Categories
Success Attitude

5 Secret Questions the Positively Successful Ask Daily

questions-ask

Article Contributed by Dr. Joey Faucette 

While studying Great Depression businesses created by successful entrepreneurs, I discovered five core practices that were daily habits for them. They asked themselves five questions daily that charted their course to success.

You become a successful business person, also, by asking yourself these same five questions daily. The five questions to ask so you become positively successful are:

What Am I Thinking?

It really is all in your head. Your thoughts guide your every action, relationship, and sale. Your thoughts either help or hinder your journey through the current economy. Your business either succeeds or sucks because of your thoughts.

Positively successful people guard their thoughts religiously, insuring that they only rent space to positive ones. They place border guards around their mind that maintain a singular perspective: focus on the positive and filter out the negative. They have little patience with purveyors of negativity—think 24/7 news channels—and constantly feed their minds mentally positive nourishment.

Who Am I Attracting?

While success begins in your head, it bears fruit in relationships with customers, clients, suppliers, team members and others with whom you invest time. As Jim Rohn reminded us so well, “You are the average of the five persons with whom you spend the most time.”

Positively successful professionals guard their relationships like their thoughts, insuring they invest time only in positive ones. They have firm social boundaries that limit availability to negative persons—“Eeyore Vampires”—and focus on attracting ideal customers, clients, team members, and suppliers. They know it costs too much to do business with some people and delete their contact databases accordingly.

Why Am I Working?

Success begins in your head, and reflects back through relationships into your heart. “Why am I working?” clarifies your purpose and desire. Successful people engage emotionally on a passionately positive level with their labor. Their work matters.

This positive engagement fuels their imagination and frees them emotionally to discover solutions to customers’ problems in innovative, added-value ways. Such creative expression satisfies their “Why?” and furthers their success journey.

How Am I Doing?

Positively successful business people understand that the what, who, and why questions beg for reflection, i.e., “How am I doing?” The key is to acknowledge areas for improvement while accelerating what’s moving forward now.

Their singular focus is, “How am I best and strategically acting on my what, who, and why?” This positive focus is the clear pathway to successful achievements.

Where Am I Going?

These Great Depression gurus understood that once positive results emerge from their positive mental, social, and emotional achievements, the successful path requires sustaining. You must keep going.

They discovered that what serves them best is to serve others. They ethically acted in the best interests of their team and community, giving servant leadership to improve others’ lives daily. Gratitude for their achievements fueled their philanthropy.

So how’s your work? Ask yourself these five questions daily and enjoy success as you Work Positive! 

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), Positive Success coach, & speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they leave the office earlier to do what they love with those they love. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.

Categories
Finance & Capital

Grow Your Team with a Small Business Loan

workingcaploan

As a small business owner, you know it takes money to make money. To meet growing demands, you may need to increase your payroll. If you don’t have the liquidity to support hiring, consider borrowing options that can help you bring on new employees. A small business loan or business line of credit can give you the working capital you need to expand your team without restricting your cash flow for day-to-day operations.

Small business term loan

A business term loan can give you access to the short-term funding you need to cover hiring costs. Typically, it has a lengthier financing period than other borrowing options, which can mean lower monthly payments and more time to repay your debt. Term loans also differ from other types of small business loans, including equipment and real estate loans, because they can be used for any business expense. Lenders offer them with both fixed and variable rates, as well as a range of terms. If you opt for a term loan to increase your working capital, use a business loan calculator to get a rough estimate of how much you’ll be able to borrow.

Business line of credit

A business line of credit can be a convenient way to get the working capital you need grow your team. It offers you revolving credit, which you can use to pay your new employees. As they generate income for your business, you can pay down your balance, and reuse your available credit. A business line of credit can also help you maintain your buying power during slow periods. Like a small business loan, it offers you the flexibility to cover any expense.

Choosing the right working capital loan for your business

Before you start the application process, create a budget.  Review your expenses, seasonal sales, online business checking account balance and project commitments to figure out how much working capital you need to hire new employees. Then, speak with a lender to determine whether a loan or line of credit is better suited to your business’s needs and financial standing. You should see what borrowing options are available from the financial institution you bank with. Having an established relationship with a lender could improve your chances of securing a small business loan or line of credit.

Sponsored content was created and provided by RBS Citizens Financial Group.

Categories
People & Relationships

How Far Should a Small Business Owner Go?

how-far

When the people that work for you need your help, as they invariably do from time to time, how far should that help go? There is a fine line between a helping hand and creating a dependency.

When you have a small business or early stage company, your employees are what make or break it for you.

Frequently, I have been asked by business owners how far should they go in helping employees solve their personal problems? What should they do, and how much should they actually get involved in the personal lives of their employees? I have never seen anything written about how far a business owner should go in helping solve the problems of those that work for them. This can be especially difficult as many business owners point out to me that their employees are just like family!

One small business owner that I mentor has asked a couple of times for advice on this very matter. She’s the owner of a small residential construction firm, doing a combination of remodels and building residences designed be ‘big name’ architects too. Her well-trained and tightly knit crew is what allows her to compete in this challenging space.

Recently her foreman of 8 years came to her with ‘template’ mid-life crisis problems, coupled with an unrelated medical issue. The first crisis issue required time away from work, and the second required a sizable loan to cover a medical emergency.  This was not the first time the foreman had asked for a loan, and on previous occasions the business owner had accommodated him with small loans, which had always been paid back, but were never as large as the one recently to cover medical bills.

Had this business owner, who sincerely cares about the well being of her employees, already created a dependency, by being receptive and helpful to financial cries for help in the past? Has the foreman come to expect and depend on her help, instead of carefully managing his finances?

These are some guidelines I have discussed with business owners on several occasions, which have worked well for them:

  • If giving extra time off for personal reasons, make sure you provide the opportunity for the employee to ‘pay back’ lost time in return. Time off requests can include the invitation to ‘cover’ for other employees when they need extra time away from work. This nurtures an attitude of helping each other, and you’ll find the requests for time off will begin to come with an arrangement already made with another employee to take on added responsibility, while the employee takes that unscheduled time off.    
  • In giving a loan to an employee, whether big or small, it’s important to make sure you orchestrate a realistic opportunity to repay the loan. An advance on pay-day with extra work-it-off times over a reasonable period of time are probably the most common. However even these simple arrangements can get out of hand if you let them, so it’s up to the business owner to draw a line quite clearly and remind employees to make this an occasional request, and not expect it to become a habit! Should the occasion arise where you are willing and able to help a loyal employee with a larger expense, my suggestion is to do it with a written legal contract, with security, exactly as a bank would require. Casual promises can become bitter feelings downstream. 
  • When loaning ‘things’ to an employee, I have two rules; return it in the condition you receive it, and return it when you agree to return it. This ranges from gas in the borrowed car, a sharpened chainsaw blade, electronic equipment etc., oh, and those nice leather gloves….. 

It’s up to the business owner to have their guidelines in mind long before things get out of hand. I’ve been flexible with time, made small and large loans through the years with employees, and have always been paid back. I’m a patsy for helping those that have helped make my business a success; however I know it’s up to me to not be taken advantage of, and to know the difference between a helping hand and creating a dependency.

In my real life story above, the business owner advised her foreman to make a deal and work out payments directly with the hospital, which fortunately for all concerned, the hospital was willing to do (perhaps a good lesson for any of us….)

What guidelines do you have in place with your employees when dealing with requests for time away from work and help with expenses?

Categories
Sales & Marketing

Quiz: Which Social Networking Platform is Right for You? Part 2

Last week, I put together a simple quiz you can take to figure out which social networking platform is the place for you. If you want to see the quiz plus the explanation AROUND the quiz (yes, there is a reason other than the entertainment value — it not only helps you use each social networking platform more successfully, but it also helps you structure your time better, so you get the results you’re looking for), you’ll want to check out part 1 right here: http://bit.ly/1jakn6t

 

Let’s jump right in.

 

If you’re a 3: LinkedIn.

You prefer small intimate cocktail parties or dinner parties where you can engage in deep conversations with a few close friends.

 

You’ve got to hand it to LinkedIn. They were one of the first social networking sites, and unlike a lot of their peers (can you say MySpace?) they’re STILL considered one of THE top social networking sites.

 

In my experience, pretty much every entrepreneur I’ve run into is either in the Facebook camp or LinkedIn camp. They may have accounts set up on both, but they very clearly prefer one over the other (which means the one they don’t prefer usually gets the shaft).

 

And while I haven’t personally experienced it (since I tend to prefer the less button-down nature of Facebook), I know plenty of folks who have gotten leads and clients from LinkedIn. So it too seems to be a hot place to showcase your business. Plus, LinkedIn does do a decent job of sending you blog traffic.

 

In addition, the other thing LinkedIn has going for it is “staying ability.” Who knows if Facebook really will weather the storm of kids thinking it’s “not cool?” But LinkedIn has managed to carve out its own unique category that (at this moment) appears to have some serious staying power.

 

One of the things I want to do this year is learn how to use my LinkedIn account more effectively. And if this is something you too are interested in then stay tuned — I’m planning to interview a LinkedIn expert on PW Unplugged in the near future!

 

 

If you’re a 4: Pinterest.

 

You’re an artist at heart and love hanging out with your other creative friends, drinking coffee or taking art classes at the local community college.

 

Pinterest is really a different sort of animal. On one hand, of all the social networking platforms out there, the posts seem to have the most staying power. (Pins last forever apparently.) But in terms of really engaging people and getting to know them, not as much.

 

I’m still testing and playing around with Pinterest myself because I’ve heard it’s a pretty good place for blog traffic (who knew?). And if you sell an actual product — like jewelry or art — I think Pinterest would be hot. Food would be hot too — like if you are selling a cookbook, pictures of the food would go a long way.  Plus it works well with Facebook — if you go through the trouble of creating a graphic for Facebook, you might as well pin it on Pinterest too.

 

I’m intrigued by the whole blog traffic thing so if I test it and it works, I may very well invite a Pinterest expert to PW Unplugged. Let me know if that intrigues you too!

 

If you’re a 5: YouTube.

 

You’re the life of the party — doesn’t matter how big or small the party is. You love nothing better than being the center of attention as you entertain all your friends.

 

Ahh, even if you never wanted to be a movie star (and you really aren’t the life of the party) incorporating video into your marketing mix is really a smart move. The best part of uploading your videos into YouTube is how versatile it is. People can search directly in YouTube, plus your videos will show up in Google search results AND in your Google+ account. You can also incorporate the YouTube link in your Facebook page, in LinkedIn, on your blog, and probably in whatever the next hot new social networking platform is going to be.

 

YouTube is not much for actual connecting and networking, but as a way to send traffic to your site, there are few things that are as hot as video.

 

The problem with video is it’s not as easy as sending a quick tweet or posting a pic on Facebook. But it’s definitely worth the extra effort. And if you are thinking about using video, I would encourage you to batch your videos in one shoot — set aside a couple hours or an afternoon and blast through as many as you can possibly stand. That way, you only have to get all dolled up once in a while (not to mention all the work hiring a video crew or getting your own studio set up).

 

 

If you’re a 6: Google+.

 

You’re the one having a party as you wait in line for the latest high tech product. You definitely consider yourself one of the early adopters and having a party with other early adopters is definitely the way to go!

 

Google+ is so massive, it’s really hard to get a handle on it. Google Hangouts, the whole +1 thing, profiles, pages, communities, circles, videos…

 

It feels like at the end of the day, G+ wants to have it all. You have the search engine capabilities with the +1 and everything that’s posted in G+ gets indexed in Google. You have videos and Google Hangouts that automatically show up on your profile plus get uploaded into YouTube. You have the communities and the networking, and maybe because G+ IS more complicated than some of the other social networking platforms, the people you DO find on G+ tend to be smart, sophisticated and passionate.

 

G+ is another one I’m playing around with more because I think there are some possibilities here, especially for traffic and SEO. I’m not sure about the leads yet — you have to be very careful about promoting yourself on this network, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing because getting to know people is the first step to actually having them become your clients. But without being able to openly promote (and really no advertising options like you have on LinkedIn and Facebook — plus Twitter looking like they’re getting into the game too) this definitely falls into a long-term biz building strategy instead of “get clients now” strategy.

 

 

 

 

Categories
Success Attitude

5 Secret Steps the Positively Successful Take in Response to Change

time-for-change

Article Contributed Dr. Joey Faucette

I live in a part of the U.S. that received a once-a-decade snowfall last week. At least 12,000 flights were cancelled. Millions of people were home from work, rearranging untold numbers of meetings and assignments.

Such rapid change is commonplace in our world today. Snow is forecast. Other changes are not. How you deal with it determines your positive success at work.

Here are five secret steps the positively successful take in response to such rapid change:

Relax

When sudden change interrupts your work flow, your fight-or-flight response to stress emerges just as quickly. You will go thermonuclear or turbodrive away due to an overwhelming sense of powerlessness.

Successful business people first relax. They take a breath and see the moment as it is. They resist the urge to go Incredible Hulk or Chicken Little and focus on the positive.

Relate

Successful professionals secondly relate. They quickly turn to others and invest in their social circles. They offer support and gain strength from relationships.

Facebook was filled with pictures of parents at home, playing in the snow with their children. Residents of neighborhoods near highways left their warm homes to push cars stranded in roadside ditches.

Once you relax in the midst of rapid change, your focus shifts from “me” to “thee.” You relate to and invest in others.

Remember

Next, successful business people look behind the moment to previously similar times. They reflect on what they implemented that was most effective. They gather courage and strength from the knowledge that they survived and are in business today. Such emotional fortitude energizes them to deal strategically with the moment.

Everyone has a survival story. Such tales willingly suspend your disbelief in the moment and propel you forward.

Respond

Having relaxed, related, and remembered, successful professionals now choose to respond. Interestingly, the temptation is to first respond. However, success builds from well-chosen inner steps before it emerges in outer steps.

The focusing question behind your response is, “What can I do?” The powerlessness of rapid change paralyzes with a myopic view of “What I Can’t Do.” There is always some sliver of an opportunity open to successful people. They see what they look for. Seizing the moment, they respond with creative imagination and transform the paralysis into a powerful rewriting of the script.

They find an appointment for the patient who stayed overnight in hopes of seeing the doctor. They let the client text the picture of the damaged vehicle direct to claims. They respond positively and creatively.

Reward

Finally, successful business people reward themselves. They take off earlier than usual to play in the snow.

Also, they reward others. They gift the team member who came in on Saturday to complete what couldn’t be done on Friday.

Rewards recognize the importance of others to the success of the business. This secret step may be the greatest of all as it hooks the team member’s emotional engagement in a most personal way. Successful professionals lead from heartfelt recognition that it takes more than themselves to navigate rapid change.

Whatever your source of change, implement these five secret steps of the positively successful and Work Positive!  

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), Positive Success coach, & speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they leave the office earlier to do what they love with those they love. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.