Author: Ethan Theo

Abe WalkingBear Sanchez is an International Speaker / Trainer / Consultant on the subject of cash flow / sales enhancement and business knowledge organization and use. Founder and President of www.armg-usa.com, WalkingBear has authored hundreds of business articles, has worked with numerous companies in a wide range of industries since 1982 and has spoken at many venues including the Shakespeare Globe Theater in London.

Work Life

What Hour is the Most Productive in Your Day?

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date October 11, 2012

Last week you discovered your productivity trigger. I found mine standing around a family member’s grave, watching dragon flies and remembering their 30-day life spans. A new focus emerged for me in doing business, one that defines success by my clients’ success. My to-do list is better now—more focused with less time required for completion.

The second question to answer as you increase sales and achieve greater productivity so you leave the office earlier to do what you love with those you love is this:

How do I act in my first hour on my productivity trigger?

For most business persons, from the minute you walk in the building to when you crawl out at the end of the day, there is noise. Some of this noise is just part and parcel of running a business. It leaves few moments of quiet to sort out important matters which determine your mental perception. A positive mental attitude accelerates your productivity so you do more in an hour than most business professionals do in a month.

Starting your day quietly—your first hour—is the key to choosing a positive perception of your business. This means leaving the TV remote alone. 24/7 news is in business to monetize negativity. “If it bleeds, it leads” is their mantra. First-hour exposure negatively frames your mindset and stunts your sales, darkly coloring everything you see that day.

Instead, choose to Work Positive and act in your first hour in these two ways:

First, read or listen to something positive. Pick a book that refreshes you. Listen to a podcast or watch a video that inspires you. Fill your mind with positive jet fuel. Just as breakfast is the most important meal of the day for your body, think of this as jump starting your mental metabolism for how you view every person and activity that day.

Second, walk through your plans for the day and mentally experience positive results. Listen to a meaningful sales conversation in your mind that’s scheduled that day. See the contract signed. List the talking points for an important meeting and hear yourself engaging and wowing the group.

Your major focus at this time is to silence the noise of doing business daily and give yourself the physical and mental space to perceive the positive at work which propels you to grow sales and increase your productivity so you can leave the office earlier to go home and be with your family and friends.

Spend at least 10 minutes, preferably an hour, doing this Work Positive activity to manage your to-do list more productively. Enjoy the extra time and money with your family and friends 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), coach, and speaker who help professionals discover success in the silver lining of their business and achieve their dreams. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org/speaking.

How-To Guides

How Do You Limit Technology’s Intrusion on Your Productivity?

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date October 2, 2012

You discovered your productivity trigger and transformed your first hour to be more productive. The third question to answer as you increase sales and achieve greater productivity so you leave the office earlier to do what you love with those you love is this:

How do I limit technology’s intrusion on my productivity?

Marilyn vos Savant says, “Working in an office with an array of electronic devices is like trying to get something done at home with half a dozen small children around. The calls for attention are constant.”

Technology intrudes with a creep, then leaps onto the stage of our productivity; seizing the starring role. Greater productivity is essential to your Work Positive lifestyle which means you daily recognize the creep and create boundaries that limit it.

You’re in a team meeting. Your desk phone rings. Do you read the Caller ID and decide about answering?

You’re working on your computer on an important project. Is your e-mail open? Is it set on automatic?

What if you’re with a customer and your smartphone buzzes with a call? Do you take it?

Multi-tasking is a productivity buster. The myth is you do more. The reality is you do less and what you do get done is less well.

Here are three actions to take today to increase your productivity and limit technology’s intrusion:

Establish Technology Schedule

Set up specific times when you employ various technology. Answer email on a schedule—a certain block and time yourself. Turn off the automatic updating feature on your computer and smartphone’s email. Forward requests best answered by a team member. Listen to voicemails and return calls on a schedule.

Engage Selectively

Your phone may be smart, but you’re not when selecting how to engage. Social media is a marvelous relationship-building tool. Use it. Monetize it.

But do you really need a notification when someone wants to connect on LinkedIn? Or, updates their status on Facebook? Or, tweets a rant about an airline?

Engage selectively with those in your primary sphere of influence. Clients, team members, and family members are top drawer. The rest are also-ran’s for your attention.

Your productivity is at stake. Want to increase sales and get out of the office earlier? Create boundaries with your smartphone with categories for interaction. Engage selectively.

Execute with the “OFF” Button

You pay for technology services. They are to serve you, not vice versa. Turn them totally off at designated times to innovate and create. A buzz, bing, or bleep dams up your flow for broadening outcomes and developing a new mindset. Avoid drying up your creative stream by pressing the “off” button.

Create boundaries around your technology that allow you to focus completely on what is most important and enjoy your increase in sales with greater productivity which gets you of the office earlier to play with your family and friends—your new Work Positive lifestyle!

About the Author:

Uncategorized

3 Ways to Give Positive Customer Service in a Negative Election Year

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date September 17, 2012

Your customers aren’t sure what to expect from you right now.

Election year uncertainty casts a negative anxiety over doing business that political ads only exacerbate. Customers aren’t sure who cares, who to trust, and who is on their side.

How do you engage this adversity so as to increase sales, and get greater productivity from your team so you can leave the office early to do what you love with your family?

Employ these 3 Ways to Give Positive Customer Service in a Negative Election Year:

Give Care

Your customers are thinking, “Who cares about me?”

Let your customers know they are far more than an account number, or monthly payment, or transaction size. Tell them, “It’s all about you.”

How? Ask yourself, “What are the results our business produces for our customers?” Think from their perspective. Talk about the benefits, not the features of what you do.

When your customers sense your care, they return often and with their friends.

Give Core Values

Your customers are thinking, “I’m not sure I can trust you.”

They’ve been lied to before, and feel lied to right now by all the political ads.

Cast core values like honesty and integrity to your customers. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale used to say, “Promises are like crying babies in a theater. They should be carried out immediately.”

Keep your word by producing promised results. If you fail to deliver on time, own the results and acknowledge them before your customer finds out.

Customers are far more likely to believe that you’ll make it right and repeat their business at your address.

Give Cooperation

Your customers are thinking, “Who’s on my side?”

Politicians cast stones at each other, telling us what the other person can’t do. Statesmanship and bipartanship are virtues lost in the lust for controlling the headlines.

Cooperate with your customers. Be on their side.

“How may I help you?” then listening deeply for a response casts a willingness to work together to solve problems. What they ask for trumps what you have in stock or what gets you a trip.

You succeed when your customers succeed whether it’s a home remodeling project or a million dollar marketing campaign or helping them achieve their financial goals.

Yes, your customers are unsure right now. By employing these 3 Ways to Give Positive Customer Service, you avoid the Negative Election Year effect and Work Positive!

About the Author:

Success Attitude

5 Strategies to Work Positive at Labor Day

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date September 3, 2012

It’s the day after Labor Day. You’re back at work. Or, are you?

Millions of Americans have yet to find work. You’d think the ones working would be satisfied to at least have a job, right?

Worker surveys report about the same number of us are dissatisfied—more than 55 percent—as when employment was higher.

So how do you move from job dissatisfaction to Work Positive career?

Here are 5 Strategies to Work Positive today:

Perceive the Positive

Business is not the way it used to be, and probably never was.

Find one positive aspect of your job and focus on it every morning.

For instance, did your last payroll check clear and make your mortgage payment?

Some days it seems like Murphy’s Law rules. Discover one positive factor in play at work.

Focus on it.

Conceive the Positive

Every business has negative people. Call them customers, clients, employees, or bosses.

Or, call them Eeyore Vampires. Nothing ever works for them and they’ll suck you dry of every bit of time, energy, and attention you’ll give.

Avoid them. Like they have the plague…because they do. They will infect your morale, productivity, and profitability with negativity if you let them.

Run from them to the positive people.

Believe the Positive

Ever find yourself so mired down in the minutia of the mundane that you neglect to look up and see in which direction your business is headed?

Imagination is the jet fuel of your rapid growth of profits. Do you fill your business tank with this high-octane propellant?

Take a few minutes weekly to ask yourself, “Am I going where I want to go?” and “How do I get there from here?”

Engage your imagination to see yourself there.

Achieve the Positive

Your business has a GPS that will lead you to the pot of gold at the end of your rainbows.

You simply “recalculate” often.

Your customers help you recalculate as you listen to their problems you can solve.

Your team members recalculate you from their mistakes.

Failure is an experience, not a person.

Make a U-Turn when legal and drive your business to increase sales with greater productivity so you can leave the office early to be with your family.

Receive the Positive

The two most powerful words in any language that leverage more business are “Thank You.”

Be specific in describing positive behavior.

Be special in delivering gratitude to your community.

Be old school and handwrite a thank you note. The pen is mightier than the sword…and the email or text message.

Want to be more than just grateful to have a job and Work Positive at Labor Day?

Employ these 5 Strategies today to Work Positive in any job.

About the Author:

Success Attitude

3 Strategies for Your Positive Business Independence

Post author By Ethan Theo
Post date August 20, 2012

The annual U.S. celebration of the Declaration of Independence’s signing is this week. While many just eat hot dogs and watch fireworks, let’s Work Positive and discover 3 strategies from the Founding Fathers’ experience that we can use to achieve our own positive business independence.

Attention

The U.S. Founding Fathers viewed “taxation without representation” as the negative mental model cast by a negative British government.

What negative mental models receive your thoughts’ focus? It could be anything from the way you determine your attitude each morning by watching TV “news” to a scarcity mentality from which you grab and rake everything you can wrap your arms around.

Who are the negative people that get your attention? From an employee or coworker, vendor to regional manager, they suck your positive time and energy even after you go home. It costs too much to do business with some people.

Is your business positively growing this way?

The first strategy is to determine today to develop a more positive mental model independent of your status quo. Feed your attitude something more positively nutritional for breakfast. Grow an abundance mentality by thinking about all you do have instead of what you don’t.

Determine to give your attention to positive mental and social energies so your business will positively grow independent of current negativity.

How?

Intention

The second strategy is to declare your positive determination to transform your attention.

The Founding Fathers of the U.S. signed a document that clearly stated what they believed to be true as the positive recasting of their attention and why. It’s known as the Declaration of Independence.

Our positive thoughts and relationships to which we give attention organize and crystallize when we declare in writing what we believe to be true. The most powerful fuel for focus is your pen.

Write down what you positively declare your independence from today. Write about more than just what you’re against. Notice the U.S. Declaration of Independence primarily focuses on positive truths that to the signers are self-evident. Keep your word count tight and positive as you declare your positively transforming mental model and social relationships.

Action

You’ve determined to do business more positively by transforming the thoughts and people who receive your attention. You’ve declared your determined beliefs.

Now it’s time to act—the third strategy.

The British response to the U.S. intention for a more positive focus of attention was “Bring it on.” While the U.S. may have preferred acquiescence, war ensued.

Every action has a consequence. In business as in life, you are 100% responsible for your actions and their consequences. You start your journey to Work Positive with the first two steps when you determine to positively realign your thoughts and relationships and then declare them. There are many more steps down that path. Sustaining the positive change means you perpetually act in the 5 core practices of a Work Positive lifestyle.

The Revolutionary War came at a great cost to both the Americans and the British. Yet it was necessary for global growth to occur.

What one action will you take today to positively grow your business?

Create your own celebration as you implement these 3 strategies for your positive business independence.

About the Author: