Professionals are coachable.

Professional leaders are coachable.

Amateurs are know-it-alls.

Which are you?

Problem with someone?

Get together with them, uninterrupted.  Have a one-sided conversation.  Listen. 

Ask follow-up questions. 

Listen.

Routines remove decisions

Routines remove decisions, like habits reduce brainpower needed.  

The key is to make routines of healthy, smart, and productive activities.  

Whether it be morning, when you arrive at work, when you leave, in the evening or weekend mornings.

What are your routines?

Can you/should you alter them?

Keep yourself together.

When there are days that you are under pressure, you can’t get everything done, you can’t control things that are not going your way, setbacks have happened, people seem to have let you down…

Keep your dignity, be the best person today and do the best job you can on one thing at a time.  Take a minute between tasks to think about what you are doing and why and how.  Be a person you are proud of.  Treat yourself and others well.  Make sure your team has clear direction on what the outcome is and stay true to your values – because now is the time they count; now is the time you wrote them for.

If you stay together, the rest will turn out just fine.

You probably can't save your way to success

Let’s say your business is not making money.  You decide the answer is to cheapen your supply of raw materials in, to solve the problem.

So you go to a cheaper A product to save $2.50, and cheaper B product to save $1.00, and a cheaper C product to save $.23 on every widget you make.

Say you save $3.73 on each widget.  That’s the most you can save.  Will that do it?  Will you be prosperous that way?

Don’t forget, now the product or service you provide your customers is made with cheap materials.  This is what you will be known for.  You’ll have the same cheap stuff as everyone else and have to compete on price. 

Will you have to lower your price by $3.73 eventually?  If so, you are back where you started.  

Will you lose market share?  This will ding you too.

I’m not saying cutting costs is not a good idea, or that spending too much is.  But what if that wasn’t the problem?

A key idea of my School of Entrepreneurship is “To set things right, you have to see things right”.

So, what if you could take that extra $3.73, maybe even add more value and spend $4.00 more on cost, and sell it for $10 per unit more because it was better?  Would it require the right branding, story, marketing, and salesmanship?  Yes but those things are either free or you are doing them now.  And if you aren’t doing them well now, maybe that is the real problem.

If you can do it, you can MAKE $6 more profit, instead of cutting your way to $3.73 savings and racing to the bottom.

Defense is cutting costs.  Do that, sure.  But you can’t defend your way to victory in many cases.  You need some offense – Innovation, extra value, marketing, and salesmanship.

Was it fun?

All money is not created equal.

When you earned it, was it fun?

When things change…

When events change and something happens you didn’t expect, just change your mind.

When things don’t go your way, it’s not that they went wrong, they just didn’t match your expectations.

Instead of feeling and expressing pain and frustration, just change your plan, your timeline, your approach or your actions.

Small things or BIG things, change your mind and keep going.

Quote to ponder today-

“A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests.” – Barbara Tuchman

Why do you think this is?  Here are my comments and I’d like to hear yours –

First, a government is run by people.  People have their own self-interest.  When you put many of them together there is no collective mind that is formed that is superior to any single man.  

Next, these people who are running the show are playing with other people’s money.  This makes them do things they would not do with their own money, and poor judgment becomes common.

Next, these people are not responsible for long-term results.  They will be gone and their bad judgment will be forgotten – at least they hope.  Therefore, short-term thinking is what they prioritize.

Lastly, governments have gotten involved in so many things that elected officials couldn’t possibly understand well.  They wind up abdicating to appointed leaders of specialty agencies (there are 443 federal agencies in the US now) who all have their own agendas – expand their influence and spend their budget by the end of the year so they can get more money next year.

This is what I see as the root causes of governments doing what seems to be “counter to their own self-interest”.

What do you think?  (Orange button for comments).

Set yourself on fire with conviction!

When we are a salesperson – and many jobs in business (marketing, call center, sales, promotion, PR, leader, manager, recruiter, etc.) require you to get others excited about your ideas enough so they take action, you have to be completely and deeply convinced that your ideas are great.

Spend time being “sold” yourself.  Spend time convincing yourself of all the great things about the product or service.  If one aspect of it is not so great, change it so it is.  

When two people meet the one who is most convinced will win over the one who is least convinced.  You better be most convinced!

When you want to convince someone else of something, you’d better convince yourself first!

Do you feel good about what your business does?

If you make money but don’t feel good about it, is it worth it?

If you make money but you aren’t proud about HOW you did it, should you continue?

I say, whatever you do, do it with style and grace and fun, treat people right, and be proud of it.  

You are more likely to make money that way anyway.