Business Keys To Success: Leadership

Leadership-Be Out Front

One of my favorite quotations on leadership states, “Leadership isn’t taught.  It is caught.”  I can assure you that in my career as a self-employed business owner and as a personal business coach that there are several people who served me well as excellent role models of leadership.

In fact today, when I am in leadership positions, I refer back to some of those experiences to help guide me and make me a better leader.

Leadership-Think In A Larger Context

One of the things I have learned is that good leadership thinks in a broader context.  Leaders start by asking themselves, how will this impact my people or those around me?  But they go one step further.  They look at the impact on those above them and below them.

They look at things in the larger context.  They try to see everything in terms of the entire organization and beyond.

Leadership—Be Global

Good leadership has the ability to be global.  Leaders that are global have the ability to create the positive vision of the future that they and their team want to accomplish.  But in being global they also see how what they are doing will have in impact on other areas of the organization.

Or, if they are a self-employed business owner, entrepreneur or solo professional, how they are going to have to change and what other changes are going to happen in order to grow the business and have small business success.

Leadership Is Influence

As John Maxwell says, “Leadership is influence.”  You can extend your leadership skills even further if you have what I call a spectrum component to add to the global outlook.

The spectrum component is the ability to see in broad terms the steps, time lines and project management that will be needed to take the team to the realization of the goal.

Leadership involves many other things but the above are a start.  Start looking at things in the larger context.  This leads to more global thinking.  Provide a linear or spectrum component, or what I call, the “how tos.”

But in the end, your leadership will be as effective as your influence.  Leadership is creating in others today a future willingness to follow you into something new for the sake of something great.  And the great leadership stories are about just that.  Leadership is about taking a group of followers into something new and ending up with something great.See more at : http://www.thehoustonbusinesscoach.com

Business Keys To Success: Self-Discipline

The road to success and ultimately more happiness is paved with self-discipline.  Author H. Jackson Brown Jr. said, “Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates.  There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.”  If you know you have talent, and you’ve seen a lot of motion—but little concrete results—you may lack self-discipline.  The road to small business success, or any success for that matter and happiness is paved with self-discipline.

Self-discipline-Sort Out Your Priorities

What two or three areas of your life are vital to your success?  Write them down, along with the disciplines that you must develop to keep growing and improving in those areas.  Develop the disciplines and more importantly develop an action plan with concrete steps that you must apply whether it is daily or weekly.  Plan how they are going to become part of your life.

Self-discipline-List the Reasons

What are the benefits of practicing the disciplines you just listed?  Starting something new is not easy.  Without a positive vision of the benefits it is more challenging to follow through.  Post these benefits somewhere where you will see them daily.  In my personal business coaching practice I have observed the importance of constant visualization of what we want to accomplish and how it gives impetus to making it a reality.

Self-discipline—Get Rid of Excuses

Whether you are a self-employed business owner, entrepreneur, solo professional or corporate manager or executive all of us come up with excuses as to why we are not getting things done.  To eliminate the roadblocks to developing your new disciplines write down the reasons as to why you may not be able to follow through with them.  Read through them.  And then dismiss them as the excuses they are.

Here’s the hard part.  Even if a reason seems legitimate, find a solution to overcome it.  Don’t leave yourself any reasons to quit.  Remember that a discipline is the bridge between a thought and an action.  Only when you have the discipline to act do you have the power to achieve your dreams.

There is a nursery in Canada that displays this sign on their wall:  “The best time to plant a tree is twenty-five years ago…..The second best time is today.”  Plant the tree of self-discipline in your life today. see more at : http://www.thehoustonbusinesscoach.com

Houston Business Coach Steve Scott Teaches Key Leadership and Business Skills For Small Business Owners

In the last 35 years, Houston Business Coach, Steve Scott has started and built up several businesses. They ranged from a sole proprietorship to a multimillion dollar corporation with 80 employees. He’s worked in a variety of industries including financial, service, retail, manufacturing and international markets. Those experiences combined make Scott an ideal business coach to work with small business owners and solo entrepreneurs to tackle key skills that may be holding them back in making their business successful.

Sandy Vilas, CEO, CoachInc.com, MCC explains that Steve Scott has a gift of taking difficult concepts and putting them into ways that she can understand and remember. “For me, his approach and memorable stories have created pathways for greater accomplishment. Steve has given me a clarity of thought that has helped me see through the fog, and focus on the future.”

Scott’s goal as a business and life coach is to collaborate with and support professionals and business owners who are committed to having more in their businesses and lives. He works with clients who understand that through coaching they will have the accountability to create the future in business and life that they desire.

“I have known Steve Scott for over 40 years and I am hard pressed to think of anyone that I trust more and have more respect for,” Bryan Gorrie, Retirement and Business Coach says, “Steve is not only a good friend but someone that is deeply committed to supporting people in attaining what is most important to them in their lives.” Gorrie originally coached Steve to get trained as a coach because he saw a passion for working with others to find their bliss and attain new levels of success in their lives.

Client Reiland Larry, Owner at The Water’s Edge Spa says, “Steve Scott has provided me a way to find my own path in this complex world in which we live and work. He is the ‘Coach’ in every sense of the word!”

Scott’s coaching style utilizes stories and examples as well as real world application so clients can go out and make real changes to their business and themselves to become more successful. He’s built up a solid reputation as “The Houston Business Coach” over the last seven years and in recent years; he’s gained national and international coaching clients who appreciate his warm manner, true listening skills and practical solutions.

Learn more about Steve Scott, “The Houston Business Coach” at: http://www.thehoustonbusinesscoach.com.

Business Keys To Success: Your Team And The Revolving Door

In any team sport, the key to sustained success is managing the revolving door of players. Players come and players go. In business it is the same. If you are leading a team, you are responsible for making sure that the revolving door is geared toward bringing in players who are better than those that are leaving.

                                  Keeping A Good Team

So how do you go about doing this? Whether you are a small business owner, entrepreneur or a business executive all of us know that situations, especially when it comes to employment, are not forever. A good start to managing the revolving door and keeping a good team is to place high value on the good people already on the team.
According to John Maxwell every team has three groups of players. The first is the starters, who directly add value to the organization or who directly influences its course. The second is the bench players, who indirectly add value to the organization or who support the starters. The third group is a core group within the starters that he calls the inner-circle members. Without these people the team would fall apart.

A Good Team Is An Evolving Process

Your job as a self-employed business owner, or corporate manager or executive is to make sure each group is continually developed so that bench players are able to step up to become starters, and starter are able to step up to become inner-circle members.

In my personal business coaching practice I have observed that the business owners and managers who understand the revolving door and how to have it work to their advantage have better and more productive teams.
If you are not sure who the inner circle members are on your team, then try this exercise: Write the names of the people on your team who are starters. Now determine the people you could most easily do without. One by one, check off the names of the people whose loss would hurt the team least if they left. At some point you will end up with a smaller group of people without whom the team would be dead. That’s your inner circle. At this point you can rank the remaining members of the team in order of importance.

Treatment of Team Members Must Match Their Value

Also, this is a good exercise to remind you of the value of the people on the team. And here’s another observation that Maxwell makes. If your treatment of those people doesn’t match their value, your run the risk of losing them and having your revolving door work against you and your team.

Here’s the question for moving your team forward in the small business or the corporate world. Does your treatment of your inner-circle members match their value? When it does your revolving door slows down and you are better able to manage it and your team. And your reputation will become one of a good team leader where people want your door to revolve so they can come in and be part of your team.for more information please visit-http://businesskeystosuccess.com/

Make Your New Year Truly New: Success Planning

2013 is slowly winding down. At the end of every year it is imperative to think about the success planning for the following 12 months. This time of the year is perfect to reflect and see what you have done in your personal and business lives.   

Understanding the keys to success, regardless of your work status (entrepreneur, solo professional or self-employed business owner) starts with where you came from to where you have arrived over the past year.  It is essential to make sure your course for the next year is charted well.

Just like the old saying, without a plan, there’s no course to follow. Get a pad and pen and begin charting your course for 2013.

The first step is to write down what your professional and individual goals are and why they are important to you. Why are they important and how will they motivate you to make your life better down the road. Understanding where you’ve been helps you chart your future more effectively. Once the groundwork is laid out, think of five goals you want to realize in 2014. Don’t go too far out in time because the goals may seem unattainable.

After the five goals are established, determine what’s the most-to-least-important. Doing this will help you establish a time-line to meet and exceed your goals. The simplest way to grow your company and make more money is to follow these steps. It will vastly increase the odds of greater prosperity. 

Regardless if you are in the process of creating your own business, at an early point of starting your own business or you are an expert at running a small business, success planning at any stage will help things smooth out and grow faster. 

Planning may include new processes, personnel, new markets, etc.  You may even look at having a personal business coach to accelerate the process of your successful performance.  Regardless, the planning itself will result in a much better outcome.  I can tell you from coaching success comes from that a large part of it comes from developing an effective plan, coupled with a burning desire to execute the plan. But many ask why success planning is so integral? The main reason is that creating your ideal plan is what helps and guides you to take action towards its fulfillment.  

When you are managing yourself and running a company with a success plan,  you are much more likely to become excited and focus on measurable results. Without a success plan, it is more likely for an individual and a company to get off course. 

Imagining your future helps you make it a reality. Once the future is finished in your mind, then what you need to do in the present becomes absolutely clear.  Success planning gives you the finished plan to create the future you desire.  With a success plan, your 2014 can be personally and professionally fulfilling. You can also have more vigor and time!

If you would like to get a jump start on 2014 visit www.businesskeystosuccess.com and start now to create the future you desire.  You will begin your road to success planning and to learn how to develop the professional and personal life that you deserve. The weekly lessons, sent via e-mail helps you and your business grow step-by-step.

The Business Keys To Success course is self-paced – so you learn and move as fast you want to! Focusing on your individual growth, this course can help anyone, including a self-employed business owner, to take his/her business and/or personal life to the next level. 

Why is personal development crucial to personal and business excellence? Here’s some food for thought. If you want to make more money, be happier, expand your company or anything you want to improve, personal development is the key that unlocks your potential.

Www.BusinesssKeystoSuccess.com can be the foundational start to begin reflecting on your past, present and future.  After all, the best investment we can make is in ourselves.  Seldom will our businesses and lives get bigger than our thinking.  Invest in yourself today.   Commence your success planning and start on the road to becoming more and having more. 

About Author:-

First things first, I like to have fun with people and what I do. I am a personal business coach. Yes, I have received training and been coaching since 1983. I have gone through and continue to happily go through more personal development.

Personal development and its quest for personal growth, more often than not, are the missing links in the chain of business and personal success.As Warren Buffett once said, "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." For more information please visit- http://www.thehoustonbusinesscoach.com

The Twilight Zone Is A Key to Success

You may ask, "How is the twilight zone a key to success?"  It's a good question and I will do my best to give some insights into the answer.

You can learn a lot during the holiday season, including finding out your individual keys to success in business and life. The majority of people go through a pre-determined, or semi-pre-determined routines in their lives and this is especially true during the holidays.  And as we enter the Holidays and start transitioning into the New Year we enter a time where we reflect on the past year, the present and what we want to have in the year ahead.  This time is the twilight zone.  As 2013 comes to an end and its light starts to fade we will ponder what has happened and plan for 2014..

The twilight zone, the end of the year time,  is easy to understand. It is a part of the natural rhythm of business and life.  For some business is excellent.  For others it slows down.  For some it remains the same.  Yet for all of us, regardless of business or life circumstances the twilight zone foretells the curtain of our latest act in life coming down only to be greeted after some darkness with the light coming up and a new curtain rising.  

As a business owner I encourage you to take advantage of the twilight zone and to step back and think about your situation. As this year ends, and the next begins, it is the ideal time to evaluate yourself, your business and where you presently are. Topics to evaluate over the past year include what occurred and what was forecasted to happen.  As the New Year approaches you will have the time to see what worked and see what has not.  

Regardless of your career choice and position, enjoying and learning from the twilight zone, whether you are a solo professional, self-employed business owner, an individual, entrepreneur, employed or between jobs, is to grab as much knowledge as you can and utilize it to create a better future in 2014.

Using this time wisely is one of the best of the keys to success. Looking back for the last 12 months, ask yourself what did I set out to do?  What did I accomplish?  And what do I need to change and will change to improve my future?

When in the twilight zone, the final and most important question to ask yourself is how do you want the rest of your life to look? If for years your business has been your life and your life is your business then something is wrong.  The last time I checked, business is just a part of life.  Not having a clearly defined outlook on a good and satisfying life makes attaining it much harder. If you want your business to experience small business growth or you want a more fulfilling personal life, without an idea of it, it’s that much harder to accomplish.  

And here's the good news.  Business and life is not an "either/or" proposition.  It is when visualized correctly, a "both/and" proposition. 

Savor your experience in the twilight zone as each year winds down.  the keys to success for one’s life. It enables you to reflect and determine ones future. And this time, when used to reflect and evaluate is one of the keys to success.

Your experience in the twilight zone enables you to be renewed, recharged and get a different perspective on things. It is the perfect opportunity to lay out success planning for your professional and personal life. 

The twilight zone provides you with the best opportunity to change your future business and life for the best. It is a time for clarity that comes from having time to think and reflect. 

There are many keys to success, but modifying how your thinking works will have the greatest impact. Doing this has a positive and wave-like impact upon your business and personal experiences.

When you modify your thinking, your habits will be forever modified.

After your habits and re-molded, your activity will be different.

After your activity is modified, you will experience different results.

When you are able to modify your results, your life will become better and better.

At this time of year, stop to enjoy the twilight zone. Step back, take a few moments and see where you are. Modify your thinking patterns, and then your life will be different, not to mention, better.

Utilize your key to success, the twilight zone, to improve your business and personal life in the coming year.  Wishing all of you the best now and in the New Year! 

About Author :-
First things first, I like to have fun with people and what I do. I am a personal business coach. Yes, I have received training and been coaching since 1983. I have gone through and continue to happily go through more personal development.

Personal development and its quest for personal growth, more often than not, are the missing links in the chain of business and personal success.As Warren Buffett once said, "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." For more information please visit- http://www.thehoustonbusinesscoach.com

I Always Thought Opportunities and Success Were Things You Went After

When people think of the opportunities and success that individuals go after, they understand that it takes drive and passion to accomplish their successes. However, this poses many questions for people looking to attain success. How can different people facing different circumstances overcome their difficult circumstances, but still attain success? This question has been asked for many, many years. Therefore, how does one obtain success despite challenges in one’s personal life?

If you think about starting your own business, there are many things to think of before jumping in and starting the process. How much experience and knowledge do you have in your field? Are you willing to work non-stop until you are able to hire enough competent and reliable people to ensure the continuity of your business? Do you have enough time and savings to devote to the venture? Are you willing to deal with the hurdles and know how to work through them to ensure your chances are success are worth the risk? These are just some of the questions to ask yourself when you are thinking about starting your own business. If you can answer “Yes” to these and other questions, then you just might have the keys to success.

Individuals who have a great attitude also have the keys to success because the right attitude will help you think your way through and help plan and execute a great business plan. Entrepreneurs with a great attitude are able to learn small business keys to success because they are receptive to learning. When an individual is receptive to learning, they will easily and efficiently pick up on “how to success in business” tips from successful serial entrepreneurs.

Business startup owners with positive attitudes are able to soak up personal development secrets from more experienced entrepreneurs. Very often, they also look to learn  from a marketing business coach in person, online or at an event. It doesn’t matter where or how the knowledge is received.  The key is  that positive entrepreneurs are more likely to be able to apply the knowledge in their startup. 

In addition to becoming a successful business person, there are other things in life besides becoming a wildly successful business owner. With the assistance of a marketing business coach, they can apply their growth in personal development as a business owner to free up more time to work on giving back to the community.  This proves that many small business keys to success can be applied in one’s personal life, including giving back to their community.

As many non-profit organizations which help disadvantage people and animals, they can utilize their how to succeed in business knowledge that has already helped them in their business success and apply it to their volunteer work in non-profit organizations.  They can bring the business success viewpoint of taking limited resources and stretching them further which in turn helps more people than would otherwise have been helped.  To have a business and life of significance our goal must be to improve others not only through our products and services but by taking what we have learned and applying it to give back to those less fortunate. For more information please visit-http://www.businesskeystosuccess.com

About Author :-

First things first, I like to have fun with people and what I do. I am a personal business coach. Yes, I have received training and been coaching since 1983. I have gone through and continue to happily go through more personal development.

Personal development and its quest for personal growth, more often than not, are the missing links in the chain of business and personal success.As Warren Buffett once said, "Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get." For more information please visit-http://www.thehoustonbusinesscoach.com