It’s June 2015.
Joe has joined a growth accelerator coaching program with his business partner.
In the opening session, they’re working on an orbit chart to create a 3-year business growth plan.
And the first question the coach asks is, “what do you want your turnover to be in year 3?”
Both of them have a figure in their head. But those figures weren’t the same!
For Joe’s business partner this figure was £1 million. But for him, it was more like £2m… but thinking it was too ambitious, he put it down to £1.5 million for the exercise.
To hear this answer from his business partner, Joe was surprised. The company was already well on its way to £1 million in a year without really trying. Having this target was safe, easy and pretty inevitable at this stage in the company’s growth.
From this moment, it became really clear that their ambitions were very different.
Joe’s goal required action, planning and money to get them there. Whereas, his partners didn’t really require anything.
The Business Growth Plan Agreement That Changed Everything
While in the growth session, Joe and his partner spoke through their goals and agreed that £1.5 million was a better target.
But after that discussion, a light had been shone on his partner that Joe hadn’t seen before.
Joe had always been the risk taker in the business. And his partner was always the one to ask questions and bring it back down to reality.
This was great at the beginning, because they needed stability. But for Joe, the business was ready to accelerate. Not stay the same.
The reality was that they had become very different people with very different goals. And the decision-making was becoming harder and harder because of it.
Someone was going to have to step out of the business…
Because decisions were already hard, Joe got a third-party valuation to see what the business could sell for. His partner was happy with the amount and exited.
Joe stayed in the business, and partnered with people that shared his growth-centred vision. So much so, part of their reason for buying was his growth plan.
Ambition and Driving Forward
On reflection, Joe sees that he is a very optimistic leader, and tends to run on the idea that everything is going to be okay.
But because he has this optimism he can become blindsided in that he doesn’t see the potential problems.
In the case of his former business partner, he didn’t see that he was one to stay comfortable and not take risks. Had they not met with that coach, he would have kept going on his own business growth plan, until it was too late.
Joe’s biggest learning from this event is to make sure that he partners with people who are on the same page as him, growth driven and ready to take risks.
In this episode, Joe shares his ambitions and what gets him pumped up in business today.
We talk about
- The dangers of being too optimistic
- Strategies for achieving goals
- The risks and adrenaline of stretch targets
Joe’s hunger for achieving goals is infectious — tune in for more tips on how to keep up the momentum in your business, and go beyond to achieve what you want!