One of the few people I follow on Twitter is Hank Haney (@HankHaney).
I guess you could say I’m kind of a golf nut.
I follow Hank because he shares some really good advice on golf. He shares tips on how to swing, but also on how to play the game.
He takes the time to review swings that people share with him on Twitter and he provides one or two thoughts to help the person improve.
That’s really cool. This is a golf coach that has worked with the best golfer ever (Tiger Woods). And here he is on Twitter reviewing people’s golf swings and providing free tips.
Two of my favorite tips that he shares really aren’t swing tips.
One is that the best way to improve is to do 100 practice swings a day. It really works. You get used to swinging a club. You get comfortable. You might not have the prettiest swing, but you’ll have a sense of what the club is doing.
The other tip is that to score better you need to eliminate 3 putts, 2 chips and penalty shots. It’s pretty simple, but it also works. All three of those things will kill your score.
A Goal Without A Plan Is Just A Dream
But there’s another thing that Hank often shares on Twitter (and his radio show) that is incredibly useful for life in general. He often says:
A goal without a plan is just a dream.
A very simple statement, but it makes so much sense.
It actually looks like he picked this up from former NFL player and coach Herm Edwards:
"A goal without a plan is nothing but a dream"
Herm Edwards
Wed 10EST | Live with Herm 866-469-0026@CelebrityGreens https://t.co/W4wbqFKrwH— Hank Haney Radio (@HankHaneyRadio) March 23, 2016
We’re in the entrepreneur world on this blog and if you’ve been around people that enjoy business, have business ideas and the like you know the person that is a dreamer.
They have a great idea or they have aspirations to start their own business, but nothing ever happens. They say that if only this would happen or if only that would happen that their idea would take off.
That’s a dream.
Dreams are fine, but they don’t lead to success.
It’s easy to live in dreamland. And that’s fine. But if a person is really getting upset and stressed about life while still living in dreamland then hearing them gets kind of old.
Taking A Step Forward
Like most entrepreneurs, I have business idea. I get ideas on how to improve GBW. I get ideas for other businesses. 99% of the time it’s not really actionable stuff. Maybe that’s not accurate, but you get the idea.
Ideas are great, but you can’t follow through on them all. Some are just not good. Some aren’t feasible. Some aren’t priority or whatever.
What I like to do is assess ideas. I might keep a running list and come back to it sometimes and assess those ideas. I like to run the numbers. Take a few hours and really think about how an idea would come to fruition. I like to see what it would take for that idea to yield a million in revenue or ten million or a billion.
How many widgets do you need to sell to make a billion dollars?
It’s a simple question, but it really does help to kind of bring your idea into the real world.
If the idea does pass this little test then the next step would be creating a plan of attack.
I’ve read Hank Haney’s book, The Big Miss, twice now. It’s a really good book if you are a golf fan. I wasn’t much of a Tiger fan, but I came away after each read with more respect for him.
With Tiger, Hank talked about his admiration for Tiger’s talent, intellect and work ethic. He said that Tiger, like many others, is willing to work hard, but he could get lost in his work unless he had a plan.
I see that in business all the time. People work the day away, but really they’re not making progress. It’s like digging random holes in your backyard when you’re wanting to grow a yard in the front. Yeah, you’re staying business, but you’re not making progress on your goal.
A plan starts with knowing where you want to go, stepping back and figuring out the steps to get there and throwing out the rest of the busy work.
Quantity vs. Quality
I want to add a little point here about quantity vs. quality. I read a post on this awhile back and it was really good. The general idea is that we all want to create quality, but the path to quality is through quantity.
There was a little study mentioned in the article where a pottery teacher had one set of students focus on creating one really amazing piece. The other set of students were instructed to create as many pieces as they could.
In the end, the ones that focused on creating as many pieces as possible were the better potters. They were creating better pieces.
It happens through quantity.
Coming back to an idea is the idea that you need a plan, but then you need to get busy working on it. If you want to have a great business blog you need to do it every day. If you want to be a great golfer you have to do it every day.
You are what you do every day.
Final Thought
It’s easy to have ideas in life. It’s more difficult to assess the idea and then create a plan of action. But that’s the only way to really achieve your goals in life. If you’re a dreamer that’s just fine. Dreams are good if you want to live in your head. But if you really want to achieve things and make things happen you need a plan of action and then you need to commit every day to doing it.