Keys To Success: Finding Peace

When talking about the keys to success in small business one topic that seldom comes up is “peace.” In coaching success, peace is the one thing my clients value above all else.

Keys To Success: What Is Peace?

Peace can mean many things. It could be a longing for predictability or stability. It could be in having a process for doing business that minimizes breakdowns for both the business and its customers.

One thing is for sure. Peace comes from order. Distress or lack of peace comes from disorder. Now, to have small business growth and small business success there must be some disorder.

After all, the only path to growth is to change. And, change by its very nature represents disorder. Whether you are starting up your own business or running a small business there needs to be growth and change.
There needs to be some disorder.

Keys To Success: Know What Is Causing You Distress

You would like to have peace but maybe you are in one of the following situations:

• Your business is growing yet you feel like you are losing control.
• You are profitable or extremely profitable but you are unhappy doing what you do.
• You are not generating the sales or profits you would like and feel lost.
• Your business is good but you can’t seem to hire the right people.
• You find yourself with no energy at the end of the day and not looking forward to tomorrow.
• You are having personal problems. You end up focusing even more on your business but the reality is that with the increased focus you are seeking more escape and not addressing the problems.

When the self-employed business owner doesn’t find peace it is because they are distracted. And, too many distractions can cause too many detours and bring progress to a stop.

Keys To Success: Visualize Peace

In the next post I will discuss what peace is and what peace is not. Also, I will give you some insights in how to create peace in your business and life. Give some thoughts to what peace is for you.

Visualize what it would look like. One of the keys to success is to remember what Napoleon Hill said, “What the mind can conceive and believe it can achieve.”

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Keys To Success: How Tall Do You Want To Grow?

One of the keys to success is to understand that your life is a choice. In fact, everyday you choose to do what you think is valuable. Sure, we have circumstances, things and others that can dictate some of our choices. But if you are to be totally honest, you choose to be with those circumstances, things and others.

Keys To Success: Your Life Is Your Choice

Imagine that you are in a forest where the trees can talk. You go up to a tree and you ask it this question. “How tall will you grow?” The tree would immediately answer, “I will grow as tall as I possibly can.”

The tree doesn’t have a choice. It is going to grow as tall as it possibly can, given the soil, surrounding vegetation and weather conditions. The tree can’t change its conditions. But you and I have a choice.

Whether you are seeking greater personal growth as an individual, an entrepreneur, solo professional or self-employed business owner the choice to become more and be more is yours.

Keys To Success: What Will Be Your Choice?

The tree understands that it doesn’t have a choice. It is stuck where it is. You are not stuck. You are a human being with a mind and a free will.

In coaching success one of the keys is to make a choice to become more and be more. Only when you choose to become more are you in a position, whether it be for personal reasons, small business growth or small business success, to attract more and have more.

As a human being you have been given the dignity of choice. You can choose to be all. Or, you can choose to be less.

Keys To Success: Strive To Achieve The Maximum

Yes, your life is a choice. You have to decide what your choice will be. Unlike the tree which has no choice as to its circumstances and surroundings, you do have the power to affect change.

So, what will it be? As a personal business coach I can assure you that to have the business and life you desire you must embrace personal development.

As said earlier, you can choose to be all. Or, you can choose to be less. When I talk about how tall you will grow I am referring to the size of your life. Is your life going to be a short summary? Or, is it going to be tall in accomplishments?

Why not strive to achieve to be the maximum and be all that you can be? Regardless of what you do, life is a challenge.

Whether your challenges come as an individual or as a self-employed business owner running a small business or starting up your own business, things are better when you are taking on challenges you have decided to create as opposed to sitting back and waiting for the challenges to come to you.

Here’s a little secret in the keys to success. Successful people do not wait for the circumstances things or challenges. They make a choice and go out and create the circumstances and relationships to let them achieve their maximum.

The next time you are in a forest and a tree asks you how tall will you grow you have the answer. Tell the tree, “I will grow as tall as I possibly can.” People want to be in harmony with nature.

Speak the language of the tree. Let the tree know that you understand the keys to success and that you have chosen to grow as tall as you possibly can.

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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.

For More Info: http://www.thehoustonbusinesscoach.com/