16 Weeks to Success

Six weeks ago, I began a journey to success. 

Many successful entrepreneurs do not become 'overnight' successes over night.  It is the journey that really creates the success.  After many frustrating nights of 'not making it', I decided to take a new approach in my journey. 

I ran my first marathon at age 30 and have run 2 to 3 marathons since then; that's 7 marathons in 3 years.  An amazing feat some would say.  It's actually pretty amazing to me, too.  I mean that's at least 24 weeks of training, and last year, it was 33 weeks of training.  Ugh!  My body was beaten, broken and tired by the last marathon.  But the point is, I did it.  After completing those three marathons last year, I decided that I would complete a business marathon. 

I started this 'business marathon' at the beginning of 2011.  I guess it's a kind of New Year's resolution.  This resolution is my training, and I am going to complete it, just like I would complete the training for any one of my marathons.  Okay, so how do I begin?  Good question!

Because I am not at the point I want to be at in business, I decided to take something that I know and translate it into business.  I know how to train for marathons.  So I thought, why don't I take what I already know about marathon training and track my progress like I would my marathons.

First step, write out a 16-week 'training' schedule.  Writing down my goals is key to acquiring the success I want to achieve.  And to keep me on track, I coined the training as "16 Weeks to Success: In Health, Fitness and Business."  I wrote down my top 3 goals in each of these categories - health, fitness, business - and then broke it down by what I needed to do in each of the 16 weeks. 

Second step, I knew I had to track my results.  So, I decided to track my goals and actual results in a journal and share my successes and failures with my coaches and business partners. 

Thirdly, I have realized that this is not much different than my marathon training.  Every Sunday I sit down with my journal and write the goals for each week that I had set at the beginning of the year.  In successive weeks, I sit down and write down the results from the previous week and my goals for the upcoming week.  This is such an important task - I started thinking of this Sunday night task as a CEO meeting to get me started for the upcoming week. 

Just like in marathon training, there are peaks and valleys in this business marathon training.  For instance, at the end of week five, I did not sit down and write down my results for week five and my goals for week six.  Instead of going into week six with a firm grasp of what I needed to do, I was heading into the week without any goals written down.  I had to hunker down and try to hit my goals (whatever they might be) for the week.  This created confusion; yet the desire to succeed was greater than ever. 

The results at the end of week six were outstanding.  Without going into details, I will say that I powered through the week and completed my journal entries on Sunday.  On the fitness side, I completed a 10-mile run on Saturday.  More than half-way through the run, I wanted to quit.  I started telling my coach how much pain I was in and that I was not enjoying myself.  Then, I started thinking about my success journey - 16 Weeks to Success.  And I remembered that this is typical in marathon training.  In the middle of the training schedule, I almost always feel the need - aka want - to give up, and it usually hits in the weeks four to six.  I knew that once I could make it through these tough weeks, I would make it to the end of the 16 weeks.

So, here I go.  I made it through week six.  And I am excited about my upcoming success.  I am even more excited about the journey and sharing it with others.