Business Motivation – April 19, 2010
There Is Always A Good Side Everything depends on the way you look at things. View every problem you encounter as an opportunity. There is always a good side to every situation. The optimist sees an opportunity in every misfortune. The pessimist sees misfortune in every opportunity. The optimist sees the doughnut, the pessimist sees the hole. You can develop success from every failure. Discouragement and failure are two stepping stones to success. No other elements can do so much for you if you’re willing to study them and make them work for you. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars. (Reprinted with permission, Sam Maitz, Director of Marketing Technology, Leadership Management® International, Inc.)
Goal Setting: Find the ROI – Measure Your Goals
By Valerie G. Cardenas “You can’t manage it if you can’t measure it.” – Paul J. Meyer Have you heard this business quotation before? It’s one of my favorites because it’s absolutely true. Unless you have a strategy for measuring your goals, you have no way of keeping your business on track and no way of knowing when you’ve achieved success. Good management of goals begins with setting measurable goals. (You may recall my reference to SMART goals in previous blogs – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Tangible goals.) If you’ve set measurable goals, then you’ve asked some basic questions, such as: How much? How many? By when? Now you’re ready to measure. Choose Measurements that Can be Managed for ROI Every business is different, so measurement strategies and types vary. But here are a few standards to get you thinking about measuring your business goals and determining your Return on Investment (ROI): General Business Measurements Dollars per contracts signed Number of call-backs per 100 jobs Increased your profit by [insert your goal percentage here] Sales Measurements New accounts as a percentage of total accounts Number of new accounts per day Percentage of referral business to your total business Ask yourself: How can you track your success? Or, what does success look like to you? Remember the quote we started with: You can’t manage it if you can’t measure it. Set up Dynamic, Motivational Measurements of Achievement Once you establish measurements, then share them and your checkpoints reached – even if the sharing is just with yourself. We humans need to celebrate our achievements! Create the visual that works for you. It might be a chart that shows your upward progress, a graph that compares, counts, or illustrates checkpoints reached. It might be pins on a map, numbers on a spreadsheet,…
Business Motivation – April 16, 2010
Happiness Is A Byproduct Of Activity Happiness lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The human spirit needs to accomplish, to achieve, to triumph to be happy. Happiness does not come from doing easy work. but from the afterglow of satisfaction that comes after the achievement of a difficult task that demands your best. Your personal growth itself contains the seed of happiness. You cannot pursue happiness by itself. There is no happiness except in the realization that you have accomplished something. Happiness thrives in activity. It’s a running river, not a stagnant pond. (Reprinted with permission, Sam Maitz, Director of Marketing Technology, Leadership Management® International, Inc.)
Business Motivation – April 14, 2010
You Are What You Think loved or unloved, happy or unhappy, attractive or unattractive, powerful or weak. What you impress upon your mind, you’ll inevitably become. It’s a psychological law that whatever you desire to accomplish you must first impress upon your subconscious mind. Relentless, repetitive self talk will change your self image. You’ll affect your subconscious mind with verbal repetition. Constant repetition carries conviction. When you change your values you’ll change your behavior. Start thinking of yourself as becoming the person you want to be. Self suggestion will make you the master of yourself. You can become whatever you want to be. If you believe you can, you can. (Reprinted with permission, Sam Maitz, Director of Marketing Technology, Leadership Management® International, Inc.)
Business Motivation – April 12, 2010
The Secret To Confidence Is Preparation There can be no great courage when there is no confidence or assurance. Half the battle is in the conviction that you can accomplish what you undertake. With practice you’ll come to a point of competence in anything. You’ll find yourself accomplishing your goals with grace and confidence. It’s then that you’ll do things that you never dreamed you could do. You’ll discover powers you never knew existed. Confidence doesn’t come out of nowhere. It’s the result of constant work and dedication. If you’re prepared, you’re able to feel confident. (Reprinted with permission, Sam Maitz, Director of Marketing Technology, Leadership Management® International, Inc.)
Business Motivation – April 9, 2010
You Are The Master Of Your Fate While your character is formed by your circumstances, your own desires can do much to shape those circumstances. What is really ennobling in the doctrine of free will is the conviction that you have the power over the formation of your own character. Nature is at work around you. Character and destiny are her handiwork. She gives you love and hate, jealousy and reverence. You have the power to choose which impulses you will follow. You can at any time decide to alter the course of your life. No one can ever take that away from you. You are the master or your joys and your sorrows. The greatest power you possess is the power to choose. You are the master of your fate. You are the captain of your soul. (Reprinted with permission, Sam Maitz, Director of Marketing Technology, Leadership Management® International, Inc.)
Business Motivation – April 7, 2010
Endurance Is The Crowning Quality Of Success The power to hold on in spite of everything, to endure, this is the quality of a winner. Your greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time you fail. It’s your constant and determined effort that will eventually break down all resistance and sweep away all the barriers before you. Persistence means taking pains to overcome every obstacle, to do all that’s necessary to reach your goal. All great achievements require time. It’s never over until you say it’s over. (Reprinted with permission, Sam Maitz, Director of Marketing Technology, Leadership Management® International, Inc.)
Business Motivation – April 5, 2010
You Must Pay A Price For Success Whatever you want in life, you must give up something to get it. The greater the value, the greater the sacrifice required of you. There’s a price to pay if you want to make things better, and a price you’ll pay for just leaving things as they are. Nothing worthwhile comes easily to anyone. Work, continuous work and hard work, is the only way to accomplish results that last. Don’t let the fear of change stop you from pursuing your dreams. There is no success at bargain basement prices. The highway to success is a toll road. (Reprinted with permission, Sam Maitz, Director of Marketing Technology, Leadership Management® International, Inc.)
Business Motivation – April 02, 2010
All Great Achievements Take Time Success is the sum of small efforts repeated day in and day out. Nothing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or an apple miraculously appears. If you want to grow an apple, you must give it time. There must be time for it to blossom, bear fruit and then ripen. That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures. (Reprinted with permission, Sam Maitz, Director of Marketing Technology, Leadership Management® International, Inc.)
Even SMART Goals Need Smart Action Steps to Succeed
Goals are fundamental to turning a business dream into business success, and SMART goals are the standard in business planning. Most of my clients have heard of SMART goals, and I suspect you have too. But just as a refresher, let me remind you that SMART goals are: Specific Measurable Attainable Realistic Tangible Even SMART goals can fail you unless they’re accompanied by smart action strategies, and that’s what I want to talk about today: Smart Action Steps to Achieving Goals. Put Your Business Goals on Your Calendar The easiest and one of the most effective action steps you can take is to put your goal on your calendar. In other words: Give yourself a deadline. When should this goal be attained? Until you move action steps and your goals onto your calendar, you have great ideas but no real means of achieving them. Make Time to Succeed Set aside the time to reach your goal. Too often, we ‘add’ goals to our business days, somehow hoping our days will expand to meet them. (Wishful thinking!) As long as goals have no time allotted to them, we have no plan to achieve them. How to Plan Your Steps and Checkpoints For most business goals – whether it’s sales, productivity, or other business-related goals – you’ll increase your chance of success exponentially if you have prioritized action steps and checkpoints to keep you on track. So, block out the time for the action steps you need to take to reach your goal. Creating successful action steps: Think through the steps you need to take to reach your goals; make them specific. Prioritize your action steps and set target dates. Identify checkpoints along the way to your ultimate goal. Move your action steps and checkpoints onto your calendar, allowing sufficient time for…
