I think passion is another one of those words we toss around, assuming the meaning, but often not digging deep enough to understand the essence. Passion to me is alignment. Alignment of your natural gifts and talents with an arena of expression. Passion is the skater with a sheet of ice, the skiier with snow covered mountain peak, the golfer with a plush green fairway, the teacher on stage with an audience watching.

I think the biggest barrier between you and your passion is your knowledge and acceptance of yourself. Our whole life we are conditioned to believe that we are not good enough. That we have to learn more, earn more, say more, do more in order to reach some holy grail of accomplishment. This paradigm no longer serves us.

In the silence and stillness of your life is where you will hear your inner voice of wisdom talk to you about your true passions. From there, your job is to be open, to be honest and to be willing to take the necessary inspired action steps that will lead you on a path of alignment.

Passion is not something external that you need to go out and get. It’s internal and you simply need to allow it to come to the surface of your life.

Be brave!!

All the best,

Heather White, CEO 2020 Communications Inc.

Make this the year of kindness to yourself. After all, if you can’t be bothered to be kind to yourself every day, why would anyone else? Stop criticizing yourself constantly. Stop expecting perfection. Laugh when you mess up. Dance when you are happy. Celebrate your successes.

When we are unkind to ourselves, when we put taking care of ourselves last on the list, what things are we teaching our daughters? What kind of role models are we?

Make 2010 the year of kindness to yourself. You won’t believe how strong an impact that will make on your confidence and on the others around you. And the effect on your bottom line will astound you. Nourish your spirit every single day this year.

Fiona Walsh, CEO, FM Walsh & Associates Inc., www.fmwalsh.com

Experience, hard word and talent are not enough to succeed in today’s workplace. You need to also focus on building a network that will bring you the success you want. Your career will likely span multiple jobs and fields and the best and fastest way to get where you want to be is having a network of people you can call on. Building an effective network takes time, planning and intention. Here are 5 rules that will help you out:

1. Talk to strangers. You never know who is standing behind you at Starbucks.
2. Build a network with intention; create a plan of the types of people you want to meet and work the plan.
3. Give as much as you get; don’t be stingy about looking for ways to help others out. This will repay itself many times over when you need a helping hand.
4. Reach out to people long before you need anything; do not be that person who only ever calls when they need something. That is not networking – that is using people and you will not be appreciated for it. Stay in touch regularly with the people in your network.
5. Ask for what you want, not what you think you can get. The simple act of asking will get you a lot more than you can ever imagine.

Remember: success does not come to those with a low tolerance for risk or those who are led by fear. Start talking to people – you will be surprised what you learn!

Fiona Walsh, CEO, FM Walsh & Associates Inc., www.fmwalsh.com

We don’t always appreciate what we have, whether at home or at work. That angst that fights against complacency is actually a good thing – the sense that the grass is always greener on the other side is what makes us jump into new opportunities. That said, making a team work together with real synergy is not an everyday feat. Learn to spot the successes in your collaborations, so you can replicate that synergy elsewhere.

Does your team actually seem to enjoy working with each other? Happy people are productive people. If you find yourself actually looking forward to seeing the people at your office every day – well, that’s no small thing.

Then there’s the skill set. With an optimal balance where everyone is assigned tasks and workload according to their talents rather than which person has the smallest stack of projects on their desk, you’ll get real productivity.

Next, look at how your group talks to each other. If discussions are fluid, with plenty of back and forth, engaging ideas, and everybody listening to what other team members are saying, you’ve got something special. Far too many groups are dominated by someone with a forceful personality rather than expertise in all areas that the team has to work in. Freedom of speech and thought are not just good for civil society – they make businesses work better.

If you do recognize your team is functioning very well, analyze what it is about this group that works well. Often, it is based on good habits rather than some innate ability to work well with others. Try to transfer these habits to your other collaborative activities and watch your successes add up.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

Our Deepest Fear
adapted from Marianne Williamson’s “A Return to Love.”

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate,
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light not our darkness,
that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, whom am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?
Actually, who are we not to be?
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There’s nothing enlightened about
shrinking so that other people won’t
feel insecure around you.
You were born to manifest the glory of love.
It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone.
And as we let our light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.

I find women to be the worst culprit of trying to ‘dumb down’ their awesomeness so as not to appear ‘boastful’ or like they’re ‘bragging’. This is a huge mistake. Anyone who knows me will be the first to tell you that no matter how small my successes, I always share them. There is so much value in sharing with one another when we are succeeding, growing, learning and changing. As we continue to merge our collective experience and intelligence we become more and more powerful and effective in reaching heights once only imaginable.

This week, step up and stand out. Let your light shine. Share your WINS no matter how seemingly small and allow them to build momentum to carry you forward. It’s about time you GOT OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY!

All the best,

Heather White, CEO, 2020 Communications Inc.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit – Aristotle

Human beings in and of themselves operate on autopilot for much of their day. We complete daily activities like, showering, brushing our teeth, drinking coffee, reading the paper, with little or almost no thought about what it is that we are actually doing. These habitual behaviours add up throughout the day and by the time we go to bed, somewhere between 75-80% of our activities were exactly the same as yesterday and will be exactly the same as tomorrow. This can’t be possible you think – take stock – I guarantee you’ll find what I’m saying to be true.

This month we’ve been writing on ways you can automate your business so that you don’t have to be the one doing all the work in order to be successful. Today, I want to draw your attention to your own personal autopilot mechanism, known as your ‘habits’, because, as positive as all the tools are that we’ve been sharing with you all month, your own personal habits can be equally as detrimental to your success.

For example…

Almost every person that I know, with the exception of a few, and especially entrepreneurs, complain that they don’t have enough time. It’s become somewhat of an epidemic. Stock answer to the question ‘how are you doing’ has become ‘busy!’. People are running around like mad men, always in a hurry and rushing. Not to mention what these raised levels of cortizol and adrenalin are doing to your body, how is this ‘habitual way of operating’ affecting the success of your business?

Being in a habitual state of ‘busyness’ is doing nothing for your health personally or professionally and if this describes you in any way, it’s time to take a step back and reevaluate. There is no way, at least that I’m aware of, to add hours to the day, so the 24 that you’re working with, is all you have. How you spend those 24 hours, however, is directly reflected in the results you are achieving in your life.

Go back to you goals for 2009 and read them over. Are you getting closer to accomplishing? If not, it’s time for you to take a look at your habits. What are you doing everyday and how is that contributing to the achievement of your goals? If you’re doing things that are not contributing, time to ditch those activities. Getting what YOU want in business and in life is 100% up to you, if you’re willing to take responsibility for your own success. The actions you take in your life are producing your current results. If you don’t like what you see, time to change your actions.

All the best,

Heather White, CEO 2020 Communications Inc.

At a time when cutting costs makes more sense, outsourcing some activities may seem counter-intuitive. After all, outsourcing means money going out, not going in. But it’s essential for businesses that want to put their operations on autopilot and create conditions for success when the overall economy starts moving again.

Taking an example from my own business, I’m passionate about helping my clients get out of chaos by providing them with strategies for things like organizing their workplaces and homes, time management and work-life balance.

This is the work that I love to do. I’m excited every day when I start work, knowing I’m doing exactly what I want to do, helping people achieve better balance and reach their goals.

Bookkeeping, on the other hand, is not my passion. Neither is spending long hours undertaking a rigorous hiring process targeting candidates from across BC who might be a good fit for my company. Same goes for making sure my website is patched every month and the code shows up like it should on every web browser. Cold-calling, administrative support… there’s an outsourcing solution for just about anything.

These are all tasks that must be done for my business to operate, but they’re not what I’m passionate about. It makes way more sense for me to hire people who are passionate about these things to do them for me. There is a cost attached to this. But compared with your bill-out rate and where you might better make use of your own expertise, it just makes sense to outsource. Find the right people, put the process in place, and you’ll find that you have more time to get down to the business you love to do.

Linda Chu
CEO – Out of Chaos, Professional Organizing Solutions
www.outofchaos.ca

One of the hardest things for entrepreneurial women to do is trust their systems, especially if their system comes in the form of another human being. Being able to let go and leave your business in the hands of someone else, or a computer system can be a challenge for many, but not if you whole heartedly trust the system.

However, in order to truly trust the system there has to be some level of understanding on how it works. Fear is the opposite of trust and, in my experience, fear is most often bread from ignorance or not knowing. I’ve heard a countless number of clients say that it’s just ‘easier if I do it myself’, and this makes it impossible to walk away from your business, even for a few hours.

Sit down TODAY and write down a wish list of things that you would love to delegate in order to put your business on auto pilot. Then write down what you would need to know in order for you to trust that a system would take care of your business as well as you would. Then take action in educating yourself on how the system would work. You might ask an expert, read a book or article, or simply go for coffee with a fellow business owner who’s having success with a system you want to implement.

Your ability to trust systems will allow you to create a work/life balance that gives you the ability to truly ’shut off’ without ever compromising the credibility or success of your business.

All the best,

Heather White, CEO, 2020 Communications Inc.

Working the system and working on the system are very different things. As an employee, working in corporate sales, I worked in the system. I was told who, what, when and where and I did it. As a business owner and entrepreneur it is my responsibility to make sure that there are proper systems in place that allow me to maximize my efforts, activities and profitability. But making this transition from ‘worker bee’ to ‘queen bee’ can be tricky for a lot of people, myself included.

At first, when I left my corporate job, I would still get up at 6am, and go and sit in front of my computer. I would check email, check voicemail, then head to the office. I’d ‘work’ for 8, 10, 12 hours, head home and just because I could, I’d probably check my email again later on in the evening, just in case something had transpired in the few moments ‘off’ that I had allowed myself. (Can I say LOSER!) Finally about 6 months in to my first venture, I had my ‘aha’ moment. I don’t have to work 12 hours a day, I don’t have to check my email every 2 seconds, I don’t have to be attached at the ear to my phone. I am a high achiever and I believe strongly and passionately about exceptional customer service, but, providing your clients with exceptional service and checking email 24/7 do not have to co-exist. What I needed were systems. Systems that freed up my time while still serving my client base in the way that made me proud of my business.

Giving yourself permission to deploy systems in place of you doing the work is the most rewarding thing you can do for your professional life. You do the work once and then allow the system to repeat itself exponentially – giving you more time to work on new ideas, create and implement new systems and remain the visionary that you are.

The first step in making this transition is to take stock of the time you spend ‘working’. What are all the activities that you are doing on a daily, weekly, quarterly and annual basis. Then, take a look at your list of activities and ask yourself what you can systemize? Start slow so as to ease yourself into this process. But, be forewarned, once you realize the power of having systems do the majority of your work, and the freedom you have as a result, you’ll be looking for the next project to sink your teeth in to.

All the best,

Heather White, CEO, 2020 Communications Inc.

“The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.”

For many people, the thought of losing (a business deal, a client, or a key staff member) can lead them to making poor decisions. Our world is so focused on winning all of the time that it forgets that success is a shitty teacher. It is the times we lose where we learn the most. I worked in a casino for a while as a security guard on the high stakes tables. A friend of mine came in with $2,000.00 and told me that he had saved up the money to learn how the game of Texas Hold’em was played. I told him he was an idiot and that he should buy a game for his computer and practice at home. He reminded me that ‘in play’ experience is the best teacher. You won’t take it seriously if the money isn’t real.

He played that night and lost about $800.00 in chips. He came back the following night and walked away +$125.oo

For the following weeks he would be up and down, but never lost his entire $2,000.00 Some nights he’d be down to $200.00 and would leave. I thought the emotional roller coaster ride would have been enough to drive anyone crazy, but he stuck with it and now he seriously augments his income by playing in poker tournaments in B.C. and Vegas.

You have to be in it to win it. When you lose, don’t focus on the loss itself. Instead focus on the lesson. What did you learn this time that you can avoid next time. For me, most of my success comes from avoiding the pitfalls that others fall into. Almost everyone I know wants to write a book. They have it on their ‘to-do’ list, but get stuck in the details. I made almost every mistake you can in finding an agent, getting a book deal, and choosing how to promote the book. Every time I made a mistake, I’d look at what the lesson was and go again. I started focusing on Canadian agents and when that didn’t work, I focused on those in Manhattan. When I wasn’t getting anywhere with one press, I would look at working with another. I had a lot of bad radio interviews so I started decising which ones I would do and which ones I would pass on. The good ones got me excited for more good ones, the bad ones made me want to get out of the studio as quickly as possible.

I’m successful for one basic fact: I’m not afraid to lose. I’m not afraid to fall on my face….as long as I only do it once per area. I will take the hits, taunts, jibes, and self-abuse I do when I fail in order to learn. I seek out others that have failed and succeeded to get their take on how to avoid pitfalls and get in the winner’s circle. You have to walk the edge if you want the good stuff. Playing too safe will strangle opportunities for yourself. When life kicks you in the guts and tries to break you, get up, dust yourself off, and look for the lesson. It might be painful and it might be expensive, but it is necessary. If you do the same mistake over and over again..well, you might be a bonehead and need to take some time to figure out what you are doing wrong rather than doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different outcome.

Best,

Chris.

p.s. If you find that when you are crapping out, you need to throw a pity party or engage in drama with the people around you, take a walk and think about where your focus is. You get what you focus on. Drama brings drama and pity parties are for losers. The only people that like coming to pity parties are other losers. Stay positive, look for the lesson, and drive forward.