Don Roulo is the CEO (Chief Encouragement Officer) of Life Quest. He is a life, career and business coach as well as a Certified 48 Days Workshop Facilitator. He travels nationally and internationally to conduct business and career training as well as marriage and family workshops.

By DON ROULO

Don’t worry there wasn’t an error in the title of today’s article. All of us have heard, ‘Ready, Aim, Fire.’ If you are a regular reader of this weekly column you know I believe in planning. I am still big believer in planning, but I know many of us, including myself, can get stuck and not take action even after we have planned everything out in great detail.

Today I want to help stop analysis/paralysis – thinking too much and not taking action. I am encouraging you to take action even if you don’t have everything perfected or completely ready.

I think most of us live by the normal, ‘Ready, Aim, Fire,’ model. We do the ‘ready and aim’ part very well, but we get stuck there and never pull the trigger and ‘fire.’ 

‘Ready’ means planning out an idea, your life, career or business. In last week’s article I even mentioned the technique I teach in my workshops on how to make a plan – the SMART technique. You can plan all the steps so everything is just right, but never take a step towards your dreams and goals. Fear, lack of confidence and doubt can creep in and stop us from taking action.

‘Aim’ means you know exactly what your target is – your specific dream or goal. You should only take aim at a specific target. If you just have a general direction, but nothing specific to aim at, when you miss the target, you miss big – aim big, miss big. However, if you have a specific, or small, target when you miss it you don’t miss it by much and still achieve great success – aim small, miss small.

‘Fire’ means to pull the trigger – take action. All the planning and goal setting will NEVER get you results. Results only happen when you take action on the plans you have set. I have shared before about how results occur. Thoughts become words. Words become actions. Actions get results. It works this way every time without exception.

What does it look like to follow the ‘Ready, Fire, Aim’ model? If you have a problem with procrastination or getting locked up in analysis/paralysis, you need to take some action on your dreams and goals before you have them totally perfected. Sometimes it is necessary to take even some small action to get the ball rolling towards your ultimate goal – even if you don’t have everything fully ready.

Here is a great example of ‘Ready, Fire, Aim.’ Dan Miller of 48 days is a friend of mine. Dan is a best-selling author, nationally known speaker. He puts out fantastic products to equip and inspire others to achieve their goals. Several years ago he was asked to speak on radio on short notice to address ideas for startup businesses, which take very little if any money to start.

Over one weekend he put together a list of 48 ideas to share. He wanted to have something available for the listeners to have in their hands after the show. He made it available online as a free download to anyone who wanted it. It had some spelling errors, set up errors and a generic layout. Over the course of several months over 50,000 people downloaded this free item.

After several more months he corrected all the errors, dressed it up with a nice layout and design and put it into book form. Since then he has made tens of thousands of dollars from this simple book full of great ideas. He could have waited until everything was just perfect before putting out this product – the regular ‘ready, aim, fire’ model. Instead, he followed the ‘ready, fire, aim’ model.

What idea, career dream or life project should you take action on now? Ready, Fire, Aim!

About the Author

Don Roulo is a life, career and business coach as well as a Certified 48 Days Workshop Facilitator. He travels nationally and internationally to conduct business and career training as well as marriage and family workshops.

As a business consultant, he has written business plans and worked to market products or services as well as organizing financial statements for investors. Because of his success in the sales and business arena, Don has been blessed with the opportunity to train, motivate and inspire others. His passion is to motivate and equip people to find their passion and achieve their goals and God given destiny.