Category: Success Attitude

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?

Success starts and stops 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!

Article Contributed by Natalie Smith

Both entrepreneurs and experienced businesspeople alike will encounter times when business seems stagnant. Despite making all the right business decisions and the right moves, you arrive at a time when you can hardly find the inspiration to change things or the motivation to continue. To help you get through difficult times when your business seems stuck, this article will help you look in the right places for the strength you need to innovate, find solutions, and make difficult yet necessary decisions.

LEARN INCESSANTLY

When your business seems stuck, hit the books. Although traditional degrees are undoubtedly worthwhile, modern businesspeople recognize that the evolving world requires a lifetime commitment to learning. You can find many ways to increase your knowledge. For example, book reading can enhance your imagination and creativity while introducing you to new ideas, new subjects, and new perspectives.
Look at learning as an investment in yourself. Set aside a monthly budget to pay for business books and journals, seminars and workshops, and online educational materials. When you integrate learning with your life, you develop the skills and ingenuity needed to reignite your business.

Writing can also help you learn. Write down new ideas every day and try your hand at crafting stories, poems, and letters. The stimulation your mind gets from writing can unlock passions that have long lain dormant. Other ways to develop creativity include playing games, learning a foreign language, developing a new skill, or taking an improv class. Even when you gain skills and knowledge that seem unrelated to your business, your renewed inspiration will breathe new life into every aspect of your daily routine.

PLAY WITH YOUR BRAND 

What you need to get your business out of a rut is sometimes right before your very eyes: your brand. Branding is the key here, so play with new ideas that can freshen and invigorate your brand. A new image for your brand will create a recognizable identity that can jar your creativity and lift your malaise. Try using storytelling to give your brand a living history through compelling content. When you do this, create a buyer persona as your lead character and show how that person has come to realize the power and possibilities of your brand.

As you tweak your brand, give it a human touch. Focus on your customers and let them tell your story from their own perspective. With permission, you can post their success stories on your website, so others can learn the benefits of doing business with your company. As you develop stories for your brand, you will likely gain inspiration that can lift your business to the next level.

DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY

Changing the way you do things can give you a new perspective that can bring new life to your business. Try to think outside the box and brainstorm new ways to operate, as well as new things to do. For example, you can find intriguing ways to thank your customers that will forever embed your brand in their mind.

Pay attention to all the things you do, and then shake things up. If you habitually eat at the same restaurant or drive to work the same way, try doing things differently. Take the bus or take the backroads to get a change of scenery and sensation. Try packing your lunch or going out to a restaurant that serves a type of food you have never tried. Change your behavior by acting in unconventional ways or taking bold actions in public, such as walking backward or with your eyes closed. You can even try dressing differently or rearranging your office. When you stimulate your mind and body in new ways, you will find that you get fresh ideas that can jumpstart your business.

ENGAGE WITH DIFFERENT PEOPLE

Your routine probably puts you in contact with the same core group of people, so take some initiative to connect with new and different people who can stimulate your mind and help you get a fresh perspective on your business and life. Surround yourself with intelligent, successful people with admirable qualities, and learn from their habits, experiences, and success stories.

If you have trouble meeting new people of sufficient caliber, ask a friend, co-worker, or associate to introduce you to people in their personal networks. Look forward to meeting people from different cultures, backgrounds, and schools of thought. Such people can infuse your life and business with energy.

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF

If you burn out or don’t feel well, you will probably not get the inspiration you need. Stress, the silent killer, can affect your life, especially during periods when your business seems dead in the water. Rather than giving way to negative thoughts and anxiety, relax. Pay attention to your personal health habits, such as diet and exercise. If necessary, try some drastic measures to restore your peace of mind.

You can, for example, pull the plug on your Internet connections and turn off your phones, so you don’t have to deal with email, social media, text messages, and phone calls. You should also consider spending some time outdoors, enjoying nature. Some people find they can blow off steam by taking part in sports, yoga, family activities or hobbies. Regardless of how you do it, get some quiet time that can give you a chance to reconnect with your inner self.

CONCLUSION

When your business seems stuck, your mind often shares the same state. Although you should never stop improving yourself or your business, you should also not pressure yourself. Instead, find ways to boost your creativity, broaden your scope, and develop a constructive mindset. When you take those actions, you will have the optimism and the energy needed to get your business and life back on track.

About the Author

Natalie Smith, a freelance writer from Seattle, ardently follows topics related to entrepreneurship, small businesses, social media, and customer service. For more information, reach her @Natalie Smith

Article Contributed by Dr. Joey Faucette

When NASA took on the challenge of putting a person on the moon, they started by setting goals.  Instead of starting with “now” and working forward, they started with “then”—the day they wanted to land on the moon, July 20, 1969, when the earth and moon were closest.  They planned backwards from that date, i.e., “Where do we need to be on July 19, July 18,” and so on. They set goals backwards, knowing when they wanted Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon, and what it would take each week to get him there.

How can you use NASA’s planning process to set 2016 goals for your business?

Here are three ways you can shoot for the moon with your business in 2016.

Total focus

I’m sure you’ve played the game where someone mentions an object—a dancing bear wearing a red vest with a black top hat—and tells you not to think about it. Of course, what’s the first thing that flashes in your mind? Your mind focuses your thoughts very quickly and with just a little suggestion.

So why is it such a challenge for most of us to focus our thoughts about our businesses on our chosen, positive subjects such as 2016 goals? Because your mind focuses your thoughts very quickly and with just a little suggestion. Unless you discipline your mind, that is coach it to filter out some thoughts and focus on others, it will hone in on whatever attention grabber presents itself. Your mind is like a muscle. You exercise it to strengthen it to do what you want it to do.

NASA had one goal—put a person on the moon.

What’s your one, big, shoot-for-the-moon goal?

Time frame

A lot of us set our business goals forward, like, “I want to increase sales by 16%,” without knowing by when.  We try to sell 16% more, realize we can’t do it all at once, and give up.

Set a realistic goal—like selling 16% more in 2016 —and a target date, like December 30^th.  Then, target date intermediate goals like 8% by June 30^th , and so forth.

This coupling of a time frame with your shoot-for-the-moon goal allows you to measure your progress along the way which makes evaluation and its incumbent course-correction easier.

When will you accomplish your shoot-for-the-moon goal in 2016?

Task Follow-Through

Everybody’s business is nobody’s business which means nobody does business unless personal responsibility is claimed for insuring it gets done. Couple your big goal with a time frame. Then examine what successful tasks contribute to its accomplishment. Each task has a responsible person—“Who will get this done in this time frame?”

NASA had various engineers charged with a plethora of tasks. Yet each contributed to the shoot-for-the-moon goal on a specified time frame.

Who does what in your business to accomplish your shoot-for-the-moon goal and by when in 2016?

Shoot for the moon with your business goals in 2016 and follow NASA’s lead in getting the job done.

Go ahead and make one small step for yourself…and one giant leap for your business!

About the Author

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

When my younger brother and I went trick-or-treating as kids at Halloween, he was scared of kids dressed as ghosts. When he was very young, he had eye surgery a couple of times.  All of the OR people wore white.  He associated their white dress and the white sheets of “the ghosts” with pain.

Like him, we can associate the ghosts of business pain past with present opportunities.  We often fear stepping up into them because of our past failures.

Here are 3 Positive Strategies to Transform Business Fear so you Work Positive this week:

Fear of “I Can’t Do It Right Enough”

If you’ve been in business longer than a week, you’ve made a mistake. Screwed up. Blew it. Failed.

The ghosts of business pain past haunt you with boos of failure today. Your fear becomes real the more you think about it.

And yet you’re still in business today.

Failure is an experience, not a person.

Shape each successive business effort with knowledge and courage from previous experiences. Innovate with the knowledge learned. Create with the courage that you lived another business day to learn even more.

Fear of “I’m Not Enough”

The ghosts of business pain past haunt you with other boos of “What difference can you as one business person make?” as you navigate today’s economic white waters. Your fear emerges as a lack of personal resources.

And yet you are the beneficiary of one person’s efforts that became your positive business Butterfly Effect. What one person influenced you positively to do what you do today?

The next time you fear you aren’t enough, remember that one man who tried to light his tennis shoe as a bomb changed the way all of us board flights today.

You are and have more than enough to innovate and create positive economic results today.

Fear of “I Won’t Be Enough”

Walter Johnson was a fireball pitcher in a previous baseball era. A rookie stepped in to face him and after two quick strikes, left the batter’s box to return to the dugout. The umpire called after him, “Hey son, you have another strike left.”

And the rookie replied, “That’s okay ump. You can have it.”

The ghosts of business pain past boo after us, hoping we give up. Quit before we’re through. Lock up before we’re done.

The next time you’re tempted to quit, reflect on those persons in business around you. The one skill they have in common is perseverance.

If they can keep going, you can, too.

Transform your business fears as you Work Positive and learn, make a difference, and persevere this week and increase your sales with greater productivity and get out of the office earlier to do what you love with those you love.