Leadership. Most people think of leading others when they hear or read the word, but self-leadership is even more important. How can you effectively lead others (whether on the job or at home) if you are not effectively living your own life? As I work with clients on leadership development, a large part of those efforts is focused on understanding what they are best at and then leveraging those strengths to perform at a higher level by being authentic to themselves. Let’s look at this more closely.

We were each created with unique qualities and abilities. No one else can do what you do, just as you do it. But do you really know your strengths? An honest and comprehensive self-assessment, whether using a formal diagnostic tool or not, is necessary to be more aware of your attitudes, your behaviors, and what makes you “tick”. This awareness will also allow you to better understand how people see you and help you improve your relationships and dealings with others. The saying that “Illumination is 80% of remediation” helps us realize how important this personal “look in the mirror” can be. As you achieve a better understanding of your strengths, it is important to realize that no matter how developed you are in these areas, there is always room for improvement. Further developing your strengths, and using them more often, will make them even more valuable and help you be more successful.

Yet, often, people neglect their strengths and focus more on their weaknesses and skills they don’t have. My friend Jay Niblick, president of Innermetrix, likes to say that “We possess talents, but we manufacture weaknesses.” Similarly, Peter Drucker has challenged us all to “make our weaknesses irrelevant”. The point is that none of us can be great at all things, and to try to be so is frustrating, time-consuming and, at times, self-defeating. Find the personal and professional situations and environments that allow you to use your strengths and accentuate the positive, instead of focusing on your weaknesses and the negative. An expert in the field, Dr. Robert Hartman once said, “Instead of trying to put in what God left out, [work] with what He put in.” In a research poll of millions of workers, only one-third reported that they were engaged in the kind of work they do best. It’s no wonder so many businesses are characterized by apathy and mediocrity instead of passion and excellence.

So, first, identify your strengths and then work to strengthen and make them more valuable. You will achieve better outcomes and experience more enjoyment as a result. Focus on the positive and what you are good at and don’t devote too much of your time and energy shoring up your weaknesses. As Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, an executive coach to Fortune 500 CEOs has said: “There are a lot of things I stink at. I just make sure I don’t have to do them to be successful.”

To borrow a phrase, “it’s the little things in life that matter”.  This is so true when talking about improving our lives. How often is it that when we accomplish the little things in our lives they quickly add up to huge results? It’s true in life and business. Right? So if this is true, what can we do about getting those little things done so that we can have “big” lives? Let us look at a few things that might help.

Allow Enough Time

Often, we do not allow ourselves enough time to do the little things as we are marching through our tasks and responsibilities. This is because we are over committed to too many projects and have not allotted the proper amount of time to complete them well. Learn to say ‘no’ more often to free up time that can be used for the little things. Build cushions of time to allow for the unexpected. How many times have you been rushed to get something done due to time constraints only to make one small error that requires substantial re-work or starting all over?

Live In The Now

I run into people all the time who are talking about how it will be next year or how it was in years past. Although, occasionally we need to look at those things forwards and backwards, the majority of our focus needs to be on what we are doing today and right now at this moment. That single-minded focus can create masterful work with details delivered that add up to a super product. So, check yourself daily to see that you are in fact “living in the now”.

Look Out For Others

Always seeking out what others need and want in their lives will drive us to do the little things for others that build lifetime relationships. The old adage “talk is cheap but action speaks” really is true. People will remember what we did for them and the thoughtful words of encouragement at the right time backed up by our own actions.  We were all put here on the earth to serve others. That is the reason any business exists. Therefore, we must be focused on others in order to do the little things that matter to them.

If you manage your time, live in the present and look out for others you will naturally accomplish the little things in life that will result in a great life for you and others. So go ahead, find something “little” to do.

Please share some ways that the ‘little things’ have come up for you. Or some habits you’re developed to get the ‘little things’ done. Thanks

Neuroscience research is revealing the social nature of the high-performance workplace. This reference comes from an article by D. Rock entitled “Managing with the Brain in Mind.” So what does this have to do with Motivation? According to the researchers of this study and a number of other studies now emerging, one thing is clear: The human brain is a social organ. It’s physiological and neurological reactions are directly and profoundly shaped by social interaction. In other words, they found that “Most processes operating in the background when your brain is at rest are involved in thinking about other people and yourself.”

When you think of this in terms of the workplace, it presents enormous challenges to managers. Although a job is often regarded as a purely economic transaction, in which people exchange their labor for financial compensation, the brain experiences the workplace first as a social system. It’s not a stretch to relate to for anyone who has had their job eliminated and found themselves without the work relationships they once had. One manager explained to me just after going through such a process, that he felt like he had just gotten through tearing at the social fabric of the organization. The impact of this neural dynamic is a threat response that disorients people causing their brains to become less efficient. Based on my experience as a manager and a consultant, this accounts for a significant portion of lost productivity organizations experience following layoffs or unexplained terminations.

Researchers also found that when leaders make people feel good about themselves, clearly communicate their expectations, give employees latitude to make decisions, support people’s efforts to build good relationships, and treat the whole organization fairly, it prompts a reward response. In other words people within the organization become more effective, more open to ideas, and more creative. They notice the kind of information that passes them by when fear or resentment makes it difficult to focus their attention. They are less susceptible to burnout because they are able to manage their stress. They feel intrinsically rewarded and are more likely to feel motivated and engaged.

It reminds me of an exercise that I went through myself a number of years ago that I now ask some of my coaching clients to complete. Several of the questions in the exercise ask you to remember those experiences in your past when you were the most productive and motivated. It also asks you to note the characteristics of the person you worked for at the time and what you were able to accomplish. Rather than simply agreeing with what the researchers found and I believe to be true, I actually took the time to dig out my responses from a moldy smelling file in my basement. I recognize that this does not come anywhere close to passing as an official validation of the study, but I am convinced the leadership characteristics that resulted from their research that mentioned in the prior paragraph, is what’s necessary to motivate and engage today’s workforce.

I also believe that the reason that these are not the prevailing leadership characteristics we reward today, outside of the top performing companies, has to do with our reluctance to grasp the fact that the management practices left over from the Industrial Revolution are no longer up to the job.

If you’d like to read more about this study the reference is…reprint number 09206 from Strategy + Business issue 56, autumn 2009. And, as always, we would appreciate your feedback and comments.

When I first saw this video clip, it made me chuckle out loud.   Take a minute to view it before you continue reading:

How often do we find ourselves stuck?  And do we wait for someone to come and help us out of our fix?  Do we feel like we can’t take action without some direction?  In his new book, the New York Times author Adam Bryant describes five critical attributes that leaders bring to the table. These five attributes allow them to keep moving, to inspire others, and to take action even when it may not be clear in which direction to move (or if they can move at all).  Let’s review each of the attributes one at a time.

First, leaders have passionate curiosity. We often see leaders in a public arena, where they need to project an image of certainty, of success, of clear direction.   But leaders, whenever possible, ask probing questions, care about the lives and interests of others, share stories of success and failure, and never miss an opportunity to learn from others and to ask questions that may provide a unique solution to whatever they are discussing.   This passionate curiosity creates multiple options and pathways to “getting unstuck,” to taking action without the boundaries we often put on ourselves.

Great leaders also have both confidence and a way of keeping things simple.  Confidence doesn’t mean that the leader is always right or always knows the answer.  Rather, this leadership confidence means that they can take ownership of a failure, learn from previous experiences, and believe passionately in their ability to make the most of whatever comes next for them and their organizations.   When combined with confidence, keeping things simple means that leaders quickly create a focus or a plan.   As Bryant says, “…. Lose the ‘Power’ part of [the] presentations and simply get to the ‘Point’.” A leader’s ability to connect the dots in simple ways and get to the core point allows them to keep teams moving, laser focus on what is important, and turn an idea into action quickly.

Speaking of teams, good leaders aren’t just team players.  Exceptional leaders have what Bryant calls “team smarts.”  They understand how teams work, they have an uncanny ability to tease out great team players as they hire, they recognize what a team needs and figure out how to bring it to the table, and they know intuitively how to mobilize groups of people for success.

Last, great leaders learn how to take action when they are stuck. Remember the video clip we started with?  When faced with a problem, they are fearless.  A key component of great leadership is the ability to take a risk, to go beyond what is comfortable, to see an opportunity that others do not see, and to upset the status quo in order to move your organization forward.

To learn more about these five attributes, consider reading Bryant’s book, The Corner Office. And the next time you get stuck, consider having the curiosity, the confidence, and the fearlessness to take some action.   Keep it simple – and use the team around you in order to achieve success.

Which of these attributes do you consider to be your strongest?  With which do you struggle as a leader?

As I write this I’m living and working in New York City. Everywhere I look there is abundant wealth. Between investment bankers, hedge funds, luxury shopping, big negotiated deals, skyscrapers being bought and sold, all kinds of businesses buying all kinds of services, people feeling the need to buy to satisfy a variety of needs and wants. There is a lot of money flowing and being exchanged. One might say it’s an abundance of wealth. You also can liken it to the ocean. It’s big, bigger than you can naturally comprehend.

So how do you participate in the ocean of wealth flowing all around you? Can you see it, hear it and touch it? Do you know others who participate in it more than you do? Do you want more of that ocean of wealth to flow through you? After all, you really don’t keep money. You may work for money, it flows to you and your checking and savings account. But then you pay your bills, or you put it in investments held and used by others such as your bank or the stock market. You don’t really hold your money, you participate in the flow of your money. Perhaps you hide it under your mattress, but then it’s not working for you and it’s value diminishes. Other than hoarding, money is flowing and being exchanged for goods and services along the way.

I grew up on Long Island and went to the beach every day as a kid. I can visualize walking up to the waters edge and getting my toes tickled by the waves. I had a sand pail and could scoop up the water. Can you visualize this? I also had a shovel and a cup. I could dip the shovel and get a little water. The cup would hold more. The pail would hold even more. If you think of people in your life who remain poor, it’s similar to them walking up to the ocean’s edge with a shovel. They dip it into the ocean of abundance and they participate in the flow of money in a very small way. Others bring a cup. Still others bring a pail. And some bring a truck. So we see various levels of wealth.

Our wealth is dependent on the container we bring. What determines what container we bring? Our expectations of ourselves. There are countless stories of people with little money who have won the lottery only to lose everything within 3 years. Their self-concept was a like a shovel. It was filled to overflowing and because they didn’t change the size of their container, the water just overflowed and seeped back into  the sand. Then there are ‘rags to riches’ stories of immigrants or poor people who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and became multi-millionaires. They expanded their containers by expanding who they were and what their expectations were. Napoleon Hill wrote Think and Grow Rich after interviewing hundreds of people who expanded themselves by reading, strategizing with others who knew more, having wealthy mentors. They grew themselves so they could handle the flow of more wealth. They grew their own containers. Look at Donald Trump. He loses it all and then gains it all back. His container is big and he is used to having it be full. When it empties, it fills right back up again because that’s his expectation.

How can you grow your container so you can have more wealth flowing through you?

• It’s been said that you’re the average of the 3 people you spend the most time with. You will gravitate to the level of the people around you. For me I wanted my kids to go to elementary, intermediate and high schools where I knew they would be around other achieving college-bound students with caring parents. So we moved to an area where we could find that. It was my expectation and I sought it out. As a result my kids didn’t think twice about going to college. It was their expectation that they would get a college education and become productive in the world. In your own life you will have to stop spending so much time with people who think small, and spend more time with people who think bigger.
• You can read and listen to all the self-improvement materials you can handle. You can attend events and conferences meant to expand your thinking and awareness. The point of effectiveness is to really believe and apply them. Often a coach helps you internalize how it all applies to you, asks you deeper questions, helps you face the fear of change and giving up old paradigms and unproductive deep-seated beliefs, helps you discover the kernel of yourself that you can transport to a higher level of wealth, achievement and self-conscious living. I once worked with a young man who wasn’t very fond of networking and it was holding back his career. He had inherited from his father the attitude that going to events and meeting people at the same or higher wealth level was inauthentic and exploitative.  When we reframed it that all people who are networking were there to meet other people and grow their contacts for future business, then he would network at places where he would fit in easily (who all had the same size containers). Once he was invited to an event through his employer at the offices of President Clinton. Of course, people with lots of money and political clout were there as it was a fund raiser. He felt out of his element and on his way home had to stop at a local bar for a beer so he could feel more comfortable again. He wasn’t ready to have his container stretched. Since then we’ve stretched his self-image so that now he feels he belongs at higher profile events and he has gone to similar events comfortably.
• You can join a mastermind of people who are at the level you want to attain. You can breathe in the assumptions of success that come naturally to others and that you’re acclimatizing yourself to. You start to think like them and act like them and get included in the resources they share, the projects they do together. Before you know it you may be looking forward to the next group at an even higher level of wealth flow, expectation of success and container largesse. These groups might be formal or informal. But it will certainly have an effect on you, your perception of yourself and your expectations of what you deserve.

This is essentially what we call your container: what you feel you deserve and what you expect of yourself and those around you, what you seek because of your comfort level with that level of success and achievement. It’s true in wealth building, in education, in happiness, in self-awareness and conscious living. You get what you expect. If your container is small, when you dip it into the ocean of wealth, you will get a small amount. If your container is larger, you will get a large amount. The size of the ocean doesn’t change. It’s there for anybody. If you pull up a tanker truck to the ocean and put your hose in and pump the ocean water into the truck and fill it to capacity, you certainly participate in the flow of wealth in a much bigger way. Have you made the ocean smaller even by taking a lot? No, because it’s just flowing through you. Does the size of your container make a difference in your life? Certainly. Can you choose to upgrade the size of your container? Certainly, but only if you want it at the deepest level, and you are willing to change, giving up the known past to move into the unknown future.

Please comment on the changes you’ve had to make to participate more fully in the flow of wealth.

What is your state of mind as your reading this?
Are you tired? Energized? Frustrated? Confident? Bored…I hope not!

Our state of mind changes dozens of times throughout the day; a boring meeting, a difficult phone call, an accepted offer, a misunderstanding with a demanding client. We know that all of these things affect our state and, as a result, our performance. But, do we understand how it affects our co-workers and staff?

As a leader, you can’t afford to let your state manage you; you need to manage your state instead. Teams tend to mirror, and even magnify, the emotions of their leader…positive and negative. If you’re confident about a situation, they’ll trust things will work out. If you’re worried about business performance, they’ll fear for their jobs and business will suffer.

Managing your state is not always easy. After all, we’re human and have a right to be angry, frustrated or worried. My rule is that I’m allowed to get emotional about a situation for 5 minutes, behind closed doors. Then I take a deep breath and change my state. Here are some of the ways I’ve learned to change my state:

• Smile – Sounds silly but it works. The next time you’re in a negative state, take a deep breath and smile real big. You’ll notice a change in state almost immediately.

• Be Thankful - Think about all the things you could be thankful for; family, friends, home, situations, etc. Being thankful will help you to forget the problem of the moment and take a longer term view.

• Ask The Right Questions – “Why me?” is the wrong question. Asking negative questions makes matters worse by causing you to dwell, unproductively, on the problem. “How can we achieve this goal regardless of the issues?” is the right question. A positive question will lead to productive, creative answers.

• Pick a Song - After a very difficult situation with an employee last week, I was incredibly frustrated. Five minutes after one of my favorite songs, I was a different person. Pick songs that “pick you up” and use them as medicine for the mind.

• Take a walk – Taking a long walk allows my mind to slow down. It relieves the stress and I, almost always, come back from my walk with a new idea.

Learn to manage your state and you’ll be surprised at the result in your own productivity as well as your teams.

What ideas do you have for managing your state? I’d love to hear them.

We’ve just celebrated St. Patrick’s Day. Some of us like to celebrate it all year long no matter what color the beer is. Leprechauns, shamrocks, pots of gold and the luck of the Irish are all part of the folklore surrounding this holiday. Let’s talk about luck.

Some people appear very lucky. Opportunities fall into their laps. They ‘just’ happen to meet the right people who take a liking to them and give their careers a boost (example 1). Or the entrepreneur coincidentally runs into someone who wants to produce a show about them and give them free PR (example 2).  Or the right person just stops in, gets hired and turns out to be the best employee (example 3).

Is this really just happenstance? Let’s look more closely at luck. The saying often goes that ‘luck is where preparation meets opportunity.’ Certainly if the individuals in the above examples had not been in their positions, they would not have been ‘ripe’ for the happenstance that occurred to them. I would even say that if the person hadn’t been prepared, the occurrence would not have even been recognized as an opportunity. Let’s look at a few elements of this.

Barbara Fredrickson is the author of the book Positivity. She has worked and researched in the field of positive psychology for over 10 years, since it was first developed. We often think of psychology like the medical model, fix the body when it breaks. On the other hand positive psychology is more like wellness. How can we create states of happiness and mental well being? In the research that she has performed those who were trained to think positive thoughts on a 3 to 1 ratio over negative thoughts, lived a more ‘flourishing life’. They not only were happier, they attracted more opportunities for what they desired. This makes sense. Don’t you like to do more and go out of your way for positive people? Doesn’t honey attract more bees than vinegar? Why wouldn’t someone take a liking to you and want to give you the gift of a career boost if you make his day a better day every time you meet (example 1).

Secondly, there is power in intention. Did you ever buy a car and then start noticing all the same models on the road that you never noticed before? If you set a defined goal and focus on achieving the action steps leading to the completion of that goal, you become like an icebreaker plowing through the icebergs and creating momentum as you go. A business leader who has passion for her big ‘why’, the reason she wants to be in business, talks about her mission and draws to her others who feel the same way, who admire her energy and dedication, and who want to help. (example #2)

Some things that appear to be luck are just unrecognized capability. In example #3, where a ‘drop-in’ becomes a great employee, who is really responsible for that person becoming a great employee? It could easily have turned out badly if that employee had been belittled, micromanaged, unchallenged, and denied opportunities to excel in alignment with his best talents. Instead the manager most likely placed him in the right role, encouraged him to train and excel in alignment with his strengths, let him develop a sense of mastery and freedom in his role and motivated him toward a greater purpose or company vision. It wasn’t luck. The manager unconsciously set it up that way and didn’t even realize it.

What do these 3 examples mean for us in our work situations? We have choice. We have more control over our destinies than the ‘luck of the Irish’. First, we can train ourselves to be positive and appreciative and improve our outlook. It’s like a muscle. The more we exercise it, the stronger and more consistent it becomes. Secondly, we can set goals, put intentions and passions out into the world and attract others who want to help us and join us. Isn’t that a big part of leadership, earning the trust and devotion of followers?  Leadership is a skill that can be developed. Thirdly, we can look at our relationships with others to bring out their best. We can adjust our behaviors to draw out the best in others to create the best working environment. When we choose to run our businesses and live our personal and professional lives with conscious awareness of these choices and their potential opportunities, it can lead to more ‘luck’ than any pot of gold, leprechaun or shamrock can provide.

Do you have a comment or example that you can add? We’d love to have your thoughts.

In honor of the New Year and new intentions, let’s talk about a word we probably all use frequently—it’s a very powerful word, but not in the way you might think.   It’s the word TRY. How often do we use that word in the context of something we are doing, a goal we are setting, an objective we are reaching for?  It’s hard to even write that last sentence without using “try,” as in “something we are trying to do, an objective we are trying to achieve.”

“Try” has become part of our vocabulary, but it limits our abilities to focus on a goal and commit completely to achieving something. As a way to illustrate this, let’s do a quick activity.  If you are sitting down, stand up.  Are you standing?  Now … try to sit back down.  No, don’t sit down, TRY to sit down.  How did that work?  What do you notice?   The bottom line:  You can’t try to sit down – you either sit down or you don’t.

Is that same principle not also true of goals or something we set our minds to – that we either do them or we don’t? We either accomplish or don’t accomplish what we set out to do.  In a take-off from what Tom Hanks said in the movie League of Our Own, “there’s no trying in life.”  (Well, he actually said, “there’s no crying in baseball,” but you get the point!)

The point is that you can’t try to achieve whatever you set out to achieve – ultimately, you either achieve it or you don’t.  Consider how often we either hear others say “try” or we say “try” ourselves.   How much more powerful and accomplished might we be if we took that pesky three-letter word out of our vocabulary?  Here are some examples across a wide spectrum of areas:

• Your kids: from “Yes, Mom, I’ll try to get my homework done before dinner,” … to … “Yes, Mom, I’ll get my homework done before dinner.”
• In a meeting at your workplace: from “I’ll try to talk with them about the project,” … to … “I’ll talk with them about the project.”
• With your wife/husband/significant other: from “Let’s try to spend more time together on the weekends,” … to … “Let’s spend more time together on the weekends.”
• In your life: from “I’m trying to exercise three times a week,” … to … “I am exercising three times a week.”

Do you notice the difference in how the statements above sound when the word try is in them or not in them?

So, here is your challenge: For the next week, don’t just try to do whatever you are focused on – do it without the “try” in your sentence.  Catch others in the act too – have them try to sit down to illustrate your point.  And as always, let me know how it goes!

John Assaraf has been a leader in understanding how to use the most recent brain research to retrain the brain to work in our favor in creating health, wealth, and happy relationships. Since appearing in the Secret, he’s been a featured writer, speaker and thought leader.

This video is a great explanation of how our inner attitudes and habits influence our behavior. He talks about the parts of the brain that hold us back and how we can override ‘past programming’ and be drawn into a future that we envision. This is exactly the process I use with business owners and their staff to transform and up-level the organization into a new level of performance. Both John and I include extensive work on goals, repetition, affirmations, positivity, action and focusing on the things you want to bring into your business and life. Focusing on problems, scarcity of resources, and negativity just brings more of it into your life.

Click the image to see the video:

I hope you enjoy this video. It could offer a major turning point in how you take control of your thoughts and emotions to lead a more fulfilling life.

Four Frequent Business Problems Expressed by Many Small Business Owners that Business Coaches Help You Address

As you’re reading through the following problems, think about how help with strategy, tactics, accountability and results could mitigate these problems.

The ‘I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know’ Problem
The ‘I Don’t Know Where to Start’ Problem
The ‘I Can’t Seem To Get Anything Finished’ Problem
The ‘Comfort Zone Upper Limit’ Problem

It doesn’t matter if it appears to be marketing, sales, management, leadership, innovation, or getting your product or service created and into the hands of your clients. It’s basically these 4 problems.

The ‘I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know’ Problem

If you ask better questions, you get better answers. But what if you don’t know the questions to ask? For instance: How can you make emails easier if you don’t know that autoresponders exist? How do you know how you can be part of a more appropriate networking group, if nobody has told you who to ask or even if one exists? How can you create a great proposal template if you haven’t had the benefit of seeing some options in use elsewhere?

If you look at all knowledge as an ever expanding universe, you know about a pinprick of it. You know that you don’t know about a thimbleful. (You know that Chinese exists, even though you don’t know how to speak it.) But that leaves the rest of the universe of knowledge that you don’t know that you don’t know. We need someone outside ourselves to share what they know that we didn’t even know to ask about.

The ‘I Don’t Know Where To Start’ Problem

Sometimes I’ll have a client who says I have to do this and I have to do that and then she adds about a dozen more things, gets totally overwhelmed with the work, the choices, the mounting dollars she imagines it’s all going to cost, and then says ‘I want to escape and do nothing’. She doesn’t know where to start, how to take things in small pieces in sequential order (even though it’s not clearly sequential), put one foot in front of the other until more and more gets done. She doesn’t remember to keep the long term goal out in front of her, remember her purpose and passion and why it’s all worthwhile.

This client needs a coach to ask ‘what is the next step? Let’s just do the next step.’ For instance, get a focus group together and ask questions about your marketing or your service, then write it up in language the prospect uses, then use that wording to write the website, then create a video using the same wording, and then build it into a seminar. Often the chicken and egg syndrome can throw some people for a loop until they just get started. A coach gets the process started and nurtures you along the way.

The ‘I Can’t Seem To Get Anything Finished’ Problem

Accountability is a big word in most people’s vocabulary. We all get distracted. There is so much to pay attention to, emails, customer requests, website updates, banking, deadlines for this and for that. Do you start a project, get distracted by a client emergency and then never get back to it? So something is half done and never really sees the light of day. All the effort you’ve put into it so far is wasted if you never roll it out. How often do you put a lesser priority on strategy, growth and proactive initiatives? That’s what will propel your business forward. If you’re working with a business coach, you’ll be held accountable for what will really get you to the next level.

The Comfort Zone Upper Limit Problem

Why is it that people who win large amounts of money in the lottery blow it all in 3 years or less? Why is it that Donald Trump can go into bankruptcy and then get it all back in just a few years? Why do small business owners hit a ceiling no matter how hard they try to get to the next level? Why do highly paid pro basketball players seem to have everything and then blow it with drugs and crime? We all have comfort zones, levels of success that we’re used to, levels of abundance that we think we deserve before we start feeling guilty or undeserving (and then psychologically self-sabotage). Often these are set in childhood. Sometimes we can handle just so much positivity in our lives and then we start to worry what will go wrong, or start arguing or start blaming? We’ve identified an upper limit (most often unconsciously) above which good thoughts turn to bad thoughts and bad thoughts lead to negative behavior. Sometimes deep inside we don’t feel we deserve too much success because we’re fundamentally flawed, or because we would be disloyal to the less successful people in our lives, or we believe more success would mean a bigger burden, or we can’t outshine a sibling, friend or parent. Whatever the barrier, we set an upper limit. We need someone outside ourselves to understand us, question us and look at us objectively. (Read more about this in ‘The Big Leap’ by Gay Hendricks)

I mentioned Strategy, Tactics, Accountability and Results because these are the pillars of the STAR Burst program that I’m currently rolling out. Now is a good time to start planning for 2011. It’s a good time to get help with the Four Frequent Business Problems. Please look at the program description on the side column to read the stories of people who have achieved great things using me as their business coach. Send me an email for a conversation or give me a call to find out if this is right for you.

Jim has to make a decision. Tom is on the accounting team Jim supervises. Tom is a likeable person and he does his job fairly well. However, lately he’s been coming in late, taking long lunches, and being rather unfocused. He’s taking a long time to get regular  work done. How should Jim talk to Tom?

Sarah is a leader in her organization. She is responsible for getting this project done. She has six other people that she is pulling together. She wants to get it done. She’s ready to dive right in, delegate the work, set up deadlines. But she realizes the value of team ownership of the project and wants the other members to contribute to the process of setting up the project as well as accomplishing the project. But they are dragging their feet, talking about it forever, and not coming to practical decision points fast enough.  How should Sarah handle this situation?

Allen is a consultant. He’s working one-on-one with his client. The client wants to solve a problem one way, but Allen knows that’s not the most efficient way. The client’s solution will work and there might be some advantages to the people in his company. But Allen feels it’s not the most efficient way or the way that costs less. Should Allen go with the client’s preferences and priorities or insist on his way?

Jim, Sarah and Allen have their own decision making styles. They will be better managers if they understand their own styles and can understand the decision making styles of those around them. Jim can either come down hard on Tom because he’s not fulfilling his job description, empathetically ask if Tom has a problem, or set practical standards for performance because the client’s work has to be completed on time. Sarah can do the set up herself not getting the team’s buy-in, be practical with them about the project’s timeline, be impatient that nothing is happening, or understand that others may need more time to discuss it. Allen can insist that the client do it his way or he can be sensitive to the client’s decision making process and the client’s priorities.

Three Decision Making Dimensions

Much research has been done on how people make decisions over the last 60 years. The most influential work was done by Dr. Robert Hartman a triple PhD from Yale and MIT who worked in the fields of psychology, math and philosophy. He showed that people have masters and blind spots along three scales.

• Empathy – feeling for people, their uniqueness and humanness

• Practicality – the most efficient and least costly way to get something accomplished

• Systems – the way things should be, measured in comparison to the true perfect way

Here’s a better way to understand it. Imagine 3 people sitting at a table with each one a pure form of each of the three scales. (of course, in reality we’re all a mix) On the table sits a project. The Systems person will say, “Let’s study this and figure out all the steps. Let’s analyze it first. Then we’ll get started.” The Practical person says, “No, that wastes time. Let’s just do it. We’ll figure it out as we go.” The Empathetic person says, ‘Both of you have really missed the boat. What’s important here is how we work together and the relationships we develop with each other while doing the project.”

In the World of Big and Small Business

Do we see this in the business world? Sure, how about with small businesses? The bankers and investors want to see a detailed business plan before they make a decision. They want to analyze before they take any risk. They are true systems people. The practical entrepreneur, on the other hand, just wants to get started and figure it out as he goes. The classic example of ‘Ready, aim, fire’ vs. ‘Ready, fire, aim’ The empathetic business owner is totally out of this loop, calling his business a ‘practice’ and not really applying business growth principles or ways of thinking.

In larger companies quite often the CEO is a practical person focused on action, efficiency and what works. No wonder it’s hard to really convince him that his people are his main asset and that HR people deserve a seat at the executive table. He’s so focused on profits that the HR industry has had to use the phrase ‘human capital management’ to create a handle that a practical person will give validity to. And Enron is a perfect example where profits and efficiency took precedence over values, ethics and the perfect world view of the systemic thinker.

Jim has choices about how he talks to Tom.

• empathetically ask Tom if he has a problem and be open to listen
• practically tell him that he’s got to get his work done so the firm can get paid
• systemically tell him about he needs to do to fulfill his job description

Sarah appears to be very practical. She wants to dive right in. Her team appears to be very systemic. If she understands this she can:

• give them more time with a definite deadline as she realizes the team buy-in is good for the project long term
• ask to have some more practical people put on the team as this will be become a pattern she won’t want to see repeatedly

Allen appears to be very practical. His client seems very concerned about his people and so is probably highly empathetic. If he understands the client’s decision making process, he can:

• present the client with the choice and the probable consequences and go with the client’s thinking
• just let the client lead him as the client is so definite with his decision

What about you?

• Are your decisions more empathetic, practical or systemic?

• Are you so highly systemic that you have blind spots about practicality and people’s feelings?

• If you are highly practical and work with colleagues or clients who are more empathetic or systemic, do you get frustrated because others don’t think like you do?

• How can a team leader pull together a team where everyone has different masters and blind spots so much so that people don’t see eye to eye?

• Can a team that is widely divergent make better team decisions because they make up for each other’s masters and blind spots?

• Do you want to purposely put together practical people to get a special project done fast?

• If you unwittingly choose only systemic people, do you run the risk that the project might get stuck in analysis paralysis? How much money does that waste?

• If you’re looking to engineer great customer experiences, do you want to put your most empathetic people on the front line? How much more profit can you generate from additional customer loyalty because you provide a great people-to-people experience for your clients?

• What if you clearly are strong in one decision making master but you prefer another?

Socrates says all knowledge is self-knowledge.

Certainly we see the world through our own colored glasses. Our perceptions shape what we claim to be reality. The Attribute Index is an assessment that I administer so you can learn about your decision making masters and blind spots. People who know their strengths and set themselves up for success lead personally and professional successful lives. If you’d like to learn more, please feel free to contact me.

Meanwhile please please a comment. How do you make decisions?

I was running late for an appointment last week and jumped into my car and turned the key. The nice smooth sound of ignition I was so used to hearing was replaced by the horrible grinding sound of an engine just about to turnover. I kept turning the key thinking that by some miracle it would stop the grinding noise and just start. Instead it drained what was left in the battery and silence followed. I was dead in the water.

How many times have you found yourself ready to go but unable to move. You lack the spark and or energy to move forward. Where did it go? You might have started out on your goal, journey or project with plenty of good intentions but for whatever reason it dissipated or just stopped. As a student of human behavior and a Business Coach I am brutally aware of the difficulty of keeping ourselves motivated to get to where we want to go.

Do These Work?

The traditional motivation methods most of us have experienced are motivation by incentive or fear. The boss tries to scare you into action by threats that range from firing to demotion. The next day in a change of heart the boss offers you the promise of bonuses, promotion or equity if you achieve the goal. Clearly both can have an impact, and often do, but the results are usually short term at best. Threats lose their veracity if they are never acted on. Incentives are only effective if you believe the goal is achievable but lose their long term impact once achieved. Neither approach has a long lasting motivational impact. So what is one to do if you want to change or achieve a difficult goal but can’t seem to stay motivated to do what is necessary to get to your destination?

Find Out What Excites You

I believe part of the answer is in finding what sparks us or excites us. If you can discover what you are passionate about and harness that passion you can access an unlimited battery of inspiration energy to keep you motivated and moving forward. Discovering your passion can be difficult since most of us have followed the career scripts provided to us by well meaning parents, educators and society.

• A simple way to start would be to list all the activities you do in your present job that you enjoy doing and are good at.
• The next step would be to ask your peers, friends, clients and family what they think your greatest strengths are.  You should get some clarity on what you are passionate about and what truly motivates you.
• Finally, a good book that gives some insight to the power of connecting your passion to business is “Crush It!” by Gary Vaynerchuk

Aligning your passion with the behaviors necessary to convert that passion into results assures you a consistent spark that will keep your motor running!

Please offer your comments on what you do to sustain your motivation, spark your energy and keep yourself moving forward every day.

An executive recently lamented that she and her company had far too many projects going on. All of them were important, she said, but insufficient progress was being made on most. In fact, she described her company as being “very good at getting things 80% done!” “Why can’t we ever complete anything?” she asked me.

This isn’t the first time that I have heard a business owner or leader talk about this struggle. Often the situation gets oversimplified as “too much to do and not enough time or people to do it”, which seems like an impossible problem to address…so many times it is merely ignored. Frequently, however, this problem is the result of a less obvious issue: a lack of focus by the company’s leaders.

The Power of Focus

A wise person once said that if you chase two rabbits, both will escape. The same holds true in business as many companies have too many items on their ‘To Do’ list. This lack of prioritization and focus leads to poor results. According to a Pricewaterhouse Coopers survey of 200 companies in 30 countries, only 2.5% of these companies had 100% of their projects come in on time, within budget, to scope, and delivering the right business benefits. This study demonstrates that 97.5% of the time we get it wrong in some way… and prioritizing can help. Just as focus and concentration allow your mind to function more effectively, prioritization allows businesses to achieve greater results.

“Doing Less”

Prioritizing can seem especially difficult when all projects seem important. But this is precisely when it can yield the best results. An oft-missing element in prioritizing is a process in which employees have confidence; one by which initiatives can be compared to determine their relative importance to the business. A fairly simple process is to plot each initiative on the following 4-quadrant chart:

• Initiatives landing in the upper left (high benefit, low cost) are “winners”…do it now.
• Initiatives landing in the lower right (low benefit, high cost) are “losers”…dump it
• Initiatives landing in the upper right (high benefit, high cost) need or require a return on investment (ROI) analysis to determine if and when to move forward
• Initiatives landing in the lower left (low benefit, low cost) are prioritized based on “gut feel”

Another fairly simple and more measurable process is to:

1. Identify the key criteria to be used for judging each project (6 to 10 criteria may be an appropriate number)
2. Weight each criterion based on its level of impact on key business goals
3. Evaluate and score each project against those (same) key criteria
4. Compare the scores of the projects to one another
5. Select the highest-scoring projects

Doing both processes in an executive management team (perhaps the Prioritization Quadrant silently and the Measurable Process as an interactive exercise) can bring out everyone’s ideas and help form consensus on moving forward. The selected projects then will be of highest importance and will have the muscle of management focus. Their advancement and completion should have the greatest positive impact on the business.

Leading More

To get the best results from prioritizing, strong leadership is required to ensure that:

• All projects are included in the evaluation and that there are no “sacred cows.”
• Personalities, politics and quests for power are not allowed to influence the process.
• The negative effects of existing paradigms and “busy as usual” are minimized.
• Employees are inspired to participate, buy into the importance of this work, and trust the process to provide valid outcomes.
• The outcomes are followed through on and resources are properly allocated to the “critical few” most important projects.
• Prioritization is not viewed as a “one and done” activity. It needs to be part of the business’ standard operating process and performed on a regular basis.

Difficult challenges and decisions will be faced during this process, especially if focus and prioritizing are not core competencies. Elbert Hubbard said that “It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.” One way that leaders can help achieve greater results is by having and instilling the discipline to focus on a few, critical projects instead of trying to do everything all at once.

In Jack Canfield’s book, The Success Principles, he tells the story of a seminar where he held a $100 bill in the air and asked the audience, “Who wants this $100 bill?”

Almost everyone raised their hands, dozens of people shouted “I’ll take it!” and many more stood up and cheered. This went on for a while, but Jack just stood there and waited. Finally, someone ran up and took the $100 bill right out of his hands.  Everyone else wanted the money, but no one else had the guts to take the necessary action.

When Jack asked the audience why they didn’t do what the one lucky audience member did, most said they thought about it but didn’t have the guts to do it. Fear held them back. Some of the reasons they gave him were:

• I was afraid I might be doing something wrong and then people would judge me or laugh at me
• I wasn’t sure you’d really give it to me
• I didn’t want to look greedy
• I didn’t want to look like I wanted it that badly
• I was too far back in the room
• I was waiting for further instructions

What’s interesting is that these are the same fears that stop us from reaching our goals in our own lives. What actions should you be taking in your business or your life that you’re NOT because of fear?

Let’s face it, there’s a lot to be fearful of these days.  Fear is natural. We all feel it. The difference between incredibly successful, fulfilled people and everyone else is how they react to that fear.

Some respond to fear by worrying, stressing out, excessively planning every thought and action. The effect is paralysis in our business and our lives.  Often times, this paralysis causes our worst fears to come true.

Others respond to fear by using it as motivation to take action. While many have the “ready, aim, fire” philosophy, some realize that the best way to hit a target is to fire first, see where the bullet lands, and then adjust your aim and fire again (ready, fire, aim). Very quickly, you’re hitting the target.

A great way to think of fear is to use the acronym, False Expectations Appearing Real.

What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail?

Here’s an idea…

Set a goal to do one courageous thing every week.

• Call that prospect you’ve been afraid to call
• Confront that co-worker you’ve been afraid to confront
• Take a stand on an important issue
• Start that new business you’ve been afraid to start
• Start writing that book you’ve been meaning to write

Turn your fear into action by doing one courageous thing every week. You’ll be amazed at what your business and your life looks like at the end of the year.

What courageous action have you done lately? Share an example so that we can all learn from each other. Your comments are welcome.

We’re coming into the fall get-busy-again season which means a renewed effort at meeting new prospects and strategic partners. In a previous post  we listed the 10 Commandments of Networking. Here are some more tips that can help make your networking efforts more successful.

- Wear something that makes you stand out, still business like and very professional, but something unique that others will remember when you follow up. “Remember me. I was wearing the oriental jacket” or “the jazzy tie.”

- Make sure you have two pockets, one for your own cards, and one for the cards you receive.

- Eat before you go. It’s too difficult to manage a drink and a plate and exchanging cards and shaking hands. You’re there for a purpose. Focus on it.

- Adjust your attitude before going in. Read things that motivate you and are empowering. Listen to music that pumps you up. Think about how people need what you have to offer.

- Go early. Ask to help. You’ll get to see the attendee list and focus on who you want to meet. You’ll ingratiate yourself to the organizer and s/he will introduce you to people you ask about.

- Watch the way you stand. If you want to talk to someone without interruptions, face him/her directly. If you want a third person to join you, face the other person diagonally and leave room for the third to join. Create an open space that acts as an invitation.

- Have a short (less than ten words) framing statement that answers the proverbial question “What do you do?”  Make it results oriented so people are forced to ask other questions like, “How do you do that?” Make your answer short. Make it about them, not about you. Ask, “What would be a good referral for you?” “What’s your specialty?” “What geographic areas do you serve?” Prepare your questions and practice.

-  Remember, it’s net-work, not net-sit. No sitting allowed. Move around.

- You are there to gather information, not to sell. Selling will fall on deaf ears.

- It’s not who talks… It’s who listens. You have two ears and only one mouth for a reason.

- If you go with an associate, split up and work the room separately for double the results.

- Greet people and introduce them to others, find a “wall flower” and shepherd him/her around the room. You’ve just made a friend for life.

- Put your name tag on your right lapel, directly in the line of sight when someone shakes your hand.

Have some other tips you would like to share with us? Please leave a comment on what has worked well for you.

Are you the kind of person who likes to get away? Get away from big city noise and traffic and crowded sidewalks? Get away from a series of appointments and emails and the pressures of a normal workday?

Would you really like to do more planning and evaluating, but never seem to find the time? Mostly, because there are interruptions: people and phones and emails and the running dialog of stuff to do going on in your head all the time. And a half hour here and there wouldn’t cut it even if you found it in your schedule, because it’s not enough time to focus and get your brain wrapped around the planning and evaluating you want to do.

And even if you made the time and forced yourself to focus, you’d be talking to yourself. You know what you know. You don’t know what you don’t know. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to offer a different perspective, offer feedback, show another path – maybe an easier path to the same objective. Wouldn’t it be nice just to relax, lay your cards out on the table and see what new answers you can come up with?

How about your team? Do you have people who are influential in your business, whether partners, high level employees, virtual assistants, key clients, whose opinions you value, but you never seem to have a long conversation to get the benefits of their input? And if they had a voice in helping to create or enhance your company’s strategies, wouldn’t they be more motivated to help accomplish them?

These are the main reasons business owners schedule retreats:

• getting away to a relaxed setting
• evaluation and planning, a chance to stop and determine strategy
• a day or two devoted to nothing else but focusing on the issue at hand
• bringing together input from pivotal players to make the evaluation and planning meaningful and doable
• helping the participants get to know each other in different ways and enhance communication
• involving a facilitator/coach/consultant who can offer objective feedback, make sure all participants get heard, keep the discussion focused, offer alternative strategies, and steer the group toward an actionable plan

There are lots of ways to structure a retreat. Including some fun activities in between sessions is usually a great idea. Incorporating rest and individual refection time enhances the experience. Time can be scheduled for breaking into pairs to come up with specific solutions or scenarios, as well as debrief time with the whole group. Facilitated interactive activities allow people to have experiences which drive home learning.

If this sounds good, we can help you plan your retreat. Have you been on a business retreat? Please tell us a high point and a low point of your retreat so we can all learn what to include and what to avoid.

Affirmations are powerful statements you tell yourself to move yourself into a positive reality, statements that you know at other times to be true, statements that empower you to bring out your best when you get into dangerous territory of thinking about the negative.

We all experience things that seek to destroy our motivation, setbacks when circumstances don’t go as expected, a prospect that decides not to move forward, a personal injury or family emergency that forces us to take time out, a negative comment that causes some of our underlying fears to surface.

We have a choice. We can play tapes in our heads that give into that emotional distress and put us in victim mode. Or we can play different tapes, ones that are uplifting, empowering, inspiring, confirming our value to ourselves and to others.

Here’s a fun video about a young girl who knows how to think positive.

This week and next we’re highlighting marketing as a part of the release of a new coaching group. Going forward in your marketing is like going forward in most everything. If you believe you can, you will. If it’s part of your comfort zone, you will do it easily. You will make time for the marketing activities. If you believe you deserve the rewards, then you will gravitate to them. And there is the crucial element. So often we feel blocked from success. We feel it’s just out of reach. We try and we work hard. But we stay stuck. Do you feel like you truly deserve the success you seek? Let’s break that down into a number of questions that might highlight contributing factors to the resistance many of us feel.

The ‘hard work’ mentality. Were you raised to believe that everything, or at least anything worthwhile, would require hard work? Therefore, you now feel that nothing can be achieved without hard work? If something doesn’t require hard work, then you haven’t earned it and don’t deserve it. Therefore, you must work hard (whether or not it’s really needed) just to justify to yourself that you’re entitled to the rewards. Without the hard work, you don’t deserve the success. All you need to do is look at someone who wasn’t raised this way (many of the millennials – people under thirty who achieve quite a lot effortlessly such as Tim Ferris, author of the 4 Hour Work Week)

No clear vision mentality. When a prospect or client says he feels blocked from the success he seeks, I ask him, “If you were to achieve success, what would your day five years from now look like? Take yourself through a day from morning til evening. Describe it in detail.” People have the hardest time putting themselves into the picture of a successful future. They don’t think it can be real and so they can’t envision it. They are afraid of wishing for too much. The more real you can make it for yourself, the more attracted you can be to the success that creates it. You create a comfort zone with achieving success so it comes about more naturally. Your future may not turn out as you describe. It may turn out better or different. But without you having a big enough dream with real details, you can’t move into it.

The silver bullet mentality. Many individuals think “if I could find the one thing that’s holding me back, then everything would turn around.” They are looking for the one paradigm shift, the one mental button to push, the one attitudinal habit left over from childhood that needs to be changed. Asking the right questions really helps to find the sources of resistance. But overcoming the blockages takes gradual change, shifting attitudes so you feel like you deserve the success, putting one foot in front of the other through goal setting and achievement, and getting used to functioning at increasingly higher levels of success. Do you reach a tipping point where the critical mass of your accomplishments all comes together? Yes, if you get out of your own way.

‘I have to do it myself’ mentality. Some people call this the ‘solo entrepreneur mindset’ or the ‘pioneer spirit’. It’s the attitude that you can create anything and control the future by yourself. It really is a control and trust issue. Success rarely if ever is achieved by one person working in isolation. It’s been shown over and over in books galore written about successful people. They relied on others. They succeeded as a team. They shared their resources and grew together. They pooled their ideas and supported each other’s moral. They challenged each other to raise the bar, think bigger, go for the gold. That shared energy, created momentum and made achievement more fun. They created accountability to each other. If you’re not part of a mastermind group, have an accountability partner, have a coach, use someone that you trust to help you such as an assistant, then you are sabotaging yourself and keeping yourself at a small level. People think, I can’t afford an assistant. Perhaps you should think, ‘If I want success, I can’t afford not to have an assistant.’

Successful marketing is all about knowing what to do and then doing it. If you’re not seeking out answers about what to do and then committing the time and energy to get those activities done, then check your attitudes about deserving success. They are getting in your way.

You can learn more about the ‘Magnified Marketing Multiplies My Money’ coaching program by signing up for a teleclass that will tell you all about it. You can listen to the recording if the timing doesn’t work with your schedule. The steps leading to success will be presented here on a silver platter. If you don’t take advantage, is it because you feel you don’t deserve success? www.drivingir.com/get-more-clients

Happy Independence Day! When I meet a coaching prospect, we talk about their goals. We keep talking until we get to the core. We peel back the superficial layers, like peeling away the layers of an onion. Eventually we get to the inner issues. What are they? People want freedom, financial freedom, freedom from stress about money, health, tension, boredom, pressure. They want options and the wisdom to choose and use the options wisely.

Of course, with freedom comes responsibility. We learned that in American history. If you want an American revolution, if you want to have freedom from taxes on your tea, you then have to run the country yourself. If you want choices, then you have to take responsibility for the choices you make. If you take the responsibility, then you deserve the freedom. Hence no ‘taxation without representation’. Our Independence Day holiday is a reminder of all that we hold dear nationally, our individual freedoms that we fight wars to maintain.

But what about some other freedoms? We get caught in habits, auto pilot types of reactions to situations, somebody pushing our buttons, entrapments of our own self-limitations of how little value we think we can  accomplish in the world, ideas about how much or how little we deserve, chips on our shoulders that cause us to think small or play the victim. What about these examples of loss of freedom? They happen in both our professional and personal lives.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

• If you are way too heavy, are you giving yourself the freedom to live a longer, higher quality, energy rich, healthy life?
• If you’re stuck in a job you don’t like, are you giving yourself the freedom to be happy, engaged, productive and developing your true potential?If you have conflicts with a loved one, are you giving yourself the freedom to live a harmonious life surrounded by love rather than conflict?
• If you have undeveloped talents and passions that you’re afraid to uncover, are you giving yourself the freedom to live the adventure of true authenticity and ease?

My mother always said, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way.’ ‘If you can’t find a door, open a window’. The way to independence may not be easy,(i.e. American Revolution) but if you’re committed to true independence, you will find a way to make it happen, people who can help, passion to motivate yourself and others. That’s the responsibility part. That’s when you’re truly independent and not marching to someone else’s drum.

Will you abdicate your freedom or take responsibility to create the life of freedom that you deserve? Please leave your comments about personal freedom and independence as we celebrate our national independence day. Thanks. Enjoy!

Salespeople are motivated by several things, money and what money will buy, pride and accomplishment, status in the eyes of others.

But the best salespeople, the ones whose customers keep coming back, realize that selling is about using their skills to make people happy, bringing value to people to make their lives better. The best salespeople want the best for their clients helping them buy what is truly in the buyer’s best interest.

If you’re a salesperson, you know that keeping yourself full of confidence each day is tough. Life happens. Yet if you don’t walk into every sales meeting with a very up-attitude, full of self-confidence and a positive outlook, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. So how can you prep your attitude, remind yourself of the benefit you can bring to your prospect, and get yourself pumped up for the meeting?

Many successful people use self-talk, telling yourself things that make you feel confident, in touch with your motivation, in line with your life purpose. I suggest that there are two kinds of self-talk and they are both necessary: Head-talk and Heart-talk. Head talk is when you tell yourself words. You comprehend the words intellectually. They make sense to you because they are your words. Heart-talk is when you let words and concepts turn into feelings. You might use the same words, but you feel them as experiences and you call up the feelings you felt the last time you were in the same situation. Heart-talk is more powerful than head-talk.

Here is something that I use at the beginning of every day.

“Who Can I Reach Today?”

The whole sentence has meaning for me in that as a business and executive coach I really believe I can help my client and that she deserves to have me in her life. And then each word has meaning and calls up experiences for me. The head-talk just sounds like some regular short words. But the heart-talk is powerful.

Who – My prospect is a person, an individual just like me with thoughts, feelings, pride and insecurities. I respect her and want the best for her. I believe in her talent, individuality and ability to make choices that are in her best interest.

Can – Yes, I ‘can.’ I can be anything I want to create myself to be. I can win over this client. I can be a winner, just like I was with  (name other clients who are very loyal and who you really like. Picture them. Feel the fulfilling feeling that I feel when my work with them is successful.)

I – I am powerful. I am my core values and my long term vision. I am my dreams and aspirations. I am everything I’ve experienced in my life. I can not be a help to someone else if I don’t feel strong and capable. People depend on me and I can come through for them because I know who I am at the center of my being. I am capable and what I offer is of value. I don’t have to tell people about my strength. If I sense it, they will sense it. I picture and feel a strong but flexible core spine deep inside my body surrounded by strong muscles.

Reach – Reaching is an action word and nothing happens til I do an action. Reaching out beyond myself, extending out from my core to touch someone at his core is what I’m all about. It gives my life meaning and is in line with my life purpose. When I think about this, I feel my muscles stretch out to touch someone just beyond my reach. I make it a kinesthetic experience. As a dancer that is very meaningful to me.

Today – Right now, not yesterday or tomorrow. I can’t control the past and the future depends on today. So there’s no putting things off. The current moment is my action point, my decision point, my point of creation. I once heard a speech by Lou Holtz (Notre Dame football coach). He stressed asking his team. “What’s important now?” That experience of hearing that speech plays in my head and helps me make choices and be focused on my actions in the present.

‘Who can I reach today?’ Who knew that such a little string of words could provide so much powerful head-talk and heart-talk?

Can you come up with your own string of words that you can use to prep yourself on your way to an important meeting and to create a meaningful experience for your prospect? Can you emotionalize the words with your feelings from your life experiences? Human development professionals call that generalization, transferring felt feelings to new situations or visualized situations. We all spend so much time in our heads with head-talk. Of course, analytic stuff is necessary and our left brain has a lot to process. But if we can engage in heart-talk from our right brains as well as the feelings that we store in the limbic part of our brains, we can be more authentic, more magnetic, more true to ourselves. Customers are smart. They intuitively sense that. You attract their trust and respect. Your relationship deepens and before you know it, you’ve made a sale and possibly a long term customer.

I invite your comments on selling from the heart. What motivates you?

Does your inner critic limit the size or growth of your business, the opportunities you seek and the risks you’ll take?

Business is all about risks, for instance, the risk of investment of time, energy and money, the risk of each new hire, the risk of a new product or service, the risk of trusting a new partner. Every step of business growth involves yet another risk. How does your inner critic handle that risk? It can make a big difference between growing a healthy thriving business or staying small or going out of business. Consider the following when you’re handling risks in your own business and your inner critic comes to call.

It’s almost like you have 2 little elves (or leprechauns) sitting on your shoulders talking into your ears. On one side the elf is very empowering. ‘You can do this. You’re smart. You enjoy a challenge. You’re capable. Remember ‘the little engine that could’?’  On the other side the other elf is whispering in your ear, ‘You’ve never done anything like this before. What makes you think you’re so smart? Nobody in your family ever did this before. Who says this is going to work? You better play it safe. Remember that kid in second grade who beat you up?’ Welcome to your inner critic!

It second guesses everything that has a little risk to it. It keeps you from speaking up even if you believe you’re right on with everything you’re thinking. It causes fear and anxiety. It causes you to rethink and rethink again. You try to be perfect to mitigate the risk and you get stuck in analysis paralysis. You ask, what does everyone else think? Your inner critic seeks approval from others to allay the fears and reduce the risk. It wants proof, absolute proof, that what you’re doing will work. It causes procrastination and indecision. It plays with your motivation to achieve. It makes you miss opportunities. It slows you down so you miss deadlines. It gives you fear and makes life difficult.

But only if you let it… By understanding the inner critic and where it comes from, you can choose whether to listen to it or ignore it. You can make more rational choices.

You are a product of your past. At home, at school, from your cultural heritage, with your friends, from the places you used to work you learned patterns of acceptable thinking and behaving. You learned what to expect from yourself. You learned what worked and those behaviors became habits. They became your comfort zone. Think of them as a bubble of comfort and convenience that you are in the center of. Straying outside your bubble is risky because it’s new, uncharted territory. The inner critic is an expression of that anxiety.

Did you know that psychologists say that most of what we know about feeling and trusting the world we’ve learned before the age of five? That early knowledge is internalized and becomes a foundation upon which other realizations are built. Were you told, ‘Don’t talk to strangers, children should be seen and not heard, be careful, don’t touch that, don’t bite off more than you can chew, don’t go where you’re not wanted.’ Certainly our parents were trying to keep us safe, but those warnings that we’ve internalized, can create anxiety even today. For instance, ‘Don’t talk to strangers’ can get in our way when we are trying to make sales or engage in public speaking.

How about your brain? The brain’s structure is the source of the ‘inner critic’ as well. It evolved over time and the three sections have various functions. The reptilian brain (or brain stem) developed when we were reptiles. It’s in charge of our survival, our fight, flight or freeze response, our anger and fear (how about road rage?). When something is too risky, the reptilian brain feels it’s being attacked by a wooly mammoth. Lots of fear and anxiety there.

The second layer is the limbic layer which is in charge of our emotions, how we’ve become conditioned to emotionally feel pain or feel pleasure. The amygdala and hippocampus record our memories and the associated emotions. In fact all our leaning is associated with emotions. We retain something better if the emotion is more intense. Doesn’t everybody remember where they were on 9/11? When you’re a toddler and very dependent on your parents, when they say ‘no’ sharply, that’s an emotional moment for the toddler and the learning is retained and internalized.

The third layer is the neocortex. This is the most recently developed part of the brain that is in charge of rational thought, intelligence, speech, creativity, adaptability, analyzing. This part of the brain has the ability to choose how much of your inner critic you will actually listen to, how much of its chatter is productive and unproductive, how much is left over from a bygone era, how to overcome the limits of the earlier parts of the brain though stopping reaction patterns, reconditioning new learning that you choose. Yes, instead of what your parents put into your brain, and instead of what the advertisers and the media are putting into your brain, you can choose to put new learning into your brain to shift your mindset.

You have choice. You don’t have to listen to the inner critic, especially when you understand how limited the inner critic is because of its origins. Here are 5 things you can do overcome your inner critic. I’m sure there are many more.

1. Keep visioning.  If we keep envisioning our dreams, detailed pictures of what we want for our businesses and our personal lives, we can override the influence of the earlier parts of the brain.

2. Recondition. We can re-condition the limbic system by using affirmations, by focusing on the positive, by spaced repetition of what we want to put into our brains as adults, especially in combination with our emotions.

3. Stop and think: Once we know about our reptilian brain stem, we can limit it’s control over non-survival situations. We can think, ‘Am I really being attacked here? Is my survival at stake? What’s the worst that could happen?’

4. Goal planning: We can use detailed goal planning to empower our neocortex to take charge and look at new situations rationally and realistically with less fear and anxiety.

5. Travel and exposure to other cultures: When you participate in new cultures, you learn just how limited your comfort zone is, You see that people who do and think differently do not put themselves at risk. You condition yourself to get used to an expanded comfort zone.

“Success is not something to be pursued. It is something to be attracted.”

“Work hard on your job, you’ll earn a living. Work hard on yourself, you’ll earn a fortune.”

These are the thoughts of Jim Rohn, personal development guru who died this week after 46 years of speaking to audiences about business and life. Often called America’s foremost business philosopher, he grew up on an Idaho farm, met his coach at age 25 and became a millionaire by the time he was 31. In his lifetime he gave 6,000 presentations, authored 25 books & tapes, and influenced an estimated 6 million people. His claim to fame is that he made things simple and profound. You can view an interview with Jim Rohn at the end of this article

Do we really attract success just by who we are? Can self development generate our success? As entrepreneurs we get caught up in all our daily activities, things we do, clients and opportunities we pursue. We work hard often sacrificing sleep, exercise, family life, close friendships, and growing our brains. We’re so targeted on externally-focused doing, doing, doing that we’re on a gerbil wheel. Perhaps we’re focused on the wrong things. If each of us focused on being smarter, being more empathetic, having a strong foundation in values, being nourished by family and friends, then perhaps we would know more about strategy and working smarter, relating emotionally to clients which engenders true client loyalty, be less prone to making risky valueless decisions, and derive more motivation and support from those around us. Consider these factors:

Passion. You will be great and your work will seem effortless if you love what you do. Are you doing something that you would do anyway even if you weren’t being paid for it? Are you doing what you’re doing because you can’t keep from doing it, because it comes so naturally?

Authenticity. Do you walk your talk? Clients and employees always know when you’re trying to be something you’re not. Respect, trust, true power and influence have to be earned rather than demanded.

Are you a star? People always want to ‘dance with a star’ or ‘hook their wagon to your star’ or have your ‘star quality rub off’ on them. Are you an expert in your field, someone whose knowledge is unparalleled and who shares knowledge freely?

Are you an enhancer? Do you make people feel special when you’re with them? There are enhancers, diminishers and neutralizers. Only enhancers will make other people feel so good that they will be naturally attracted and bring opportunities as well.

Brain development. There is more and more proof that we build new neural pathways by focusing our brains on what we want to achieve, picturing our success, exercising the prefrontal cortex of higher level thinking to override the earlier reptilian and mammalian brains that focus on survival, reduced risk taking, and fear.

Expectations. People who always expect the best, who are always looking for the positive, find it. It’s because their mindset shapes what they see.

The work of Barbara Fredrickson over the last 20 years is very interesting. She is a positive psychologist conducting research on students who developed positive thoughts through meditation. Her research has shown that when subjects control their positive thoughts and reported a 3 to 1 ratio of positive to negative thoughts, their lives flourished. They attracted people, opportunities, and each thing built upon another leading to expanded success. Control groups who did not achieve the 3 to 1 ratio had significantly lesser results. (Positivity by Barbara Fredrickson, 2009)

In summary, if you are not developing yourself, you are doing things the hard way, fighting an uphill battle. Read some success-oriented books, listen to some tapes, work with a coach. Put in place and prioritize a professional development program. Build professional development for yourself and your employees into your 2010 strategic business plan. In business, first you sell yourself, then your company and then your product/service. If you can’t sell yourself first, then the rest never happens. Why would you deny yourself success by not attracting it?

If you’d like to see Jim Rohn in action, watch this interview with Vic Johnson.  http://bit.ly/jim-rohn-video

Recently I was looking to update my morning routine. I really wanted to exercise at least 15 minutes each morning. Probably not enough, but something is better than nothing. And I wanted to be able to give myself a dose of super confidence each morning, give myself a power surge to attract new clients based solely on the attitude that emanates from my spirit. Last month we talked about the inner critic and the empowering advocate as two little elves sitting on your shoulders whispering into your ears shaping how positive or negative your attitude is. Well, I wanted to give my empowering advocate a super dose of sugar water so that anyone I talked to couldn’t help but get a sugar high as well. But my morning time is limited. I’ve got places to go and people to see. So I combined them. Duh! I can exercise and speak my affirmations at the same time. And wouldn’t that anchor them into my muscle memory? Wouldn’t that utilize another channel into my unconscious mind? Doesn’t Tony Robbins do that? Well, with my dance and yoga background, why didn’t that occur to me before? See the picture of my brain burst?

For a few weeks now I’ve been saying affirmations while doing my exercises and I love it. Affirmations, if that term is new for you, are those things we say to ourselves that help us create the future. If we imagine ourselves with the goal completed, we’re putting ourselves into the mindset of already being there, which turns on the light and eases us right into the new level of proficiency or achievement.  Of course, you have to believe yourself, and after a while you will. And they work best if you say them out loud. They are more reinforcing when you say them and hear yourself saying them. But they are even more powerful when you move to them. When I do my exercises while saying how powerful I am or how I will get paid today, I feel like a cheerleader cheering myself on. When I do arm exercises, I feel like I’m punching and accenting each arm movement with the emphasis on the accented syllable of the word. When I do yoga sun salutations (a series of movements and postures that have you reaching, bending, stretching, and breathing) I have linked certain movements to certain words. For instance I’ve linked ‘wealth of experience’ to the opening of my arms. I think of “my unique talents’ when my legs are moving backwards because my legs enable me to dance. I come away feeling exhilarated and really excited and supercharged. I encourage you to write out about 10 affirmations, things you want to make happen, ways in which you really want to believe in yourself. Establish a few exercises that are repetitive. Now do your exercises while you say each of your affirmations aloud a few times.

I could go into a lot of brain and body research that explains that the mind is just not in the brain, that we can retrain new pathways in the brain, how enacting nonverbal facial and body habits can reshape your mental attitude and a whole lot of other stuff. The bottom line is that all that verbiage isn’t necessary. This works. That’s the bottom line.

Now instead of putting off my exercises, easily sloughing them off when any little thing comes up or dreading getting started, I’m eager to do them. I know I’ll feel great when I’m done. It’s self sustaining and self reinforcing. I’m feeling successful, victorious and triumphant these days. How about you? Give it a try!!

I’m looking forward to achieving new goals with fresh energy. This is a time for new beginnings and creative thinking.

When the winds of change blow, some people build walls and others build windmills. –Chinese proverb.

The picture above is an acroyoga (acrobatics and yoga) pose and was taken by Tyler Blank, a good friend of my daughter’s.  How appropriate for this year’s business environment. Have you turned yourself and your business into a ‘wall’ or a ‘windmill?’ Are you fighting the ‘wind’ or harnessing it and turning it into your own advantage? (Keep reading to learn about the Magnified Marketing program that can help you harness the ‘winds of change’ and two success stories of people who’ve used it. Also, a free teleconference on January 8th to learn more. Register here)

After all, you have a choice.
You are creating your destiny by the choices you make now. If you build a ‘wall’ (scale back, layoffs, reduced marketing, no innovation), then you’re giving in to your fear of uncertainty. If you’re building a ‘windmill’, you’re:
-thinking creatively and strategically about how to make lemonade from any lemons in your path, -using your time to become better at what you do and develop yourself and your staff,
-going after new markets,
-developing new products,
-taking advantage of the opportunities opened up by the ‘wall builders,
-marketing to grab as much market share as possible,
-hiring the best in the industry that the ‘wall builders’ have laid off (after they’ve trained them for you)

Do you know what this symbol is?

This is the Chinese symbol for crisis.
The character on the left means danger. The character on the right means opportunity.

Let’s take some lessons from the Great Depression of the 1930′s. At that time Lawrence Gelb wrangled a free write up on the Chicago American, which sold out his first batch of product. Then he wrangled credit from a bottle manufacturer. Gave credit to wholesalers so they could put product in beauty stores on credit… Sold the resulting company, Clairol (ever heard of them?) for $22.5 million in 1959. That’s over $100 million in today’s dollars.

Chock Full ‘O Nuts founder sold candy on street corner, switched to coffee when a nearby drug store complained, and grew to become major coffee brand.

Good Humor was founded as an attempt to expand ice cream sales by delivering the product to neighborhoods. In the Great Depression, most people fell behind, but others prospered enormously. It always works that way, you know. Vast fields of opportunity lie before you, and some people do take advantage.

It would be a shame to inspire you without giving you tools to actually accomplish becoming a ‘windmill’ to harness the ‘winds of change.’

We offer various group and individual coaching packages, all to help you build your own windmills. Give us a call.

People have been saying this for a couple of months and I was at a business holiday party this week where this was the theme. Some people say it’s silly, but is it really? So what does it actually mean?

Sure we recognize that The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has confirmed that the nation has been in a recession since December 2007.

But here’s the heart of the message.

I Refuse to Let Fear and the Macro-Economy Control My Destiny.

The weakened economy, poor consumer confidence, the uncertainty of the stock market and the lack of available financing will not affect my ability or desire to provide a tremendous value to my clients. It will not influence my Vision or diminish the vital role I play in the businesses and lives of my clients.

The reasons I refuse to participate in the recession are simple: First, I choose to take immediate and consistent action steps that are aligned with my goals and my Vision! The recession has no power over any of these things. Second, I provide an important service that meets a basic need of mankind – guidance and coaching services that help people and organizations create hope, change direction, and prosper when times are good as well as when times are tough.  (I am happy to provide you the names of numerous clients who are stronger and more successful now than ever before!)

So let me ask you two questions:

1) “Are you ready for a new direction and/or improved results?”

2) “Do you also provide a valuable service or product that helps others in the community or around the world?”

If you answered “yes” to both of these questions, then we share a common bond and I am eager to give you these timely instructions:

- Now is the time to plan for 2009 and the future

- Now is the time for creative and inspirational thinking

- Now is the time to expand and find new opportunities

- Now is the time for renewed hope in yourself and your family, community and country

- Now is the time to focus (on your success)

- Now is the time to increase knowledge and skills

- Now is the time to be responsible for your actions

- Now is the time to market and advertise

- Now is the time to give to others

- Now is the time to have fun (and smile more)

- Now is the time to invest in yourself and in your business (or non-profit)

- Now is the time to put fear behind you

- Now is the time for Positive Attitude and Purposeful Action!

You cannot simply wait for answers to come – or for a bailout to rescue you (especially if you’re not a car manufacturer or a bank). If you want results tomorrow and in 2009, you need to follow these instructions and act now!  The first step is always the hardest because it requires a humble gesture of faith. It requires that you pick up your phone and call (or send an email to) a mentor or advisor or a coach – and ask for help and guidance.

I guarantee you that there is no better time to act and start an incredible process of abundance, redemption and renewed hope with Driving IR. Only through hope, can we believe; and only through belief, can we take enthused action!  Truly inspired planning and action inevitably and ultimately always leads to confidence and improved results.

If you now refuse to participate in fear (the recession), and instead choose to follow a path of progression, then you need to take some immediate action and call us right away! Here are two things you can do with us to shape your own destiny, Strategic Business Planning and Magnified Marketing. As always we can provide custom solutions as well.

Business Planning Is Strategic and Proactive

If you’re not doing it, you’re falling prey to the whims of your customers, your vendors and the economy. There are plenty of people and businesses doing well because they’ve taken their futures into their own hands and are steering their own courses through turbulent times being nimble to adjust as obstacles appear. If you’re not, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Having clearly defined vision, values, mission, goals and action steps is important. What’s your path and your end game? What will you accomplish this year? Create a new product or service? Do more internet marketing? Target a new niche? Open a new branch? Get x number of new clients? Cut your overhead costs by y%? A lot of thought goes into a good business plan. This yields several goals that are to be accomplished each month of the year in order to achieve your overall desired results. The goals are consistent with a “necessary and sufficient’ filter. They must be ‘necessary’ because you don’t need distractions wasting your resources (time and money). They must be ‘sufficient’ to do the job. Make sure you have goals in all the critical goal categories. Most businesses will need to focus on 1) Marketing, 2) Sales, 3) Product or service fulfillment, 4) Training and development, 5) Business administration. You may have additional goal categories depending on your industry or market.

Do you have a well thought out plan to accomplish what you want? No excuses. Don’t blame anybody but yourself if the company you’re leading isn’t getting ahead. You’ve got to adjust with the times, roll with the punches and dance with your challenges. Where are the new opportunities? Who is buying? Adjust and modify yourself, your target, how you perform your service or fulfill your product, get leaner. Even if you have a plan, has someone else looked at it? I’m facilitating more business plans this year than in prior years  because really progressive people realize it’s the way to leapfrog forward and eat everyone else’s lunch. I offer two different ways to help owners with business plans and it doesn’t have to be expensive. Call me if you want to be an eater and not be the lunch.

Do you ever feel like you’re having a lackluster day? Or maybe a lot of days are feeling that way lately. Are you blaming the economy because you’re not motivated to do anything but procrastinate? Do you go through the motions of your day and do the required actions and wonder why your heart’s not into it? Do you have some employees who appear to function like this? Is it affecting the quality of your work, your engagement with customers, your interest in being in business? Here are some ways to renew your energy and commitment.

Focus on your child. Each one of us has different parts of our personalities. Our internalized parent tells us what to do, tells us what we’re capable of, and also nurtures us. Our internalized child feels passion, is creative, is often stubborn, exuberant, angry or playful. Our adult makes rationalized choices, separates fantasy from reality and tries to be objective. All are necessary in our world.

The point is our adult and parent are boring! If you go around all day using your adult and parent, no wonder the passion is gone. You need to tune into your child. How do you do that? Find something you’re passionate about. It could be the arts, singing, dancing, drawing, drama, performing a sport, playing a musical instrument, developing a hobby, climbing a mountain, hiking, working with children, volunteering. Have fun! Find anything that draws you out into something you like. I’ve had clients who started singing on the way to the bus, started taking dancing lessons or took a class in creative writing. When they got passionate about something, they got motivated about many things, even their businesses. It allowed them to get more committed and more engaged, and therefore, more focused, and their businesses took off.

Get moving! Movement is especially good because it releases brain chemicals and gets your whole body involved. There is more and more research pointing to the fact that our minds, memory and what we’ve always considered our brain functions are distributed through other parts of the body as well, in muscles, in the spine and other parts of our nervous system. Getting involved in movement, in sports, dancing, jogging, exercise sets our energy in motion. It helps us feel freer, more like that child who enjoyed movement just for the pure enjoyment of it, and couldn’t sit still.

Celebrate small wins and give yourself rewards.
Focus on a goal. Make it a S.M.A.R.T. goal. (specific, measurable, attainable, realistically high and time targeted so you know when to celebrate) When you achieve it, go out to dinner, see a movie, buy yourself something, or do something that makes you happy. Let other people know so they can celebrate with you. Have a virtual ‘victory dance’ with your friends who may be miles apart. Celebrate the small wins you have in your workplace. Make a sale, ring a bell. Focus on the rewards and have fun!

Recently I was leading a workshop on Customer/Employee Loyalty which I entitled ‘Dancing With The Stars’. Many of us have watched that TV show or a similar one called, “So You Think You Can Dance.” Some of us have even tried some partner dancing, taken lessons, or danced at weddings.

One person told a story about what they witnessed on a cruise, There was some dancing going on in the lounge. Joe was sitting at the bar. Susan, his wife was sitting there, too. She’s getting motivated by the music. She’s watching the other couples having fun, getting close, interacting with each other. Joe is focused on his drink. So she pulls Joe off the bar stool and says “Come on, let’s dance.” What is Susan seeking? An emotionally positive experience that’s hassle free, where she is individually recognized and respected. She wants to feel a connection. She wants to have fun. Joe has a choice. He could get up and do the minimum, go through the motions without really connecting. He could ignore her and continue to nurse his drink. Or he could get up and interact with her, respect her desire to connect, look at it as an opportunity to co-create something between them.

You are given an invitation everyday to interact with customers and employees. The choices you make will dictate your success. When you join the ‘dance’ or interact in a focused caring way, you create a point of connection. Just like dancers have points where they touch so they can respond to one another’s movements and feel bonded to one another, your customer and employee points of connection are very important. Research shows that emotional points of connection create customer and employee loyalty.

So what else can we take from the dance metaphor?

Partners must trust each other. It’s certainly not a good experience if Joe is stepping on Susan’s toes or makes her bump into other couples. The leader needs to be trustworthy. Are you developing long lasting trust relationships with your customers and your employees?

Dancers make each other shine. Give and take happens as the leader and follower roles switch back and forth. Followers add flourishes and kicks to augment the move the leader leads. Sometimes there is ‘playing’ done by both to interpret the music. In the world of sales, being effective means being an assistant buyer and helping the buyer discover what he needs, then offering several solutions from which the buyer chooses and modifies the one that he likes best. There is give and take. Empowered employees think up great solutions to problems that the boss might never have thought of.  Achieving an outcome is about us, not about me. 1+1=3.

Each dancer maintains his or her own balance. It’s no fun dancing with someone who is falling all over the place. Employees need balance. Are their personal goals working in concert with the organizations goals? Are your personal goals and professional goals dovetailed? Do you seek quality customers that seem to be have balance, can pay their bills, realize you have a life also, and maintain an emotional even keel?

A good dancer has firm arms, strong abs and sturdy legs and ankles. Each partner supports herself/himself and maintains a connection and a strong frame. Strength in the business world is identified by core values such as integrity, respect, customer service and providing value, Vision of where you’re going and where you’ll be in the future is also a source of strength. Probably the biggest source of strength is self-esteem. Do you foster the core values, vision and self-esteem of each of your customers and employees so they can be better partners in the dance of business?

If you’d like to watch a real dance (not show stuff) with great connection, please click this link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TyqjMp2HNI

Are you ‘participating’ in the recession? ‘Participating’ can also be called ‘contributing’. Do you know the toilet paper shortage story? It was told to me by a colleague and fellow coach, and now I pass it on to you. A young student of economics came home from college and wanted to impress his grandmother about how much he knew about the world of economics. So he boldly told her there was going to be a toilet paper shortage. So his grandmother went to the local store and bought a whole cart of toilet paper. And grandmothers being proud of their grandchildren, she then told other grandmothers who went out and bought their own carts full of toilet paper. So, of course, there was a real toilet paper shortage just as predicted. So be careful your own actions (based on your attitudes about the health or lack of health of your industry) don’t contribute toward a downward spiral. You could say when asked about how the economy is effecting your business, ‘I choose not to participate in any downturns.’ And in a way that is true. Some industries are not feeling the pinch. And just because you may not have low hanging fruit (customers seeking you out) doesn’t mean that you can’t go after the higher fruit (become more proactive in seeking out new customers and new groups of customers). Are you giving yourself permission to play the ‘victim’ of the economy, or are you saying, “I’ll make lemonade from  this lemon.” Many philosophers, psychologists and business gurus say that times of stress produce the most breakthroughs in sales, market leadership, efficient operations, etc. So what can you do?

1. Find a new market. Strategically expand your product or service offering.Come to the book discussion group on “Blue Ocean Strategy” on July 23rd to learn a conceptual framework for finding new markets and products (strategy canvas, value innovation, six path evaluation and other tools)
2. Cut out unnecessary jobs and operations. Use this time to document your operations and make them smoother and trimmer. When you document your processes, you’re building in protection against losing people who take their knowledge with them. You also are preparing to set up a second business that is similar to the first.
3. Train yourself and your staff. A slow time is a good time to learn new skills, prepare to offer a new product, open your eyes to new opportunities, transform your company culture, get coaching to develop yourself  to take your business to the next level.

4. Advertise and market your product or service. It has been shown over and over again that those companies that promote themselves during tough times ride the wave the highest and the earliest as the economy starts to recover. They have such a head start on their competition that competitors never catch up and their market share skyrockets.

It’s all in your attitude. You can play ‘victim of a poor economy’ or you can choose to not participate, get proactive in positioning your company for ‘more and better’ in the present and future. It’s your choice.

Do you have a big hairy audacious goal (BHAG)? This is a term coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book Built to Last and discussed again in Jim’s book Good to Great. For a company, a BHAG is its reason for being, what it does best in the world, gets passionate about and drives its economic engine. For a person it’s a life purpose that supersedes and directs one’s everyday actions. Inside every company there are many individuals all with their personal BHAG’s. It’s management’s job to help and inspire employees to dovetail their personal BHAG’s with the company BHAG. When this happens, there is very little employee turnover and a great deal of productivity.

In my work I ask people to define their Purpose in Life or BHAG. They mostly all have trouble with this question. In our time together my clients are going to accomplish many goals. Without a direction goal achievement is rather unfulfilling. It’s just busy work. Our culture is so activity based that we often ‘do’, but we don’t know why. People often answer that they want to become a better salesperson or a better CEO because they want their sales or business to grow. Then I play the 5 year old who continually asks ‘why?’ to dig deeper. To have more money. To have a sense of accomplishment and status. Why? Many answers revolve around financial stability for themselves or family. Some say ‘to pursue excellence’. Occasionally I hear to ‘to help clients and staff be the best they can be.’

Being clear with yourself about your own BHAG is important. It leads to focused and motivated behavior. Envisioning your purpose helps you excel and achieve. Robert Cooper in the book, Get Out of Your Own Way, talks about research done on the forebrain which lies just beneath your temples. Stimulating this part of the brain with BHAG visions mobilizes your inner resources to realign and energize your current actions to achieve the future you envision. Strengthening this brain activity is like strengthening a muscle. Focusing on your BHAG vision, repeatedly sets you in motion because of the reactions of other parts of the brain such as the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala. There’s a lot more to this analysis than I can go into here. So check out his book. Here are two more inspirational ways to look at the power of a BHAG.

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations. Your consciousness expands in every direction. And you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”     — Patanjali

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? … And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” – Marianne Williamson

“When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations. Your consciousness expands in every direction. And you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.”  — Patanjali

If you make your business goals work in concert with your life goals, this can happen and often does, effortlessly.

May your 2008 be inspired by all the things you find important in your life.

With warmth and respect,

Jeri

One of my clients has built a dashboard that measures the important indicators in his business and will help him manage growth and cash flow, his pipeline, lead sources, accounts receivable and work in progress.

One has mastered the goal achieving process so well in his business that he has transferred it to his personal life as well and he’s now much more physically fit.

One has come to understand the full importance of creating a company culture of accountability, vision, values and customer loyalty.

Another is now enjoying a great deal of success because they are targeting a specific narrow market instead of trying to be all things to all people.

One has accomplished a huge manual, had it published and is now selling it on-line because she dealt with her own issues about time management and followed her plan.

Another has landed the sales job she wanted because she upped her sales skills, prepared her sales presentation and sold herself.

Another has arrived at a new level of clarity about the way he wants to grow his business and now has two sources of new work.

Another young woman has evolved from being an entrepreneur with a fun hobby to a serious CEO with a well developed business plan.

Another has developed a plan to turn a local business into a national business and now has a detailed business plan in hand while shopping for a venture capitalist.

Are you aware of self-fulfilling prophecies? We all have them. We get trapped in our comfort zones and we don’t know what we don’t know. The old adage goes, “if you always think what you’ve always thought, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.” Or, in other words, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.” As a business coach I help you challenge your own assumptions, see things from a different perspective, think outside your comfort zone. Then together we set goals for more productive behaviors and actions that will bring you better results. It’s practice and application. Common sense dictates that people don’t make change long lasting without practice and application, learn from what went well and not-so-well, and then practice again. That’s why one day training sessions and even 3 day boot camps don’t really achieve results. The coaching I offer is outcome based. You state your goals and we make them happen together. I hold you accountable for making progress.

Will you be making New Year’s resolutions?

Will you make the same ones you made last year?

What will you do differently this year that will guarantee that you make progress towards your goals?

Do you want to succeed?

If you in yourself by working with a coach, could you make more progress than by yourself?

Do you care enough about yourself and your business/career to help yourself become more successful?

Here are some numbers dealing with customer loyalty. It has been proven that organizations with high levels of loyal customers typically grow sales at 2X the rate of their competition. It costs 5 times as much to get a new customer than to keep an existing customer. The most effective and least expensive form of adverting is word-of-mouth. An organization with disloyal customers will typically spend 4 to 5 times more in advertising to get additional customers. Loyal customers will be less likely to be swayed by discount pricing and other incentives offered by the competition. They are generally willing to pay more and are more forgiving if there is a mistake. 6 out of 10 customers will never return when they experience bad service. They won’t complain, they just won’t come back. The ultimate question to measure customer loyalty is, “How likely is it that you would recommend our organization, products and services to a friend or colleague?” Get your customers to answer this question on a scale of 1-10. It has been shown that there is a direct and strategic correlation between an organization’s revenue growth and this customer loyalty score.

Action Step for This Week

Develop a way to measure customer loyalty in your organization. Add up how much customers spend. What get’s measured, get’s focused on and has the best chance of being improved. Develop a questionnaire with the key question. “How likely is it that you would recommend our organization, products and services to a friend or colleague?” Poll your clients via email, phone calls or postcards. Listen, listen, listen. Summarize and share the information throughout the organization. Make this an on-going strategic policy.

The Hedgehog Concept’ comes from Jim Collins’ book Good to Great. After analyzing companies that had met his criteria for explosive and sustained growth, he discovered that they had achieved an understanding of their sweet spot of impenetrable strength and great success (like a hedgehog). You can find this for your business also. It is where these three components intersect.

• what you are passionate about,
• what you can be best in the world at,
• what drives your economic engine.

It may take a while to refine your concepts, understand your strengths and analyze the market to find this spot. But when you do, it will lead to breakthroughs and sustained success.

Action Step for This Week

Ask yourself these questions to find your hedgehog:

1. What are you deeply passionate about? What do you love? What motivates you? What do you love the process of doing in your business so much that you look forward to getting up every morning?
2. What can you be the best in the world at (or your corner of the world)? What do you have a natural talent for? Where are you strong? How can you tweak your company’s purpose to make it unique, simple, understandable and the best?

What drives your economic engine? What can you make money at by focusing on? What indicator or denominator will you use to measure your success that will, when multiplied, drive your success?

Ask yourself these questions to find your hedgehog:

1. What are you deeply passionate about? What do you love? What motivates you? What do you love the process of doing in your business so much that you look forward to getting up every morning?
2. What can you be the best in the world at (or your corner of the world)? What do you have a natural talent for? Where are you strong? How can you tweak your company’s purpose to make it unique, simple, understandable and the best?

What drives your economic engine? What can you make money at by focusing on? What indicator or denominator will you use to measure your success that will, when multiplied, drive your success?

Last week I gave reasons why written goals are so much more effective than no goals or unwritten goals. This week I’d like to introduce you to ‘WHY SMART” goals. Apply these parameters to your goals and you’ll be much more likely to achieve them..

W – write your goals

H – harmonious with your overall plan

Y – yours and yours alone

S – specific so you can achieve them

M – measurable so you know when they’ve been achieved

A – attainable, realistic coming from your starting point

R – realistically high, let’s make it a stretch or what’s the point

T – target dated and time trackable

If you’d like a sure fire way to gain victory over the goal achievement process, give me a call. I’ll help you lay out a format to accomplish one of your goals at no charge.