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The other day Mr 12 and Mr 17 were having a discussion about the car Mr 17 was hoping to buy when he turns 18.

“If you get one of those cars which look like a mini funeral car (he was referring to a wagon), I’ll disown you as my brother!” said Mr 12.

After picking myself up off the floor from laughing so hard, my business brain identified that clearly Mr 12 is not the ideal customer avatar for a car brand trying to promote their newest style wagon.

A critical aspect of building a successful business is knowing who your ideal customer is. Trying to market to the masses is fruitless and frustrating.

A successful business knows their purpose, knows their product or service, they know their ideal customer and their pain or problem and they market specifically to that niche audience.

Know your customer – When you try and cater to everyone, you will end up serving no-one.

What do you do when you’re stuck in a rut, disenchanted with your job and don’t know what to do or how to solve the problem? There are always choices and those choices may be to find a new job or create your own job. Realistically though, for many, these choices may not be possible in the short term. In the meantime, here are 5 ways to improve your current situation:

·         Seek out a mentor – find someone in your workplace or someone external to help you, guide you and develop you into a better version of who you want to be

·         Do better work – ask yourself, are you really doing the best work you can? Let go of the negatives you are currently focusing on and simply strive to become better at what you were hired to do. You can bring back a sense of fulfillment in simply achieving great results.

·         Up-skill – find a skill or a task to get better at, and give it everything. Use whatever opportunity you have in the present, to gather skills which may serve you in the future

·         Use your current situation as a launch pad for the next step – you may not being doing your life’s work right now, but look at your current job as a means to an end while you search for the next opportunity.

·         Practice gratitude – for the fact that you can pay your bills and put food on the table. Many people do not have this privilege.

·         Do something for someone else in your company. Helping others is a proven way to lift your spirits.

This morning I did my workout at the 1000 steps at Mt Dandenong in Melbourne’s east, which I love to do as often as I get the chance. It’s simply a beautiful place to be.

As a fitness leader in the community and a fitness and health professional, it was wonderfully inspiring this morning to really take notice of how many people, different people, were together in one place with one common goal.

It is a unique, rare encounter to be part of something like that.

Different ages, both sexes, adults, kids, babies, singles, couples, families, different ethnicities, all types of languages, a vast range of fitness levels and abilities, some cruising, some panting, some having to stop and rest and regular intervals.

Each person had their own personal goal, they were facing their own challenges, battling their own unspoken demons.

There was a sense of unity, peace, cameraderie amongst these strangers, all who shared the same common individual goal of getting to the top of those blasted steps!

People truly are fantastic when they want to be. Awesomeness is everywhere. Make a point to look for it every now and again.

Success in business, like in life, is a marathon, not a sprint. Consistency is not only king but it is absolutely, undeniably, irrefutably necessary. Habits take time to form but like learning a new skill in sport, the more you practice the better you get. So how do you create kick arse habits to keep you going through the business marathon month after month, year after year with consistency?

Here are my 3 tips for creating kick arse habits:

1.       Set a schedule

There are many areas of your business which require a consistent effort. Let’s take blogging as an example. The best way to ensure that you consistently do what it required, when it is required, is set a schedule. It sounds simple, obvious even. But the number of business owners with poor time management skills is astounding. Work out what needs to be done on a regular basis, and schedule it into your day, week or month and make sure you stick to this schedule. With our example of blogging, let’s set a schedule of writing a blog post every Monday and Thursday.

2.       Choose a pace that you can sustain

Your schedule must be set at a pace that you can maintain for the long haul. Consistency adds up very fast and trumps a short lived, over enthusiastic effort which flames out after a month or two. Let’s look again at our example of blogging. A new, enthusiastic business owner might be super motivated when they first start blogging and they might serve up some great blog posts every weekday for a month. Inevitably, at this kind of pace, it’s simply not going to be sustainable. It would be so much more valuable to write a well thought out, engaging blog piece, twice per week and maintain that for 5 years than try and blog every day only to find that you can’t keep up that pace.

3.       Repeat over and over

As reliably as seeing frost on a Melbourne morning in July, you will win the business battle with consistency, every time.  Once you have your schedule set and a pace established that you can reliably stick to, simply continue to do it again and again and again, for as long as you want to have success.

Whether it’s winning the battle against the snooze alarm, winning the job interview race for a new role or winning a customer in business from a competitor, the need to win in life is essential. Here are my three tips for winning the race of life:

1. Conviction

When you’re in a battle, whether it’s against yourself or a competitor, your own belief in yourself and your ability is the most powerful weapon you can ever have. Your belief needs to be so strong that there is no other result possible than the one you are striving for.

2. Fire in your belly

You have to find that fire in your belly, that desire which makes you want it more than anything. You have to want it more than your fear. You have to want it more than the effort it takes. You have to be so determined that no one and nothing can stop you.

3. Do what others won’t or don’t

To rise to the highest level, you have to be prepared to do what all the others won’t. To stand out as exceptional, all you need to do is the small things that others don’t. There is only room at the top for one. Someone has to be there, so why not you?

When you really want something in your life, you have to reach the point where you want it more than you are afraid of it. Alternatively, you need to feel the pain of not achieving it, and be driven towards avoiding that pain.

Rarely will something come to you until you are truly ready to embrace the steps you need to take to get there, regardless of the challenges. But the bottom line is, taking action is the only way forward.

Everyone has blockages preventing them from achieving certain things. Everyone is afraid of something and that’s perfectly ok.

Feel the fear and then do it anyway!

Do you hate your job so much that you could quite happily throw it in tomorrow without a second thought?

Ok! Hold it right there. Step away from the keyboard. Before you hand in your resignation papers, there are a few questions you need to ponder.

What do you want out of your work and your life? Do you need a new job or do you need a new perspective? Is your problem really a job problem or is it actually a YOU problem?

What exactly is the pain point for you? Is the issue you are miserable about going to disappear in a new environment? Is the grass actually going to be greener? Are you 100% sure about that?

Don’t get me wrong. There may actually be a problem outside your control that is making you miserable. Sometimes it is the job – the lack of purpose in the company, the lack of leadership, the lack of inspiration, the lack of autonomy or the poor culture.

However, sometimes it’s your thinking and your perspective. Sometimes everything else going on in your life outside and around your work is influencing how you are seeing your situation and if you put yourself in a new situation, with the same thinking, you’d be no happier.

Moral of the story – a change in thinking may very well change your experience.

When you are looking for change, for progress, for growth, there are three simple questions you need to ask yourself:

What should I keep doing that serves my goals?

What do I need to stop doing that is sabotaging my goals?

What can I start doing in order to move forward towards my goals?

Many things appear impossible, until he who believes it is possible, tries.

·         Prior to 1875, swimming across the English Chanel was thought to be impossible… Until Captain Matthew Webb achieved the feat.

·         Prior to 1903, no-one believed that it was possible for human beings to fly… Until the Wright brothers took to the sky.

·         Prior to 1953, conquering the ‘roof of the world’ by climbing to the summit of Mt Everest was considered impossible after numerous failed attempts by ambitious climbers… Until Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay conquered the mountain.

·         Prior to 1954, the athletics world believed no-one could run the mile in under 4 minutes… Until Roger Banister did it.

·         Prior to 1969, man landing on the moon was a pipe dream… Until Neil Armstrong and the crew of Apollo 11 took those famous first steps.

“It always seems impossible, until it’s done” – Nelson Mandela