For a long time I totally ignored what the best marketers and business gurus had to say about the importance of setting a clear vision for your company. It cost me a lot of money, and resulted in my stress levels peaking to almost unbearable levels at times.

It’s only in the last few years where the vision for my online business has become crystal clear, and that’s had a massive positive impact on both my business and my personal life.

It’s only when you have a clear vision that you can clearly define a strategy to get you there, and it’s only when you have a strategy that you can really start making rapid progress towards your vision. They go hand in hand.

Once you have a strategy, and know everything you need to do within that strategy (the specific tactics), the next step is execution.

Taking Daily Action.

Can you guess what the number one challenge is to executing the tactics in the strategy that will realise your vision? (Psst: There’s a big hint in the title to this blog post.)

That’s right, discipline.

When you have a clear vision, know your strategy, and have a list of proven tactics to work on… you finally need the discipline to take consistent action on those tactics.

Unless you have vision, strategy, tactics and the discipline to take action, success will most likely evade you, just like it did me for so many years.

I made things hard for myself because I didn’t have a clear vision, was therefore unable to define a strategy, and as a result was swinging wildly from one tactic to another, in the hope success was just around the corner. It wasn’t.

I didn’t start to achieve any level of success until I had a clear vision, picked a strategy, tactics… and developed the discipline to consistently perform those tactics every day. Success takes all four.

Because my blog’s mostly read by business owners I’ll assume you already have a vision. If not please stop reading, put your business on hold, and ‘get one’. You’re going to need it!

Still here? Good.

I’ll also assume you’ve clearly defined how you’re going to realise the vision. In other words, that you know your strategy. If not then you’ll probably zig zag from one tactic to another, never sticking on one tactic and performing it long enough to get noticeable results.

So you’ve got a big vision, a proven strategy, and know the specific tactics within that strategy. Success is now inevitable right?

Sorry, no, you still need the discipline of execution. Taking the daily actions necessary to ensure each tactic get’s performed on time, every time, and far beyond the early days when “it doesn’t appear to be working”.

Doomed to Fail.

My old web design company once helped a retailed setup an e-commerce site. The owners has a very clear vision of what they wanted their online store to become. I gave them a simple yet proven strategy which included tactics to quickly acquire large volumes of customers on the front-end of the business then generate large volumes of repeat sales on the back-end.

The doors to the site opened, and the front-end marketing worked a treat. In the first year alone they attracted thousands of first time customers. Things looked very promising.

So why did they shut down the business? Simple. They didn’t have the discipline to perform the necessary back-end marketing tactics that would have ensured their business was hugely profitable and constantly growing.

I know for a fact: if they kept on simply e-mail marketing their back-end list with great information, updates and buying opportunities, they would have realised their original vision for their business.

Unfortunately it didn’t happen — and it was all to do with a consistent lack of discipline.

Knowing that discipline is so critical, let me leave you with a some tricks you can use to ensure consistent personal discipline at all times (or as much as possible, because we all slip from time to time):

1) Use visual tools.

I spend a lot of time in front of the computer and on the Internet. It’s so easy to get distracted that I have a Post It note stuck to my monitor that reminds me to spend less time reading about things and more time doing things.

I know someone who managed to stop snacking and lose lots of weight by simply putting small models of Pigs in their fridge!

The simple tools are usually the best.

2) Encourage critics.

I first heard this from self-help guru Tony Robbins — tell everyone what you’re meant to be doing — and the more critical the person you tell the better. They’ll be sure to bark the moment they see you’re going off track.

3) Delegate and outsource.

Delegate whatever you can, either to your own staff, or external contractors (also called outsourcing).

Entrepreneurs are chaotic by nature. We love creativity and innovation, but we’re usually not so hot at doing the boring stuff that keeps things running.

The challenge is that it’s the ‘boring stuff’ that gets results over longer periods of time. So why not outsource the boring stuff to people you know have discipline to do them instead?

4) Use productivity software with features to enforce discipline.

You can configure your diary system to remind you about what you should be doing each day, and to block our time well in advance so that other more urgent but less important tasks don’t interrupt your disciplined routine.

And there’s a tonne of free stuff on the web to help you be more disciplined.

I’m trialling a new service in January — RescueTime — which automatically monitors what I’m doing on my computer and then gives me a detailed report of how long I spend in the various programmes each day.

For example I write all my blog posts in a piece of software called TextPad. RescueTime quietly keeps a log of how long I spend in TextPad each day. It will also show me what I do on my computer when I’m not in Textpad. If those activities are not related to growing my business then I’ll know to make adjustments.

I have the uneasy feeling RescueTime is going to give me lots of reasons to kick my own butt in January.

So we know discipline is critical for success. Here’s a three step process to build discipline into your new year, and notice that we have to start from the top:

1) Make sure you clearly define your vision. Don’t make the mistake of ignoring that advice like I did for so many years.

2) Create a strategy that will help you realise the vision, and work out each specific tactic within that strategy.

3) Engineer your days so that discipline is at the heart of every hour you spend working on your business. Use visual tools, encourage critics, outsource the boring but important tactics, and take advantage of productivity software.

If you can think of anything else please comment on this blog post and share with my other readers.

I wish you a very successful, prosperous and disciplined year in 2008.

-Ed.

PS. Tip of the hat to RescueTime for the link to an article about Self Discipline Matters More Than IQ. That’s great news!