How To Set Goals That Get Done - With Laura Posey

Tom Bailey, Founder of Succeed Through Speaking, Interviews Laura Posey

Laura Posey is an internationally-recognised speaker, author and consultant. She is known as The Simple Planning Specialist for her unique ability to simply and easily laser focus her clients to get dramatic results.

Her Simple Strategic Plan is used by over 2500 companies from start-up’s to Fortune 100 companies. She is the author of "How to Plan Your Entire Year On One Sheet Of Paper", and co-author with Jack Canfield of "Mastering The Art Of Success"

Why you've got to check out Laura's episode:

- Learn how Coaches, Consultants and Business Owners can finally earn what they are worth by increasing the amount of people they can help

- Discover what Laura means by the open loop trap and how entrepreneurs can avoid jumping from technique to tactic while looking for a silver bullet which never comes

- See why you need to avoid analysis paralysis and the detail death cycle to help you get better at making decisions in your business

- Get FREE access to Laura's daily success checklist so that you can start planning your day and ensuring you are making significant progress each and every day.

- Learn how to avoid creating a job in your business instead of having a business that suits your lifestyle.

Resources / Links

https://simplesuccessplans.com/checklist

Transcript

Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to the flow and grow expert interviews. The place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.

Hello, I'm Tom. And in this episode, I'm so happy to be joined today by Laura Posey who is a multi book author and the super successful founder of Simple Success Plans. So, Laura, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode.

Laura Posey: Thanks for having me today. I'm so excited to be here.

Tom Bailey: Awesome. And whereabouts are you in the world? Right now?

Laura Posey: I am in Richmond, Virginia, which is about two hours South of Washington, DC in the US

Tom Bailey: Perfect. And spring is just starting, isn't it? This time of year.

Laura Posey: It is, it's just gorgeous outside. Everything's in bloom.

Tom Bailey: Awesome. Perfect. And I'm sure everyone's really keen for me to get straight onto the subject of Laura.

So, Laura is an internationally recognized speaker. She's known as the simple funding specialist for her unique ability to get focus for her clients and get dramatic results. Simple strategic plan is used by over 2,500 companies. And she's the author of how to plan your entire year on one sheet of paper.

And finally, the co-author with Jack Cranfield of Mastering the Art of Success. The title for today's episode is how to set goals that get done. And Laura is going to show us how to do that in just under seven minutes. The question of one for you, Laura is who are your ideal clients?

Laura Posey: Yeah. So, my ideal clients are coaches, consultants, business owners, people who sell their expertise and who are really struggling to earn what they're worth.

They know they've got something that is really powerful for their clients. They just don't have enough people to get out there and share it with

Tom Bailey: and constantly chasing people, I guess, trying to find new. Yes. What what's typically the biggest challenge that they face other than this thing around trying to get more people.

What, what is the typically the biggest challenge for them?

Laura Posey: Yeah. So, the biggest challenge I see there, there's several really big challenges. The biggest one I see is what we call the open loop trap, which is where they're starting lots of things, but they don't finish any of them. Right. They get excited about the new thing, or they're looking for that silver bullet, that magic thing that's going to fix it.

And so they just jumped from technique and tactic to technique and tactic, and they don't really get any of them finished and implant.

Tom Bailey: Got it. It's that shiny object syndrome, I guess it is. And, and jumping from thing to thing, what impact does this typically have on them or their business?

Laura Posey: Yeah. So, what happens is they start lots of things and they don't finish them.

So, they never actually make any progress. Right. You know, maybe they'll go buy an online course from some guru and they don't finish the course. And here's the thing about. Any advice, any course, anything that you do, if you don't use it, I guarantee it will not work. And so, if you don't finish it and implement it, it's not going to work.

And so, they're trying lots of things, but they're not making any progress because they're not finishing anything.

Tom Bailey: And, and sometimes I think it's, you know, waiting to be perfect before we launch ourselves out into the world. So, we invest more programs. We learn more. We do more, but yeah.

Laura Posey: Yeah. Yeah. We, we call that the detail death spiral.

That's it right where you yep. So that there's this analysis paralysis. She gets so much information because you're trying to get it perfect. And you just get buried under this information and a lot of it's conflicting. Right? So, you just can't ever make a decision.

Tom Bailey: Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people can resonate with that.

So, given that, what is one valuable piece of advice that you might give to somebody to really help them solve that problem?

Laura Posey: Yeah. So, I think one of the biggest things that people need is we call it a daily success checklist, right? And it's that list of things that need to be done every day, as well as those things that need to be done today to really make sure that you're making significant progress in the most important areas that you're not just getting up every day and winging it, that you've got an actual plan for success in your business.

Tom Bailey: And, and that plan, would you do it at the start of the week? Would you do it every day? How do you tend to …

Laura Posey: every day? I, I have mine right here. Yeah. Here's today's version. Awesome. And yeah, we, we tell folks to fill it out every single day. We have other tools that we use for weekly and quarterly and annual planning, but you know, it all comes down to what are you doing today?

That's really what you have control over.

Tom Bailey: And can people get ahold of this plan? Can you share a link or …

Laura Posey: yes, absolutely. It's one of my favorite things to give people because it's such a powerful tool. And so, if they go to our website, which is simple success plans.com forward slash checklist. There's a place there and I'll give them a, not only a, a fillable and a printable copy of the checklist, but I've got a tutorial video for them to show them how to use it.

And I've got a couple of samples that they can download and look at so they can see what it looks like when it's filled in the right way.

Tom Bailey: Awesome. Thank you. So simple success plans.com forward slash checklist. And what I'll do is I'll post the link to that underneath this episode. So, people can just click that and dive in, and I'm sure it'd be a really valuable resource for them.

Now, slightly off subject. What would you say is your greatest failure that you've ever made either in life or business? And what did you learn from it?

Laura Posey: Yeah. So, my biggest failure was starting my business. I left corporate America and I basically created a business. That was my job in corporate America.

I was the sales manager and so I went to do sales training and I created the same structures and was doing the same work that I was doing before. And I left the job because I hated it. And it was all because I didn't take time to sit down and think about what kind of lifestyle I really wanted. And then fashioning the business in a way that would support the lifestyle that I wanted.

So, it was not just having a lot of money, but it was also having a lot of freedom and a lot of flexibility. And that, that just, I mean, it was a crusher. I, to all intents and purposes, after four years closed the business and restarted it I just didn't tell anybody that's what I had done. Cause I didn't change the name or anything, but I just, I had to clear the deck.

And start over,

Tom Bailey: I guess, it's that difference between working for the business or working on the business, I guess is the big difference. Yeah.

Laura Posey: I have created a job and a business.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. Yeah. The, you went left, left one job to start a business and ended up in another job doing the exact same thing.

Laura Posey: Yeah. I used to tell everybody I had a, I had a job, but no boss.

Tom Bailey: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And no health insurance. Yes, exactly. Perfect. And the final question for me today is what is one question that I should have asked you that will also give great value to our audience?

Laura Posey: Why should you plan in and do any kind of plan on a single sheet of paper? Okay. Anytime you're planning.

Yeah, because by forcing yourself to put everything on a single sheet of paper, it forces you to decide and that the Latin root of the word decide means to cut out or cut away. And so, you're forced to decide and cut out or cut away. All of the things that aren't absolutely necessary for getting you to success.

It makes you leverage that 80 /20 rule and do the 20% of things that are going to give you 80% of the value. Anything more than that in your ending. You're just doing a lot of work that isn't generating results.

Tom Bailey: And I guess having it on the page, it's a single point of reference. You can keep your eyes on it, on your desk for it next to you all day.

Yep. Mine's right here. Next to me. There it is. Perfect. Great. Well, Laura, thank you so much again for your time today. I'm personally going to rethink the way that I plan my day and I'm confident there's a ton of value here for our listeners. You as well. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I really appreciate joining and hopefully we can catch up again soon.