Thanksgiving is always a great time for pausing and taking stock, then acknowledging what HAS been successful this past year. I spent a lot of time in hopsital waiting rooms, ICUs and funeral activities for my step-dad. Each of those hours stirred up thoughts of appreciation AND of priority.

I’ve found, from way too many personal encounters in this life time, that when shocking events strike our lives we snap into a closer focus on what is important and what is the fluff and chaff that’s clouding our view and our focus.

So Thanksgiving seemed an opportune time, as I took a deep slow breath before heading back into the business world, to reset my focus and priorities for business. I put the next article together for all of us – there’s no reason we need to wait for miserable events to refocus!

I look forward to your thoughts about all of this.

One of my clients, Don, kept waffling back and forth over which sized firms he wanted as his clients. For the lack of that focus, his efforts were scattered and outright conflicting with each other.

If you’ve been aware of hearing about the Law of Attraction recently, you’re in step with the latest message about inspiration. For nearly 25 years, I’ve seen it taught in various forms, from ‘mindfulness retreats’ to est to various Human Potential and Self-Actualization programs. Each program teaches their own frameworks, or those borrowed from the ages, to give us tools to use on a daily basis.

As with anything in life, all the techniques and frameworks are only moderately effective if you don’t KNOW where you’re going. Without a clear Vision and destination in mind you’ll either eventually get lost or it’ll take you a long time to get there, much longer than necessary.

If you’re heading out to drive into new territory and choose to do it without a roadmap, you may spend a lot of your time recognizing you’re lost and looking for road-side assistance, over and over again. It may not make sense to even head out in the first place.

Over the years, it’s been proven out that if you don’t consciously declare what you want, you’ll continually attract what your unconscious mind wants to attract rather than what you say you want.

In business, I see this play out over and over again with participants in my Productivity and Time Mastery Kick Start Program. People learn a technique or two that has the potential to double and even triple how much they accomplish in less time. They take on a commitment to using the new practices, and then come back asking for personal tune-ups.

When we take a closer look at what’s going on, they’ve go the technique down pat. They’re often missing the content – what they’re spending their time on has not been prioritized or selected to get them to a specific destination.

It’s a lot like taking a fabulous ride in a Maserati (yes, the techniques are that powerful), on a perfect day with superb road conditions… and then noticing you’ve got no idea where you’re headed, for how long, and why.

All that energy going to waste! So I want to share with you two of the tune-up steps I use with my program participants.

Pick a Focus
Over the years, I’ve seen certain entrepreneurs be completely wishy-washy about what they want. Or they’re wanting it for the reasons that are taking them off course. BIG mistake. Not knowing what you really want creates confusion in both your marketing AND your manifesting.

Here’s what I mean. Say one day you decide that you want to attract a roster of 200 clients, and you set that intention. But the next day, you decide that instead, you’re interested in only 35 private clients and systems to serve another 150 with a second tier of services. That same afternoon, you decide you don’t want ANY private clients, but instead, you want to only deal with groups. (I’ve watched this switching take place over and over with professionals.)

If you’re sitting in a restaurant placing an order and calling the waiter back over and over, to change it again and again, eventually the waiter will tell you “Call me when you know what you want.” And walk away.

The same goes in your business. For the lack of a focused Vision, every new idea pulls you off course. At that moment, all the time management techniques in the world can’t get you to your destination faster or easier.

If you’re aware that what you focus on is what you bring into your reality, whether you refer to it as the Law of Attraction or by any other term, then you’ll recognize that you’re repeatedly sending the wrong message over and over again to the Universe (or your subconscious mind, whichever you prefer).

Bless The Rest
One of the greatest fears I find my clients facing, is “But what about everyone else who could use me?” I know that fear – I struggled with it for 18 months!

When you recognize that people are looking for ‘someone who understands them’ you’ll realize you can accelerate your results by focusing your message and your marketing on them. If other folks show up – serve them if you wish. Open your grip on trying to serve everyone and keep your eye and your message on focus and you’ll find your ideal clients will be clamoring to work with you.

That  single focus will guide your product or services design so that they send a consistent message. You’ll be able to keep all your marketing and your service delivery targeted to their specific needs. This in turn will attract what you want, much faster.

Don picked a specific industry, and a target company size for his ideal clients, and 90-days later he’d doubled his active clients. Now it’s your turn!

If I were to make a guess, it would be that you’re hearing an average of 6,294 messages a day about how bad a disaster the economy is, how everyone is going to loose their jobs, the roof over their heads, and even the ability to put clothes on their backs.

Even if I’m overestimating your exposure by a factor of 100… that’s 62 times a day when the despairing ghosts are moaning at you from behind the curtains and the goblins are haunting you from your radio and TV.

Well, all I know is I don’t need to hear whispers sixty-two times to put me off my dinner. Once, twice, three times is enough to give me the creeps. So my survival technique for surviving the ghouls is to remember the walk in the woods when I was growing up.

I remember creeping through the woods by our house after dusk. Every snap of a twig or brush of a leaf made me jump. I had that reaction even when I’d walked the same path easily in daylight a mere few hours before.

And of course it was even creepier when I was walking with other kids, as we all stirred each other with mutterings of fright – building a sense of helplessness and impending doom.

In the same way as that path was just fine during daylight, things are just fine when you shut off the radio and TV, put down the magazines and newspapers and focus on what you DO have control over.

I’ve had techniques I’ve used for years, that work for me, and work for my clients when they learn them. In the spirit of dispelling the gloom and wisps of despair swirling around you, I’m bringing them to light for you.

Choose Your Companions Well

Just as they were in childhood, some of the people around you thrive on anxiety, worry and fear. And they want companions on their path. Don’t let yourself be roped into walking that path with them.

Turn off the news media, cancel lunches and dinners with bogeymen, and those who want to feed on your fright. Wish them well, and get your attention back to what you DO have control over: your time, your attention, your energy.

Surround yourself with people who look at life for it’s possibilities, in good times and risky times alike. One of my coaching clients has started holding weekly conference calls with her entire team, with a light, up beat tone of voice. She uses the time to acknowledge the successes the team has created and cheer them on to each upcoming project.

Light a Lantern

The woods were spooky on a moon-less night. Not so during the day, or at night when the moon was lighting the way.

In your personal life and your business life, someone needs to put a light in the lantern and hold it up for others to see. I vote for you! Be the lantern bearer consistently and publicly and others will rally behind you.

I have a client who has contracts for the next five years. Can you imagine! You can bet that after our work together he is mentioning that fact weekly, reassuring his staff that their jobs are not in jeopardy.

He’s already designing the quarterly bonuses he’ll be giving out, instead of annually, to reinforce the message that every thing is OK, better than OK, for everyone.

Face The Path In Front Of You

Ghost stories work because they take us into our imagination. Brain studies have shown that anything you visualize, and I mean absolutely anything, is interpreted by your brain as completely real. So when you watch and listen to the drama being acted out on the political stage and the media pages, your brain is telling you “This is truth!” even when it’s metaphor, ghost stories, fear mongering.

Replace all the ‘what might happen’ imagery that your eyes are seeing and your ears are hearing with information that will keep you focused in present time, on the opportunities for you, your business, your life. Right here. Right now.

• Post your business Vision and Goals where you and everyone else can see them.
• Chunk your daily time to 45-minute blocks and focus on what you have control over right here and now. Plan your week for how you’ll use each day to keep your attention on the high payoff actions that will get you to your goals. One topic at a time.
• Focus your language with your team on what you WILL create with your business.

And I’ll meet you in the sunlight on the other side of the woods.

I’m a voracious reader. There have been some years when I read nearly 400 books… and worked full time and slept fewer than 4 hours a night. I love reading.

That was then… And now my body wants more sleep, and my reading has dropped off. So I use my reading time even more focused. 20 percent for pleasure and 80 percent for the joy of new ideas that I can take to my clients.

I don’t usually take the entire book or article for them to read. I extract the core idea, perhaps even a quote, and take it into a discussion to illustrate a new way of thinking about their challenge.

I have favorites that I give to management teams whose companies are facing growth challenges, leadership practices, and marketing. Those include the

• Harvard Business Review article by Larry Greiner “Evolution & Revolution as organizations grow” (I prefer the original version, not the updated one),
• Fast Company’s piece called “Measure What Matters”
• Inc Magazine’s “Cold Fish, Hot Data, New Profis”
• Fast Company’s “Start With Nothing”
• And Fortune Magazine’s “Making The Lord’s Copies”

If you get yourself a copy of these, you’ll find the following core ideas:

The changes you make to improve operations, at one stage of your company’s growth, actually create the seeds of the breakdowns that will happen during its next stages. Every time, guaranteed. So never announce a change is ‘final’ or ‘perfect.’ You WILL be eating your words if your business continues to grow.

Your company’s excellence will outpace the competition by the degree to which you get at the heart of what your customer values, rather than what your industry standard tells you to focus on. Base your metrics on what your clients want you to deliver, and tie individual goals for every person in your organization to those metrics.

If you pay attention to the unusual requests made by clients you may find that you have data at your finger tips that customers will actually pay you for. You might find yourself with a highly profitable new product or service with little need to add infrastructure or staff to satisfy the needs for information.

Beware launching that ‘absolutely perfect’ new business concept. Be it product or service, first interview prospective customers for their reactions and ideas. They may suggest a complete redesign or a highly profitable refinement saving you time and expense down the line.

Even the monks have to rethink their business model. Once upon the time they produced and distributed a fluid call ‘wine.’ Today, it’s printer inks. The same controlled manufacturing of fluids. New markets and profit margins.

Those are just for starters. Last week I quoted a Fortune magazine discussion about performance measurement from Coach Campbell’s playbook. He uses a review system that measures four areas:

1. On-the-job performance
2. Peer group relationships
3. Innovation best practices, and
4. Management & Leadership that develops the people who report to you

I really love when I find ideas in Discover Magazine… Discussions in the world of Science often break through old thinking about systems, relationships, and more.

And I haven’t even started to list my favorite books of the past few years. One of those is Malcolm Gladwell’s fabulous “The Tipping Point.” His explanations of how viruses and fads are spread through the same trigger point has accompanied me into meetings with a luxury desert chef, the VP of marketing of a commodity with a new product to launch, a serial entrepreneur with a real estate concept, and even a regional CPA firm’s head of Audit Services.

One idea – build relationships with people who are connected to a huge pool of relationships – with many applications in many industries from toys to data marketing.

So as I head for my vacation this year, I’ll have my usual stash of magazines from the past couple of weeks to read on the airplane with marking pen in hand. I’ll also have a business book… and two blouse-rippers just for the diversion of it all.

I know that I’ll probably find 30-40 ideas to bring back with me for my teleseminars, coaching clubs, corporate consulting and newsletter articles.

It might be chancy waiting for my next ideas. My suggestion? Subscribe to three periodicals that have nothing to do with your product or industry, keep them in the bathroom next to the toilet or take them with you to read on the gym’s treadmill or bike.

You’ll have your own High Payoff ideas rather than wait for mine.

Several folks asked me what I did differently this year. As I thought about it, I realized that it was a mix of old familiar activities AND ones I’d never stepped up to before.

One of the key ones, and this is uncomfortable to say to you, is that I asked. I asked for support from folks that I share my goals with. That’s a given.

But beyond that I stretched out of my comfort zone and asked for the support of professional colleagues, in a way that met both of our goals. The result is I was referred to a client that I’ve been working with for nearly eight months. AND they’re one of my all time favorite clients – they pull me aside to tell me how they’re using the ideas and techniques I’m showing them and talk about the results they’re getting and loving.

And for my part, I’m passionate about people getting better results from their efforts and I love seeing people take our conversations and the tools I show them and making a difference in their lives.

So, the result of my stepping up with a new stride to that uncomfortable action is both warming my financial results and my heart all at the same time.

Thus, last week’s article, this week’s quote, and some additional thoughts in this week’s article on what I did differently.

Go on! Be ‘different’ this year!

8 months ago I set new financial targets for myself for the year. They included boosting my earnings by 60%. (I love stretch goals, don’t you?)

I have to admit that I gulped as I put those goals down on paper. I made that commitment very publicly, to 12 other people at a MasterMind retreat.

And, since I just updated them on the results so far, I thought I’d share them with you.

Why? Because all too often we worry about impressions others hold about us instead of focusing on the person we want to be in the world. And part of who I am is a professional who stepped up, did a very uncomfortable thing (setting that goal that had knots in my stomach AND saying it out loud)… and standing firm about it.

For me, the shift is in experiencing my self as… Tah Dah! Someone who set a significant goal AND already hit the 78% mark at the end of July. That’s 58% of the time I gave myself. And that’s also already the highest gross income I’ve ever mad.

I’m popping a bottle of the fizzy stuff to celebrate!

This year has been radically different than past years and I thought I’d share HOW that occurred in this week’s newsletter so watch for the article 2 days from now. YOU can take action on your goals and celebrate, too.

For example, if you want to really make sure your project is done on time, make a commitment to others. Let those folks know the deadlines you’re using and exactly what you’ll be delivering.

In other words, assign your own public accountability.

Read through your appointments, and the projects that have been sitting incomplere. Ask yourself:

“Who shall I make myself accountable to, for which items?”

Make yourself accountable to someone for what you want to accomplish. This could be a coach you work with or it could simply be a business friend.

Even more powerful, find a buddy who wants to create the same High Payoff result. They tell you their weekly goals and you tell them yours.

Now you know you’re going to asked about how you did.

Let’s get you back on track!

Ask yourself:

“What single key objective do I want to make measurable progress on this week?”

Write that goal on 5 Post-It notes. Put one on your phone, one on your computer, one on your calendar or PDA. The fourth goes on your note pad and the fifth on the center of your steering wheel.

They’re there to give you pause before you leap into action on any new idea that comes to mind

Technorati Tags: Build Your Business, Entrepreneur, Productivity, Small Business

The world is full of fabulous ideas. Some of them are extensions of your current products and services and would add materially to your bottom line profits. Others are outright innovations that could dramatically launch your business to new heights.

And sometimes those ideas pull you ‘off focus.’ My client’s management team is running around like…. Hmmm, ‘chickens with their heads cut off’ is the typical expression we’d use here. But let’s shift the metaphor to one that’s more useful for building effective businesses.

I sat in employee feedback sessions on behalf of my client. The questions I posed to more than 30 people were “What is working well here?” and “What could be working better?” and also “What are your impressions of the management team as Leaders? As Managers? As a Team?”

Over and over again the senior professionals were described as well-intentioned, but poor on execution.

The common phrase that was used by the people I spoke with, at every level in the company, was “We all run around like everything is a fire drill!”

The irony is the entire team spends hundreds of hours preparing plans and key objectives for the coming year. They agree to all of it. Yet that’s not how their behavior shows up the rest of the year.

Everyone on the management team drops everything to take on projects that aren’t on the plan. They run to solve customer emergencies, and work overtime on special projects that were never planned for. They all operate this way for a very specific reason: the head of the company rewards people for being flexible and looking urgent.

Let me say that another way: one of their key performance indicators is how quickly they jump to take on any new thing that is proposed, simply because someone paints a compelling picture about how valuable the effort would be.

No one steps up to ask “How does this fit with the objectives we set for the year?” Their personal focus has become to ‘jump’ and prove to their boss that they will whenever called.

As you can imagine, at the end of the year, many of the goals they set out in their plan have not been achieved.

You can sure bet they hear about that when it’s time to review their results.

Most important of all, the reason for the fire drill is basic: The team needs to learn to tie all their activities to their key objectives.

So I’m rolling up my sleeves to teach the entire management team how to set and keep objectives in a new way. I’ve found there are 3 Keys to setting objectives that stick:

First – Set objectives that have a measurable value to your business – a value YOU actually want.

You may ask why this even needs to be said? It’s all about the trap of ‘shoulds.’ Many times when I begin my work with new clients, they have a list of objectives that reads more like a list of ‘shoulds’ than actual goals.

At times the goals they set come from industry standards. At others from articles or advisors or lists of ‘best practices.’ They may sound right, but that doesn’t make them right for their business or yours.

When your heart isn’t behind your goals, you’ll write them down and promptly ignore them.

Second – Keep track daily, not just weekly or monthly, if your activities are getting you closer to those objectives.

By making your goals measurable, you’ll be able to evaluate your results. And as important, you’ll be able to assess whether you should even be pursuing a particular course of action – before you invest time, money and energy towards it.

Third – Politely turn away all other activities.

Remember those ‘fabulous ideas’ I mentioned at the top? Check any and all new ideas that show up against your list of objectives. If new ideas don’t address one of your objectives exactly, and I mean EXACTLY, put it on a list for next year’s plan and get your attention back on focus.

I know, I know. It’s a true challenge to see them and to not pursue them. To put them on a list and get back to them later, if at all. Yet it’s the only way to leverage your efforts.

If you use these three Keys, you’ll achieve your true objectives and create powerful results. They’ll keep you on track so you can get the highest payoff from your planned activities.

Technorati Tags: Build Your Business, Entrepreneur, Productivity

What single thing will I absolutely get “DONE” today?”

Write it down.

Now write down 3 items you’ll take off today’s calendar so you can keep your focus. Take those items and delegate, dump, or time block them so they’re off your To Do list and you can celebrate what you got DONE today and the rest of the week. Ta Da!