We can learn a lot from super successful athletes such as Michael Phelps. His athletic achievements are nothing short of stunning. But like every successful person, the man has a strategy.

His coach Bob Bowman has a clear philosophy for creating excellence. His approach is not rocket science, however like any successful strategy it requires some planning, big thinking and persistence.

Why think in small measures when it comes to creating a vision for your business. Successful people create goals for themselves that push them outside of their comfort zone while remaining realistic with what they can achieve. To rack up close to 25 Olympic Gold Medals is a huge vision – however we believe Michael's vision is a lot larger than this!

Achieving on a regular basis only serves as inspiration to keep the momentum going. Daily KPIs – no matter how big or small all - add up. Whether it's achieving a certain daily staff utilisation amount, a daily sales figure or as simple as checking in on your key numbers – these daily achievements will lead to impressive annual results.

Be OK with uncertainty. A high aversion to risk can limit your ability to leverage a great opportunity. We often work with our clients to help them run the numbers on certain opportunities which ensures that they are taking calculated risks.

Goal setting is crucial to achieving success. We advise setting a few key short term goals that help to keep you focussed and that ultimately lead you to achieving your larger, long term goals. For example, ensuring you are covering your break-even every month or setting weekly / monthly sales forecasts.

Create positive financial habits both for yourself and your team. Incorporating a weekly team meeting that reviews forecasted revenue and expenses for the week or month will help keep everyone in touch with what the organisation needs to achieve financially.

It's one thing to set financial goals and forecasts however these are useless if you are not reviewing them to see if they have been met. It's also important to investigate why or why not goals have or have not been met so you are also able to optimise and tweak your tactics to ensure you are meeting these goals in the future.

Michael has a massive support team! His coach, his fellow Olympic team, his medics, his family and friends, the entire population of the USA! The more support you have, the more help you have and the more accountable you are. This is particularly powerful when you may be going through a financial rough patch and you need to rally the troops to pull you through as a team.

Use your vision to keep you focussed and motivated. There are always good days and bad days in business and it's easy to get disheartened if you experience a bad financial result every once and a while. The most successful business owners that we see are those that ride out the tough times by reviewing and revising their KPI's and goals on a regular basis. This puts them in a good place to react or even better to take proactive action to improve a situation.

If you are doing all of the above, you can proceed with the utmost in confidence.

We help businesses achieve their PB in business on a daily basis. We are an Accountant Practice that is driven by our client's success. If you'd like to find out more about our strategic approach to building business contact us today.