Be FEARLESS!

Live, Love, Make it Easy.

 [The Underpinning Theme of FEARLESS! The Golden Love Musical]

Put “Entrepreneur” in this site’s Search window and scroll. You’ll get hundreds of definitive traits and characteristics. Values. Instincts. Behaviors. Ingredients. Challenges. Strategies. Personal/professional and entrepreneurial family issues.

The consistent message in these posts has been that no matter who you are, no matter who you think you are, no matter whether you own and/or operate a small business, or are a corporate muckity-muck or government doo-dah . . . no matter that you’re out-of-work, or in professional practice, a family business, or entrenched in –or on the cusp of– retirement . . . or whether you’re a student, teacher, Walmart Welcomer, laborer, or a stay-at-home Mom or Dad . . . makes no difference. None.

Being FEARLESS is what makes a difference!

Sound too easy? You are of course free to read more here or click on the little “x” and go somewhere less threatening.

You ALWAYS have a choice.

You can choose to think like an entrepreneur even if you’re not one. Why would you want to do that? Because entrepreneurial thinking is one way of putting you in closer touch with the real you — the you that wants to reach out more to help others, the you that’s not afraid to take reasonable risks, the you that craves being able to see problem solutions all the way through to the end . . . the difference between creativity, and innovation.

ANYone can have creative ideas. Making creative ideas work by taking them all the way to completion, is innovation. Innovation breeds entrepreneurial thinking. And there at least 5 ways to breed innovation!

Still with me?

Do you really WANT to be in touch with the real you? Of course you do. It’s what you’re here on Earth for, isn’t it? It’s the path to making a difference with your life. So, HOW  do you “go for it”? (What’s the process? What are the steps?)

Here’s HOW: You make the conscious choice to let go of what’s holding you back. You make the conscious choice to move forward with fueling the fire inside you that’s never been more than glowing embers. You start by taking a reasonable risk or two or three or more that will open that door and lead you through it!

Why?

Because the biggest failure you could ever be in life is to look back at what you wanted most to do but that you never took serious steps to make it happen.

Notice the intentional absence of the word “TRY.” To try is not to do. To try is to offer an excuse for not making something you believe in, actually happen.

You will never feel fulfilled if you don’t live your life as fully as you know deep down that you are capable of, with love and devotion to making the choices you need to make, to make it easy. “To thine own self be true” said Shakespeare’s Polonius in Hamlet. Channeling energy is a choice.

Try asking yourself this in the mirror:

Are you choosing to brighten up and dig yourself out of your rut (I gave you a shovel!) and move in the directions you want most to go, OR are you simply bitching and whining and accepting your circumstances?

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hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

Peoplepreneurs

Regardless of your career, your career interests, your day-to-day pursuits, your life circumstances . . . regardless of how rich or poor you are, how much or little you are loved, or love, how educated or intuitive or salesy you are . . . regardless of whether you are a small business owner or manager or a government or corporate muckity-muck, and whether you’re a doctor, nurse, lawyer, accountant, grave-digger, tire-changer, astronaut, roofer, artist, teacher, or hamburger flipper:

You need to think like an entrepreneur.

You don’t need to BE an entrepreneur. In fact, most who think they are, probably are not.

Thinking like an entrepreneur translates to taking more reasonable risks.

It means recognizing the expertise you lack, accepting that, and then surrounding yourself with those who can bring those missing links to the table.

It means staying focused on making your ideas work, not on making money. As you get closer to making your ideas work, the money will simply come to you; it will appear seemingly out of nowhere. If you pursue money, your ideas will fail. This conclusion comes from a gazillion tons of experience. Need examples? Try me. Call the number below. No strings attached. I’m happy to share what I’ve learned the hard way.

Thinking like an entrepreneur is taking steps on your own behalf instead of waiting for opportunities to come to you.

Thinking like an entrepreneur requires endless testing of your ideas.

It holds out the expectation that you will fall all over yourself to delight (not just service) your every customer, and that you will constantly solicit the customer feedback you need to adjust, adapt, and adjust        again.

Does it matter if your “customer” is a patient or patient family, a client, someone paying you for a service or   a product, rich or poor, with three eyes or one, old or young? Of course not.

Entrepreneurs, true entrepreneurs, are passionate about everything they do, every day of the week. But they  are also realistic enough to recognize when their passion outstrips the ability to make their ideas work, they will not go down with the ship!

Is this walking a thin line? Not if it’s a reasonable and realistic line to start with (in other words, you’re not  “betting the farm” to get where you want to go). When something doesn’t work, you take away what you learned and start out in a new direction making the most of that experience.

Does that remind you of life? Well, how about that? So, how far away from thinking like an entrepreneur has your brain strayed?

Is it time to be a peoplepreneur?

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hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

DEAR BOSS:

What can the matter be?

Gallup Research says odds are that your

employees may be costing you a

lot more than you think.

How so?

Fewer than a third of employees , says Gallup, are “Actively Engaged” with their work! (Does that furrow your brow?)

And more than half are “Disengaged” from their work! One out of five is, in fact, Actively Disengaged! (Does that make you snort?)

If you think it’s not true, maybe it’s because some of your people are just good actors! (Does that make you applaud as the cash falls from your pockets?)

But guess what? YOU are the boss. YOU are responsible. You can delegate authority, but you canNOT delegate responsibility.

Bosses who try to “pass the buck” inevitably fail. Bosses, however, who accept full responsibility and who lead by leading instead of by telling, who make genuine ongoing efforts to create a bond with their employees are the ones who help ensure and foster active employee commitment and –in the process– help ensure and foster black ink on their organizations bottom line!

So where do you start?

You start with the decision to start. This is a typically easy and quick step. You either want to be a better leader or you don’t.

Assuming your screen-tapping fingers are still capable of the task, START with a WRITTEN-ON-PAPER-WITH-A-PEN goal of where you’d like to end up, and if your goal statement is ever to work, it MUST be:

Specific       Realistic      Flexible     Due-Dated

If you stick to working through this in any meaningful way and steer clear of attempting shortcuts, this is a typically hard and slow process. But don’t be discouraged, the harder you work at this, the better your odds for success.

Next, review your goal statement at least daily. Sometimes hourly is necessary. Change it as you open new doors, uncover new problems, discover new directions, meet new people, discover new techniques. Remember, a key criteria is flexibility . . . a sudden storm can quickly disrupt a leisurely canoe trip and force a change in direction. Unexpected removal of a roadblock can shorten and speed up a long drive. When you get this far, check out: HOW to make your goals work.

BUT

Believe it or not, don’t share your goals with anyone else who doesn’t also have written goals, or who isn’t working with you on a shared goal. Why? Many people are either consciously or unconsciously invested in seeing others around them who strive to succeed, become failures. Doubt this at your own peril.

Assuming you’ve kept your homework out of the dog’s mouth and actually done what you’ve accepted as necessary, and are getting into the swing of real handwritten-on-paper goals that are flexible, realistic, specific and due-dated, and that you are constantly upgrading them, and carrying them with you all the time and reviewing them as often as you check your wristwatch or smartphone messages, you need to start teaching your people to do the same thing for themselves.

Start them out with a deeeeep breath!

THAT process is a good beginning. But it can only start if YOU start!

# # #

hal@businessworks.US

STRATEGY/ CONTENT/ CONNECTION

Higher impact. Lower costs.

——————-

Business Development/ National-Awards/ Record Client Sales

Entrepreneurship & Expansion Coaching    931.854.0474

Go for your goals, thanks for your visit, God Bless You!

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!

Entrepreneurial Leadership?

… Practice “The 5 Freedoms”

World renown family therapist and author Virginia Satir spoke with me once after a workshop she ran at the University of California. She told me that small business growth and strength, and family growth and strength could both be most readily achieved with the acceptance and conscientious practice of what she aptly called “The 5 Freedoms.”

I share these with you here, now, not as some plaque to hang on your wall, or slogan to bang into your head, but as a road to travel. You may want to slow your brain down and digest each, then ask yourself how your family, small business or professional practice might grow stronger, quicker, by following your commitment to pursue this avenue.

The 5 Freedoms

by Virginia Satir

To see and hear

what is here,

instead of what should be,

 was, or will be.

To say what one

feels and thinks,

instead of what one should.

To feel

what one feels,

instead of what one ought.

To ask

for what one wants,

instead of always waiting

for permission.

To take risks

in one’s own behalf,

instead of choosing to be

only “secure” and

not rocking the boat.

How and when and where can you use this road to help guide your business and family development interests? Please be sure to let me know if this message works for you, if it helps you think big, and to share it (together with your own thoughts if you choose) by clicking on your choice of social media buttons shown below.

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Hal@Businessworks.US     931.854.0474

        I just re-discovered a Christmas ornament my 14-year-old grand- daughter Gwyn made . . . five years ago. The brightly painted piece of heart-shaped plywood is the stage for her blobby-marker-printed starstruck words. But where did you get those words? I asked. “I just thought them up in my head,”  she said.

HER WORDS ARE THE BEST WISDOM I CAN SHARE FOR 2016:

Life is a question. No person on earth is your enemy but you. You can’t decide what you’re born with, but you can decide how you end up.

Being happy is beyond a feeling. It’s a way of life.

Questions are endless but the only one answer is YOU.

You can dream without imagination, but you can’t dream without a belief.

You are who you are, and no one can stop you.

— Gwyn, Age 9

As you head into 2016 building your life and your business, do Gwyn’s words have as much “start the new year” clout for you?

Please let me know YOUR thoughts . . .

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God Bless You One And All . . .

and HAPPY NEW YEAR To You!

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Watch where you’re going,

Are You Making A Difference?

‘

Until your life and career purposes are interwoven as one, you’re not

likely to be on the road of making a difference for yourself, or for others.

Making a difference may not always measure up to what others consider as success, but there’s little doubt that making the kind of difference in life that really matters requires determination, dedication, commitment, stick-to-it-ive-ness, and resolve.

Okay, you may say, that all sounds good, but what does it actually mean for me in my life, in my work?

It means that –no matter how or where you live, no matter what kind of work you do or career you are in or aspire to, making a true difference in life demands that you do the best you can possibly do, and then more… and that you never give up your pursuits no matter how many discouraging roadblocks block your path, no matter how many opinions cloud the intersections you come to, no matter how many temptations seem to reach out for you to change your path.

It means that –no matter how you feel when you wake up every morning, no matter how stressed or tired, you must remember that you are the only one who can carry your own torch, who can take steps every day on your own behalf by doing what you do best for others… family, friends, co-workers, partners, customers, clients, patients, community, church, and –of course– pets!

Is this a diagram to study? No it’s simply a model from which to create your own diagram that fits your own life and career circumstances, but the model does represent the key ingredients most of us need to move forward with and toward on a daily basis to get where we want to go. The circular motion indicated is not to say we should run around in aimless circles; it is to say that this kind of flow awareness is what it takes to make things happen.

As Shakespeare’s Falstaff once said:

“Discretion is the better part of valor.”

In other words, let your daily pursuits be guided by good judgment. And perhaps the most important message to keep in mind — because it literally dictates everything else, every word and every action, is that every behavior is the result of a choice that we make or that we once made. So if everything we say and do today is a choice, then why choose to make things hard on yourself when you can just as easily choose to make them easy, including how and when you deal with others.

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Keep your head cool and your feet warm

God Bless You and thanks for your visit!

OPEN MINDS OPEN DOORS

Make Today A Great Day For Someone!
hal@businessworks.US

How to Run a Successful

Coaching Business from Home:

Life Beyond The Cubicle

by Peggy Salvatore

This is re-posted from Evercoach (11/18/15), with thanks to Ajit Nawalkha and the Evercoach team.

Did corporate mergers and acquisitions leave you out in the world to fend for yourself? That’s great! You’ve already got the personal discipline and structure to succeed on your own.

Coaches and consultants fresh from inside a large organization have a lot to offer new clients. You have a depth of experience and knowledge that only your years in the hallowed halls of a corporate enterprise can provide.

This could be the start of something big.

At first, you might find the cubicle-less-ness of your world gives you a feeling of freedom that is more illusory than real. If a large company isn’t imposing a schedule on you, you need to do it for yourself to realize your full potential.

As a self-employed businesswoman, I have been able to garden when the weather is lovely on Tuesday at 10 a.m., take walks at 2:30 in the afternoon just to stretch and enjoy the sunshine, attend school functions in the middle of the day to see my son perform in a toga, go to a yoga class two mornings a week and even disappear for long weekends. So, I’m here to tell you that yes, it’s possible to work from Maui and enjoy the view of the beach as long as you remember you are running a business to pay for it.

Here are 10 tips for running a coaching business

from home that separate the pros from the posers:

1) Set aside dedicated office space

• Make this space every bit as free from personal artifacts as your corporate cubicle. Pics of the spouse and kids are okay, but put the toy box in another room.
• The sooner you can get out of the corner of your bedroom and into a professional room of your own, the better. You can write off your home office space as long as you aren’t using a desk and computer that you share with your kids in the family room; talk to your accountant.

2) Update your equipment and software

• You are your own tech department now.
• Make sure you are running the programs and have the applications that your customers and clients are using. You don’t want to be frivolous with your spending during your startup, but this is a very good place to be investing your limited funds in your home business.
• Consider upgrades as an ongoing business expense. Again, this is the cost of doing business so keep receipts for your accountant.

3) Make a daily schedule and stick to it

• Block out a big, uninterrupted chunk of time each day to do your most demanding and important work.
• Then limit emails to a specific time slot and don’t get sucked into all-day IM sessions with your besties.

4) Get dressed for work

• Nothing elaborate here. You can leave grandma’s diamond earrings in their box, but go to the trouble to put on a clean shirt and jeans in the spirit of dress-down Friday.
• It affects your attitude and reminds you that you aren’t on vacation.
• Your office should be a no-jammie zone to keep your head in the game. (Although I’ll admit I’ve reported to work sick or exhausted in my jammies a few times!)

5) Close the office door at the end of the day

• Take time to enjoy uninterrupted family dinnertime or personal time.
• Physically closing a door defines a mental boundary, too. So shut the door and mentally punch out when your work is through.

6) Network locally

• There’s nothing like human contact to keep you grounded.
• Regularly get out of your home office and stay connected to other professionals. If you work by yourself, make sure you network so you can look into some else’s eyeballs occasionally and to stay current with trends and best practices.
• Take a class. Join a local professional organization. Regularly schedule networking time with colleagues.

7) Connect online

• Attend professional webinars to stay current in your field.
• Join LinkedIn groups or professional forums related to coaching. Connect and learn from other professionals by participating in masterminds.
• The opportunity to learn from other coaches and trainers at the top of their game has never been easier. Take full advantage of it.

8) Hire caregivers

• Hire a babysitter if you are responsible for young kids during the workday. This reminds you that you are at work and earning a living, especially when paying for child care. Extend this to caring for very ill family members.
• As a client, there is nothing more annoying than realizing that the attention, care and time that you are paying for is divided between you and a three year old who wants more Cheerios.

9) Be flexible

• You may have to work 24/7 in the global economy. Restricting your day from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in your time zone is probably unrealistic if you need to respond to a client five time zones away.
• In the global economy “it’s 5 o’clock somewhere”.
• This rule isn’t in conflict with Rule #5, but an expansion of it. Rules and boundaries are good for keeping yourself on a schedule, but adjusting to your clients’ needs is even better.

I’ve trained online classes with a German company from my home office in the Eastern U.S. and it required some flexibility on my part. I’ve also facilitated classes in a nursing home at midnight because the third shift deserves stress management skills as much- or more!- as day shift. It doesn’t happen every day, but my business calls on me to meet the needs of a global 24/7 workforce.

10) Pay for professional services

• Make a few wise investments in your business by paying for accounting and legal services.
• Accountants and lawyers understand tax rules and good contract language for agreements. In many cases, you will only use their services a few times or once a year, but it is money well spent.
• A good accountant who specializes in small business can tell you about important tax write-offs and help you make good decisions about whether to buy or lease equipment, the best allocation of retirement savings and other advice that will save you far more than you spend. A lawyer can help you write good contract language for getting paid and for defining your relationships with your clients.

Starting your own successful coaching business takes discipline and time to transition from a conventional job. However, with a little planning you will find that it is worth the effort to put some rules and structure around your new enterprise.

When you establish a few boundaries, your personal life will benefit from the freedom you have on your time off, and your clients will benefit from your undivided attention during your working hours.

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MORE ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Click on “About Peggy” tab above

peggy@businessworks.US