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.

Categories
People & Relationships

Don’t Be a Pushover Employee

Article Contributed By Mystique

The word ‘Pushover’ was in my mind from the day I watched an Episode of “Friends” (the most popular sitcom showed on ABC). In that episode the character ‘Rachel’ played by Jennifer Annistonwas bit of a pushover, which means a person that is easily defeated or taken advantage of. It’s not a born defect rather a fear of anything or insecure feeling which makes you act like a pushover. I’ve seen people acting like total pushovers on their jobs which most of the time put a bad affect on your social profile. So I’m writing about some disadvantages of being a pushover on the job.

Decisions made without your inclusion

Being a pushover makes you invisible on your job, while big or small decisions are made. As being a pushover you act neutral on all situations so they don’t think of needing your suggestions while deciding over something. It’s not only during big decisions, but also while deciding over small decisions like a trip to somewhere or some outdoor activity among the colleague circle. You may have the position or authority to decide, but the people around you don’t think you’re worthy with decisions.
You just follow orders

The main demerit of being a pushover that you only follow orders without objecting to anything. The people at your job ask to go, you go; they ask to sit, you sit; and they ask to work, you work. Most of the time you must be thinking that you’re doing work which is of worth to the company, but do you really think anybody knows you outside your work profile. You’re just a computer program who follows commands and executes tasks.
Your colleagues get interested on you

Being a pushover makes you get this one important thing while you’re on the job, “Interest”. But don’t get happy that someone is interested on you because of your personality, it’s because you work more and you’ll do their work too. Sometimes they do act before you like you’re their only hope. I suggest don’t get diverted as this “Interest” is a dangerous weapon which can kill your social life. At the end of the day you’ll be loaded with someone else’s work which you’ll never get credit for.
You being a fool, others act cool

Yeah, it’s true. Being a pushover you’re no more less than a fool before whom everyone else act cool. You’re a person who wants credit but never speak of it rather gives credit others for nothing. The most embarrassing thing happens when your colleague whose assignment was done by you gets credit for it. On that moment you’re just left with a Jack-Ass stamp on your face.
You’re feel Insecure at every step

This is a characteristic of a pushover. You just fear or feel insecure while doing something different or attempting something new. This makes your work profile weak before your Boss and she/he ignores while reviewing performances. This is what stops you being a leader on your job and also slows your journey to higher positions.
Most of the time you do your Boss’s work

This is a common problem of every person who is a pushover or act like pushover. You’ve to do your Boss’s work as you’ve the quality of shaking your head to left. I mean to say you’ve a power of saying yes to everything unreasonable, objectionable and idiotic. Most of the paper work done by your Boss would be either the easiest or most difficult for work you, yet you’ve to do that as your Boss wants that.

So think what you want to be while you’re on a job, a Pushover or a Person who comes front and speaks for his rights.

About the Author:

Mystique is a new Job Blogger and wants to share his job experience with the job bloggers. Mystique likes to write about the factors that help you get a job, surviving on the job, the job environment and how to get kicked out of it too, on his new blog The Job Factor. He is an avid gamer, computer geek, web designer and a jobber too.

Categories
Branding

Ten Things Small Businesses Need to Consider When Branding

 

Brand management is a process that helps your business produce long-lasting connections with your customers. Your brand is an establishment of how you would like people to feel about your business. A good brand provides a solid identity, which endears itself to your customers. By taking the time to adequately brand your business and providing excellent customer service, you will be able to enhance the growth of your business and increase your bottom line. The following are ten things to consider as you brand your business.

1. Distinguish yourself from the competition:

A unique brand identity will help you stand out in a crowded global marketplace. When you think of majorly successful companies and their products, you will notice they all have iconic branding.This is not a coincidence. Add high-level customer service and high-quality products or services, and your business will outshine the competition.

2. Marketing becomes more effective:

Your brand conveys the message of who you are and what your company is about. By establishing your brand and identity in the minds of your customers, marketing your business becomes much easier and more effective. Truly successful brands need no introduction.

3. Make your business more recognisable:

A good brand will stand out in the minds of customers. Psychological theories and ideas, such as Cognitive Fluency, state that the easier something comes to mind, such as your business name or the visual representation of your logo, the more likely a person will choose it. It is therefore very important to make your business more recognizable than your competition.

4. Creates business credibility:

Credibility is more important than whether or not you’ve been in business for a long time. If your business lacks professional credibility, customers will go elsewhere. Provide excellent service and well-managed brand will come to represent that service to establish your business credibility.

5. Helps create a connection with your customer:

Good products and services establish a connection with your customers. In fact, customers enjoy the feelings they get when they purchase or use a particular item that they love. Imagine a favourite pair of shoes or car manufacturer. Establishing your brand with your customers in this manner will evoke that type of connection.

6. Helps ensure loyalty:

A well-managed brand takes the connection that is created between the product and customer and ensures loyalty to the brand. How many times have you heard a person rave about a great product and how they absolutely love the company that makes it? This type of loyalty is established through excellent branding.

7. Conveys establishment and stability:

By staying the course with your brand and providing top-level customer service, your brand will help your business convey stability and the idea that it has been established for a long period of time.

8. Helps your business look larger:

A professionally executed brand identity and logo system provides a look and feel for your business that could make it look larger than it really is. If you have a poorly executed logo and brand, it will create the feeling that the business is small and less established.

9. Attracts more customers:

Having a good brand will naturally attract more customers. More importantly, a good brand will attract customers through word-of-mouth, which is one of the best forms of advertising and brand equity that a company can receive.

10. Creating something more memorable:

A quality brand will evoke good feelings in customers. In return, these feelings will be more memorable in the minds of your customers. This will ensure that they return to your business when they need more of your products or services.

With new technologies and the Internet providing a global face for your business, brand management is incredibly important. If you focus on developing your brand for the long-term, and bolster it with superb customer service and quality products or services, you’ll ensure growth and longevity for your business.

 

Categories
Entrepreneurs

YES, You Can Be a Full-Time Mom and Successful Entrepreneur!

Article Contributed By Lisa Cherney

How do I balance being a full-time mother and a full-time entrepreneur?  After five+ years of doing both, I can say it’s been crazy, fun, and worth every minute!  I started by creating the life that I wanted, and then I worked my business into it.  If you want to be a mother and entrepreneur without sacrificing either, start by asking yourself these questions:

1.    What transitions do I need to make in light of being a mother?  There’s nothing like a child to make you do a 180 with your business.  For me, I was inspired to get smarter and work less. Being a mom forced me to get real about how I was spending my time.  Not in a time management sense, but in the sense of how I wanted to be of service with my life’s work,   which leads to the second question.

2.    How do I design my business around my most profitable activities?  Let go of what’s not working and get support for what is.  At first I needed to just pare things down.  I was working five plus days a week before I had my daughter.  After Bella was born I was able to cut back to one or two days a week with no change in income.  I was just working off of the momentum that I had created.  When she turned two and started preschool, I still only wanted to work three days a week, max.  It took a huge mind-set shift, and I took some big risks, but by focusing on my most profitable activities, I was able to triple my income again.

3.    What are some of the action steps I can take to make a full-time business model work with part-time hours? First, I changed the way I was charging for my services.  I had to get out of the whole “economy” conversation, because it gives people an out instead of really taking a hard look at the way they do business.  Look at what you really want to do.  Try charging by the project instead of by the hour, or experiment with value-based pricing where you create service packages.  Maybe you need to leverage your programs instead of doing so much one-on-one work.  For myself, I went straight to the leveraged model.  I keep it very simple, with just a few highly impactful programs.  I created programs that I believed in, I set an implementation date, I enrolled people in the program, and I went for it.

4.    Where can you give yourself a raise?  Here’s an exercise.  Think about the last time you raised your rates.  Make a list of the reasons why you did it.  Now think about doubling your rates today.  There is no difference between where you were when you last raised your rates and where you are now.  So why can’t you do it again?  Any reason you come up with to not justify your true value is just an excuse.

If being a full-time mother and a full-time entrepreneur is your goal, take action now.  Find a mentor who shares your values and vision for your life and don’t leave their side until you make the change. Investing in a mentor when Bella turned 3 gave me the courage to take those steps.  Even now that my daughter is in First Grade, I still work only three to four days a week, because I’m willing to do what I need to do to create the life I want.  You can too!

About the Author:

Lisa Cherney, a.k.a. the Juicy Marketing Expert, founded Conscious Marketing 12 years ago to help small business owners find their authentic marketing voice, attract their ideal clients and increase their sales. Following her own Stand Out & Be Juicy program, which centers on owning your unique self and laser-focus marketing, Lisa has tripled her income while working part-time.

Prior to Conscious Marketing, Lisa worked with many Fortune 500 companies, including AT&T, Lipton, Nissan, Blue Cross and Equal. She is a highly sought after speaker and often shares the stage with experts such as Jack Assaraf (The Secret), Jack Canfield and Jill Lublin. Learn more about Lisa at www.consciousmarketing.com or call 887-771-0156.

 

Categories
People & Relationships

Becoming the Leader You Want/Need to Be

Article Contributed By Skip Weisman

You’ve probably heard the phrase “be careful what you wish for”, haven’t you? Let’s assume you have.

That was my exact thought at the age of 26 when I was thrust, unexpectedly, into the role of Vice President/General Manager of one of Minor League Baseball’s most successful franchises in the mid-80s in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Overnight I went from being comfortable in my role as assistant general manager into the top position of a $3 million business.

In looking back on that experience early in my career in baseball management, I realized I got into the game for selfish reasons and never envisioned myself as a leader. Well, to be fair, at that age many young men are self-seeking when it comes to their career aspirations. Wisdom comes with age and experience!

But at that age, I never really aspired to be a leader, I just wanted to work in baseball.

I’m making this point because it took me a long time, probably 10-12 years, before I felt comfortable in my leadership role. It took me that long to realize how important investing time and energy is in what I refer to as  Level 1 Leadership Communication.

Let me explain. Knowing these basic level skills provides an important foundation on which you build the trust and respect you need to lead people most effectively. It also provides the foundation from which you are then be able to get great results from your more advanced techniques. I call these Level 2 & Level 3 Leadership Communication.

Level 1 Leadership Communication is about becoming self-aware and defining yourself as a leader, then committing to be the type of leader you want to be, and then acting congruently and consistently with that definition.

To help you get a better grasp on this, I have created two separate, but related, exercises.  One is called the WHO-WHAT-HOW Exercise, described below. (Don’t just read about it; I encourage you to take out a piece of paper and work on this exercise):

WHO-WHAT-HOW Exercise:

WHO – Define who you want to be as a leader. Identify the traits, personality characteristics and the communication style you are committed to applying in your leadership role. If you know or have admired other leaders whom you would like to emulate, list them and their traits.

Example:

-Detail oriented,

-punctual,

-early riser,

-physically fit,

-healthy diet,

-communicates with directness but with compassion and empathy,

-open minded,

-curious,

-true open door policy.

WHAT – What are the specific details behind each of the traits, personality characteristics and the communication style you want to use.

Example:

-Ask a lot of questions,

-listens actively and responds appropriately,

-always uses appropriate eye contact,

-is early for every meeting,

-always prepares meeting agenda in advance and lets others review it for comments and adjustments before providing final copy in advance,

-always has time for others when requested either in the moment or schedules a specific time as close as possible to the time the request is made,

-always follows through with an answer to questions/requests in a timely fashion,

-always maintains and projects appropriate emotional demeanor.

HOW – How are you committed to manifesting these traits and how are you committed to showing up as a leader. This is where the aspiring Champion Leader commits to applying those traits, characteristics  and actions into specific daily behaviors in leading their organization.

Example:

-I promise to be early and prepare in advance for all meetings.

-I will maintain a positive attitude and apply the most appropriate emotional responses to situations so that I can be a role model for those I lead.

-I promise to lead by example in terms of my personal health and physical fitness, and

-will treat all those who come before me with respect, empathy, compassion and genuineness.

The “HOW” section is the leader’s personal promise and standard statement to themselves and to those they lead. It is something those that aspire to be great leaders are willing to hold themselves accountable to and are willing to have those they lead hold them accountable to.

The WHO-WHAT-HOW exercise is a very powerful process offering a solid strategy for Level 1 Leadership Communication.

Once your WHO-WHAT-HOW is complete it is meant to be a living, working document that should be evaluated, and adjusted regularly, if required. It is also a great model to launch a 360 feedback process from those you lead, which will allow you to make adjustments that will have the greatest impact and results in leading your team and organization.

About the Author:

Skip Weisman is The Leadership & Workplace Communication Expert. He’s the author of the white paper report titled, “The 7 Deadliest Sins of Leadership & Workplace Communication: How Leaders and Their Employees Unknowingly Undermine Morale, Motivation and Trust in Work Environments.” The white paper is available as a free download for a limited time at www.HowToImproveLeadershipCommunication.com . If you’d like to learn how you can improve your work environment by improving communication contact him directly with any questions, or for a complimentary Strategy Session at 845-463-3838 or e-mail to Skip@WorkplaceCommunicationExpert.com

 

Categories
Finance & Capital

How Business Owners Should Choose a Financial Planner That Will Protect Their Money & Their Future

Article Contributed By Marty Higgins

The world of personal finance is extremely complex.  Just one look at the sheer number of investment options, retirement planning vehicles, types of life insurance, estate planning options and the tax implications of each of these elements and you’ll notice it’s hard not to feel overwhelmed.

So what’s a business owner to do?

You could try to learn everything there is to know about each individual aspect of your personal financial situation, and constantly work to keep up to date on those things, or you could seek help from a financial advisor so you can focus on growing your business.

Now, the problem is: Finding and choosing the right financial planner for you can be just as daunting. That’s why I created this guide and checklist of things to consider before you hire your next financial planner.

9 Things to Consider Before You Hire Your First or Next Financial Planner…

1.What Is Your Financial Advisor’s Experience?

You need to know how long your prospective financial advisor has been in practice and where he or she worked prior to the company that the advisor is currently with.

2. What Is Your Financial Advisor’s Professional Qualifications?

The term “Financial Advisor” can have more than a single meaning.  Ask any prospective advisor what types of certifications or registrations they have.  These might include the CFP, RFP, CPA/PFS, ChFC, and CWM.

3. What Financial Planning Services Does Your Prospective Financial Planner Offer?

You should ask the Financial Advisor what services they can offer you.  The available services will depend on precisely which certifications and licenses that individual has secured.  For example, in order to sell insurance, they may be required to have a license in your state.

4. What Are Your Prospective Financial Planner’s Philosophies or Views on Financial Planning?

Financial advisors are individual people.  While there will be some similarities in their educational backgrounds, as individuals they will bring different approaches to how they advise their clients. You can start out by asking the advisor what types of clients they like working with. Make sure it is individuals in a similar situation (e.g., at a similar stage in life, or in a comparable financial situation) as you?

5. Who Else From the Financial Advisor’s Company Will be Working With You?

Depending on the type of company the financial advisor works for, they may have other people on your account.  If the advisor will receive assistance from others in the same office, then you might want to meet with those other individuals, especially if they are going to providing assistance in a key area, such as tax or insurance planning.

Your financial advisor might also use the services of professionals outside their office, such as attorneys. Then ask your financial advisor for the names and contact details of those individuals, and check their backgrounds later.

6. Could Anyone Else Benefit From Your Financial Planner’s Advice?

There are situations where a financial advisor’s other business relationships or partnerships could affect their personal judgment with respect to your account, or otherwise act as a disincentive for the Advisor to act in your best interest.

For example, if your advisor has a relationship with other companies whereby the advisor receives a financial benefit by selling their mutual funds or insurance policies, then you should be aware of this.

7. Can You Get the Scope of Your Relationship in Writing?

Your financial advisor should be willing to sign a written agreement that sets forth the most significant terms of your professional relationship.  At a minimum, the agreement should set forth exactly how the financial advisor will be compensated, whether they will act as a fiduciary with respect to your account, and whether there are any actual or potential conflicts of interest with their other professional activities.

8. Is Your Financial Planner Registered As An Investment Adviser?

Ask whether either the Advisor individually, or his or her firm, is registered as an investment adviser (RIA).  This registration can either be made at with the state or federal authorities.  If the advisor is registered, then ask how they will inform you when they are acting as a sales agent of the firm, and when they will be acting as an investment adviser.

9. What are Potential Conflicts of Interest?

Regarding any brokerage account that you may open, ask the advisor to advise you of potential conflicts that they may have when recommending certain products.  Also ask how they will disclose those conflicts of interest prior to you purchasing the product (including disclosing any payments or incentives that the advisor may receive).

The answers to these questions should be a guide to whether you should hire a particular financial planner – or run away fast. For even more information on how to choose a financial planner that meets your family’s needs and goals – including more questions that you should be asking, I invite you to grab my Complete, FREE Consumer Awareness Guide at: http://www.chooseyourfinancialadvisor.com

About the Author:

During his 33+ years experience as a Certified Financial Planner, Family Wealth Management Expert Marty Higgins discovered that most business owners are risking their children’s chances of going to a good college, their own chance at a secure retirement and their ability to provide a strong legacy as they have no criteria for choosing a financial advisor. Now, grab his free special report at http://www.chooseyourfinancialadvisor.com & uncover the 16 questions that you should be asking.