Detour or Destination? Coming back from the Wolff Sharpening Seminar in Reno, we took a detour through San Francisco. We found ourselves in line at the San Francisco airport check-in behind a family with identical luggage as ours. Alarmed that we may get our suitcase with all our shears switched at the baggage claim at the end of our journey, I inquired as to their destination. “Duluth,” the wife replied. “Not Duluth, GEORGIA?” I cried with alarm. “No, Duluth, Minnesota.” That brought on a conversation between their family and ours. The husband, a policeman, told us an interesting story. He said an 18 wheel trucker waved him down as he drove past him on the highway. He was frantically checking his map trying to find his delivery address. When he read the address he chuckled and told him, “Turn around and head south, when you reach Texas turn east and keep going.” The trucker had driven across country to Duluth, Minnesota instead of Duluth, Georgia. That story brought all kinds of parallels to mind. We can think we are heading in the right direction, but be completely wrong. We can be making great time on our travels, but be moving further and further away from our real goals. We know we should have goals, but it’s important to see if we really are heading in the right direction. Here are some simple questions to ask about goals: 1. What is my true goal? A question like this takes a while to probe. Many people like to write a “life purpose” or choose a verse from the Bible that keeps them focused on what it really important in life. Before I came into the scissor business I managed a knife warehouse. I knew the job didn’t fit in with my life purpose, but I wasn’t sure what I was to do. I prayed for direction and got no answer except that I was not where I was supposed to be. So, I gave notice at my job first then began searching for my place. Sometimes our first step toward a new goal is like that of the trucker, we need to make a U-turn and change directions. 2. What is my long-range goal? Take a look at where you would like to be at retirement age. Whether you plan to retire early or late or not at all, picture yourself doing what you would most enjoy doing in life. Be sure to take in the entire picture. If your goal is to travel, do you plan to travel alone? Don’t sacrifice relationships for financial goals. All our healthy long-term goals are intertwined with healthy relationships. 3. Does my daily routine move me toward my long-range goals? As a sharpener, you may want to always have a one person operation. You may be content to run your sharpening route by yourself, enjoying each day as it comes. If that is your goal, you may not need to make many adjustments to today’s routine to reach that goal. However, if your goal is to build a business to either pass on to your children or to sell, you will need to take some steps today. If you want your children in your business you may want to do what we do and get your children excited about what you are doing. Take the time to make the business fun for them. No matter how profitable the business is, they may not want to help you run it if they grew up thinking the scissor business is boring. Ted Powell, a sharpener from Georgia, takes his teen-age son with him in the summers and travels and sharpens. Glen Burke, a father of seven in Salt Lake City, chooses a different child each Saturday to take to work and develop a personal relationship. If you want to build a profitable business to sell, plan today’s business investments appropriately. Plowing your profits back into your business to grow your business can pay big dividends later. Do you want to bring on employees? Streamline and organize everything you do so it is teachable and reproducible in others. If you convince your customers only YOU can sharpen correctly, it will be hard to bring on the future employee to handle your sharpening. Maybe it would be best to promote your technique or equipment rather than your personal skills since an employee with your equipment and technique could smoothly move into position when the time comes. The bottom-line is to examine the way you run your business today and decide what habits you have that will hinder you from reaching your long term goals. 4. What short range goals should I set? The truck driver heading to Duluth set a short range goal to head north before he thoroughly studied his final destination. Short range goals such as be more organized are useless unless you understand your long range goals. A sophisticated computer program may be overkill if you have modest long range goals for your business, but if you see a large thriving company down the road it would be wiser to set up an organizational system that can grow and adjust and be compatible with networked computers when there will be several people accessing the calendar and customer database. I suggest you choose just one area of your business at a time and decide what changes should be implemented now to move in the direction of your goals. Here is one last word of caution in setting goals. Don’t be too rigid and locked into goals. They can sometimes set you up for disappointment and can get in the way. Wade Cook in his book, Don't Set Goals: The Old Way advocates setting priorities instead of goals. “Instead of setting goals, just be that kind of person.” I strive to work each day to develop myself to be the person I want to be. In this way, in some degree, I am experiencing my long range goals today. Goals are nothing more than a paper road map for tomorrow. Life is what happens on the road. Remember, it’s the journey and the little side trips, (like our trip through San Francisco to get to Duluth, Georgia) that make life more fun. Just make sure you don’t confuse the detours with the destination. |
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