You will be disciplined.  Either you will choose to do it yourself or life will do it for you. 

Take your finances, you can either discipline yourself to live within your means or you can spend like there is no tomorrow and reap the consequences with sleepless nights and bill collectors car-pooling to your home. 

Your business works the same way.  Either you will discipline yourself on what you need to accomplish and employ enough focus to get it done.  The upside is that you get to determine when you get up, when you can vacation, what you will do in the day and how much you are worth.  If you choose not to discipline yourself you will need to go back into an environment where you have a employer who will tell you when you get up, when you can vacation, what you will do in the day and how much you are worth.

Either way you will be disciplined, it’s your choice as to how.

Everyone needs a map and compass (or better yet a GPS) if they are lost in the woods and want to find their way back to civilization. After years of accumulation of procedures, rules and practices our “Business Opus,” the policy and procedures manual had become a behemoth text. In a moment of inspiration, we flushed our 300 page operations and client services manual in favor of a three question compass and it changed our business culture instantly.

Here’s our guide –

1. From our client’s point of view, am I treating the client with the utmost respect?

2. From our client’s point of view, am I exceeding the client’s expectations?

3. From the company point of view, is what I’m doing in the best long-term interest of our company?