How to Change Life
To change life for yourself you must change your future. You can create your future life in advance.
To change life in the future you need to know what you want in your new changed life.
Create life-changing goals. Imagine how you will feel when you have changed your life by achieving your goals.
Why do goals work?
2 people went for an interview to borrow money for their new business.
1 succeeded, started her business and enjoyed the pleasure of being her own boss.
1 failed to convince the bank and left with a headache about how to start her business with nothing.
How did that happen?
How can it help you?
I will explain how to be the successful one and the differences between the two people.
Let us look at these two people and see how they arrived at the bank and where things went right and wrong.
Have you ever procrastinated and left something so long that it has caused you problems later?
We all have. How do we do that?
Felicity and Dick are both keen to get a start-up loan in the bank to begin a new career in business.
Felicity
Felicity has got a piece of paper and written down the reasons why her new baby-rocker will be a boon to all parents of screaming babies. Having had a couple of noisy babies herself, she knows the yearning for peace and quiet that new parents often crave.
She has described the colours and got a friend to do some initial drawings, which Felicity has coloured in soft blues and pinks. There are lots of charming frills and sticky pads to put toys onto, to keep the baby smiling and gurgling happily.
She has written a price down that she believes the “Rocker” could be sold for and how much she believes it will cost to produce. She has looked around hardware stores and on the net to find suitable materials to pull the whole thing together.
A friend, who is a banker, has advised her to get a business plan together. She has found one on the net and, with a little help, put some figures together. She has a cash flow forecast and a break-even point calculated, so she is fairly confident in her plan.
The information has been gathered together in a folder, tied up with ribbon and beautifully marked: “Baby Rocker”, by Felicity.
Felicity is well organised and has a list of her suppliers and potential clients, although the latter has not been tested yet.
Felicity has a few problems:
- She is scared to contact potential customers and ask if they might be interested in her “Baby Rocker.”
- She has several different designs of the rocker and is not sure which one to go with.
- She has no experience of approaching bankers for loans so she has no idea what to say to them, in fact, she thinks they will “see through” her because she is not an established business person. They will maybe think she is stupid.
- Her Cash Flow / Business plan appears to show her losing money for over a year and she is worried that the bank will say it is not a viable business.
Felicity’s feelings of inadequacy and fear are not reflected in her preparation. She is well prepared and, since few new businesses break-even in the first 18 months, she has a good basis for financial success.
She does need to contact a few potential customers before approaching a bank. She does need to go with one model and not a variety of ideas, which will only confuse people.
What should she do?
Dick
Dick is also a start-up business person.
He also has a cash flow which does not break-even for over a year. His business plan is as detailed as Felicity’s.
His product is for a new training machine for health-clubs and gyms. It is based around losing weight with as little effort as possible.
He has 3 different models, all of which have drawings and detailed user manuals. He has expert documentation about how his machines will work and, combined with a diet sheet designed by computer for each customer, can provide a useful extra service for clubs to sell.
He has priced up the 3 models and found a manufacturer who can produce the numbers of machines to suit the business plan.
Dick has never asked anyone for a business loan before. He has never had to do a presentation of this kind before to get a loan.
Dick has a good friend who is a personal development coach so he invites her to lunch and asks her advice.
What should Dick do next?
Felicity and Dick are in similar situations.
One gets a loan, the other does not, and this is how it works out.
Felicity
Felicity is scared and uncertain.
She goes to the bank and takes her best friend with her to give moral support.
The bank is friendly and listens to her pitch.
When they realise she has not done enough research into buyers, they point this out to her and Felicity gets very nervous, wringing her hands and stuttering.
They question her about the 3 models and which one she intends to use and in state of mind, she becomes unsure and thinks they don’t like any of them. She suggests she could produce more drawings of more models.
When the bank points out that her cash-flow shows a profit after only a year and ask about her certainty of sales prices, Felicity breaks down and explains that it was probably all a bad idea anyway and gets up to leave.
“Please sort the problems out and come back,” says the bank manager but Felicity is too upset and hurries out of the bank with her friend in hot pursuit.
Dick
Dick gets advice from his Personal Development coach, Mindy. Mindy suggests that he simplifies his pitch and gets one clear idea of the Pre-start-up situation.
She gets him to imagine what the business is like after 6 months, what he is doing and how he feels about it.
She gets him to create a clear sense of where the business will go and how he will deal with problems and challenges, always with the sense of the business going well.
She gets him to remember the enthusiasm and excitement he felt when he conceived of the idea and to carry those feelings into the meeting with the bank.
He is to hold the feelings of “I can” and “I love doing this” in his body and mind.
Dick goes to the meeting feeling excited and confident.
The bank suggests things he really should do before they can approve a loan and Dick says “Yes! I can do that.”
Although the bank has said “No!” he knows that it is a conditional “no.”
He tidies up his business plan, contacts suppliers and potential customers and gets real offers of interest.
He gets an accountant to check his cash flow and tells his wife he is going back to the bank.
What happened?
There was little difference between Dick’s and Felicity’s businesses. They both had work to do to get approval.
The difference was solely in the attitude and belief they had in themselves.
Felicity thought she would fail and so she did, even though the bank asked her to come back.
Dick believed in himself and accepted the setbacks as a part of getting what he wanted. He took the challenges as a means to learn something new and improve the chances of his business surviving.
Answers
We create our own futures. Our past is in our memory and so is in our imagination. Our future is in our imagination. Imagine a good future for yourself and your decisions, your thoughts and your actions will guide you in the right direction.
To invent the telephone, someone had to think of it.
To invent TV, someone had to think of it, etc. etc.
Think of your future success and then it has a very good chance of becoming your future.
B.T.W. Felicity pulled herself together, sorted out the answers to the bank’s questions and got her loan.
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