Keys To Success: Momentum

Momentum and maintaining it is one the most important keys to success. To have greater small business success and personal fulfillment you must create the momentum with the right thoughts and attitudes.

The right thoughts envision what is possible. The right attitude brings the feelings or passions that what you are thinking is possible. As Napoleon Hill said in Think And Grow Rich, “What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

Keys To Success: A Momentum Story

Every day each one of us goes to the airport of life. You are your plane. Are you going to take off? Or, are you going to stay grounded?

Picture a plane on the runway. It is getting ready to take off. Yet, it is carrying too much baggage and therefore, too much weight. If it tries to take off it will crash. It can expend all the energy in the world but it will never get off the ground.

Similarly, in coaching success, I see good people who can’t take off because they are carrying too much baggage. The first step is to determine what the baggage is. Very often people have been carrying it around for a long time without even realizing it.

How do you recognize baggage? Baggage is any unresolved situation or attitude about yourself from your past? But you say, don’t we all have a history? Yes, we all have a history. History tells us where we have been. Baggage is what we decide to carry forward from our history into the present.

As a personal business coach, the first step I ask client to take to prepare for take off and to gather momentum is to get clear of their past. The past is not a predictor of the future. It is the past.

Getting clear of your past is a skill. You can get clear of almost anything. It is up to you.

Keys To Success: Dress For Building Momentum

Whether you are an individual seeking greater personal growth or an entrepreneur, solo professional or self-employed business owner seeking greater small business success you can only build momentum by dressing for it.

What do I mean by dressing for momentum? I am talking about the words you use. The words you use every day are the clothes that you dress yourself and others with. Replace the words “maybe”, “someday”, “sometime” or “I’ll try.” They are momentum killers.

Use the words “I can”, “I will”, “today” to start building your momentum. Dress yourself and other with momentum building words.

Keys To Success: Momentum Is A Daily Discipline

Personal success or small business success is not an accident when you focus on building momentum for yourself and your business every day. Personal growth or small business growth that sustains itself is no accident. It applies to everyone whether you are an individual or starting your own business or running a small business.

It happens because you are on purpose. When you are on purpose continually you are getting clear of the past, keeping your baggage light and dressing yourself with the right words to take off and soar above the crowd.

When you want to be on track to becoming more and having more, remember that momentum is one of your most important keys to success.

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Business Keys To Success: Add Value To People

Your attitude determines what you value.  And when it comes to people it is no different.  Human relations expert Les Giblin remarked, “You can’t make the other fellow feel important in your presence if you secretly feel that he is a nobody.”  Isn’t that true?  I think you would agree that you find it difficult to do something kind for people when you dislike them?

How Do You Value People

Many years ago I read that the way we see people is often the difference between manipulating and motivating them.  In my personal business coaching practice one of the things I collaborate on with self-employed business owners, corporate executives and corporate managers is the atmosphere they are creating in their business or area.


Ask yourself the question.  Do your people or associates feel motivated or manipulated?  If we don’t want to help them, yet we want them to help us, then we get in trouble.  Small business success along with corporate and personal success if it is to be long-term, depends on motivation.


Your Results Depend On How You Value People


You manipulate people when you move them for your personal advantage.  However, we motivate people when we move them for mutual advantage.   Adding value to others is often a win-win proposition. 


You may say isn’t all of life and business a manipulation?  I would agree with you in a general sense.  Hopefully, you are manipulating a situation to where it is a win-win more often than not.  When you do that you motivate people.  But if you aren’t you are encouraging others to plant the seeds to sabotage you and your dreams.


How Do You See Value In People?


How do you see people?  Are they potential recipients of value you can give, or do they tend to be nuisances along your path to success?   Author Sydney J. Harris said, “People want to be appreciated, not impressed.  They want to be regarded as human beings, not as sounding boards for other people’s egos.  They want to be treated as an end in themselves, not as a means towards the gratification of another’s vanity” 


How do you stay on the right path in seeing and bringing value to people? If you want to add value to people, you have to value them first.


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Business Keys To Success: You Are Responsible For Your Attitudes

Life is full of surprises, and the adjustment of our attitudes is a lifelong project.  Think about your destiny in business and life.  It will never be determined by our complaining spirits or high expectations.  In my business coaching practice and in my own life I had to come face to face with my attitudes.

For myself, self-employed business owners, entrepreneurs, solo professionals, corporate managers and all individuals our attitudes are what will determine in large part our destiny.

We Choose The Attitudes We Have Now

And it is an ongoing choice.  And it surprises me, the large number of adults who fail to take responsibility for their attitudes.  If they are unhappy they may something like, “I got up on the wrong side of the bed.”

 If failure begins to repeat itself in their lives they often say, “I was born on the wrong side of the tracks.” 

When their lives aren’t progressing while others and their family are still on the rise they may say, “Things would be different if only the birth order was different in my family.”

Whether you are running a small business or starting your own business it is a continual challenge to adjust your attitudes.

Attitudes

In all of the above examples there was one common thread.  There is blame for everyone else or circumstances for their problems.

When a marriage fails they believe they married the wrong person.   When someone else gets a promotion they wanted, it’s because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yes, in the words of Rose Ann, Rose Anna Danna, “It’s always something.”  It’s always something except for them and their attitude.

Attitudes-A Summary

When John Maxwell talks about attitudes he has a great summary.

The pessimist complains about the wind.

The optimist expects it to change.

The leader adjusts the sails.

To be the leader in your life you must adjust your attitudes.  The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes.  That is the day we truly grow up.  When you grow up you choose to be responsible for your attitudes and how you view your circumstances.

To have small business and personal success be the leader in your life.  Adjust the sails.  With the right attitudes you will create the circumstances to have the business and life you desire.

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What’s Your Ticket To Greater Small Business Success

Although small business success can be defined in different ways I have learned from my own businesses and from being a personal business coach that there is, in the long run, one thing that every self-employed business owner wants. They want greater freedom.

In coaching success I have discovered that the entrepreneurs and solo professionals who are the happiest are the ones who have attained greater personal freedom. Here’s the dirty little secret to being a self-employed business owner. The small business you created to give you greater freedom and abundance ends up putting you in bondage.

It is ironic that the very thing you create to give you greater freedom and to experience more of what life has to offer ends up putting you like a hamster on a wheel. Except, unlike the hamster, who can get off, you have to stay on. You are held hostage by your own creation.

At some point, small business success and the dream of greater freedom and abundance disappears. And the excitement and anticipation for a wonderful future gives way to a feeling that every day is the same as the last. Business and life become a slog through the mud.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to be that way. But, to have greater freedom and abundance you must be willing to grow. By the way, no amount of business training courses, or new marketing business plans are going to give you the freedom you seek.

The freedom you seek only will come when you expand the thinking between your ears. I had a client who for some time felt that by having employees he would become a baby sitter. In fact, the thought of having employees was painful. Is this a formula for small business growth? No.

Is this a formula to stay in bondage and be unhappy? Yes! Finally, he got sick and tired of being sick and tired. He took the plunge. He expanded his thinking. He looked at having his first employee as a way to achieve his goals and dreams. He stopped looking at it as baby sitting.

What happened? He changed his thinking. He accepted the fact that he would have to embrace his own personal development. In hiring someone, he would have to learn hiring skills, payroll, taxes and how to build an organization. In hiring someone he would have to come up with a marketing business plan to increase sales to cover the expense of the employee as well as to continue to pay himself.

It was amazing what happened. In 2 years time he added three employees and increased his sales by 200%. Here’s the great news. He spends less time working in his business. During the busiest times of year he can take time off. His outlook on life and his future are positive.

What is the formula for small business success and greater freedom? It includes many things but first and foremost you, the self-employed business owner, must accept the challenge of personal growth.

As in the above case study, once you change your thinking that starts things rolling. When you add people the next thing you must immediately do is create better processes to accommodate business growth. Don’t just add people if your business is growing. Add more to your processes or systems to support growth.

Put yourself in a position where you can hire average people and have outstanding results. How do you do that? Have a good process. Think about this. If you put above average people in a bad process you will have a bad outcome. If you put average people in a great process you will have a great outcome.
McDonald’s is a great example of how process determines outcome. Give yourself greater freedom and abundance. Seldom will your business or your life exceed your personal development.
Know that the freedom and small business success you desire starts with expanding your thinking and creating a process that will allow you to move toward greater freedom and abundance. Once you see it and believe it then small business success can be yours.

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Successful Business Performance: It’s About Raising Your Standards

Successful business performance and how it is tied to raising your standards was the focus of a client meeting I had at the beginning of the year. He was looking for 2010 to be a breakout year.

Things were going well. The marketing of his company was producing very positive results. His forays into advertising had shown him some possibilities that really worked. In 2009 he had gotten his policies and procedures into a manual. Personnel policies and procedures were in place. He had good employees and was starting to put together a management team.

In the financial area, the company was profitable and he was drawing a good salary. His taxes were current. Sales had increased although there was some seasonality to his business. It was all good.

For most small business owners they would keep doing what they did in 2009 expecting a better 2010. That could happen and many times does. Small business owners stay in the comfort zone. Ultimately, when things do change, and they will, they are caught off guard. And, when you are in the comfort zone and things change it can quickly become the zone of mediocrity or failure.

We talked about the fact that when things are going well it is a good time to look ahead to changes that could make the business stronger. The question when things are going well is where do you start?
It is not easy to answer. I asked him to go back over 2009 and focus on things he didn’t like or that nagged at him in his business. I even asked him to look at his life. The result was a list that had many items.

The good news was that many of these things could be corrected or delegated. After all the goal is to design a business and life around who you are. The bad news was that when we looked at them they were draining him of focus and energy. How do you go about getting rid of or diminishing those things that aren’t working well for you?

You have one simple phrase you live by. “Raise your standards.” When you raise your standards what you are tolerating starts to go away. But, change is not easily done with a change of phrase.

Raising your standards has to become a mindset. In the beginning it is best to start with small things that can be easily corrected. The paper work flow in his business was not efficient and could cause some delays. He changed that. Then he changed some job descriptions that started making every one’s life better.
He kept raising his standards and as he did things became easier. He built momentum. And, as of this writing he is enjoying more business and he is having a more satisfying life.

Too often in small business we create a job for ourselves and not a business. Start raising your standards. When you do you will start to grow and move beyond just having a job to creating a business. Creating a business that earns money and where you don’t have to be there all the time.

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Business Keys To Success: Leader-A Larger Field of View

Leader-The Larger Context

 

A leader has a larger field of view. John Maxwell in The 360-Degree Leader shares the following thoughts.
Most people evaluate events in their lives according to how they will be personally affected. Leaders think within a broader context. They start by asking themselves, How this will impact those they lead? They also look at how something will impact those that they don’t immediately lead. They try to see everything in terms of the whole organization.
To be an effective leader you want to ask the following questions:

• How do I fit in my area or department?
• Ho do all the departments fit into the organization?
• Where does our organization fit in the market?
• How is our market related to other industries and the economy?

And as industries in our economy become more global, many good leaders are thinking even more broadly!
You don’t have to become a global economist to lead effectively from the middle of your organization. The point is that 360-Degree Leaders see their area as part of the larger process and understand how the pieces of the larger puzzle fit together. “If you desire to be a better leader, then broaden your thinking and work at seeing things from a larger perspective.”—John Maxwell, The 360-Degree Leader.

Leader-The Application

 

The question for all of us is how does this apply to me? Secondly, what am I going to do about it? In my personal business coaching practice I very often focus on leadership. For the self-employed business owner with a small business leadership first and foremost is about how he or she chooses to lead themselves. In a small company, as you are putting the processes in place for growth, how the owner leads himself and models his behavior has a ripple effect on everything from sales to marketing to hiring to the bottom line.
Interestingly, with larger corporate clients the same is true. The difference is that they have many processes in place that support leading a large organization. How often have we seen a CEO of a large company fired and the company does just fine? We see it quite often. Why? With multiple layers there are other leaders in place in upper and middle management to carry on.
But, the smaller companies can take a big hit when the CEO leaves or gets fired. You may have a few people who can step in and again you may not. The health of a smaller organization can be in the balance. To minimize the loss it is critical for small companies to have good processes in place that have taught others how to lead. But, if each area in a small company has created their own “silo,” it becomes hard for them to pull together for the common good once the strong leader is gone.

A Leader Encourages The Exchange of Information

 

Good leaders understand that silos in an organization are deadly. They prevent free exchange of information, hamper team building across groups and ultimately are counterproductive when it comes to efficiency and profit. Leaders who see the whole picture understand this. Look at your business. See the whole business and all the effects of how you do business. When you do you will become a better leader because you are viewing people and processes in a larger context

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Business Networking 1

A great deal has been written about business networking. Whether you are a self-employed business owner, entrepreneur, solo professional or an executive or manager with a large company, business networking is important for several reasons.

One of the primary reasons to invest time and effort into business networking is to get more business. Yet, for many the outcome of greater business remains elusive.

Business Networking—How To Get More Business

As a personal business coach one of the first things I ask a potential client, whether it be a self-employed small business owner or a corporate manager or executive, is if they are doing any business networking. Most of them will tell me that they do some business networking.

The main reason they do business networking is to get more business. When I ask how successful it has been the answers range from very successful to virtually no success at all.

How come one person has great success and another doesn’t. Is one’s product or service in greater demand? Possibly, but very often it has nothing to do with that.

Business Networking—Success Is About How You Fish

For a moment visualize a business networking event as a big pond with many fish. You have come together with a group of other people and all of you are fishing in the same pond. Some of you will catch fish, prospects, referrals and customers. And most of you will put your bait on a hook and come up with nothing.

What’s causing the difference in results? It could be the pond you are in. Maybe the fish you are swimming with aren’t ideal for you or your business. But, more often than not it is not the fish in the pond that is the problem.

The problem is how you are choosing to fish in that pond. Especially for small business owners seeking more small business growth and success how you fish is a critical determinant in your results.

Running a small business is a big enough challenge to your time and energy without engaging in business networking that is not producing positive results. So if the pond of your business networking is not yielding the results you desire, yet appears to be a good pond, then you must change the way you fish in the pond.

Business Networking—It’s About The Human Being And Not The Human Doing

How do you catch a fish? It’s easy. You give him some bait where he wants to bite on your hook. The best hook you have is you. It’s not your business. It’s not your service. It is who you are. Most people when you engage them do not need your product or service.

The key is that they certainly may need it at some point in time in the future. The goal is to start building a relationship with them based on who you are, not what you do. In the end they will do business with someone they know, like and trust.

The key to successful business networking is to get beyond the human doing, your business, and let others get to know the human being. Focus on learning about who someone else is. Reveal to them more about yourself. It will give you and them many more reasons to build a solid relationship.

Focus on the human being, not getting business. And, the last part is the most important. If you have business networking functions every month attend them regularly. Even if business is good and you feel too busy attend them regularly.

Great relationships aren’t built with intensity but with regular contact over a period of time. Be consistent in showing up and persistent in building your relationships. When you approach business networking as an essential marketing activity focusing on human beings instead of human doings you will start catching a lot more fish in your pond and even greater small business, large business and personal success.

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