Done. For Real!
For self-employed professionals and managing directors who want more out of their businessYou work hard. Just not on the goal that matters most.
In twelve weeks you reach the one goal that changes your business. That works because we clear the blocks that have been holding you back.
Done. For Real! is one-to-one mentoring. We pick the one goal that changes your business, and I work alongside you for twelve weeks until you have reached it.
- Twelve weeksone goal, one plan
- Every week30 minutes in conversation
- In betweena direct line on WhatsApp
In January you knew exactly what should be different this year
The new offer. The sales channel you have wanted to build for two years. The support you finally bring in so that not everything hangs on you. In December the same items are still on your to-do list, some of them half done, because you squeezed them in between two meetings and then spent three days making them worse. Real focus looks different.
Twelve months of hard work went by in between. Long weeks, full calendars, plenty of things handled. And which of it moved your business forward?
The most expensive item of your year appears on no balance sheet
- Prices that have not gone up in two years while your costs have
- The task you do yourself at night instead of handing it over for 40 euros an hour
- The contract that eats three weeks of your time and leaves almost no margin
Add up what these three points cost you over the past year.
You have read all the productivity books. Nothing has changed.
Atomic Habits. Deep Work. The 12 Week Year. The 5 AM Club. You nodded, you underlined passages, and you started. It went well for three days, then everyday business took over.
Knowledge is not the problem. You know the methods better than most. What stops you sits one level deeper: the sentences in your own head that make everything else suddenly look more urgent. They hand you good reasons, they get you to pull forward things nobody would have missed, and they disguise themselves as common sense and hard work.
You are in good company with that, by the way. For fifteen years I have worked with people who are excellent at what they do and who have still been stuck at the same spot for years.
Almost nobody names their most important goal first
When I ask what someone wants to work on, the loudest item comes first. The client who is waiting. The proposal that has to go out. The thing that would have changed the business comes third or fourth, often in half a sentence and with a shrug.
This has nothing to do with carelessness. The goal with the biggest effect carries something that is bigger than the calendar. The price increase that might cost you clients. The conversation that has been avoided for months because it is uncomfortable. The part of the business someone would have to shut down to make room for the part that works.
And the avoidance looks like work. First learn the tool so everything goes better afterwards. First serve the client who is waiting. People who simply get distracted notice it. People who prepare do not.
Check the goal first, then clear the block
Most productivity offers on the market take your goal as given and work on execution. My work starts one step earlier.
First the selection.
We go through your goals until the one that changes your business is on the table, and we make it measurable.
Then the block.
Every week a pattern shows up that has been stopping you at the same spot for years. We look at it in the moment it appears and clear it, so that you can stay focused on your goal.
And you do not do it alone.
Every week I sit across from you and ask about what you set out to do. And we look closely. That commitment is the part no book can give you.
You do not work more, you work differently.
Nothing gets added on top of your everyday business. We change your everyday business so that your goal has room inside it.
Twelve weeks on, you tick off what has been sitting there for years
- Your goal is reached and it has turned out really well. Thought through and built with care, instead of started quickly between two meetings and patched for months afterwards.
- You no longer stand in your own way. The patterns that have held you at the same spot for years, we cleared week by week. What used to slow you down for days you now recognise the moment it appears.
- You take on what you used to avoid. The conversation you put off for months. The price increase you shied away from. You do it, and you do it from a place of calm.
- You set the right priorities in minutes where you used to need half a morning. When the complaint, the call back to your accountant and the new enquiry all land at once, you know how to react without losing sight of your goal.
- You have learned and applied a method you can repeat. With the next big goal you do not start from zero, because you now know how to handle your inner hurdles and get past them.
Three goals that fill twelve weeks
You bring your own. These three show what size a goal may have for the effort to pay off.
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Solo self-employed, nutrition consulting
She wants to build a digital offer that sells without her being there, and has been putting it off for two years because every client meeting feels more urgent.
The goal for twelve weeks: The offer is online and has its first buyers.
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Trades business, six employees
The business lives on one-off jobs and starts from zero every January. The owner is building up maintenance contracts, from the service through the price to approaching existing customers.
The goal for twelve weeks: The maintenance offer is in place, the first fifteen existing customers have signed.
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Agency, twenty employees
The owner prefers to do the projects himself because it is faster, and has not got round to winning new work for months.
The goal for twelve weeks: Delivery sits with the team, he is having sales conversations again.
In the kickoff we check whether your goal has that size. Too small, and you do not need me for it. Too big, and we break it down until a twelve week goal comes out of it.
Done. For Real! Twelve weeks, one goal, one conversation a week
- Step 01
You prepare
With a questionnaire I send you before our kickoff, you pull together where you want to be in two to three years, which goals feed into that, what has been left undone so far and why.
- Step 02
We choose your goal, a two hour kickoff
We go through your vision, your goals, plans and ideas and pick the one with the biggest effect on your business. Then we make your goal tangible and measurable, so that staying focused on it comes easily over the following weeks. From that we build a work plan for the next twelve weeks and clarify which steps in which order make your goal reachable.
- Step 03
30 minutes together every week
In your weekly conversation we go through what you have done, what slowed you down and above all which unhelpful patterns and limiting thoughts showed up, so that we clear them straight away. At the same time we set your work package for the coming week and check your progress against the plan.
- Step 04
In between you reach me on WhatsApp
For the urgent question that cannot wait until the next conversation, I am available to you on WhatsApp between our appointments. A block on Tuesday will not cost you a whole week.
The status every week, the view from above three times
Your 30 minutes a week always follow the same shape: where you stand against the plan, what has slowed you down since last time, and what you take on for the coming seven days. Short and operational, so that you can carry on working afterwards.
In weeks 4, 8 and 12 we do something else. We step out of the day-to-day and look at the process from above. What has changed since the start, which patterns kept coming back at you, and what have you learned about the way you work. Imagine you were your own external adviser looking at the past four weeks: what stands out?
Most people underestimate these three appointments. Anyone who spends twelve weeks only ticking off tasks may well reach the goal and then start from zero with the next one.
We rarely fail because of the method or because we lack knowledge
I led before I began guiding others. As HR Director at Wacom I was responsible for around 200 employees in 13 countries and took a reorganisation through the company, and before that I held international roles at Metro Cash & Carry. In those years I hired consultants, and I threw them out again when a fine concept sat on the table after four weeks and everything in the company stayed as it was.
Since 2011 I have been running my own company and have guided more than a hundred change projects, at T-Systems and Deloitte, at Siempelkamp and Warsteiner, at bofrost and in the city administration of Mönchengladbach. Over the years I have also trained systemic business coaches myself and certified them for the International Coaching Association.
Seeing a big goal through alongside a full job: I know that from the inside. I earned my degree in business administration and my postgraduate master in mediation while working.
In fifteen years I have seen the same thing again and again. What gets in the way of doing looks like common sense and hard work, and it holds people at the same spot for years. That is where I start.
Work out what your goal brings in
A new offer that you sell twelve times a year at 2,000 euros brings you 24,000 euros. Do the sums with your own number and put it next to this one.
What is included:
- The review of your material before the kickoff, so that we are working on your case from the first minute
- Two hours of kickoff, in which your ideas turn into the one goal that changes your business
- Your twelve week plan, in writing, with the order in which the steps take you to the goal
- Twelve conversations in which I ask what you have done, and we clear what has slowed you down
- The direct line on WhatsApp, so that a block on Tuesday does not cost you a whole week
All appointments take place online via Zoom.
Done. For Real! also fits when
- Your calendar is already full. Nothing gets added to your everyday business, we clear up inside it. What is firmly booked is 30 minutes a week, everything else is the work you want to do anyway.
- You have known your goal for ages. Then we check it once against your numbers in the kickoff, and if it holds, it is on paper as a plan two hours later.
- You have tried something like this before and it fizzled out. That is exactly what we look at every week: what slowed you down, in the moment it happened.
- You are not the coaching type. This work does not need a crisis. It needs a question you want to research for twelve weeks.
- You are in the middle of a project right now. There is no fixed starting date. You start on the day you book.
- You work alone or employ twenty people. The size of your business makes no difference. What counts is that you set your goal yourself.
Eight hours of conversation for 2,890 euros. That is the sum you are doing in your head, isn't it? It just does not add up. Before the kickoff I review your material, afterwards you get your written twelve week plan, and in between you reach me on WhatsApp when something holds you up on a Tuesday. And for twelve weeks you have someone who asks every week what you have done. Set the 2,890 euros against what your goal brings in, not against the clock.
When Done. For Real! does not fit
When someone else decides on your goal. Working on one goal for twelve weeks pays off when you decide yourself which one it is and when it changes. If the decision sits above you, in a management board, an executive board, a circle of shareholders, then what slows you down here is not an inner block but the remit. Tell me that in the intro call, and we will sort out together what would help instead.
There is no fixed starting date.
You tell me what you want to work on, I tell you honestly whether Done. For Real! is the right format for it. If it is, you get your material and your twelve weeks begin. If it is not, I tell you what would help instead.
This time next year you will have worked another year. The question is whether you will have real results to show or only full calendars.