#12 What Is Important to You? How Do You Keep Score?

Craig reveals an addition that he has added to The Biz Sherpa scorecard and shares why you should implement it into your life and business. 

Craig Willett:
This is Craig Willett, the Biz Sherpa. I’m grateful that you would join me today for this episode of my podcast. As we get ready to celebrate the Christmas season, I think it’s important to look back this year and decide what’s most important in life. I wanted to spend a little bit of time speaking directly to you. One of the things that I love is doing the interviews I have with my special guests that have been willing to appear on my podcast, and they have taught us many great principles. What I love though, is the feeling of one-on-one with each of you. This is a special time of year. It’s been a difficult year. Some people say they wish they could erase the year. My feelings are that it’s helping all of us look at and decide what’s most important to us. In fact, I’d like to review a few things that I think are very important.

Craig Willett:
One is as you look at your business, look at the reasons why you operate it. Not only have I said that you shouldn’t start a business with the number one objective to be to make money. You should make that objective to improve the lives of others by giving extraordinary service that goes above and beyond, or deliver a product that really makes a difference in the lives of those people who are your customers. As you do this, the money seems to take care of itself. You’ve heard me say that time and time again. And I hope that the guests that I have and that you’ll see this coming year will reinforce that principle. I believe it’s a true principle, and people sense when you’re all about money.

Craig Willett:
Remember, I’ve always said of this podcast, everything’s free. The resources on our website at bizsherpa.co are no charge to you. They’re there because I want to make a difference in your life, whether you use them personally to improve, or whether you use them to refocus on your business. One of the things that I’ve added this year is the Biz Sherpa Scorecard. I think it’s one of the greatest tools to help you figure out what’s most important. And as you identify what’s most important, then I want you to spend 80% of your time in that activity. As you spend 80% of your time in that activity, you will see that you start to make a difference in the lives of your employees and in your customers. You want that contact point to be important. Also I’ve revised it for this episode, and you’ll see in upcoming we’ll have my personal trainer, Zach [Goalie 00:03:02] on, who will talk about the importance of staying in physical shape and condition to be able to operate a business at a high level.

Craig Willett:
I’ve always said that it’s really like being an athlete. They perform at high intensity level for periods of time, but they usually don’t exceed an hour and a half. And when you look at the time that they’re on the field on offense or in basketball on the court, and then there’s timeouts and halftime where they have time to recover, rarely are they giving 100% of their effort for more than 20 minutes at a time. That’s important. A business owner is to be on the top of their game 8, 10, 12 hours a day, six, seven days a week. It’s important to get control of your life and to stay in condition. So I’m adding a little box at the bottom of my scorecard that allows you to schedule and plan your activities. Zach will have some great things to offer you to consider in keeping yourself physically fit.

Craig Willett:
As you focus on what’s important, you’ll find that other areas of your life will fall into place. There is an emotional currency that comes from being a business owner. Not only can you be proud of the business that you own, like we’ve seen with a number of our guests, you can also take pride in your talents and your skills. When you’re able to identify what you’re good at and spend your time focused on doing what you’re good at that makes a difference in other people’s lives, there’s a satisfaction at night when you go lay down and go to bed.

Craig Willett:
The Christmas season is the time where we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. He is a great example. He’s not a business owner. And I don’t mean to be sacrilegious when I relate this principle, but he cared about others. He wanted to make a difference in other people’s lives. And to the extent that we care to serve and make a difference in other people’s lives, we get rewarded in return. Our reward is greater satisfaction, but there’s also monetary compensation. Such was not the case for our savior Jesus Christ.

Craig Willett:
But as we look to him as an example, as we look to his love, his way and ability to care for other people, we can all look to and make a list of some areas that maybe we can be more like him in the coming year. It may help you in your business, but even if it won’t help you in your business, it will certainly help you in your personal and family life. I’m grateful to have a savior who came and lived on this earth and lived and died for us, that we might have eternal life with his father, our God, in his kingdom in heaven.

Craig Willett:
Now back to keeping balance in our lives. Whether you’re religious or not religious, I think it’s important that we take time to contemplate. It’s important each day to take time. Some people call it prayer. Some people call it meditation. Whatever you want to call it, take time to reflect on what’s going on in your life. Not just what’s going on in the world, but how you’re reacting to it and how it motivates you. Are there opportunities to make a difference where someone’s hurting? It may be an opportunity for a new division of your business or a different product that you might be able to develop and share with others.

Craig Willett:
I like this time of year because it’s very close to the beginning of a new year. And I’m one that’s really motivated by goals and objectives. I love setting goals and objectives, but I think they have to be realistic. And as we set those goals and objectives, we need to measure them. So it’s important to write them down. It’s important to follow up, and that’s where my Biz Sherpa Scorecard can really come into play. It gives you a weekly way to measure your performance on your objectives and rate yourself. And as you score yourself, you can see where you need to improve. Now, this is the time of year where we’re supposed to be really happy because of all the gift giving and the family gatherings. And wherever you find yourself, I hope that you will be kindhearted toward yourself. Set goals and objectives for this coming year that will make you feel good about yourself. Set them so they’re realistic so that you can achieve them. And remember, don’t focus on the money. The money seems to take care of itself when you seem to take care of other people.

Craig Willett:
It’s important that you listen to what other people have to say. You’ll find that the Biz Sherpa Scorecard causes you to talk to people and get feedback from your customers, whether it’s you directly or someone in your business, but look at that feedback and understand whether you’re hitting and achieving the satisfaction that you care to with the goals and objectives of your company. As you do that, you will be able to make the differences and set new objectives so that you can overcome the weaknesses that you find. We have to own up that no one’s perfect. And in life, there are many different ways that we fall short, but I think it’s in accepting our weaknesses and accepting that we’re human and subject to weakness that we can then work on and seek help to improve.

Craig Willett:
I hope that some of the guests and their stories from the Biz Sherpa podcasts this year have made a difference in your life, helped you think of something, given you new hope or said I’ve experienced the same thing. It’s nice to know that somebody else made it through a difficult time. And it may not always be the difficult times. In the good times, it’s important to plan. When we’re experiencing high levels of success financially, it’s important to realize that those days won’t always last. Somehow there’s a business cycle and an economic cycle in life, and I’m a firm believer in that. And try as you might, we’re not always going to be on top. So it’s important to diversify. Diversify your dependence on your business.

Craig Willett:
I understand it. I get it. It’s your baby. You started it. You developed it to the point where it’s bringing you substantial income and it represents most likely the major asset in your life. But it’s important to take some of that money, not only reinvest it in the business, but set aside regularly, and I recommend 20%. This is also on the Biz Sherpas Scorecard. Set aside that 20% so that you know that you have a separate source of cash saved up and a separate source of income that will replace the income that you have from the business someday, whether you’re able to sell it, that would just be gravy on top, whether you hit difficult times, you’ll be able to turn to something else so that you don’t end up losing everything that you’ve worked so hard to create.

Craig Willett:
I’m grateful that you would listen to my podcast this year. This was an experiment for me. I tried to write two books. In fact, I wrote them, but I’m so embarrassed at how terrible I am as a writer that I chose not to publish them. And you may not think I’m a very good speaker and you may be right, but it’s a lot easier for me to talk than it is for me to write. Therefore, I have this podcast. My objective is to inspire others to start businesses. I think it’s one of the greatest expressions of our freedom as Americans, that we have the opportunity to start a business and become free, to become independent from other people. I understand that’s a lot of reasons people start a business. Maybe they’re thinking freedom to them means to go to the beach and be able to collect money while they’re not working. And while that’s a great vision to have in mind, I do know that the first three years to five years of owning a business, the business owns you rather than you own the business, but there are ways to achieve that.

Craig Willett:
You hire other people, you have the ability to express yourself on a whole different level of creativity as a business owner. I highly recommend it. Now it can become drudgery, but it becomes drudgery when we allow things that we aren’t good at to overwhelm us and become stuck because we feel like we can’t pay, or we don’t know someone who can help us out, who has the expertise. I’ve done that myself in life. Don’t think that that’s necessarily a strong point for me. It’s one of the reasons I advocate it. Quite frankly, there was a time in my life where I felt I couldn’t afford to have the help.

Craig Willett:
Recently because of some changes I’m making in my life, I formed an investment committee and I’ve invited people on there who I think can be of great help to me. I’ve also been able to delegate some of the other things that seem to come naturally to me, to somebody else, and it’s freed me up to be able to feel more independent, more strong, more able to see other people’s needs and spend time outside of my desk, in my office and my enterprise to touch the lives of other people.

Craig Willett:
Nothing brings greater happiness to me than to be able to spend time talking to and helping other individuals. You never know how important it is. In fact, it happened today. I had someone reach out to me yesterday and said, “I really need your help on something, Craig.” Then I said, “Hey, I have some time at 11:30 tomorrow. Can I give you a call then?” I called them, and as I walked them through, as they shared with me the background of their situation, then asked me a question, they seemed very relieved. In the matter of two or three minutes, I was able to give them some thoughts that they didn’t have experience with that allowed them to overcome an obstacle and a stress in a negotiation that was before them.

Craig Willett:
I don’t say this to brag. I say this because each one of us has talents and abilities. What we need to find is what those are. We have an obligation as part of the human family to share those with other people. I love that. The greatest hallmark of my life is to be able to interact with people. I love to see a smile. I love to see someone shed the stress when we’re able to talk and visit about alternatives and solutions to sometimes the problems that we create in our own minds, because we can’t see our way through. And I think that’s what it’s all about. This is the time of year where we talk a lot about love and we talk a lot about giving. I hope that each one of you will take the opportunity to give this coming year, not only to your customers, but to your community, to the people around you and to your family.

Craig Willett:

The most precious thing we have that everyone’s equal on is 24 hours a day. Yes, we need eight hours of sleep. We need a couple hours to study and to eat, but we have the rest of the time that we can give. And I hope that each one of us will examine where we’re spending our time, how we’re applying the principles that we have deep in our heart in our desire to give and to share love and to share of our bounteous blessings. That’s one of the great things of the end of the year, is to look back and to count the blessings that we’ve had. And be careful. Sometimes we see things as being very difficult and sometimes we’ve seen tragedy in our life, but look in there. There’s usually a silver lining, and in that silver lining, you can find hope, happiness and joy from what you’ve learned. I’ve experienced those tragedies. I’ve had loved ones die unexpectedly. I’ve had people caught in situations that were beyond their control. But you know what, in each one of them, there’s a lesson for us that will help us down the road.

Craig Willett:

One last thing, some of you who are listening to this podcast, because maybe I haven’t done such a good job at the beginning or end of a podcast to let you know, we’re on YouTube. It’s one of our most popular formats. I would hope that you would watch this on YouTube so you can see in the eyes and the faces of our guests, their excitement and their passion for what they do. I hope it will ignite and continue to reignite the passion that you have for business. I’m grateful that you would choose to spend 20 minutes to an hour every other week listening to the Biz Sherpa podcast.

Craig Willett:

What I would like you to do is share with other people what you’ve learned. I’m not necessarily asking that you share the podcast, although that would be helpful, if other people could see it and maybe they’ll benefit. But the best way we learn is to take a principle, a thought, a little nugget that comes to us as we listen to other people’s stories and share it with someone else. It’s one thing when we were in school. We studied. But the best way to remember something is not just to study it, but to share it or teach that principle to someone else. I hope you’ll do that. I wish you each a Merry Christmas and a happy new year. And I look forward to a great 2021 with you here on the Biz Sherpa podcast.

Craig Willett:

Go to our website, www.bizsherpa.co, and use the resources. You may find that that’s a good way to share or take a note or find a little nugget that will help you, or look at the pictures of the success of other business owners or perhaps some of the worksheets that we have. I hope that they bring a more successful 2021 to you. Not that 2020 wasn’t good for you, but I always think as we look ahead, we can control our future as we set goals and objectives and focus on that. I’m hopeful that the Biz Sherpa Scorecard is an instrument that you can use to benefit your business, your personal development and your success. This is Craig Willett, the Biz Sherpa.

Announcer:

Be sure to go to our website to access the resources related to this episode at www.bizsherpa.co. If you enjoyed this show, tell your friends about us and be sure to rate our podcast. Craig would like to hear from you. So share your thoughts in the Facebook community at bizsherpa.co. Follow us on Twitter @BizSherpa_Co and on Instagram, @BizSherpa.co.

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