A call to action: Avoid analysis paralysis. Rather than looking for the answer to the challenge that faces you in more knowledge, commit to taking one small action, that applies the knowledge you already have.

Let me know your results.

Steve Gunn, For Your Success

• You can’t be satisfied with me because of my modest figure. But I keep working out every day to be more pleasing to you, and are you grateful?  Noooooo!!

•  You never pay attention to me and when you do, all I hear is how I am not enough for you! I take care of you, in so many ways, but my love is unrequited.

• I send you letters every quarter from the investment company telling you about how I am doing, but do you read them?  No! You just stick them in a box unopened, unread, uncared for!!

• You just wad me up and throw me in your wallet. And then when you spend me, you hardly pay attention about how much of me you are sending away.

• You complain about how I am not enough for you, but then you fritter me away on croissant and cappuccino. You could spend more time with me if we had a cup of coffee together at home. I am wasting away one cappuccino at a time.

•  And then, you only take me out when you are feeling bad and you want splurge on some new infatuation to make yourself feel better. But you don’t really feel better, do you?  No, and then you miss me!

•  You feel embarrassed about talking about me to other people. Are you ashamed of me? Do you think I am just “filthy lucre?”*

If this is how your money would talk about you, then I suggest you take a look at your relationship with money. Transform your relationship with money. Join me for a book study, The Energy of Money, starting on Wednesday, February 29^th.  Click here for more details: The Energy of Money

* Money, esp. when regarded as sordid or distasteful or gained in a dishonorable way. From Dictionary.com.

When I coach my clients to take action on their goals, I ask the question: “Who can support you in achieving this goal?” The energy of relationship supports you to achieve your goal with ease. You don’t have to be the Lone Ranger to succeed. In fact, if you look at the most successful people, you will notice that they have great relationships and great support teams.

In order to win the membership contest, I needed to bring prospective members to our breakfast meeting, but I wasn’t bringing any guests. Then I noticed that one of my LeTip colleagues, Tom Young, was bringing lots of guests. In addition to running the best flooring company in the Lehigh Valley, Tom also runs a media company called Social Media on Fire. So I asked Tom how he was achieving success in bringing guests. He demonstrated his generosity by sharing a key social media strategy with me. This was particularly generous because when he supported me, he was helping a competitor in the contest.  So I started using the idea that Tom suggested, using Face Book and LinkedIn to identify potential members. It worked! Not only that, it was easy, fun and a contribution to the people that I invited.

Great relationships are crucial to success. One important avenue to great relationships is to acknowledge those who support you. So I would like to publicly acknowledge Tom Young for his generosity in sharing his social media savvy with me. Check out his web site  Social Media On Fire  Thanks Tom!!

I invite you to take three actions that will support your success:

• Identify untapped relationships.
• Ask for support.
• Acknowledge and appreciate the people who support you.

Here’s to your success.

Steve Gunn, Personal and Organizational Coach

The contest was sponsored by my business networking group, LeTip of the Lehigh Valley. Each year, we have a membership contest to support the growth of the group. This year, the prize was a cruise for two. The members receive points for bringing guests and more points for enrolling new members. The person with the most points wins the cruise.

Early in the contest I did not bring any guests, and guess what? I was not winning. But then I thought “Wouldn’t it be great to take my wife on a cruise. Maybe I should give this a shot.” So I looked at how I was thinking about inviting guests and realized that the mindset I was using was not supporting me. I decided to open up my coaching toolkit and pull out one of the most important tools: working with how we see the world.

After talking to one of my coaching colleagues, I found that I was using a mindset along these lines: “It is pushy to invite members. They are too busy and won’t want to visit us anyway, so why bother.” Well that is rather embarrassing, but it is the truth. Okay, so that mindset is not working, but what mindset would serve me better? Here is what I came up with: “I am being a contribution to the people that I invite to be my guest for a meeting and it supports developing a business relationship with them. Plus, this game is fun.”  Well that mindset gave me a lot more energy, breathing room and ease. So I started calling people; I started bringing guests and one of them joined!! It was easy and fun, and I was developing relationships, supporting my business and supporting the group all at the same time.

So I won the contest and my wife and I are planning a cruise. The tool I used is definitely not rocket science and it is probably not something you haven’t heard before. But it is not what you know that matters, but how you use what you know.

Here’s to your success.

Steve Gunn, Personal and Organizational Coach

• By observing and shifting the way you see the process of business networking
• Shifting the way you do face-to-face marketing.

There are two ways of seeing the purpose of networking.  

1.  To get the word about my business out to as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time.
2.  To get to know, like and respect the person I am interacting with, and find a way to support their success.

The short version for these two contrasting approaches is promotion versus attraction. The promoter is trying to get something and the attracter is seeking to give and in the process draws potential customers to him.

During networking events, do you ever have conversations (with yourself) like these?

• “I’m disappointed with the turn-out. I met most of these people at the last event.”
•  “I’d better move faster. I’ve only hit half the room so far.”
•  “I wish this guy would shut up so I can end this conversation and move to the next person.”

If you approach networking interactions this way, you might feel stressed, concerned about the effectiveness of your efforts, pressured, critical of others and impatient. However, when you focus on getting to know, like and respect the person you are interacting with, and looking for a way to support their success, you are likely to:

• Enjoy the conversations.
• Feel connected with the person you are talking to.
• Want to connect good people to other good people
• Feel satisfaction when you can refer them to a potential customer or business connection.
• Feel relaxed.

Who would you rather do business with, a critical, pressured, impatient and stressed person, or someone who appreciates you and is interested in you and your success? Being an attractor is absolutely crucial to success.  The Beatles described it like this:

“And, in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

An Action Plan for Powering-Up Your Face-to-Face Networking

1. Observe your promotion and attraction approaches to face-to-face networking interactions.
2. If you are focusing primarily on promotion, play with the attraction approach for a while.
3. Make your goal for a networking event to create 3-5 quality interactions (rather than seeing how many business cards you can collect.
4. Find at least one opportunity to connect someone with a potential customer or business connection.
5. Find something to appreciate about each person with whom you interact.
6. Find an attractor and observe what she/he is doing to develop business relationships.
7. The day after you meet someone, write a simple note of appreciation to the 3-5 people with whom you had a quality interaction.

Try it out and let me know your results.

Be well.

Coach Steve

Too Stressed For Success Teleconference Part One

Too Stressed For Success Teleconference Part Two

These business- and life-changing principles outlined in this teleconference recording has supported countless others to transform their businesses and lives, and your business and your life will surely change, too!!   It’s so exciting to anticipate, isn’t it?

I will appreciate your feedback about the teleconference. What did you find useful? What did you find not so useful? What questions do you have about the teleconference?

Thanks, Be Well.

Coach Steve

Create Your Future Podcast

To listen to this 35 minute podcast, click on the link below.

To download it for your Ipod or other mp3 player,  right click and select “save link as.”

Loren Keim Podcast 9 2 11

This podcast will provide information about:

-The importance of working on your business, not just in it
-A strategy for identifying creative strategies to enhance your business success
-Building a powerful support team
-Succeeding in a challenging economy (like this one!)

My mission as a coach is to empower inspired small business owners and entrepreneurs to let go of their small stories and act from their essence to take their business to the next level. I have designed these podcasts to inspire you, to achieve success in your business with clarity, focus, ease and grace. These podcasts will explore the attitudes, mindsets, strategies, and tools that will support you to bring your business to the next level.

These Create Your Future Podcasts will introduce you to high achieving business people who succeed, not only in business, but in life. The guest for this podcast is Loren Keim, President of Century 21 Keim in Allentown PA.

I invited Loren to kick off this podcast series because he inspires me to move my business to the next level, and I want you to experience that inspiration as well. Here is a brief summary of some of Loren’s accomplishments:

• Loren co-wrote the first anti-virus computer program.
• He has published 8 books, including:

-How to Sell Your Home in Any Market
-The Fundamentals of Commercial Real Estate
- Real Estate Prospecting: The Ultimate Resource
-Life Lessons from the Back Seat of My Car

• Editor-in-chief of Real Estate Investment Digest and Pennsylvania Farm & Ranch Magazine
• Adjunct professor at Lehigh University
• Performs economic analysis and housing projections for Lehigh University’s Goodman Center.
• He has appeared on television and radio programs to talk about the housing and real estate markets, and is a sought-after speaker at national conventions.
• He is heavily referenced in Donald Trump’s Marketing 101 book.

That is the good news. On the other hand, stress is a huge issue for small business owners, worldwide.  Here are some of the symptoms  of stress that  small business owners tell me they experience. Check and see if any of these apply to you:

• I find myself doing the same thing over and over.
• I feel tense, confused, fatigued.
• My relationships are strained.
• I feel my pulse quickening when I look at my to-do list.
• I don’t enjoy my work.
• I have to keep working harder and harder just to stay even.

There are several ways of addressing business stress. For example, you can:

1.      Work on your business, for example, you can implement enhanced business strategies such as out-sourcing or the use of computerized processes.

2.      Enhance your personal business skills, for example, learn new marketing and sales skills

3.      Use effective self-care strategies such as getting adequate sleep, nutrition, recreation, assertiveness and relaxation

4.      Work with your “mental game.”

The first three strategies will help you do things faster and smarter and may reduce stress if your business runs more smoothly and effectively. But working faster and smarter may not give you access to certain resources that are essential to your success: creativity, intuition, ingenuity, enthusiasm, focus, good humor, great relationships and relaxed effort. Given the challenges that you encounter as a small business owner, it is crucial to your success that you have full access to these resources. When you are stressed, your access to these resources is radically reduced. In short, you are Too Stressed for Success!

If working smarter and faster does not adequately reduce your stress, consider option four and work with your mindsets. Your thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and opinions (or mindsets) are powerful sources of stress. Information (like bad economic news or word that you are losing a valued customer) is filtered through your mindsets. Your mindsets determine the reality that you see and as a result,  your feelings and actions.

Therefore, your success hinges on effectively working with your mindsets.  How do you do that? One crucial factor is taking an objective look at them. Once you are aware of how your mindset is affecting your performance, you have the basis for taking action. The best way to identify your mindsets and how they affect your performance and your outcomes is to partner with someone you trust to observe these limiting points of view. Here are two options to consider:

1.      Work with a trusted friend or colleague or join a master mind group. Look for people who are willing to be truthful with you even if it is uncomfortable, who have the ability to support you and to be objective despite their personal beliefs.

2.      Hire a coach who can support you to take a look at your limiting beliefs and shift to more useful and interesting points of view.

Be well and remember that the way you see the world can get in the way of your success.

Coach Steve Gunn

Here is how to recognize these energy sources:

Blissed: Look for what brings you joy. When you do these things, time disappears and energy flows freely. You feel joyous and energized. The poet Pablo Neruda described his bliss experience this way: “my heart broke loose on the wind.”

Blessed: Look for where you have been blessed with encouragement, talents, or good luck. What do people say you are really good at?

Pissed/Dissed: What do you get angry about? What injustice or wrong needs to be righted? Take a look at how have you have been disrespected or wounded in some way. The injuries we have suffered invite us to energize us to change something in the world.

Here is an example of these energies from my life. I recently saw a video about the Wounded Warrior Project, a program that empowers wounded veterans to get back into life after their return. http://woundedwarriorproject.org/

When I saw this video I was so overcome with emotion that I could not speak for fear of bursting into tears. This was an example of “pissed” and “dissed” energy. When I returned from Vietnam, there was little welcome for me and my fellow veterans. That is why, when I meet a Vietnam vet, I say “Welcome home.”

Today, I see veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with severe physical and emotional injury and on top of it, they are returning to an environment of economic distress. We sent our soldiers off to risk their bodies, minds and souls and we need to support them when they return. The wrong I experienced has given me energy to do something to make things right for today’s veterans. So I started looking for ways to that I can take personal action to support veterans. I am particularly excited by a local program, The Veterans Sanctuary, designed to support veterans dealing with post traumatic stress and other post-service challenges. http://treatmenttrends.org/Vets.html

What is the benefit of tapping into these energy sources? These “blissed, blessed, pissed/dissed” energies are powerful and come from your core. You need that kind of powerful energy in order to be successful. Unless you have this kind of clear strong energy, you may not have the power to get through the tough times that occur when you are working to bring something important into reality.

A Call to Action

Identify these powerful energies in yourself:

• Look at what gives you bliss. What gives you joy and energy? What makes your “heart break loose on the wind”?
• Remember when someone told you that you are really good at something or who encouraged you or blessed you in some way?
• What do you get angry about?
• What wound have you suffered, or where have you been disrespected or seen someone else treated badly that has made you especially sensitive or motivated to work in that area.
• Then take one small step to put that energy into action.

I recently completed a round of coaching with a client and asked him to share what he had gained from our work together. He said that he came into coaching wanting to figure out how to make himself take action to achieve his goals and left knowing how to let it happen. We took a look at how he was using his energy. As a result, he saw that he could enhance his use of the energies of creativity, enjoyment and relationship to accomplish his goals. He started playing toward his goals with a colleague. They partnered, with the specific intention of having fun with creative ways of interacting with potential clients. As a result, he made significant progress toward his goal; he had more clients and more income.

Enjoyment is a crucial form of energy because it is so closely related to creativity. Creativity thrives in an environment of enjoyment. Creativity can be stimulated to flow in life-threatening circumstances (think about Apollo 13, for example), for the most part, fear and anxiety do not support creativity. Also, enjoyment is also connected with the free flow of physical vitality, since enjoyment supports the free flow of energy through relaxation.

How do we put that to use? My client chose to enjoy his work. One way to see the word enjoy is not as a passive experience, but as the process of bringing joy into what you do, to en-joy your activity.

Here are some suggestions about how to en-joy your work:

1. Remember that you can choose to en-joy to what you do; enjoyment does not come from the outside.
2. It does not take extra time to en-joy your work, so don’t listen to inner conversations that say you are too busy.
3. Be alert and fully present to what you are doing.
4. Focus on the action, not the outcome. Enjoy the trip, not just anticipation of the destination.

Choose an activity that you experience as mildly unpleasant and experiment with bringing enjoyment to it.   What have you got to lose?