Engineering Your Success
Now, you may not know this, but before I began my business I was a 'Radio Frequency Planning and Optimization Engineer' for a large mobile telecommunications provider.
A grand title indeed, but what does it mean? Well, it was my job to design and perfect the radio characteristics of an area of the national mobile phone network.
I would have certain parameters that I would have to work with such as the number of base stations available to me and their location, the direction, tilt and height of the antennae and the interference between sites.
And of these parameters some were fixed, like the number and location of the base stations, but the rest I could manipulate to get the best result.
And I spent hours tweaking my plans to ensure the best possible result.
I realized that my old engineering job is actually very similar to that of building a successful business, and many of the same processes apply.
You begin with a goal, or an outcome that you want to achieve - in my old job my boss would set this for me, but in my business it's down to me - then you would plan a way to achieve it, and finally you would take the feedback from the initial plan and alter the plan to reflect it until you have reached your desired outcome.
For example, let's say you want to fill your professional practice by the end of this year.
What do you need to do to ensure this happens? Well, first you need to know what a full practice looks like to you.
Is it 5 clients, 10 clients, 20 clients? Do you measure your full practice by the number of billable sessions you have booked? If so, how many billable sessions would fill your practice? 10, 20, 40? Or perhaps a full practice means a specific monthly income to you? What's your magic monthly figure? Whatever a full practice means to you, that's your starting point.
Be honest with yourself, because what you plan for is what you will achieve.
Unless you are congruent and believe that you can achieve your target, guess what? You probably won't.
Once you believe that you can achieve your full practice - remember you don't yet need to know how to fill it, just that you can - then you are ready to move on to PLAN how you are going to do it.
Once again, don't get hung up on the details of the plan yet, what we need right now is an outline plan.
For example, let's say our full practice means £3000 per month to us, and we want to work 30 hours per week.
I always advise clients to set aside 40% of their working week to dedicate to marketing and other admin which leaves 18 client facing, or billable hours each week.
This is 72 billable hours per month, and if our practice is full, that equates to a session fee of £42 per hour to achieve our £3000 per month goal.
This is just a first draft of our plan, as it should throw up some questions that will allow you to begin 'optimizing' or changing it to suit you.
Now you can change or optimize any of the parameters of your goal plan, so what have you got to play with? Your monthly income goal, the number of hours you work and the hourly fee you charge.
You can increase or decrease the figure of any of these parameters because it is your plan.
Before we leave this outline plan, it is well worth spending some time identifying which of these parameters is most important to you, and the effects of changing each: Your monthly income goal - do you need to have a specific income each month? Is this income the most important thing to you? Is this the most important parameter in your plan? If it is then set the figure and adjust the other two parameters until you have a plan that fits for you.
For example, if you require £3000 per month and feel that you would have to find too many clients to currently fill your practice, you could increase your hourly rate which in turn would decrease the number of clients you require to reach your target which has remained the same.
What if the number of hours you work is most important to you? Then use the remaining parameters to develop the right plan for you.
If you are tied to the number of hours you can work each week, how many billable hours do you have available in your working week? What can you do to ensure that you are making the best use of your time? Once again, you may choose to increase your hourly rate, or perhaps reduce the monthly income figure you expect.
Once you begin to get comfortable with planning and optimizing your plan using the parameters available to you, you will get such a sense of control over your business and your income that you will never look at it the same way again.
A grand title indeed, but what does it mean? Well, it was my job to design and perfect the radio characteristics of an area of the national mobile phone network.
I would have certain parameters that I would have to work with such as the number of base stations available to me and their location, the direction, tilt and height of the antennae and the interference between sites.
And of these parameters some were fixed, like the number and location of the base stations, but the rest I could manipulate to get the best result.
And I spent hours tweaking my plans to ensure the best possible result.
I realized that my old engineering job is actually very similar to that of building a successful business, and many of the same processes apply.
You begin with a goal, or an outcome that you want to achieve - in my old job my boss would set this for me, but in my business it's down to me - then you would plan a way to achieve it, and finally you would take the feedback from the initial plan and alter the plan to reflect it until you have reached your desired outcome.
For example, let's say you want to fill your professional practice by the end of this year.
What do you need to do to ensure this happens? Well, first you need to know what a full practice looks like to you.
Is it 5 clients, 10 clients, 20 clients? Do you measure your full practice by the number of billable sessions you have booked? If so, how many billable sessions would fill your practice? 10, 20, 40? Or perhaps a full practice means a specific monthly income to you? What's your magic monthly figure? Whatever a full practice means to you, that's your starting point.
Be honest with yourself, because what you plan for is what you will achieve.
Unless you are congruent and believe that you can achieve your target, guess what? You probably won't.
Once you believe that you can achieve your full practice - remember you don't yet need to know how to fill it, just that you can - then you are ready to move on to PLAN how you are going to do it.
Once again, don't get hung up on the details of the plan yet, what we need right now is an outline plan.
For example, let's say our full practice means £3000 per month to us, and we want to work 30 hours per week.
I always advise clients to set aside 40% of their working week to dedicate to marketing and other admin which leaves 18 client facing, or billable hours each week.
This is 72 billable hours per month, and if our practice is full, that equates to a session fee of £42 per hour to achieve our £3000 per month goal.
This is just a first draft of our plan, as it should throw up some questions that will allow you to begin 'optimizing' or changing it to suit you.
Now you can change or optimize any of the parameters of your goal plan, so what have you got to play with? Your monthly income goal, the number of hours you work and the hourly fee you charge.
You can increase or decrease the figure of any of these parameters because it is your plan.
Before we leave this outline plan, it is well worth spending some time identifying which of these parameters is most important to you, and the effects of changing each: Your monthly income goal - do you need to have a specific income each month? Is this income the most important thing to you? Is this the most important parameter in your plan? If it is then set the figure and adjust the other two parameters until you have a plan that fits for you.
For example, if you require £3000 per month and feel that you would have to find too many clients to currently fill your practice, you could increase your hourly rate which in turn would decrease the number of clients you require to reach your target which has remained the same.
What if the number of hours you work is most important to you? Then use the remaining parameters to develop the right plan for you.
If you are tied to the number of hours you can work each week, how many billable hours do you have available in your working week? What can you do to ensure that you are making the best use of your time? Once again, you may choose to increase your hourly rate, or perhaps reduce the monthly income figure you expect.
Once you begin to get comfortable with planning and optimizing your plan using the parameters available to you, you will get such a sense of control over your business and your income that you will never look at it the same way again.