Chris Flett posed a blog earlier in the week discussing his love for stress and pressure and how it brings out his best game.  I know he thought I would kill him because I preach “balance”, rest, nutrition and a host of other “fluffy” things that he isn’t concerned with because they don’t have (at least in his mind) a direct correlation with making cash.  Here in a nutshell is what I love about being a business owner who isn’t afraid to be authentic.  I see it all the time, people try to be something or someone they are not in business and this mistake robs them of their passion, enthusiasm, drive and vision for building a business in first place. What’s refreshing about the new paradigm of business is the permission business owners are giving themselves to be authentic, to be transparent, to honour what works for them and the development of their business.  I don’t like being stressed and Chris doesn’t like meditating, but, we both run successful businesses that mirror many fundamentals and systems.  I do it in a way that works for me and he does it in a way that works for him.  Be authentic everyday in business – it’s the only way to stay in love with what you do.

All the best,

Heather, CEO 2020 Communications Inc.

Okay, time for some tough questions in this quest to rekindle your passion for business – hey, every relationship is work, people!

When you got into business I can guarantee the reason contained an element of wanting to help someone or something. Whether you’re a service business or sell a product, you are in some way filling a need. “I’m really good at this and I want to make people’s lives easier,” is a refrain I often here.

When it starts feeling like your feet are stuck in mud every time you try to move the business forward it’s time to take a look around and reassess. If fear of sales is your issue, Fiona Walsh can give you some great pointers.

However, if you are having trouble selling you might want to take a hard look at what and how you are selling, too. The world changes and what worked before may not be working now (anyone been impacted by the current market fallout?). What consumers and business bought before may not be what they are buying now.

Don’t hang on too hard to what you sold in the past. Instead, look back at the need you filled. Is the need still there? If it is, maybe the mechanism is no longer useful. When was the last time you went into a music store and bought a CD? Chances are if you bought one at all it was at your local coffee shop or drugstore, and it’s more than likely you downloaded it off the Internet instead.

Business formats come and go and maybe it’s time for you to shake things up a little. Look at how you can repackage, tweak and update what you offer.

Hey, that’s kind of like starting a new business, except you don’t have to start from scratch! You get to look at it with fresh eyes and a renewed openness to solving problems. And I’m betting you can get pretty excited about that.

- Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

Malcolm Gladwell (author of Blink and Tipping Point) has come out with his next business masterpiece: Ouliners. I speak highly of him, because he has the ability to take the obvious and distill it into usable information. Will it change your life? No… Will it give you some perspective of how you do business? Yes. I especially like his chapter on the 10,000 hour rule. It talks about expertise in anything comes after 10,000 hours of practice.

Here is how Gladwell answered the question: Why did you write Outliers?

I write books when I find myself returning again and again, in my mind, to the same themes. I wrote Tipping Point because I was fascinated by the sudden drop in crime in New York City—and that fascination grew to an interest in the whole idea of epidemics and epidemic processes. I wrote Blink because I began to get obsessed, in the same way, with the way that all of us seem to make up our minds about other people in an instant—without really doing any real thinking. In the case of Outliers, the book grew out a frustration I found myself having with the way we explain the careers of really successful people. You know how you hear someone say of Bill Gates or some rock star or some other outlier—”they’re really smart,” or “they’re really ambitious?’ Well, I know lots of people who are really smart and really ambitious, and they aren’t worth 60 billion dollars. It struck me that our understanding of success was really crude—and there was an opportunity to dig down and come up with a better set of explanations.

Click on the link above and pick up this book. It is enjoyable, a great read, and I truly believe it will offer you some insight into the market, ethnocentric systems, and how true ‘experts’ are created, not born.

Best,

Chris.

www.GhostCEO.com

As I often emphasize with my friends, colleagues and clients, better workplace effectiveness isn’t just about reducing the physical clutter. Just as important as having an organized space is having a healthy mind and a good attitude. When we are positive, we attract love, health and success in our work.

Sometimes we need to feel positive and in control before we can undertake the physical organizing. Negative thoughts can lead to procrastination or perfectionism. Some causes of procrastination include fear of failure, unclear expectations or depression. It will stop you from starting projects. Conversely, perfectionism can prevent you from finishing projects that you began long ago.

One way to overcome negative thoughts and promote a healthy mind is through regular self-affirmations.

Go to a quiet place and clear your mind. If any negative thoughts come to mind, don’t simply try to ignore them; recognize them, and recognize that you are in control of your own actions. You can change your situation. Use positive mantras and affirm your ability to do the things that you want and need to do. Use visualization techniques to imagine what your successes will look like.

It takes time and patience to change, but we can all have more balance in our lives. When your mind is healthy, you will have more energy and take on tasks with enthusiasm.

- Linda Chu, CEO – Out of Chaos

Are you able to close your sales? Are you successful at landing the new business you go after?  Time after time I have seen clients go after a sale and lose it. They have no problem with prospecting and qualifying.  They can identify who their potential customers are; they can get a meeting with them.  They even do a great presentation on their product or service.  Then they fall victim to this false belief:  if I do a great job presenting all my benefits, answer all their questions and objections, and the prospect likes me, they will buy from me – I don’t have to ask for the business.

This is wrong.  You need to ask for the business every single time. Not in a pushy way; no need to have a wrestling match over their credit card! But you do have to ask.  And I know how hard it was for me to learn this skill when I first started out in sales.  I was worried that people would think I was being pushy or unpleasant.  Honestly, I hated doing it.  So I didn’t.  And I didn’t make many sales, which meant I wasn’t too happy with selling, as I was not as successful as I would like to be.

Once I learned the importance of closing in every sales call, and realized that it was a simple as: “When would you like to get started?” or “When do you want to take delivery?” I started asking for the business every single time.  While I didn’t always get it, my sales did increase, my confidence went up and I fell in love again with helping my customers, which is really what sales is all about.

Fiona Walsh, CEO, FM Walsh & Associates Inc.

I know that Heather White is going to kill me for this, but I like stress. Okay…I LOVE stress. When I’m under pressure, I’m at my best. Sometimes I set myself up to be stressed (leave things till the last minute, do less preparation than I should, etc.) A recent report came out saying that stress isn’t so bad. Check out the story (presented by Newsweek) here.

What I get from this report is that stress can be good or bad, depending on how you manage it. I’m not crippled by it. Instead, it makes me work smarter than harder, and gets my butt in gear. For me, stess is my fried.

As Spencer Rathus puts it in “Psychology: Concepts and Connections,” “some stress is healthy and necessary to keep us alert and occupied.” Yet that’s not the theme that’s been coming out of science for the past few years. “The public has gotten such a uniform message that stress is always harmful,” says Janet DiPietro, a developmental psychologist at Johns Hopkins University. “And that’s too bad, because most people do their best under mild to moderate stress.”

All the best (with a little stress!)

Chris.

www.GhostCEO.com

Falling in love with your business begins with being able to fall in love with yourself.  As women, we are quick to pick up on our imperfections and shortcomings and slow to acknowledge our gifts, talents and strengths.  All you have to do is take a walk by a magazine rack and notice all the buzz words indicating the need to change in order to be great: thinner, younger, more successful, wealthier etc.  My challenge to you this weekend is to make a list of all the things that you are great at – all your strengths. Are you organized, articulate, responsible, strategic – what are all the amazing qualities you have that make you good at what you do.  If you’re stuck, grab a copy of Strengths Finder, a great resource for putting some language around your natural abilities.  Afterwards, post the list somewhere that you see it often so as to remind yourself of your strengths and stay focused on what you do well.  This will set the intention for being the best you, in business and in life.

All the best,

Heather

CEO, 2020 Communications Inc.

When we fall in love with someone it’s not usually because they are just like everyone else. What would be the point? No, it’s because there is something unique and special about them, something we haven’t encountered in the masses of people we encounter on a day-to-day basis.

Part of recapturing the love of our business is remembering what it was that made us special, unique, and unusual at the start. We forget to celebrate those amazing qualities when we start to take them for granted.

A client a few years back was facing increased competition. As a small retail jeweler, she’d had a comfortable business for 30+ years. Recently new, large jewelry store chains of the Tiffany’s ilk had entered her geographic area and she was feeling the pinch.

Not only had a couple of high end chains opened up shop in her area, some of the larger local players were responding with a surge in radio and print advertising. With a limited budget, she couldn’t compete on the already cluttered advertising airwaves.

In our initial session together we got down to the root of her business and it quickly became apparent what her “gems” (pun intended) were. She owned a family run business that was 60 years old. Her level of service and one-to-one time with customers meant they came in to ask for her by name. Children and grandchildren of her father’s original customers were still coming to the store to have custom design work done.

In a crowded, noisy market of big bling, hers was a stable, customer-focused, high quality, high service boutique. And she didn’t even know it.

She left the session that day, repeating with wonder in her voice, “I’m a boutique. I’ve never really thought of that. I’m a boutique.” Her spark was relit when she recognized and appreciated all the great things she’d been doing for years and had been taking for granted.

Take a close look at your business and acknowledge the characteristics that make you unique and memorable…then get back to celebrating them.

- Liz Gaige
Market Navigators Consulting

Sometimes things have to be tough in order for us to appreciate the effort that goes into the goal. Things are more challenging in the market now, then ever, but it is in that challenge that you will come out stronger the other side.

In business, like in any physical effort, one you get into the rhythm of making things happen, your body and mind start to take over. A friend of mine is a freestyle rock climber. When I ask her if it worries her to climb up 100s of feet without a rope or anchor, she says no. “Once I commit to climbing the mountain, I have no alternative but to succeed. Going back in not an option nor is letting go. I’m 100% committed and thus I guarantee the results. Aside from some freak accident, when I start a mountain, I know I will finish on top.

Seems a timely lesson in today’s business world as well.

Best,

Chris

www.GhostCEO.com

Just like with our closest personal relationships, in our business we need to focus our time on what’s most important. Being successful entails organizing your time to do the things that you think are most important for your success, and outsourcing the rest.

My own business, like for most other consultants and service providers, is successful because my clients recognize that they just don’t have time to do everything if they want to maintain balance. As GhostCEO pointed out on this blog recently (Get Your Business Development Time in the Flow), if you’re all tapped out from taking on too much, you can lose out on business opportunities.

For instance, I enjoy showing people a proven system for organizing their offices, workspaces and homes so that they can live and work without chaos, but I also recognize that sometimes clients are so strapped for time that they don’t even have time to learn the system: they need their space organized now. Fair enough, although I’m always ready to offer the service that will help them save time and boost productivity in the long run, when they can schedule us in.

Whether you’re able to do the work on your own or you find it easier to outsource, the goal is to focus on those aspects of your business that you love doing. When you stay passionate about your business, your chances of success are much greater.

- Linda Chu, CEO – Out of Chaos