martial arts? I'm sure it wasn't for the money. I'm sure it wasn't to work so hard. I'm sure it was for a better lifestyle. I'm sure it was to show your kids and your family that you can have...do something that you love and get paid for it as well.

So I really ask you to go back and drill deep to the reason behind the business...why you got in the business. And I need you to always be congruent and tie yourself back that because it's the only thing that keeps you going when time gets tough. When you feel like, "Shit, it's a bad month and I don't have the money. Jeez, I need it to stop. I got to stop focusing on I don't have money," because you know what? What you focus on you get. Focus on you don't have money, guess what, you get no more. Focus on I got no students, I got no more. You've got to think big picture and you gotta put yourself in the mindset of expectation and knowing and believing congruently and wholeheartedly that it will be okay. So you know the law of attraction. It's like you got to put it out there in the universe. Now, we don't have magic wands, and we don't want you to turn into these creatures of like flower power sharing about...oblivious to the reality, but what we're talking about is the motivation or the reason behind it and not losing sight of that.

The second thing that ties to this and Graham, we'll let you sort of roll with it after I give you the word if you want it. Well, do you? Is every single person... And I'll throw it back to you. I'm sure when you were a student, you had someone who was your inspiration. More than likely it was your instructor, but it could have been someone at a high level like Chuck Norris or a movie star or whatever that may be, or your dad. It doesn't have to be martial arts orientated. But if you have an inspiration, someone who's inspirational to you and someone that you can look towards for motivation and model their behavior, then you're gonna also set yourself up for success. It's when we don't have those inspirations and you know, I just think about kids that grow up without dads or moms for that matter, or a role model or a figure that they can associate with or a coach or whatever it may be. If you don't have them in your life, man, you search for it. And at a young age, you end up searching for it with gangs or groups of people when you end up in bad situations. But if you can find someone who is inspirational to you that is modeling a certain behavior of success, well your chances for success is fired right up.

Graham: Wow, what a way to start a year. And we in some of our motivational speaking sort of I guess development of our team and our students will talk about the average. The average of the five people you associate with. So at this stage of the year, it's a great opportunity for you to really take stock. Be grateful for where you are. But look, if you want to supercharge your year, who around you is gonna empower you and help you get there? Who's gonna challenge you? Who's gonna continually inspire you and motivate you? Or do you have the people around you that are holding you down? Because, man, you don't want to repeat the same lesson. You wanna learn from that and grow from that. So this is a great chance for you to identify now who around you is gonna help you to reach the goals that you wanna set this year? Or who around you is gonna make you break through that glass ceiling if your school's plateauing? Who's gonna encourage you to start another school or grow? Or who's going to give you the inspiration or the belief that you can accomplish anything?

So I know that myself and Phil on a regular basis have podcasts that we download, and it's great that you guys are listening to this one. So we're sort of one cycle and circle of friends, but who else on a daily basis or regular basis are you connecting with? And I know we're got great loads of material that if you guys want some, will give you who we're listening to and what we're up to. We're happy to do that but you need to really think about who is it that's inspiring you to help you be a better version of yourself. And I really...I guess that's what this podcast is all about because, man, you're at a perfect tipping point to make the rest of this year, the rest of your life absolutely epic if you apply.

Phil: Cool. So let's just reiterate the three things that we talked about right now is one coming from a mindset of gratitude. Be grateful for where you are, what you've accomplished. Whether it's in a fantastic position or not, you should still be grateful. Number two is, why are you doing what you're doing? What's the reason behind it? What's the motive? And number three was, find your inspiration. Who is inspiring you or who can inspire you to success? Whether it's this podcast, whether it's a coach or mentor, whether it's your instructor, whoever it may be. If you can do those three basic things, you don't actually have to go out and learn this. You just have to know it and start doing it like putting the action. Graham, if there's any one last sort of tip or tool that you would suggest.

Graham: Well, I guess it summarizes, I have [inaudible 00:09:53] For those who know us and have seen us talk and present in a person, we like to write lots of words and to have lots of different meanings behind them. I'm gonna give you one that I want your idea and I said it before, epic, E-P-I-C. Okay? And going to this next year, E, Empowered. Who is gonna empower you? And again that's the stuff we talked about. Okay? P, what is your purpose? What is your why? Why are you doing this? You can be inspired but you gotta do it for the right reasons. Okay? Again, we wanna make sure that the people around you are gonna be driving you. And again, like I've said, empowered, purpose, inspired. Okay? Again, who's gonna continually inspire you and who are you inspiring? Again, the whole idea is to conquer. Absolutely let nothing stop you. Okay, absolutely divide and conquer with those goals. There's gonna be challenges that you face and that's what this year's all about. So make your 2017 epic. All right, so I just wanna challenge you guys.

Phil: You see the passion in this guy's face. So if you're just listening to us, man, you gotta go watch this thing because Graham's face is about to explode from passion. So, guys, I hope you've enjoyed this one. I can't wait to kick-start 2017. We'll catch you on the flip side. If you have any questions catch us at [email protected]. See you later.

Graham: Take care.