Milestones Push You to BIGG Success

We recently went on vacation. It was our first real vacation since we started BIGG Success over two-and-a-half years ago.

We did take a staycation about this same time last year. But our business is home-based and we both love our work. So, while we did have more downtime than usual, we pretty much worked through it.

So we were ready to get away!

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 Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss reaching milestones while on vacation on The Bigg Success Show! Click the player to listen [7:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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You can push and push and push. At some point, however, it becomes counterproductive. You have to give yourself a break.

We set some parameters for our vacation:
We wanted to go someplace warm.
We wanted to be near BIGG water.
We didn’t want the hassle of flying. 

We entertained the idea of visiting some friends. But we realized we needed time for ourselves, to reconnect as a couple in life as well as in business.

So we ended up going to Panama City Beach, Florida. We were a little worried about Spring Breakers, but it was the tail end of Spring Break. So it wasn’t much of a factor. 

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We had a great room … our balcony was a stone’s throw away from the Gulf. We spent a lot of time on our balcony and walking on the beach just enjoying the beauty of nature, BIGG water and time together to connect.

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We had a great time. It was so relaxing … I almost started feeling hypnotized toward the end of our time there. I've uploaded some vacation pictures on our Flickr page.

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Now you may be asking, “What does this have to do with BIGG success?

Set direction to create milestones

Well, we’re really talking about BIGG success. BIGG success is life on your own terms. It’s about entrepreneuring your life … designing and building your life to perfectly fit you. It’s about setting milestones.

Venture capitalists demand that the entrepreneurs they fund have goals with due dates. That’s a milestone. If the entrepreneur hits the milestone, the venture capitalist will keep funding him or her. It keeps the entrepreneurs pushing to the next maker.

You can’t create milestones until you set your direction. We decided our ultimate destination was Panama City Beach, Florida.

Milestones must allow for response

But Panama City is a long way from Champaign, Illinois. That’s why you set milestones. It helps keep you on track – both in terms of focus and time management – as you push for your ultimate objective.

Our first milestone was Huntsville, Alabama. We planned to make it that far on our first day. It was a little more than half-way between Champaign and Panama City.

We front-loaded it so we could coast to the coast on our second day of driving!

We thought if we left home by 10 in the morning, we would hit Huntsville around 6 that evening. But a funny thing happened.

We got to the Huntsville area a little earlier than expected. But we would have had to divert a few miles off our path to stay there. Neither MapQuest nor our map had made this fully clear. So we pressed on to Birmingham.

There’s the lesson for entrepreneuring your life. No matter how carefully you plan, new information will come to light. You have to remain flexible so you can respond to it. We had essentially reached our milestone but we felt good about pressing on a little further.

The next morning, we were excited about reaching our destination. Traffic was pretty heavy at times starting in Montgomery, Alabama. So the drive on the second day took a little longer than we expected.

But we had left earlier than planned. And we had traveled further the first day than planned. So we got to see BIGG water by 3:30 in the afternoon … a little earlier than expected.

Be prepared to change anything

But there was an error in our thinking. Have you spotted it yet?

We defined our ultimate destination as Panama City Beach, Florida. But the real destination was a round trip … to Panama City and back home safely.

We knew that, of course, but we hadn’t explicitly thought of it that way.

So it goes with entrepreneuring your life. Be prepared to change anything, including your destination. You will learn as you go along. Take your new knowledge and make any necessary corrections along the way to BIGG success.

There was a greater reward in seeing the whole trip instead of just thinking of it as a trip to Panama City Beach. Because we realized that we didn’t want to just push to get home. We wanted to see something different. We were even willing to drive a little more. We decided to come back through Memphis, Tennessee.

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Reward yourself when you reach a milestone

We knew it would be a real push to get to Memphis on the first day of the drive back. We also wanted to spend all the time we could walking beside the Gulf before we left Panama City Beach. So this next milestone was going to be a challenge.

But it was worth it!

It took a little longer than we expected to get there because we had two-lane roads for part of the trip. We were pretty tired as we pulled into Memphis around 8 that evening.

But as soon as we got out onto Beale Street, it was totally worth it! When you reach a milestone, reward yourself!

The next morning we reached our goal – we made it back home safely. We reached BIGG success … one milestone at a time!

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00576-041910.mp3

(Image in today's post by dzm)