Planning can be done by anyone, however it doesn’t make you a success. Success is deeply personal, and I encourage you to clearly define it for yourself. This can take time until you are satisfied with the answer to what is success to you?

After 10 years in Brisbane, my family and I took long service leave for 10 weeks and travelled to visit family around the world.  One of my objectives was to clearly define what success was to me.

I was set to franchise my company and realised that I had coached many franchisors who were lost on the journey to success.  In fact, I had been a franchisee and never clearly knew what I wanted from my business or life each year just ran on from the last.  Do you know what success is?

I believe planning should stem from knowing what your why is in life in order to put it all in context. You see if you just accumulate more stuff without the essence of becoming more – your stuff will lead you to stuff all.

Sitting at my brother’s lake house in Louisiana, I wrote in my journal just after my 40th birthday that success to me is being loved by the men I respect and respected by the women I love.

Now I could set a plan in place to become crystal clear on who were the men I respected and the women I loved. I have since connected with these people directly to get a clearer plan on how I could collaborate with them to create a better life.  I believe that plans can be changed and challenged easily provided that the care of the plan is that everyone is of value and is loved and respected.  As I have built a better plan year after year I am confident that it’s the time I took to define success rather than any special technique I use to write up a plan that has made the difference.

Surround yourself with quality people in 2018, “go where you are celebrated not where you are tolerated” I was wisely reminded by my mentor Nancy.

Define success and then plan to achieve it.