We're most of us in the business of change.

Maybe you're a coach or consultant who works directly with clients helping them change and improve. Or maybe you provide advice or services to clients that they then use to make a change themselves.

Either way, like me, you probably spend a bunch of time advising your clients to change (and lamenting it if they don't). After all, it's the only way they'll make improvements and achieve their goals.

Of course, when it comes to ourselves it's a different story.

We set ourselves ambitious goals, but often we don't change the “system” we use to get them.

For us, our “system” is what we're doing day-in, day-out, week-in, week-out.

If we do the same things we did last year, our results will be a lot like last year. And the year before.

If we want different results, we've got to do different things.

For the first few years of running my own business I got better results simply by getting better at what I did and doing more of the same. But eventually you hit a plateau. It felt to me for a year or so like I was just spinning my wheels.

So for the last few years I've been making significant changes every year.

I started focusing more on my online courses to get more scale. I put the prices of my 1-1 work up. And I started emailing more frequently.

Some of that was uncomfortable. Some of it required me to learn new skills so I invested in courses and spent some time talking to people I thought had mastered what I wanted to learn.

And some of it required some late nights working on course material and content long after everyone else was tucked up in bed or watching TV.

I must admit, I went down a couple of blind alleys with some of the things I tried. But most of it worked. And it worked well enough to make a significant difference to my business.

We all advise our clients to change. So how much are you prepared to change yourself? How much are you prepared to invest in your own future?

I can't guarantee that what you try will work 100%. But I can guarantee that if you don't do anything different, you won't get any different results.