The first quarter of the calendar year is almost over. As you look back over what you've accomplished - and haven't accomplished - thus far, we'd like to remind you that operating a business is anything but consistent.
When you create or review your forecasts for income, new customers, project completion, and "shipping of your deliverables" (oooooh jargon), remember that forecasts are decision-making tools. They are not the branches that you get to whip yourself with, nor are they the prizes you get to award yourself. The one consistency you can count on in business is that your forecasts will be wrong, one way or another. Surprise! You can't predict the future. Tying your feelings of success or failure to those forecasts is an exercise in futility.
If Q1 2019 isn't turning out as well as your start-of-year forecasts, that's okay. If it's better, or even right on the mark, that's okay too. None of these results are judgments of you. The most important thing you can do right now is find out why. Why did your revenues / targets / customers / projects / deliverables turn out the way they did? What can you do - or not do - going forward, based on this data (and that's all it is: data), to move your business in the direction you want to go?
As you know, the Admin Slayer theme for 2019 is Resilience: the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, or stress. We want to support you and your business in becoming incredibly resilient. It's a teeny bit selfish, because we know that if you're strong, we're strong. We're okay with that kind of selfishness around here, since we see it as a motivation for collaboration, and collaboration is exactly what produces results.
In January, we shared our thoughts on building a financial resilient company, and in February, we were all about building your resilient team. Since we know you are making decisions based on the data you've gathered from that first quarter - and if you need help gathering that data, you know where to find us - here are a few ideas we have around building your resilient pipeline of new business.
We've also got a great article from our good friend Dr. Ian Macnaughton, an expert in leadership and business, on Entrepreneurial Leadership & Conflict Management. This article is an excerpt from our wildly successful ebook, The Entrepreneur's Survival Guide, a collection of great advice from experts we know and love. While you're checking out that one, don't forget our first ebook, The Art of Delegation, full of key tips, tools, and worksheets to help you develop your delegation muscle.
By the way, have you met Cheri? Our Systems & Software Slayer has been working with us since spring of 2018 and we're a quite a bit behind in introducing you. If you need to transfer data, update your website, solve a knotty tech problem, implement a new CRM system, or much, much more, our softball-playing mother of three will sort you right out.
What kind of resilience are you looking to build this year? Write to us at info@adminslayer.com!