The room is buzzing, the energy palpable. 250+ people, all lit up, with visions of, well…Vision, dancing in their heads. Visions of big fat bank accounts and summers on the Italian coast. Visions of vibrant relationships and epic adventures with friends and family. Visions of health and vitality and thriving well past the century mark! And then…(wha, wha, whaa) it's time for Benchmarking. Man, oh man, nothing says Captain Bringdown quite like taking vision out of the ethereal and bringing it into the practical with boring old benchmarking. Until now that is. My intention is to make you love benchmarking as much as I do. I might not be able to accomplish that in 1500 words or less, but I'm pretty sure I can support you to employ your emotional resilience in this space so we can get this very valuable and important step done, and done well. And over time...you'll come to love it! Promise.
One of the key reasons benchmarking feels challenging is that until we get the hang of it, we might be a little confused about the difference between a vision, a benchmark, and an action plan. Fair enough. I wrote a blog called Vision Is Everything, about how vision is inclusive of benchmarks. Give it a read as a primer if you'd like. I’ll wait. (Jeopardy theme music plays…) Aaand we’re back! In order to set benchmarks, it's a great idea to keep it simple at first. Here's a way to look at it... benchmarks are to vision what landmarks are to destinations.
Let's say your teenager is driving to the airport for the first time. And let’s say you live in Los Angeles and the airport they’re going to is LAX. If you don’t know Los Angeles very well, let me tell you, unless you actually live at the airport, getting there is a challenge. Wherever you’re coming from, it’s going to involve multiple freeways and long bouts of mind numbing traffic. So you share with your young pup some landmarks along the way to the airport as a way of helping them know that they're on track. The first landmark might be Downtown...you make it to downtown LA and you know you're heading in the right direction. Then you cross the LA basin passing Century City (another landmark). From there, your next landmark is the giant donut (seriously, it's one of those LA landmarks that tells you you're getting close to the airport), and finally you see the signs, lights, and the groovy mod building that looks like a spaceship, and you know you've made it. Overly simplified maybe, but you get the point.
If your vision for the body includes skiing with the grandkids in your 70s, one of your benchmarks might be to attain specific body composition marks. Like say, 20% body fat. If you're currently at 26%, then you'll set some mini-marks on your way from 26% to 20%. Easy peasy. If your vision includes financial freedom to the tune of $150k in passive income annually, one of your key marks might be $3M well-invested dollars. If you're currently at $500k invested, you'll set some mini-marks on your way from $500k to $3M. You got this! If your vision includes being in a state of Joy 90% of the time and currently you're hitting about 49%, great, you'll set mini-marks along the way from 49-90%. Woo Hoo! See, this benchmarking thing is simple and very empowering.
But let’s take a deeper dive. What does all of this actually look like? Jorge owns a chain of Mexican restaurants in Colorado, famous for their green chili smothered burritos. The eight restaurants, scattered throughout the state, net Jorge almost a million bucks a year. He lives in a great house in a great neighborhood. He’s married, has three kids, the family busy with all kinds of activities. And at the age of 58, Jorge is in the best physical shape of his life. But that didn’t all happen overnight. The vision of life that Jorge has created for himself and his family is the product of decades of intentional work. In other words, Jorge has been benchmarking his you-know-what off.
It all started with a couple of crockpots and an old van on the corner of 16th and Broadway, right around the corner from the state capitol. Every morning, Jorge would set up shop, simmering his chili and pounding out his freshly made tortillas, getting ready for the lunch crowd to come filing out of the civic buildings. It didn’t take long for word to spread and for Jorge to save up enough cash to hit his first benchmark: Open a brick-and-mortar restaurant. Now, for most people, starting a single successful business is considered a big win. Job well done. But Jorge wanted 8 of them. Why 8? I don’t know, you’ll have to ask Jorge.
He opened the second restaurant three years after the first. Numbers three and four came two years later. Five, six and seven opened two years after that. And restaurant number 8 (if you’ve been following the math, you might see where this is going) cut its ribbon on the 8th anniversary of the opening of restaurant number 1. Clearly, Jorge has a thing for the number 8. Point is, none of this was happenstance. It was the result of following a meticulously laid out action plan. And that action plan was designed to fulfill…say it with me now…Benchmarks!
Every new restaurant was a benchmark reached, and each new opening was the result of meeting mini-benchmarks in between: hitting revenue goals, securing financing, finding locations, etc. And while Jorge was building his burrito empire, he was working on other benchmarks as well. He wanted to own a home before he was 30. Nailed it. He wanted to start having kids in his early 30’s. Nailed it. He wanted to have two boys and a girl. Well, two out of three ain’t bad. (Three girls. Whom he loves to death. But kids are like a box of chocolates, right? You never know what you’re gonna get.) And again, for each of those benchmarks, there were steps along the way: save up money for a down payment, meet the person he wants to spend his life with, return all that blue paint for a pallet of pink.
Jorge also made a point of taking care of himself, physically, mentally, and emotionally. He wasn’t going to spend all the time and effort creating his dream life only to spend his golden years with aching joints, low energy, unable to climb a flight of stairs without taking the rest of the day off. So when Jorge turned 40, he set a benchmark of running a marathon. To get there he followed an action plan that included taking in 2200 calories per day, weekly run schedule, 7.5-8.5 hours of sleep nightly, 20 minutes of inner training every morning and evening, etc. All designed to get his mind and body dialed in so that he’ll be primed for a 26 mile run.
Maybe, like Jorge, you know exactly what you want your life to look like. Maybe you have some ideas but you’re not exactly sure how to nail them down. Maybe you’re going through your days completely unaware of the destination. Whatever the case may be, we’ve got a program for you. If you have a crystal clear view of what you want, we can help you build the roadmap that will get you there. If you wake up every morning to a blank page, we have the tools to help you figure out what you want to write. And we do it through the thrilling, exhilarating, dare I say, life changing process of benchmarking!
Put simply, benchmarking is taking a big ticket item (the Vision for the life of your dreams) and breaking it down into bite-sized, achievable components. I mean, you can’t just will a house into existence. First you have to raze the land, then you lay the foundation, then you frame it out, then you add plumbing and electrical, then comes the drywall and the roof, you get the idea. The same rules apply to creating a life of your own design.
So, enough dilly-dallying. Let’s get to work. Join us for a Power Series program and learn not only how to name a vision for the life you want, but also how to lay out the steps you’ll need to take to get there. Click HERE to learn more about the Power Series, sign up today, and let’s get benchmarking!
(You may have noticed I set a benchmark of sorts at the top of this post: 1500 words or less. It came in at 1468. Benchmark hit, baby!)
