building your platform

You need a platform that makes it easy to turn your insight into a movement. ~ Seth Godin from the book Linchpin

There’s a new world of work that exists in today’s marketplace. I call it the New Work Revolution. This new world of work starts with understanding and building a platform for yourself that you can work from to create maximum value in the marketplace. What is a platform and is your career built on one that is solid enough?

The reason having a platform is becoming so important is that the work environment is changing. The way we create products in the United States has changed as I am sure it has in other nations with similar economies. Unemployment hovers around 9-10% and the jobs that are being created by the government are not the kinds of jobs that the average American is looking to fill.

With a changing work environment how can we change the way that people see us and the way that we create value for others. It starts with building the right platform for yourself. It doesn’t matter if you work for someone else or if you are a business owner, you need a platform either way.

A work platform consists of your passions, purpose, core values, mission, etc. The main message of your platform is who are you and how do you create value in the marketplace.

Your platform drives everything you do and guides your decision making. The individuals who are creating massive value in the world have established their platforms before they have started spreading their message.  This is a must if you are going to stand firm in your convictions as having a platform means a lot of times that you are taking a stand.  Taking a stand means that many people will not agree with your opinion on the matter.  Standing strong, in this case, means having the ability to understand fully what you are doing and why.

Work has changed.  In his book Linchpin, Seth Godin also says that the days of getting paid well to be told what to do at work are ending.  Positioning yourself with a platform to create value will allow you to navigate this landscape confidently and effectively.

What’s your platform?

PS… If you are looking to build a platform for yourself, we have created our coaching club specifically for those individuals who want to change the way that they create value in the market.  Check out our coaching club to get started in the discussion and to access our platform building tools.

From a mindset standpoint there are three main culprits that inhibit our success.  Those inhibitors are fear, stories and complexity.

Fear is the most recognizable for us because it is immediate and more tangible than other mindset issues.  We fear failure and in a peculiar way we fear success as well.  The dichotomy between the two fears is mystifying and in some parts cruel.  On the one hand we don’t want to be rejected so we fear putting ourselves out there.  On the other hand what if we are accepted?  Then what happens.  Now I am scared because I am out in the open and exposed to criticism and scrutiny.

This reminds me of the high school guy who wants to ask a girl out but worries that she will say no.  Then when he gets the nerve to ask and she says yes, it doesn’t get rid of the fear it just shifts to a set of new concerns.  What if I am not interesting?  What if she thinks I am a bad kisser?  What if she laughs at my car?

Deeper than fear lies a much harder obstacle to spot and overcome.  That obstacle is the stories that we create for our lives that if you were to really examine them just aren’t true.  These stories are created by negative experiences that happen in our past that we then take on and use it to define us.

If you were an unpopular nerd in high school, you may still be holding onto some of the conversations around that experience and they may still be holding you back.  You may think that people generally don’t like you.  You may think that you aren’t suited to stand out or that you are not special.  The reality is that when we step back and take a look at these stories, we realize that they aren’t true for us today and we need to release their hold on us.

Another issue that keeps us from taking action is the complexity that we create in our minds about a certain project.  This happens to me when it comes to fixing things around my house.  Recently I had a situation where my kitchen sink was leaking.  It leaked for a few months and my solutions was to put a flower vase underneath the leak and empty it once a week.  (This was not a favored move by my better half.)

The reason why I didn’t fix it is that I had told myself that I don’t know anything about plumbing and therefore would be unable to fix this problem.  The reality was that when I finally dove in and looked at the problem, it was not nearly as hard as I made it out to be and was able to fix the problem in about 20 minutes time.  I let the complexity get in the way of my taking action and in retrospect this was foolish.  I wasted tons of time and worry with my band aid solution of the flower vase.

These are the mind set issues that keep us from doing the things we know we should be doing to achieve greater success.  Take a look at these issues and ask yourself which of these applies to you.  It really comes down to how bad you want it?  Most of us wait until something bad happens before we make a positive change.  Is that going to be your story too?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shame when long time local businesses fail.  You feel like a piece of your town/city dies with it.  As tragic as this is, businesses need to adapt themselves to a changing business landscape.  It’s not enough to just put up a storefront and run a few ads in the paper and on local TV and think that people will flock to your store.

Today, consumers can buy from retailers all over the country.  Geography isn’t nearly as important as it used to be.  So how do business owners take advantage of this?  One of the first things to do if your business is struggling in tough times is take a step back and look at your business from a 30,000 ft.  viewpoint.  Where is there waste?  Are there product lines that you have been thinking about adding but haven’t?  Are there dead product lines that you just need to kill?  Are there employees that need to be fired?

You get the point, leave no stone left unturned.

Another consistent factor with small businesses that have failed in the past couple of years is their stubborn refusal to get active on the web.  With customers moving more and more towards making purchases on the web and engaging with each other and the places that they do business with, if you don’t have a website for your business, you have no chance to make those sales or get people engaged in your business.  Social media is another avenue to explore although not critical but what about creating online content about your particular niche?  Most small businesses that fail don’t engage in online content creation and their business ultimately suffers for it.

We are a social society today.  We want to engage with the businesses that we patronize.  We get excited when a business engages us online through Twitter or a blog post.  Old school businesses like Jolley’s have a hard time with this concept.  They see conversing with people online as a waste of time.  Seth Godin refers to emotional capital in his most recent book Linchpin and how emotional capital is the way that we separate ourselves from other businesses and people.  The key is finding your voice and your platform for delivering your message in a manner that works for you.

In times when your business is struggling it’s time to take hard look at where your business is at currently and how well it is positioned to do business in the current  landscape.  Don’t hold onto antiquated business practices and keep an open mind about what the future holds.  Business is constantly changing and evolving.  A Taoist principle that comes to mind when I think about this topic is that of keeping yourself formless like water so that you can overcome the different obstacles that arise because you haven’t attached yourself to any particular way.  The government isn’t going to help you do that.  Smart, flexible business owners do that for themselves.

Used Courtesy of Morganz http://www.sxc.hu/profile/marganz

Everyone has a different style when it comes to generating ideas and creating.  Developing new ideas and creating new possibilities is a driving force behind today’s economy.   Knowing that creating and leveraging ideas is important, what keeps us from doing it?

The biggest obstacle for creating starts with our mindset.  How often do you hear; “I’m not good at that.” or “I never have any good ideas.”  The truth is that we have lots of good ideas, we just don’t have a process for filtering those ideas.

This brings me to what process we should use for innovating and creating in the marketplace.  There’s a lot of conflicting information out there about what works best.  For every article you hear on the power of brainstorming, you see another article on why brainstorming doesn’t work.

An important aspect of creation is obviously people.  We know that we, as individuals, need to be involved in the process of creating/innovating but when do we get other people involved in our creation process?

Creating in solitude definitely has it’s value.  Zen Habits recently called solitude the #1 habit of highly creative people.   I talk a lot in this blog about having a morning ritual that focuses in mind, body and spirit.  This is a great time for quiet and to create.

Working in a communal setting was listed by Zen Habits as the #2 habit of highly creative people.  Working in a group is where I think you take an idea that you have put together and bounce it off the right people to really refine the idea.  I know I have had many instances where I have come together with my team and we end of with something even more incredible than when it was first conceived.

Use both a solo and team approach to creation and innovating.  A challenge that we face is creating the time and space in our lives for solitude.  This is why I suggest doing this type of an activity first thing in the morning to limit the distractions. Then use your work from your solo time and bring your best ideas to a group or to people that you enjoy collaborating with.

There are going to be some disciplines where it makes more sense to work solo vs. working in a group.  Other times the opposite is true.

Innovating and creating is about people and the best innovators make time to create in their own space and also know when to get together and refine their ideas with people they trust.

What’s your creation process?

We are all too content with the generic phrases such as; “This product/service was great, really informative!”

What does that really tell a customer about your product/service?  You guessed it, nothing.

When we look at testimonials, we want to see authenticity.  We want to feel like the person talking about a product/service is a human being.  That sounds pretty straight forward right?  What can we do as business owners to make our testimonials more authentic?

A technique that I recently learned about and have employed with success was from Sean D’Souza.  Sean has a book called The Brain Audit that talks about how to create compelling messages as a writer and takes you through a specific process.  In that book, Sean touched on testimonials and how to avoid making crappy testimonials.  I am not going to get into his entire testimonial process.  You can visit his site for more info on that.  The testimonial process has one specific step that really brings the humanity back into your testimonial.

This specific step is actually the first step in the testimonial process.  The step deals with asking your client right off the bat, what specific concerns or issues did they have with getting engaged in your product/service.  In other words, were they worried about spending the money?  Do they a really busy schedule and didn’t feel they had time?  Had they used similar services in the past with less than stellar results?

As business owners, we focus a lot on the potential outcomes from using our product/service but not enough on the psychology behind why they would or would not buy.

We decided to employ this specific step into our own testimonial process for an event that we do.  People fly in from all over the country to participate so we knew there were sacrifices involved, we were just ignorant as to what those sacrifices were specifically.  In that event, we learned that some of our clients are worried about leaving their kids.  One of our clients is currently taking care of their elderly parents and really had a hard time breaking free from that for a couple of day.  Another client was worried about a trip that was taking them out of the country and some deadlines coming up in their business.

On the surface we have some really authentic testimonials for our workshop which is cool.  The real benefits, however, go much deeper than that.  We connected with our clients through that process on a much deeper level.  We see them with different eyes, that are more compassionate and more understanding.  That’s really cool.

If you have a testimonial process, ask yourself one question.  Does it bring out the human side of your product/service?  Do your testimonials feel like they were written by human beings?  If not, how can you change that?  If you aren’t getting testimonials, implement a system to start getting them.  Your business and, more importantly, your clients will be better for it.

At the base of productivity is having greater personal clarity.  When you have that clarity about not only what it is that you should be doing but also how you should be doing it, you are able to accomplish things that keep your career/life moving forward.

We ignore ourselves when we look at productivity.  We address the symptoms of our inefficiencies at work without really addressing/curing the root cause.  It’s not a good idea to do this with regards to our health and the same is true for productivity.

If you are struggling with productivity or feel like you are letting the day get away from you more often than not, don’t start implementing strategies to fix productivity without looking at yourself in more depth.

Having greater clarity of your Soul’s Purpose will allow you to then have greater clarity on what you should be doing and how you should be doing it.

Understanding Soul Purpose gives you greater clarity in the following areas of your career:

1. Are you in a career where you are passionate and deliver value to the best of you ability?
2. Are you engaging in your chosen field in a way that plays to your strengths? (Are you the kind of detailed person that will put the correct cover sheet on the TPS reports?)
3. Should you jump on that business opportunity or promotion?
4. Should you travel a lot?
5. Are you suited for leadership?
6. What continuing education should you engage in?  For example, Is a master’s degree going to further my career or am I doing it just say that I did it?
7. What kind of team environment is best for you?  Some people thrive in group settings other are completely drained by it?

These are some questions that you can answer about yourself in a more concise manner when you really understand your Soul Purpose.  Knowing what kind of activities you should be doing and how you should do them is going to put you in a position to maximize productivity.

I always thought of myself as an analyzer, someone who could pore through data.  I would accept these types of projects and then couldn’t figure out why I procrastinated on them so much.  I later realized that I actually hate analyzing and doing detail work but for some reason had created a story about myself that I liked it and it just simply wasn’t true.  It turns out I am somewhere in the middle of obtaining facts.  I like to have just the right amount of info to make a decision.  No more, no less.

In the end, you can see how engaging in this activity slowed my productivity way down because it wasn’t something I was fully engaged in even though overall, I loved my job.  I thought the problem was not enough time when it was really not enough passion.

Sometimes we worry only about time when what we should really be worrying about is how we are spending that time, now and in the future.

If you want to be more productive in your careers, start with Soul Purpose as your base.  Don’t build your career on a shaky platform.  Many have tried this and failed.  Once you gain that personal clarity, you will be able to better assess where, what and how you should be sharing your talents.  Once you get there, greater productivity naturally follows.

When it came to having ability, I knew that there were some things that I did very well.  Even easier to pinpoint was the list of things that I didn’t do well.  ( Isn’t that always the case?  We are always so good at what we suck at.)  The problem is that I didn’t value a lot of the things that I did well and so I never bothered to explore them at a deeper level.

The reason we do this a lot of the time is because the things we do well come some easy and natural to us that because they are so natural, we think that everyone can do it.  We get stuck in this place of thinking that we have no talent, no ability and nothing that distinguishes us from anyone else.

Because of this thought process, my career path was that of working for a Fortune 100 company and trying to move up the ranks within that company as fast as I could.

When it came to be being an employee at the firm I worked for, I was better than average but certainly not exceptional.  I was being promoted but not always as quickly as I would have liked mainly due to the fact that the operation that I ran was not always delivering consistent results.

This inconsistency drove me crazy.  I couldn’t put my finger on it.  I will tell you this.  I worked at a job for almost 9 years and hated it 75% of the time.  I loved it during the extremely high points of my success but was constantly having to pep talk myself and get myself up to go in and work. Mondays were the worst days of my life.

During my career I had friends who made comments about why I was working where I was working and those comments just pissed me off.  I think they made me mad because I really wasn’t sure why I was doing what I was doing.

It wasn’t really until one my daughters was hospitalized at 3 weeks old with pneumonia that I really got serious about my career and where I was going.  At that point I realized that life is short and I should spend it doing what I love to do and what allows me to create the most value in the world.

So I quit.

I went to work for a smaller firm that allowed me to be more of an intrapreneur and I loved it.  I ran projects with a lot of autonomy.  During this time I decided to start educating myself on what my skills were and decided that I needed a deeper understanding of what I brought to the table and what I truly loved to do.

I took tests like the Kolbe A index and Meyers- Briggs.  I read books like Unique Ability. It all started to slowly come together.  Clarity of purpose started to manifest itself.

I also started spending time in the mornings doing what I call a power hour which consisted of physical, spiritual and mental exercises that helped further my clarity.

With this increased clarity I started a business on the side while working at the small firm.  Eventually I went out on my own full time.

I haven’t looked back since.

I never considered myself to be an entrepreneur growing up.  It’s funny how thing’s change.  Soul Purpose starts with questions and possibilities and then creating a process to develop the possibilities and answer the questions.

It’s not an easy process and one that I am still working through but it has certainly been worth it.

What things do you value in your life?  Are you in a position to create the most value for the world?  Do you know what your core strengths and abilities are?

When looking at doing better the first thing you need to examine is how you are being as person.  Before you can change your actions you have to make a commitment to yourself to change the way you are and also be willing to see your world through a different lens.

Leadership can be a challenge whether you are a business owner, a manager or a parent.  What’s the right balance of support and toughness?  How do I get the best out of the people around me?

What really made me think about this topic with regards to business was at a workshop that we run for business owners.  We spend a lot of time talking about relationships and the subject of employees always comes up.  Once you get business owners talking about their employees, you are likely to hear some of the following statements.

My employees are lazy.

My employees don’t seem to care.

Why can’t my employees just get it?

Young kids today are just bad workers.

These are just a few of the comments that you will hear.  The truth is that maybe their employees really aren’t doing that well and there really are bad employees.  However I never once hear business owners talk about how they can do better with regards to leading their teams.  I never hear them ask, “What am I doing wrong?”  It’s always their team.

Penelope Trunk wrote an interesting piece for BNET on how employees need to approach their work.  I respect the article and the place that it was written from as it talks about the employee taking responsibility for the direction of their careers.  I agree with that but I will say this, leaders are leaders for a reason.  Employees are employees for a reason.

Leaders are supposed to handle things better than their employees that’s why they are in the position they are in in the first place.

If employees were that good at holding themselves accountable, they would already be a business owner or a leader somewhere.  The reality is that they are probably not good at doing this currently.

So this puts a lot of responsibility on the leader and it starts with self analysis and a willingness to accept criticism.  If you can continually ask yourself what you can do better as a leader for your people, you will drive much better results for your individual team members as well as your organization as a whole.

How can you do better?  You can ask this of yourself as a parent, as a manager, as a business owners and even as an employee.  If you keep asking yourself this question and don’t allow yourself to filter the results, there’s no question in mind that you will be better for yourself and put yourself in a position to get the best out of people around you.

So how do we create content that readers/clients want?

Today we are going to start with how your material is presented from a look and feel standpoint.

I ran across on article from the Search Engine Blog that got me thinking about this.  The article is titled, SEO 101 – part 12: Everything You Need To Know About Page Content.

We often get so caught up into the different tricks that we can employ to get people to our site that we often forget about the most important aspect, which is having content that readers want and presenting it to them in a way that engages them.

The point of the Search Engine Guide article that I want to most talk about is just in the simple layout of your blog.  If you do nothing else, start there.

How much thought are you putting into your headlines?

Headlines are a good place to start because it’s typically the first thing that someone sees.  Headline should be something compelling that draws people in.   Without a compelling headline, many readers may not take the time to even look at your article.  There are several different approaches to writing a headline that you can use.  Copyblogger gives you some examples of different headlines that you can read about on their blog.

Beyond the headline, take a look at how your material is presented.  Is it presented in a clean, easy to process manner?  There is not one way to present your content that will please every reader (we will talk more about this in a couple of days).  You can start with utilizing pictures to enhance the readability of blogs.  The use of white space is also very important.  There are a lot of articles out there that seem to just steam roll the reader with their content and for most it’s too overwhelming and they don’t read it.

Relevant links in your article are also important in your posts.  You should try and link back to past relevant content as much as possible.  Linking to other people’s content is a great way to enhance the readability of your content as well.

Take a look at your content and ask in what ways can your content be enhanced to increase your readability.  Pay attention to what other sites are doing that you like to read as well.  Looking at your content layout is a simple place to start.

Communication is the key.  Are you sharing?  Is your content good?  Do you consistently update? Do you respond in a timely manner?  Do you actively engage your community and build new relationships?  Are you looking for ways to build great relationships with your clients?

These are all good questions to ask yourself to assess where you are at with regards to your online relationship building.  Building relationships in person is a much easier task than building them in a virtual setting.  Virtual relationships take extra work and extra thought.  For a business owner it come down to one thing, helping people win.

Search Engine Guide has a post that I think is great in breaking down the philosophy of successful online relationship building.  The post shares the following quote from Pete Vossler:

People are insecure; give them confidence.
People want to feel special; compliment them.
People desire a better tomorrow; show them hope.
People need to be understood; listen to them.
People are selfish; speak to their needs first.
People are emotionally low; encourage them.
People want to be associated with success; help them win.

I think that all of these points are important but the last point about helping people win really stuck out to me.  In reality, building relationships is about getting creating value for others.  I doesn’t have to come in the form of money.  It can come in the form of feelings for instance.

When you create an online presence for your business, you are creating a platform to help a wider range of people be successful than you could be having just a local presence.  There is a lot of power in that but we tend to take it for granted in today’s day and age.

We take it for granted by not having an online presence at all by thinking that the web is over-saturated and that we can’t provide anything new to the space.  We take it for granted by not creating content on a regular basis or by failing to create new content at all.

There are several great examples of businesses interacting with their community and creating some positive results:

• Dogfish Head Brewery Craft Ales-  (I always like to spot light a beer company doing it right.)  They have built their business on giving their customers what they want.  Sam Calagione, president and founder says this about using social media with his business: “Social media has leveled the playing field…We can have intimate conversations with customers.”
• Mashable had a recent article that talks about businesses using social media right.  They give several examples of what companies are doing to engage their people.
• Houlihan’s restaurant was recently featured in a recent edition of Fast Company for their efforts in using social media to increase profitability.  The restaurant change went ahead and built their own social media outlet to communicate with their clients.

You don’t have to do something exactly like the examples above but at the very least, they should give you some great ideas.

To be a good neighbor on the web, we have to be willing to create good content at a consistent level and not take our relationships for granted.  It’s also about going out and actively looking to create new relationships as well. We have to keep in mind that the reason our businesses have an online presence is to create value in the marketplace and help people win.

Is your online presence doing that?

Making hiring decisions for your small business can be a nerve racking affair.  How do I find the right people?  Where do I go to look?  How do I approach them in the interview without sounding desperate?  These are all questions that we have asked, or will ask, during the course of running our businesses.

It’s challenging to be a small business owner who has a business that is growing and needs the right people to get the business to the next level.  As a small business owner, you probably don’t have an extensive budget with which to bring in top talent.  That means you have to be creative.  Beyond salary, what do you have to offer?  Do you have a compelling vision?  Is your company positioned for massive growth?  Do you have an opportunity to make a wide spread difference in the community?

Great (and authentic) answers to these questions can be the deciding factor on whether or not you will bring on the talent you are looking for.  If your business is up and coming, it stands to reason that there are also some up and coming talent who are looking for the opportunity that your business has to offer.  How creative you will be in this process is critical.

Crafting a creative offering is just one challenge however.  Another challenge that you face as a small business owner is the competition in the marketplace.  You are not only competing with large businesses to land talent, you are also competing with other small businesses just like you who are also looking for ways to creatively position themselves in the minds of the talent pool.  As a business owner, you have to figure out how to separate your business and what you have to offer from everyone else.

If being creative and working in the competitive landscape of hiring talent isn’t hard enough, as a business owner, you also have to find time to participate in the search for talent.  You have to do some research on where to find the talent.  You need to work on crafting wants ads for talent.  You have to know what kind of person you are looking for.  All of these things take precious time that you don’t necessarily have.

Understanding the challenges that you face as a small business owner when looking for talent will help you develop strategies to overcome them. These practices will then create a powerful landscape for your business to hire talented people and allow your business to thrive.

Everyone has heard or seen the romanticized version of the entrepreneur, the rugged individualist who overcomes all of the odds to build a successful business and becomes a millionaire. He/she puts in long hours and years of hard work and has built something that he/she owns. Great story.

Or there is the other story that people like to tell about entrepreneurs. The story of the fortunate entrepreneur who just happens to be at the right place at the right time. His/her success more a product of luck and a series of fortunate circumstances vs actual work. A lot of us for some reason hope this is true and that success will just fall into our lap one day.

The truth is that running a business probably falls somewhere between the two opposing visions that people have about successful entrepreneurs.  It is hard work but that hard work puts you in a position to get some breaks.

Before I get into why you may consider keeping your day job while building or running a business, I do want to say that I am not talking about doing some work from home or some online get rich quick scheme. Those opportunities don’t exist. People who are successful building online businesses work their ass off to make them work just like everyone else. Even if they have a success formula, chances are it’s not going to equate into the kind of success that the individual who is teaching the formula had. This is nothing against that type of business but I think that unless you feel your Soul Purpose revolves around online commerce, you should not waste your time.

I read Hugh Macleod’s book, Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity a few weeks ago and the concept of keeping your day job did resonate with me as I did see the wisdom in this advice.  Like any piece advice, there is not a one size easy fit for every single individual.  I worked in sales for a number of years and I can say that if you are a commission sales person, you practically have a business even though you don’t have any input of the companies’ decisions, you do control your earnings to a certain extent and it requires a lot of work physically, emotionally and mentally.  It would be hard to be a salesperson and be able to run a business on the side.

With that being said, I do think there are a number of industries that would work nicely with running a business on the side.  Any kind of creative business is a no brainer.  If you write, design, build websites, code websites, paint etc all of these types of businesses are easier to run on the side as you can do this on project to project freelance basis.

It’s also easier to run a business on the side if you have the kind of job that when you leave, your done for the day and you don’t have to be responsible for your work outside of your work time.  Also, it may make sense to keep your day job if you really enjoy it and it gives you some freedom to do projects on the side.

These are just a couple of scenarios that I thought that really make sense when it comes to keeping your day job.  Obviously there are financial considerations that come into play here as well.

What are some other scenarios where you think this makes sense?  Does this even make sense to do this?  I would love to hear your thoughts on this.

This is the point where business owners get curious about sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  What are the best social media outlets for your business.  That’s really up to you and your clients to decide.  You can look for networks that are favored by your industry, you can look at what your clients are using, you can look at what networks may be the most appropriate for your business.

Here’s a breakdown of Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn:

Twitter:  I have said this before but when I first signed up for Twitter, it seemed ridiculous to me.  I just didn’t get it.  I really think that Twitter doesn’t make sense until you start expanding your network with people who are really using it. The main complaint that I get from small business owners about Twitter revolves around this same lack of understanding that  I had.

What’s great about Twitter is that it gives you access to a whole group of people that you would typically not have access to.  It’s a great opportunity to meet new people, run across great ideas and share your own great ideas.

I will avoid getting on a soap box about how to best use Twitter or any other social networking platform for that matter.  I am certainly not a social media expert but I do use it on a daily basis.  What I will do is share how I use Twitter so that it works for me.

The first thing I do with Twitter is use it to update my followers on information that is relevant to small business owners.  Typically I do this by sharing other people’s content that I run across on a daily basis.  The second thing I do is use to expand the reach of my own information that I create.  Beyond content, I use Twitter as a connection tool.  I am not so much of a conversationalist on Twitter itself but I do try to set up 1-2 calls/meetings a week with people that I connect with on Twitter.

The connection aspect has been a great way to find mentors as well as create synergies with people to move my business forward.  One word of caution about Twitter, be careful what you say, you don’t want to have this happen to you.

Facebook:  For me Facebook is more of a friendship site.  I don’t link my Twitter account to it and I don’t really pursue a lot of business there.  However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t or shouldn’t use Facebook for business.

I have made great professional connections through Facebook.  I have also seen business owners really use the fan page function of Facebook to get communicate and share with their clientele on a regular basis.

Alex Mandossian has done a great job with this through his Productivity Strategies platform.  They post content regularly and seem to have created an active and engaged following through their fan page.  You can certainly pick up some tips for how Alex has structured his page to get ideas for your own business.

LinkedIn:  LinkedIn is the more buttoned up and professional of the major social networking sites.  LinkedIn provides a lot of unique features for its users.

One of my favorite features is the ability to recommend people in your network.  This is a great way to share with others the great things that people in your network are doing.  I also enjoy the question and answer feature that allows you to weigh in on questions that other LinkedIn users have about various topics.  You can also integrate Slide Share into your profile which is a great tool for my graphic and web design business.   As a business owner there is plenty to like about LinkedIn.

Those are the 3 main sites that I use regularly.  It’s up to you determine what networks are best for you and how much time and effort you want to put into using them.  To get past the social media is dumb and a waste of time issue that a lot if us business owners have, it takes jumping in and giving them a try so that we can see how to make these networks work effectively for our business.

How often do we hear the story of the rugged individualist business owner who defies all odds and works 20 hour days just to realize his/her dream of small business success.  We have heard these stories a lot and the one thing we don’t hear about is how these same business owners are still putting in 20 hour days five years later.  In the end their businesses shut down because the owners can’t sustain that level of work indefinitely and they burn out.

What can we do to make sure that this doesn’t happen to our business?  The first thing that the E-Myth suggests is to look at the franchise model for doing business.  The “poster child” for franchises that was named in the book was McDonald’s.  The funny thing about McDonald’s is that for all the criticism about the fast food industry, you don’t hear enough about what McDonald’s does right when it comes to delivering a consistent customer experience that is second to none in their particular industry.  At McDonald’s nothing is left to chance, everything is done the McDonald’s way.

For your business, it’s about creating the systems and processes that allow you to own a business rather than behaving like the business owner who works 20 hours a day and in reality just owns a job.  The first thing that will be helpful in creating your systems is to do some research on the franchise concept and the different models that exist for franchising.  All Business has a franchise blog that you can look at to get started.  This doesn’t mean that you have to franchise your business but this kind of information is helpful to show how the best franchises create uniformity in operations all over the country and in some cases the world.  Anyone who has worked for a small firm can attest to the fact that getting people to act uniform in one office of 10-15 people is hard enough, let alone getting several offices in different parts of a country to do it.

The second thing that you can do right now to get your systems and processes in place for your small business is to go back and look at the vision that you have for your small business.  How big do you want to be?  What markets do you want to serve?  How many employees etc? What roles do these employees fill?  Take a look at your vision and then look at how you can build your business today so that it looks like your vision for your company 20 years from now.

Building your vision today is important.  One of the common mistakes that small business owners make when they do create systems and processes is that they create the systems and processes around their business as it exists today rather than how they want it to look in the future.  The problem with this is that as soon as they start growing, they need new systems and processes.  When that happens, typically the systems and processes don’t get created because the small business is growing and the business owner can’t find the time to get it done.  The fact that the business owner had systems and processes done once was pretty amazing.  Asking them to do it again is darn near impossible.  Ultimately, growth for the business without the systems to sustain the growth, causes the business to fail.

If you haven’t read the book E-Myth, make sure you take some time to read it.  It will give you some good insight on why systems and processes are important and how to go about putting them together.  For now, think about your business and think about how you can automate more of the work that you do and look at where systems and processes would be an improvement to your life as well as your client experience.

What has been your experience with systems and processes for your business?  Any suggestions for readers on good sources of franchise advice?

We spend a lot of time talking about how to avoid confrontation.  On the flip side, we rarely talk about how to confront people to create positive outcomes in the workplace or in your business.  We fear confrontation so that we don’t hurt people’s feelings or rock the boat.  When it comes down to it, it’s much easier to be the “so-called” nice guy/gal rather than be the jerk.  However, let me run you through a couple of scenarios and you can judge for yourself which you would prefer.

Scenario #1

You have been working with a company for a couple of years.  You aren’t sure what direction your career is headed but no one has really talked to you about doing poorly so you figure that no news is good news.  The only feedback you get is the occasional, hollow sounding, “good job”.  Your manager is a real “players coach”.  He gets along with people really well and everyone likes him.  In your mind, you think he is the best manager you have ever had.  Always agreeable, always nice, always telling you that you are doing great.

Then one day your manager calls you into his office.  You see the look on his face and know there is a problem even though your manager is having a hard time spitting it out.  As it turns out your performance has been below standard and the company needs to let you go as a result.  When you ask for specifics, you get a laundry list of things that you have been doing wrong that no one has mentioned up until now.  Unfortunately, you have no time to correct it because you’re fired.  All you get now is a sorry from your manager and box to put your stuff in.  Nice.

Scenario #2

You start with a new firm and you are a little nervous as is everyone who starts in a new position.  Your boss sits you down day one and lays out expectations that they have for you and she also asks you for your goals that you want to attain with the company.  Day 2 you fall short of the assigned expectations for that day and your new boss comes over to your desk after the day is over to see how you did.  She hears how you fell short of expectations and makes you stay that night until you hit the expectations that you have been given.  You drive home that night looking at the hour and a half of overtime that you just worked and can’t believe what a hard ass your boss was on just your second day!

A funny thing happens to you over the course of the next year.  Since you know the score very well and what’s expected of you on a day-to-day basis, your performance has been getting better and better.  In fact, you not only get a raise but you also hear that if you keep it up, you are in line for a promotion.  Your boss isn’t always buddy buddy with you but she has you on track to hitting your goals.

These 2 scenarios certainly seem extreme but as a leader the difference between someone succeeding or failing in your organization is your leadership.   How you confront poor performance is an important part of great leadership. In the end, who would you rather the work for?  The nice guy who helped you get fired or the manager that isn’t afraid to draw a hard line because they aren’t willing to compromise your success?  The above scenarios have varying degrees to them for sure.  These scenarios can also be used in your personal relationships, parenting etc.

It all comes down to creating the right conditions in your life as well as other people’s lives.  Confrontation allows you to not only be more successful but it also allows for the people around you to be more successful also.   You are able to create better teamwork and come up with better solutions to problems.  We will be talking about the right way to confront over the next few days.  In the meantime, what are your thoughts on confrontation? What has been your experience with confrontation good or bad?

This is something that should take you maybe an hour to complete and once it’s done, will help you in your goal setting and planning for next year.  The first step is to look at what tasks that you could engage in that would ensure personal success.  This could be in any area of your life: financially, family, career, business, you name it.  Whatever your top 5 core values are, game plan around them.  This is important as we often know what tasks are important but we don’t commit them in writing and put a plan together for how we are going to achieve them.  We just assume that because they are in our mind, that’s good enough.

When you have your important tasks laid out for yourself, then take out a piece pf paper and write down every activity/person that exists in your life that is a time waster or that you have identified as tasks you don’t want to do.  If you aren’t sure if a task falls in this category then write it down anyway because it probably does belong.

Go through each activity and ask the following questions:

• Is it a task that you can eliminate entirely?  If not, how can you reduce the amount of time spent on the activity?
• Do you need to hire someone to take care of the tasks that you can’t get to or don’t do well?
• Are there people you need to cut out of your life that are dragging you down?
• Is there a system that may exist that would allow you to handle the task more efficiently?
• Is there automation that exists in the form of technology that would allow tasks to be handled in a more time efficient manner?

This simple inventory can make a big difference for you next year.  We have all fallen victim to time wasters (Social media, e-mail, talking at the water cooler etc.) that we can manage better.  We all get stuck trying to handle the many tasks that we are responsible for when we should get help to manage them.

Take some time in the next couple of weeks to do this and get your upcoming year started in a more productive and efficient manner and prosper in ways that you didn’t know were possible.

Loss of mindfulness is why people engage in useless pursuits, do not care for their own interests, and remain unalarmed in the presence of things which actually menace their welfare.

Buddha

Influence is a critical piece for small business owners.  The sooner they can get some traction with the public and start building some visibility, the better your chance at building a successful business.  Building influence and reach is tough despite all of the tools that are available.  The best way to influence others and expand your reach starts with one simple piece.

The piece that I am referring to is to have personal clarity, or a better way of putting it is to know what you stand for.  When it comes to gaining clarity, unfortunately it’s not a matter of a light switch being turned on and us no longer being in the dark.  Gaining clarity is more like a slow decent out of a dark cave.  Every step gets you closer to being in the light.

To get yourself on the right path towards that clarity light, we must have daily discipline and practice that allows us to discover more about ourselves and get a better understanding of what we stand for.  In the book Siddhartha, it recounts the story of Siddhartha Gotama’s own quest for enlightenment.  His quest for enlightenment took 6 years of immersing himself into the practice of self discovery before he was known as Buddha, The Enlightened One.  The harsh reality for a lot of small business owners is that there is not a lot of time for you to be able to take a sabbatical in order to do this self discovery.  We have to become little Buddhas on the fly doing it while worrying about taking care of our families and paying bills.

This doesn’t mean that discovery is impossible, it just means that we have to be more intentional with our behaviors.   The good news is that a little bit of understanding of what you stand for will put you ahead of most people who just live their lives hoping that this knowledge will fall into their lap one day.  Once you have attained greater knowledge of what you stand for, you will be more influential in the conversations you have with others.

You will gain this influence for two reasons.  The first reason is obviously because you will be able to more confidently articulate what it is that you are looking to do in the world and what you stand for.  Because of the scarcity of confidence in our lives, people tend to be really impressed by the presence of a confident individual.  They will remember you because of it.  The second reason has to do with your own self esteem.  When you have more knowledge of who you are, you stop worrying so much about who you are not.  This translates to confidence as well and also allows you to have meaningful conversations with people without having to prove yourself to them with your words.  Better connections with people equals a more profound impact on those people you connect with.

If you want to expand your reach and be more influential then start by knowing and understand what it is that you stand for.  Don’t stand for many things, stand for just one and relentlessly pursue it.  This is the first and best step to making your mark on the world and creating your position of influence for the masses.

Last year I saw an interview on Charlie Rose with Geoff Colvin, Senior Editor at Large for Fortune magazine, who wrote a book titled, Talent is Overrated.  In the interview and the book, Mr. Colvin talks about the idea that we have of talent and how this concept of talent has never been proven despite all of the research that have on genes and in other areas.   In fact he goes on to discuss how this idea has been proven to be untrue.  In the interview, he goes on to discuss famous people who have achieved at high levels and how it took them a certain amount of time to reach the stage of their careers where they started making a significant difference in their chosen industry.

The myth of talent that currently exists hamper our own personal development.  When we don’t excel at something that is obvious to us, we discount ourselves by saying that we don’t have any talent to offer the world.  It’s hard for us to see the forest from the trees regarding our abilities.  As individuals, we get hung up on talent rather than discovering and expressing our Soul Purpose.  The myth of talent is so powerful that it overpowers our  road to discovery of Soul Purpose.

In America, talent is the easy road.  Talent is sexy and glamorous.  Self discovery, on the other hand, is hard.   Self discovery takes effort on our part to do.  Self discovery is that new agey friend who we like but that we also think is crazy sometimes.  The myth of talent has us believe that talent allows us to just do things effortlessly without any work at all because we are just “born with it”.  This myth has hurt our ability to value ourselves and our gifts properly as well as kept us from working to achieve at the highest level possible.

What is your experience with talent?  How many people have you come accross that swear they have no unique talents and gifts?  If you are like me, you have run accross several people like this.  The exciting thing is that everyone has a Soul Purpose and everyone has abilities that can be used to create value in the world regardless if they believe that they do.  It comes down to getting past old notions that we perceive as truth.  This is the case with regards to talent and why the myth hurts us today.  It’s time to stop selling ourselves short and be the kind of people that we want to be.

The reason that this post resonated with me right now is that I feel that I have personally been in violation of the one goal rule.  I took a step back and looked at some of the different ventures that I am involved in and wondered to myself how I had gotten in the position that I currently stood.  I realized that if you aren’t careful, it’s really easy to overload yourself with projects and ventures as an entrepreneur.

This brings me to the topic of one goal.  Success stories begin with this concept.  You hear of people and organizations who are successful because they have that laser focus on one goal that they want to achieve.  You don’t hear of people like Bill Gates or Lance Armstrong being successful at multiple things at the same time.  They may have success in one arena and then once they have gotten as far as they can (or want to) with that arena, they move onto something else.

Entrepreneurs have a hard time with staying focused on one goal typically because of money.  We figure sometimes that the more things that we are involved with, the more of a chance we will have at stumbling upon success.  The problem with the many irons in the fire mentality is that it never works out to the kind of financial and business success that we are looking for in the first place.  In the end we master nothing and then end up starting over.

There is a lot of power in one goal for the simple fact that it’s simple.  One goal allows us to avoid over-complicating our lives and gives us the space to focus on that one goal that we feel is most important.  The power ultimately lies in our ability to master that goal that we have and when we master something, we are able to create the highest potential value in the marketplace for our clients.

What’s your one goal?

Assess Your Business

The first thing that you need to do to put together your marketing plan is take a look at where your business is.  If you have a business plan put together then most of your questions have been answered. Some questions you ask in this phase and information you have put together are:

• Market research-  how much do you know about the market for your business.
• You customer- What do they value? How do they want to be communicated to? Who is your customer?
• Mission, vision and values- You have to know where your business is going and why.
• Target market- what niche can you excel in?  The more specific, the better.
• USP- What makes our business different
• Who do I know?
• Budget-  what can you set aside for marketing

Framework

In the framework, this where you set your parameters.  What are your goals with your marketing, short term and long? How long do you work with a client?  How long does it take to get a new client?  What’s my budget?  What channels will I use to market (social media, blogging, SEO, PPC etc)

Plan

In this phase you start outlining specifics.  What segments do you have in your client base?  How will you bring each one along in the buying process?  Will you do a free newsletter and then offer a $39 product?

What channels are you going to use to get them?  What ones are you passionate about?  Don’t use a marketing channel that you hate and if you hate all online marketing channels, hire someone who loves them.

Put testing into your plan.  What prices work best?  What channels are working and what aren’t?

Evaluate

We just talked about testing and that is important in this phase.  It’s important that you have a way to track how each channel, that you are marketing from, is performing.  Make sure that you have a set time that is frequent where you can evaluate your marketing efforts.

Putting together a marketing plan is a great way to really discover some great things about your business. You will find out who your customer really is, what your offering really is and what channels work best to distribute your message.  Get your plan in place today with these 4 components in mind.

We have all worked for or with someone who suffered from the curse of knowledge.  This is the boss/entrepreneur who assumes that everyone clearly understands their complete vision after talking with them for five minutes or assumes that you know what they are thinking  just because you work there.

Even though I had experienced the curse of knowledge many times, it was articulated to me in a concrete manner by the book Made To Stick by Chip and Dan Heath.  In the book they give an example of a test that was run where they had one person tap a song that they had in their head on a table.  While this person was tapping out their tune, another person sits there and tries to guess the tune that is being tapped.  Rarely did the listener guess the right tune much to the frustration of the tapper.  The tapper couldn’t understand why the listener didn’t get it.  It seemed so obvious to the person in charge of tapping the tune.  This is the same plight of the leader/entrepreneur.

The vision in our mind is so clear that we think that everyone just gets it.  In order to build high performing teams for your organization, it’s important to get past the curse of knowledge so that you are able to get everyone associated with your business, whether it be internal or external team members, on the same page and driving towards a common goal.  Business owners who are able to do this find that their business is able to get high results much faster and easier than business owners who ignore this.

What tips can you give for articulating the vision of your business?  How has this worked for you in the past?

To start, I consider myself to have fairly reasonable views politically. (Don’t we all?)  With that being said, I may not agree with everything that President Obama does but I don’t think he is knowingly trying to create the 2nd coming of the Third Reich. In fact if any of us ever completely agreed with a president I don’t know what we would do.  In the case of his plans to infuse capital into small businesses, I appreciate the spirit of the message but not the tactics used to employ them.

The issue I have with this is two fold.  The first issue is that the current administration apparently forgot about what just happened to the housing market.   This is with regards to the proposal to funnel money at a reduced cost to community banks and credit unions.  Sounds great right?  Except that cheap cost of funds was the same thing that helped kill the mortgage industry as banks lost their minds.  The real issue with the plan is that not only are banks getting money at a reduced rate, they are also required to lend that money specifically to small businesses.

If I am a bank president, I am positive that I don’t like being told how to lend my money for my bank but in this case what does the bank have to lose?  They have no skin in the game on this deal.  They borrow the money for cheap and then if the loans don’t work out, which a lot of them wont, they will just say that the government made them lend the money.   What were they to do?  This is the same thing that we did with mortgages.

Cheap money+regulation that encouraged more people to be home owners=epic fail

A message to the small business owner:

If you are looking for a bail out or are angry because corporations are getting all of the bail out money, get over it.  This is no different than any other time.  An 80% failure rate in the first 5 years historically for small business tells me that times have always been tough for small business owners.  This just didn’t develop over the past couple of years.

Looking for a bail out, to me, shows a lack of leadership.  You’re telling your organization that you can’t solve the problems within your organization.  Waiting and thinking about a bail out just keeps you  farther from finding the solution.  Leadership means facing tough times and asking what your organization can do to overcome.

Ultimately, there are root causes to a businesses problems that more often than not don’t include a lack of capital.  Infusing money into your business without understanding what the real reasons are that your business lacks capital is essentially throwing good money after bad.  The proposition is risky at best.

I firmly believe that the problems that exist within small business today can be solved without the governments help.  Somewhere within your organization lies the answers to the questions that you seek.  Now it’s time to get dig deep and start looking for the solutions to make your business a winner.

What do you think small businesses can do to help themselves?

Maybe this just happened to me but I have a feeling that it has happened to most of us at some point.  I also still hear a disturbingly high number of people who suggest to me that they don’t have any kind of special and unique talent.

The reason why I think that so few people recognize their abilities is because we haven’t designed a system for this discovery.  The system that is currently used is called school.  But school falls short due to the fact that there is no outside analysis on a student’s gifts.  It’s up to the student to figure out his/her passions and strengths.

The problem with leaving this up to the individual to discover is that our gifts and abilities come so easy and natural to us that we fail to identify them as special because we think anyone can do what we do.  Therefore we think there must be some other type of complex gift that we possess that have not yet discovered.

The reason I bring this up is that knowledge of self is a vital component to starting and running a successful business operation.  Too many business owner don’t understand themselves well enough and trap themselves in an operation that is better suited to someone else.

Understanding your gifts and abilities as an individual allows you to create your operation with your specific skills in mind.  This is the first step to long term business success.

As I said in yesterday’s post,  how well you manage the internal aspects of your business will dictate how positively the public perceives your business.  In the beginning of a companies’ life cycle, the business owner is the foremost dictator of how things play out in their business.  This is why when you consider your companies brand, you identify concisely what you want to be known for.

Once you have done that, you can then identify what you personally bring to the table. Start by looking at your strengths, your weaknesses and what resources you bring to the table.  One of the personal assessment tests that I took a couple of years ago was the Kolbe A index.  This assessment breaks down 4 categories: Fact Finder, Follow Through, Quick Start and Implementation.  It scores you on how heavily you rank in each category and there is no right or wrong to the assessment it just shows how you get things done and how you process information.  One thing I have found with entrepreneurs is they tend to score high in the “Quick Start” category which means they don’t take a lot of time to think about moving forward on an idea which can be a great asset for an entrepreneur.   While they tend to take action quickly I have noticed that entrepreneurs aren’t “Follow Through” people.  Again this isn’t good or bad it just shows how you do things.

The follow through aspect is the most tricky for entrepreneurs.  Because they don’t normally have the attention span to see things to completion, things always fall through the cracks.  They don’t return calls or e-mails on time,  they are frequently unorganized and unprepared for important meetings, communicate poorly and most importantly activities that need to be accomplished seem to pile up.  These areas affect customers, vendors that do business with you, partnerships and employees.  Ultimately being poor in these areas affects your brand as it starts to break the trust that you are trying to build with these different groups.

This is why I mentioned putting a list together that identifies strengths and weaknesses.  Look at where you are weak and then figure out what personnel or system needs to be in place to make up for your deficiencies in this area.  The Kolbe test is one great resource for helping you hire the right team.  A common mistake that I see business owners make is hiring an assistant to help them with follow through and then you find out that the assistant isn’t strong in follow through either.  Math is still the only area I have seen where 2 negatives can become a positive.

There are resources to help you create a great image for your company and insure that your weaknesses don’t become your firms weaknesses and ultimately cripple your brand in the process.

What resources have you been able to use to ensure that your company operates smoothly and your weaknesses aren’t exposed?

It seems like I have been getting tons of questions about blogging lately and a lot of it is coming from inside my own house.  My wife has a business and she started blogging a while back on free hosting blog service.  She hadn’t really added content consistently but she wanted to start doing it more and asked me what I thought she should do.  I told her she should redo her blog and self host her blog if she was really going to get serious about it and use it as a business tool.  My wife was very hesitant to do this.

It wasn’t because she couldn’t do it.  It really boils down to wanting to do it.  When you don’t enjoy something, in this case technology, it’s extremely painful to do it.  Unfortunately as a business owner there are things that we have to do that we don’t like.  To make a long story short, I helped my wife set up her blog and got it up and running.  The funniest part of the process was looking at the glazed over look in her eyes as I walked her through the process.  In the end she is appreciative of the customization that is available to her on her new site.

We often try and cut corners on things especially when we don’t like doing them.  Sometimes cutting a corner makes sense but it’s important to think your decision through and assess the long term consequences of today’s actions.  Blogging is no exception.  It has become an important tool for small business owners to build their platform on and should not be taken lightly.

This particular topic has been on my mind recently due to the fact that I have been reading Geoff Colvin’s excellent book, Talent is Overrated.  In it, the author talks about what really separates high achievers from average performers.  One thing that I found particularly interesting is in the mindset that average achievers have around how success is achieved.  Average achievers tend to think that success happens because someone is incredibly gifted, has a flash of brilliance or finds lightning in a bottle.

The reality is that high achievers can point to having a plan, working diligently on that plan and then realizing success after years of deliberate practice in their chosen domain of expertise.

What it really comes down to is planning and execution.  You set the path that you feel inspired to travel and then you figure out what disciplines you need to walk the path and practice those disciplines daily.

The self help industry has made millions on the premise that you can be successful through some easy, step by step method to living the life of your dreams.  Just because someone else was successful utilizing a system in no way actually means that you are going to realize the same success.  The gurus success typically has more to do with who they are than the system that they used.

The great news and maybe the bad news is that your success also depends on you.  No one else is going to be successful for you.  It takes diligently planning and diligent execution on an individual level to make that high level of success possible.

What are you keys to success?  What do you do to maintain success?

I have already talked about why mission, vision and values are important to your business.  They really are the foundation for everything that you do and your results are no different.

Many small business owners wander ahead with their business without understanding the fundamental questions about their business.  Questions such as: Why do I exist?  Where do I want to go?  What’s most important to my business?  Knowing these questions will then allow you to create the results that will make the answers to the aforementioned questions a reality for your business.

To be sure, your business can have success without having solid clarity behind it…in the short term.  Businesses who have success without defining mission, vision and values do one of two things.  They either realize that to sustain the success, they are going to need to understand their business better because they aren’t sure why they were successful or they end up failing because they can’t duplicate the success in the long term.

Business can even have success without defining results…also in the short term.  The reason businesses don’t define results is due to the lack of clarity or for other reasons that I will discuss later this week. Having success without defined results or an understanding of why results happened is the most dangerous kind of success because at that point you have grown your business which means more liabilities and more customers to answer to.  Not having a plan in place to manage your results then becomes suicide for your organization.

What’s the first step?  Get results defined for yoru business but before you do that make sure that you understand why your business exists in the first place and where you want it to go.  The long term success of your business is counting on it.

All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.

Sun Tzu

Once you have clearly articulated your mission, vision and values, the next piece to your business should be putting together a plan.  There are varying opinions on whether or not you should spend the time putting together a business plan.  There are several reasons that a business plan can help you and your business get started on the right track.

The first reason is to have a road map for your business to guide you in where you are going and how you are getting these.  Spending the time to put this down on paper will help put it firmly in your mind.  Not only will you know it well but I believe having a plan gives you more confidence when you are networking, looking for vendors for your business, hiring etc.

With a business plan you are able to better measure results because you actually know what they are.  You can also make and recognize adjustments that need to be made more quickly when you know what you are looking for and why.  Measurement of results is where a lot of business owners fall short because they don’t take the time to figure out what numbers are important to their business.

If you are starting your business with employees, you can build a sense of teamwork by working on this plan together.  Everyone will be on the same page and will understand what is going on in the company.  When you bring on new team members, your business plan can get them up to speed much more quickly by showing them the plan and talking it over with them.

The last reason is one that most people talk about when the subject of business planning comes up.  That reason is to get funding for your business.  A plan alone does not get your business funding, it’s more like your ticket to the game.  The businesses that get funding without a plan are few and far between.  You are kidding yourself if you think you will be that special business.

Like I said at the beginning there are some who would suggest that you don’t need a business plan.   They would suggest that you can get by with something written down that’s much more simple because people don’t look at their business plan after it is written.  My argument is that if you wont take the time to look at your business plan, you probably wont take the time to look at anything else.  This is more of a discipline issue more than anything else.  Business owners need to have discipline or they will fail.

Even if you did not ever look at your plan again after it is written, I believe the journey is just as important.  Putting together a business plan requires you to take a serious look at your business and spend some time thinking about how your business is going to work, what you need and what obstacles exist for you currently.  You will have gained some important knowledge up front even if you fail to review later.

How have you been able to use a business plan for success?  What are some other reasons for and against putting together a plan?

PS Listen below to this week’s podcast where I talk more about business planning.

What got me thinking about this was after I recently read Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki. The last chapter is titled The Art of Being a Mensch. Guy wrote a blog post about what a mensch is as well as his 5 guidelines to follow.

His 5 guidelines are:

1. Help people who cannot help you. A mensch helps people who cannot ever return the favor. He doesn’t care if the recipient is rich, famous, or powerful. This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t help rich, famous, or powerful people (indeed, they may need the most help), but you shouldn’t help only rich, famous, and powerful people.
2. Help without the expectation of return. A mensch helps people without the expectation of return–at least in this life. What’s the payoff? Not that there has to be a payoff, but the payoff is the pure satisfaction of helping others. Nothing more, nothing less.
3. Help many people. Menschdom is a numbers game: you should help many people, so you don’t hide your generosity under a bushel. (Of course, not even a mensch can help everyone. To try to do so would mean failing to help anyone.)
4. Do the right thing the right way. A mensch always does the right thing the right way. She would never cop an attitude like, “We’re not as bad as Enron.” There is a bright, clear line between right and wrong, and a mensch never crosses that line.
5. Pay back society. A mensch realizes that he’s blessed. For example, entrepreneurs are blessed with vision and passion plus the ability to recruit, raise money, and change the world. These blessings come with the obligation to pay back society. The baseline is that we owe something to society–we’re not a doing a favor by paying back society.

Personally, I agree with everything that Guy talks about above. The one thing that we must be careful about is with how far we go with some of these things. Specifically as it pertains to points 1 and 2. It seems that if we aren’t careful we can end up wasting time helping people who need our help while sacrificing our own time and money in the process. Doing this on a small scale (this is relative to where you are at personally) is perfectly acceptable but how far do you go before you are not helping someone, you are being used.

We have all done someone a favor and then seen that other person turn into the cable guy after the fact. Always wanting more and working to get every last bit of time, patience and energy that we have left.

I have always believed in giving without expectation of return and to help people without regard to how it will benefit me. Entrepreneurs, in general, tend to be giving people.  Because of this I think having a filter for how to manage your relationships would be important.  Is a better question, how will helping this person possibly hurt me? Do I have the time? The resources? How do you manage your relationship capital? Am I off base with my thinking? Would love to know your thoughts.

PS…For more on relationship capital, listen to my podcast below.

When your organization has a clearly defined vision, you have answered the fundamental question of “Where am I going?”.   When you have this set, everyone in your organization knows where the business is going and can use this to guide their decision making.  By using a vision effectively, you can also better dictate the culture that you want to create in your organization.

As far as building your organization goes, vision allows you to better see what players that you need on the team to make your vision a reality.  It also lets you figure out what qualities that these new players need as well.  In the end, you have a better quality team and a more efficient team.

Another benefit to understanding your vision is in your communication to the public.  Your marketing will be more effective because you better understand what channels work for your business and what message is right for your client base.  Business owners network better when they can communicate more clearly with other people they meet at events.  Ever talked with someone about their venture and walked away having no clue what they do?  Don’t worry about it, chances are they aren’t sure either.  Last, but not least, vision helps you to communicate your business through a business plan which can lead to potential funding for your business in the future.

A couple of words of caution about vision:

The first word of caution is that vision is no different than anything else.  If you don’t take care of it and cultivate it properly, it will die.  There are too many businesses that pay vision lip service and then watch as it has no impact on their business.

The second is the fact that vision is an ongoing process and is constantly evolving.  Make sure that you take the time to review this so that the only time you go off course is because you planned it.

If you don’t have a vision in place for your business then spend some time and work on this now.  If you have a vision, how is it working for your organization?  Where does it help you?  Where does it hinder you?

Podcasting:

A lot of people still don’t know what a podcast is.  If you aren’t sure what a podcast is click here.  In the past if you wanted to host a show or get audio content produced, you had to have a radio show or book time in a studio.  Those times are over.  Now all you need is microphone, some headphones and a method for recording to be able to put together a podcast.

With programs like Apple’s Garage Band, mixing an intro/outro and editing are easier than ever as well.  If you want to go through the podcasting process step by step as well as download a free program to get started, go here.  There are tons a resources on the internet for putting together a podcast as well as different networks.

The are also numerous directories to list your podcast for exposure such as iTunes.  You can find a comprehensive list of directories at Podcast411.   Just keep in mind that you still need to set up hosting for your podcast before you submit to any directories.  You can do this yourself or get a third party to host it for you.  iTunes is one directory that people typically ask about.  Here’s an FAQ for submitting a podcast to iTunes.

Video

Video was something that a few years back was difficult to distribute as well.  Those days are also done.  Now with the help of YouTube and other video outlets people are watching hundreds of millions of videos each day.  TubeMogul is a great, free resource for getting your videos to multiple video sharing sites and increase your exposure.  The ultimate question with video is how do I get started recording video inexpensively.

One of my business partners recently got a Flip camera and he uses it now constantly to record videos to provide inofrmation and talk about upcoming events.  These cameras are compact and can plug right into your computer to upload to video sharing sites in a matter of minutes.  The cost for one of these cameras is a few hundred dollars but is worth the investment.  This is one way that you can start recording content at a fairly inexpensive price (I relaize this is relative). For more outlets to capture video visit TechRepublic who put together a nice list of services related to online video.

You can also do simple recording of screenshots with voice over with services like Camtasia that come in handy if you want to record a presentation you are doing and make it available later online.  I have also heard that they are working on expanding cell phone video capabilities that records video in HD!  I don’t know how soon that is coming but that is crazy.

These are just some resources that do in some cases require a little bit of money but not much to get started.  If you are serious about building a presence for your business or building a platform for your self personally, it’s time to start podcasting and using video to get your message out.  I didn’t even mention that this is also a great way to build products and services for your business as well.

Ideas are where all great businesses start.  They are the inspiration and life blood of an entrepreneur.  There are millions of people who have taken a great idea right to their grave.  The true value of your idea lies in the action that comes behind it.

We have all had friends who have talked about lofty aspirations and ideas only to see them take no action on it and still wonder why their dreams are not reality.  In fact, most of us have probably done that at some point in time in our lives.  There are two reasons why we don’t take action on our ideas.  The first is because it’s perceived as being easier to do nothing.  The second is that we fear what might happen if we do take action on a great idea.

As time goes by it’s easy to become complacent with our lives.  We are also taught that chasing after a dream is foolish.  I still catch hell for leaving the corporate world and starting my own business which is funny when you look at the landscape for employees right now.  In any event, we already have a listening about chasing dreams and following up on ideas that doing so is for foolish people with their head in the clouds.

The reality is that the more crazy your idea is the better your idea may be.  Think about electricity.  When you are used to doing everything by candlelight and by hand and someone told you they could generate power for lights and other devices in the future, you would have told that person they were insane.  It’s easy to look back and critique past achievement. It’s much harder to have faith and vision of what the future may look like.

But what if we do have vision and can see how we are able to impact the future with an idea?  That’s scary too.  You risk putting yourself out there for all the world to see.  You open yourself up to more success which means more demands.  You open yourself up to more demands of your time and more criticism.  When you add these things up they can be terrifying.  Especially if you don’t value yourself enough to think that you can handle it.

To overcome inaction and fear it takes a high level of consciousness and belief that we were not put here on this Earth to play small.  Many us don’t believe this so we let fear and inaction take over.  As Thomas Edison said, your idea is only valuable if you put it into action, otherwise it’s no good to anyone.  So what’s the answer?  How do we overcome?  Changing your mindset is key.  We will talk more about this  and other action steps in my next post.

Stay tuned….

PS… If you absolutely can’t wait, listen to this week’s podcast right now.

For your business, innovation is no different.  There are 2 types of innovators.  There’s the inventor who comes up with ideas that no one else thought possible and works for years to try and make it a reality and there’s the business person who takes what’s already in the marketplace and sees a way to improve upon that.   Both are important, it just depends on what you are willing to sacrifice.

Pioneers in the 19th century endured many hardships to settle in the west.  Illness and death, confrontation with native people, lack of knowledge of what may lay ahead, weather, lack of food and lack of resources just to name a few.  As an inventor of new products, you face a high degree of uncertainty.  Is your product something that the market will purchase?  Can it be made in a cost effective manner?  Will my family be able to endure the stress financially?  Do I have the resources to make it happen?  How will I market it?  How will I protect the idea?  As you can see there are a lot of unknowns involved.

For the entrepreneur who wants to improve what already exists in the marketplace, there is a higher degree of certainty.  Namely, there is already a niche carved out for your product.  You know what types of people buy it.  You have an idea on pricing structure. These are the same advantages that the people who followed the first settlers had.  They could observe and find out what routes worked best and avoid earlier mistakes.  When they settled in a spot that was already settled they could observe what crops grew best in the area and where to find resources for building a home.

Look at some of the improvements to existing products over the past 15 years.  HDTV, Blu Ray, Lap top computers, cell phones, e-mail, DVR etc.  All of these products improved a product that already existed.   Take the cell phone, a company like AT&T did not have to wonder if people wanted a phone or if a phone was useful.  It was already established that people found value in a phone, the cell phone just made it even more convenient for the marketplace.  Do you remember the BASF commercials?

Observing the market and what exists currently is a path of much less resistance than looking to create a product and market from scratch.  Most entrepreneurs would be better served to taking this approach in the beginning of their venture.  Regardless of the innovation that currently exists, there are still problems that need to solved in the world.  The current state of our financial system in America is proof of that.  You don’t have to be a pioneer to have a successful business and product line.

What is broken out there that you can fix?  What are you currently observing in the marketplace that can be improved upon that you have knowledge in?

Processes for your business can be simple or, depending on the task, very complex.  The key is to have something in place that you can repeat and make a habit of time after time.  This is necessary for you as the individual business owner and for any team members that you have.

Here is a simple explanation and lay out on how to create a process.   For product creation, I would include all of the steps mentioned and I would add 1 more step.  Business owners should not create any processes without having a fully developed mission, vision and values as well as a business plan.  Once you have the road map you can start to work on how to travel to your destination.

Who should create a process for product creation?

• Entrepreneurs who have ideas on product improvement but after months and months they are still merely ideas. This is especially handy for the thousands of entrepreneurs who continuously say that they are writing a book but no one has ever seen it including the entrepreneur.

• Entrepreneurs or would-be entrepreneurs who struggle with coming up with new ideas.
• Entrepreneurs who have several ideas that they have started working but have not been completed.

Regardless of the stage of the idea.  Having a process in place means more ideas completed which means getting a better feel for what works and what doesn’t which ultimately leads to more profitable products that can be put out on the market.

A process for product creation will keep your business moving forward and ensure that it will remain competitive in today’s marketplace.  It will also hold entrepreneurs more accountable for getting their ideas to market.

How have you been able to get product and ideas formulated into a tangible product?  Where have you struggled?  What other ideas would be useful for entrepreneurs to know?  What’s your process for product creation?

External tools

Your boss, if you are employed, is one tool for external accountability.  As an employee we all need help getting to our goals and seeing new directions and good boss can help us do that.

A business coach can help guide business owners in any number of business issues from sales and marketing to building your start up.

Life coaching takes a holistic look at everything you have going on in your life and career and gets to the core of you and why you do what you do.  They are able to blend your professional and personal life to allow you to focus on the things in your life that are most important.

Books: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey is a great book to help build the right personal habits.

Good to Great by Jim Collins is not just a great book about organizations but good insight on how we can apply these principles to our lives as individuals.

Winning With Accountability: The Secret Language of High Performing Organizations by Henry J Evans.

These are just a few examples of books that can help us with external accountability.

Retail programs and workshops can give us great insight on accountability as well.  There are a lot of great workshops and programs that exist that can help us develop an accountability plan.

Internal Tools

Goal setting: Or for a business, we can call this business planning.  This is a road map that can make sure we are able to assess where we stand throughout our success journey.  This is a seriously overlooked and simple tool for success.

Morning routine:  We call our morning routine a “power hour“.  Regardless of how we do it or what we call it, the key is to get a routine implemented and do it.

Daily markers: Markers in conjunction with your goals are powerful tools to help keep us on track by reviewing where we are at daily.

Time management:  How we manage our time is critical to dictating how we hold ourselves accountable in other areas as well.  Getting a consistent time management system will ensure that we are doing the things that need to be done in a timely manner.

There is not a one size fits all accountability system.  It’s a matter of trying different things out and seeing what works for us personally.  This takes a little time but once we have it done, it makes a huge difference in how effective we are.

What works for you with regards to accountability?  How have you figured out what works and what doesn’t?

Do you know anyone whose whole life seems incomplete?  They have tons of unfinished business going on.  They always use words like some day.  Their life is in perpetual crisis.  They never seem to get anything done on time.  (If this is you, it’s going to be OK.)  They want to take action but it always seems to be starting the next day.

When we identify behavior that is keeping us from achieving success, it’s important to stop that behavior as soon as possible.  Here are some steps to utilize to help you with this,  Four Easy Steps To Change Thoughts-Feelings-Behavior.  I would also recommend meditation as well to help you with the thought control that the 4 easy steps talks about.

If there are some things that need to be changed, will it start now?  What are you waiting for with regards to changing of behavior?  How can you more positively impact those around you by getting the important things done in your day consistently?

A “power hour” is a tool that we utilize each morning that dedicates one hour before we do anything else to focus on our mind, body and spirit.  During this hour (give or take) time is spent reading, praying, meditating, writing, working-out, among other things.  This is a great way to get your day off to the right start and ensure that you spend time doing the things that are important to you.  We even created a membership around this concept.

So what does this have to do with you?  Having a “power hour” routine is a great accountability tool. It’s a key to being a great entrepreneur, employee, spouse, parent etc.  I first read about this in Jeffrey Gitomer’s Little Red Book of Selling.  Jeffrey’s premise is that before you can be the best person for others, you have to work on yourself continually to be the best person you can be for yourself.

The problem is that we all have multiple responsibilities that pull us in different directions.  Because of this, we often neglect certain things that aren’t urgent in the moment.  Neglect in exercise, we can do it tomorrow.  Neglect in prayer and gratitude, God will forgive.  Neglect with our business, it wont put me out of business today is I don’t have my business plan complete.  These are just a few examples but you get the point.

Putting a morning routine in place for the above activities is a common theme for successful people.  An excellent blog on productivity is Zen Habits.  They interviewed Stephen Covey on his morning routine that he uses to get his day started on the right foot. This is just one example but there are many.

What routine do you use?  If you have a morning routine, what are your results from using it?  If you don’t use a routine, what are your barriers for starting?

Having a coach can help you not only uncover the blind spots that you have but they can also uncover the blind spots in your overall plan.  The 30,000 ft. viewpoint that a coach brings is critical to seeing how you operate and how your strengths will operate in a given plan.  They are able to be objective as they are not emotionally invested in what you are doing.  It’s easy for entrepreneurs to get attached to something working and then drive themselves broke and insane trying to make something work that simply wont.

This is why bringing in a coach can be valuable from the start.  The more help you have in the beginning of your venture, the more likely it will be to succeed.  In your planning phase, you can decide a budget for coaching and how long you want to initially work with them.  During this phase you will also be able to see what areas that you need help with.

Understanding yourself is critical so that you not only understand what information you need, but also how you process that information.  How do you best thrive?  Do you need to be kicked in the butt or gently pushed?  How involved does the relationships need to be?  How do you prefer to communicate?  The relationship between you and the coach is just as important as the information and help that you receive from them.

Selecting a coach will be predicated upon what you decide your needs are.  Do you need life/work balance? Do you need specific strategic business advice?  Answers to these questions will help you decide what type of coach to work with.

Take a look at your system, goals and plan.  Where could you use help?  What would a coach allow you to do that you aren’t doing?  What would the results be if you had help?

A good friend of mine, understanding my interest in Soul Purpose, sent this video from the good people at Dos Equis:

The logic of  “The World’s Most Interesting Man” is sound in the regard that there are the things that we all struggle at being good at and will probably never be good at.  In this regard, as the man says, don’t do it or to lesser extreme, try not to do it very often.  The time that you take to improve a weakness is small when you consider that the same time to improve a strength can lead to exponential growth with much less effort.

In this day and age I would be careful what you consider a weakness.  There are a few questions that you can ask to assess why you are weak in certain areas.

• Is your weakness due to lack of experience?
• Is your weakness due to lack of knowledge?
• Why do I consider a particular activity a weakness?
• Can I demonstrate to myself in numerous instances where I have been weak in this area?

Lack of experience and knowledge can be overcome with work.  We don’t become great at something just because we are born with it.  Leadership is a skill that we often hear attributed to being “born” with.  While I do believe that some are more inclined to be leaders than others.  Leadership still needs to be cultivated and learned.  Being a manager in any work environment is a great example of this.

When we take our first leadership position, we often make a lot of basic fundamental mistakes in managing people.  Mistakes such as, assuming everyone will work, think and act like us at work; not always being tactful in our approach; not quite understanding how to truly connect with the people that work for us, etc.  These are all mistakes that many new leaders make but for those that have the passion, learn to overcome.  What happens if we just give up when things stop going our way?  Experience and some coaching in these areas as well as consistent practice of sound management practices can help us be better managers.

Make sure that when deeming something a weakness that there is some real assessment into why that is so.  This assessment should include a list of strengths as well as resources that we have so that we are laying all of our cards out on the table.  Look at what training has been done, books that have been read and what examples we have that justify weakness.  Passion is a key word in our assessments.  How passionate are we about the subject matter to overcome our deficiencies?

Should we focus on strengths rather than weaknesses?  Absolutely.  We just need to make sure we aren’t giving up on ourselves too easily and that we have thoroughly assessed the situation.

Assessing strengths and weaknesses are a valuable tool not only for business planning but for the individuals in the business as well.  When it come to self awareness from a weakness standpoint, answers can range from “I have none” (very few of us) to “I have so many I can’t count”.(Unfortunately there are way too many people on this end)  Most of us fall in between this.  This is an important assessment for discovering our Soul Purpose.

In assessing weaknesses, we are really good at this.  If someone asks what our weaknesses our, we will give them a laundry list of items that are weaknesses.  We might even make a few up so the list looks as long as possible.  For some reason we have been programmed to be a better job of what we are bad at rather than good at.  It’s important that we don’t look to far into weaknesses and delve into weaknesses that aren’t truly there.  It’s also important from a business standpoint to understand what weaknesses truly exist as it pertains to our business.

With strengths, it’s much harder for us to assess.  First, we are taught to not brag on ourselves too much and to stay humble.  Unfortunately we do this by devaluing every good that we ever do.   We often devalue our gifts and talents because they come so natural to us that we think that everyone can do them if they are so easy.  It turns out that lots of people value our gifts much more than we do.  It takes practice and maybe some outside sources to look into this critical aspect of building a business.  If we don’t have a firm handle on our strengths when starting a business venture that business venture is doomed to failure.

Knowing what we are good at and what we are not so good at is a great start to making sure that your business ventures and activities don’t become random and arbitrary happenings.  Deeper discovery gives your greater power to move forward with certainty and efficiently.  When it come to weaknesses, the best advice is to not worry about them so much in that your weakness just means that you are strong in some other aspect.  Embrace that.  Also, it’s important to assess the nature of our perceived weakness.  Our we weak because of habit, lack of knowledge, some of your weaknesses can easily be overcome and could further enhance strengths depending on why you are lacking.  Spending time to assess will help to get more clarity on these things going forward.

How have you been able to make these assessments?  If you have devalued yourself in the past, how did you overcome?  What have been your results of having greater personal clarity?

In the article “6 Ways to Get Fast Feedback” on 1000ventures.com, they give some great tips on getting started with market testing.  Initially you will want to set some pricing parameters for your product.  If it’s a physical product that you are manufacturing, you can just go off a certain percentage mark-up above cost.  Industry analysis will help with this decision.  If it’s an information product, the great thing is you can test different price points as well.  Just be prepared to tell people a price when you approach them.

Once you have done some analysis of the market and have established some pricing parameters, start approaching would be buyers about the product and get their feedback.  As the article above states, you can do this at trade shows, approach people you know who maybe interested and go to places where your target customer is going to be.  Another great resource is to do surveys to get some initial feedback.  I will caution that verbal feedback is one thing.  People actually buying the product is another.

Your product or service starts with a great idea.  “6 Ways to get Fast Feedback” shares the story of Ross Perot to illustrate this.  Getting a customer to front manufacture costs can be a great strategy to get started.  However, you must have high integrity to make this work.  If you take someone’s money for a product/service, you better deliver the goods.  Your reputation is critical in business and doing this wrong will kill it.

Last, take a look at the budget you have allotted to test.  Many entrepreneurs try and skimp here to save some money.  Unfortunately, handling this wrong up front is much more expensive than if you just went out and tested in the first place.  Make sure you have a budget or resources available to do some market testing.

What avenues have been successful for you when testing an idea?

PS-  Click on the  link below to listen to my weekly podcast on this subject.

I am going to talk more about workshops and seminars that you can go to tomorrow to get help with time  management.  Workshops are great and give you great tools but once the seminar is done your training is over and you are on your own.   This is where most of us get into trouble.  Once life starts happening again, it’s easy for us to revert back to our bad habits.  That’s when we need someone to give us that extra push to focus on the things that are most important which is exactly what a coach does.

A coach typically doesn’t tell you anything that you don’t already know, they just give you the blueprint and encouragement to do it.  There are several life coaches and business coaches who also work within the realm of time management and personal productivity.  My suggestion on finding one is to first ask people you know.  I would particularly start with people who are in higher level positions or who are currently successful as they have possibly worked with someone in that capacity or know of people who do.  If you can’t find one word through people you know, try Facebook or Twitter and if for some crazy reason that doesn’t work, you can always use the old stand by Google to search for someone.

Having coaching will help you break bad habits or even help you recognize bad habits that you weren’t aware of.  If you find yourself always scrambling to get things done or constantly in crisis mode, it’s time to make some changes.  Who holds you accountable?  If you have never used a coach,  why not?  If you have, how did it work out?

PS- It’s time for my weekly podcast click the button below to listen and enjoy.

The first question to ask, when using a time management/productivity system, is can this system be utilized at home and at work.  Ideally you want to be able to use it for both.  Being productive outside of work has different parameters than when you are at work but is no less important.  The important thing is to make sure that your system works both at home and at work. If you are worried about what’s going on at home while you are at work, your productivity is going to suffer and vice versa.

Think about how you can be more productive both at home and at work.  What would that look like for you?  How have tasks that you have avoided in your personal life affected your work life and vice versa?  What works for you?

PS-  It’s podcast time.  Click here to listen on how to pick a productivity system that is right for you.  Enjoy.

A simple key to starting your day off right is starting it at the right time.  When is that time?  Your day should have started yesterday.  By that I mean that you should take some time at the end of each day to game plan and structure your next day.  Most of us seem to wait until the morning to start planning our day.  This  becomes problematic for a couple of reasons.

The first is that we generally don’t put enough thought into structuring our day by the time morning rolls around as the day is already making demands of our time that we need to get to right away.  The second is that we also forget important items from the previous day since we waited until overnight to address them.

At the end of the day, we always have the best idea of what our next day needs to look like.  Therefore we should put our next day together at that time.  This will make sure that it’s efficiently planned and that nothing gets missed and will also ensure that we don’t ignore this task altogether.  If you aren’t planning your day like this, give it a shot and see what changes in efficiency happen.  What’s worked for you in structuring your day?  How has structuring your day properly allowed you to be successful?

PS-  It’s that time of the week for my podcast.  Click below to listen.

To illustrate personal values, I will give you an example of one of my own.  One value of mine is family time.  How do I use this to drive my professional life?  An easy example I can give is that of travel.  While I do travel from time-to-time for business, I make it a point to do this as infrequently as possible.  If someone were to offer me a great opportunity that required me to be away from my family 75% of the time, I would turn it down as it violates a personal core value.

This is not to judge someone who is away from their family like that, it’s just not congruent for me.  Time management is not just how we accomplish things.  It’s what things do we accomplish and how is our personal world more valuable as a result of the time spent on certain activities.  We often get lost in the objective of task completion and lists when we plan our day. So why do we need values?

For us to maximize productivity, it can’t be just about a system.  There are often deeper layers that dictate what’s managed within that system.  This is where core values come in.  They allow us to dictate more easily where we spend our time.  It makes it easier for us to tell people “no” when the request is clearly outside our scope of what’s truly important to us.

In using a time management system, keep in mind that the system is only as effective as the clarity behind it.  If you haven’t set aside some personal core value for yourself, do this tomorrow morning.  Write down as many as you can think of and then pare them down to 5 final values.  You will act with more intention and clarity by doing this and your time management system will also be more effective.  How have you been able to use personal clarity to effectively manage your time?  D0 you have a set of values written down?

Podcasting is a great way to share information because of the iPod.  Now when people want to listen to your content, they don’t have to sitting in front of their computer.  Consumers of your content can listen to you when they are traveling, working out etc.  One of the intimidating things for people is how to get started.   You can search the internet for tips, there are several books on the subject that you can find here, or if you are like me you have tech geek friends that can help you (note to friends: I will apologize in advance for calling you geeks).  If you want to be the most effective, I would suggest finding someone who can be a resource for you to get started.

Teleseminars came onto my radar after attending a teleseminar with Alex Mandossian who built his business around this medium of communication.  These are basically seminars and telecomferences rolled into one.  You can attend  teleseminars and give them anywhere that has a phone available.  The great thing about teleseminars is that, like podcasting, they are inexpensive to set up and run.  You can format these calls any way that you want.  One of  my favorites is to do “ask campaigns” (this is one of Alex’s ideas).  You bring on an expert to talk about their topic. You then solicit your clients for questions to ask the expert.  You then take the most frquently asked questions and use that to build your topic for the call.  This is a great way for you, the interviewer, and the expert to have something that they can take the content  sell it later.

Other mediums in the audio realm are doing interviews on other radio or podcast programs.  This can be free or you can pay to be on someone else’s program.  Doing live events is a great way to start building your platform.  Just make sure that you record them.

Utilizing these avenues allows you to not only build your platform but it allows you to serve the marketplace with great content, build connections and have content created that you can later use to make products.  These are all effective and inexpensive ways to get your message out and start building your business.

I am curious as to how you have been able to use podcasting or teleseminars successfully.  If you aren’t doing this, why aren’t you?

PS..This week’s podcast is on… podcasting and other media outlets that you can utilize to build your platform.

I will talk more extensively tomorrow about listening but for today I will just talk about the simple act of listening attentively.  Listening attentively means looking at the person while they are talking to you and making sure that you are actively participating where appropriate.  I am sure we have all experienced the person who just can’t seem to pull themselves away from their phone to stop texting while you are speaking with them.  They don’t listen to your conversation and then ask a question that you already answered but they didn’t hear it because they weren’t listening.  This drives me crazy and I avoid talking with these people as much as possible because I hate wasting my time.

The second step is to engage the person that you are talking with appropriately.  Ask questions that drive the conversation that you are having to deeper levels of understanding.  This lets the person that you are talking to know that you care about what they are saying.  When you engage people to further the conversation, you also learn more about the person.

Listening and engaging are important tools to getting to know the people around you at a deeper level.  When we engage people beyond the surface level of conversations, we are able to know more about those people.  The more we know about them, the more we are able to build resources to have great relationships and have a group of people put together that can further our careers or assist us in our businesses.  All it takes is a little practice and the ability to care.  It’s really that easy.

PS Podcast time.  Click the button below to listen.

I touched briefly on tools to help you shift your mindset to see yourself differently on Monday

The first tools that I will touch on again is meditation.  An article that I ran across at discovery.com give an extensive process for getting started with meditation.  The article talks about 4 basic meditative practices.  The practices are follow your breath, observe an icon, recite a mantra and do a guided meditation.  These are meditation tools to aid you in your journey towards finding a meditative state.  This is a great start for beginners.

The second tool is visualization.  This can be done in the same space as your meditation in that you are already in a relaxed focused state.  Visualization is the process of seeing events and occurences in your life as you want them to happen and unfold.  It’s important, when doing this, to be as detailed with your visualization as possible.  Incorporating sights, smells, sounds etc to make it seem as “real” as possible.

The last tool that I didn’t mention in my previous post is reciting a reality statement.  The reality statement is a written statement on your life.  You include things that you want to be doing, how you see your life and even things that you are grateful for.  This exercise was introduced to me by spiritual teacher Steve D’Annunzio.  When crafting your reality statement, it’s important to make it about value creation.  Don’t create a reality statement that talks about the fancy car that you drive or the millions in your bank account.  There is no real power in those things and your reality statement will not be as effective. Your reality should be read a minimum of twice daily.

Utilize these tools this week and incorporate them into a daily routine for yourself.  How have you used these tools for success in your life?  What areas have you maybe struggled with?

PS.  The weekly podcast is here.  Click the play button below to listen.  Enjoy your weekend!

Times are not always going to be easy, whether it be in your career or a business.  The important thing with setbacks and tough times is to make sure that you learn the lesson that needed to be learned and then move on.  Don’t dwell on it.  It’s important to also note that setbacks just get you closer to your end result.

So, how do you make sure that you are prepared for setbacks?  The first is the make sure that you are clear on your purpose.  Most likely you’ve seen the movie “Rudy”.  His goal was to dress in 1 game for Notre Dame.  He certainly had many setbacks and limitations but he was always clear on his purpose.  Take time to cultivate this every day so that you have the will to stick it out.

Another important tool is to have the right people around you.  If you are constantly getting negative feedback from a friend or relative.  It’s time to cut ties with that person because it’s clear they are not in a place to be able to support you.  Great people on your team, whether they be mentors, friends or relatives, can make a big impact on what adversity you will be able to withstand.

Nothing ever worth having comes easy.  Those people who said they made millions doing nothing are lying.  They worked their tails off to make it happen.  Setbacks are tests from a higher power asking us how bad we want our goal.  Where have you encountered setbacks?  How have you been able to overcome?  How bad do you want it?

PS.  My weekly podcast, as always, can be found below.  Enjoy!

So I am going to share another straight forward tidbit about being resourceful.  This time I will give you a peek at a model that we use with clients to help them identify where the stand and what they have on hand in terms of resources.

We call this model the Production Continuum.  In some respects it looks like a balance sheet but in this case we are identifying more than just quantifiable assets and liabilities.  This exercise is for the most part straightforward.  You go through and list all of your assets, liabilities and resources.  You then identify income, expenses and production.  Not only is the exercise not that difficult, it doesn’t take that much time either. Yet so many do not utilize this tool or something like it to assess their business.

The reason why I think that people don’t use an assessment tool is that when we work on our businesses every day, we feel like we have a pretty good handle on what is going on.  We don’t think we need to sit down and assess, it’s all in our heads. An assessment tool like the Production Continuum is useful for a couple of different reasons.

The first being that it gives us the opportunity to reflect on where we are at and what we have.  When we do this we are able to evaluate what resources and assets we are using productively and which ones we are not.  It also allows us the opportunity to identify resources that we either didn’t realize we had or just forgot about.

The second is that we can also construct a game plan to use assets and resources better if we feel we are not using them as productively as we can be.  We can also assess if there are any missing pieces that we need to create or find.  At this point we can implement a strategy for both.

Right now is the time for resourcefulness and problem solving.  It’s not time to point fingers and continually dwell on what’s wrong.  Regardless if you are a business owner or not, if you haven’t taken the time to assess where you are at you are missing out on opportunities.  My questions are these.  Where have you been successful with this?  Where have you failed?  Any additional advice to give for those looking to be resourceful in today’s marketplace?  I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

PS: Podcast time.  Talking more about resources.  Enjoy the podcast below.