Gratitude is a Winning Business Attitude

"Yet today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth." Lou Gehrig, Hall of Fame Baseball Player

It's that time of year when we all sit back and count our blessings. That's usually easy to do on the personal side where we are thankful for family anf friends. What about being thankful for your business? Have you thought about the things in your business that are creatying abundance in your life? Or are you constantly focused on the things that aren't working?

Let's do an exercise geared toward identifying what's working in your business. Are the lights on? Is the rent paid? Is most of your machinery working? Di you have some loyal staff who show up on time and do their jobs? make your own list, but be sure to jot down at least ten things, no matter how minor you think they are. the list is designed to illuminate where you are doing things right as well as to inspire gratitude for those things.

Are you surprised by some of the things on your list? Maybe you wrote down "Shipping Department." The unsung mailroom may not seem like a key part of your operation, but if it's humming along, working efficiently and cost effectively, and the staff show up and do their jobs well, you should be grateful!

Next, you should think about how to translet the mailroom's success to other parts of your business. Are there systems and strategies that the mailroom uses that could be translated to the production floor? And by the way, if the mailroom is your only high-performing department, be sure to acknowledge their contribution.

This next week, pay attention to where your business is winning. For one week, make this the most important thing you notice, rather than what's broken. Workplace gratitude is an idea worth the effort, and the results will show up throughout your business. You may find yourself re-energized and full of new ideas based on what you learn. Those ideas can be incorporated into your business plan for 2010.

At Possibilities Unlimited, we are grateful for the opportunity to work with clients who want to win in the game of business. We can help you design an abundant future for your business and coach you on how to achieve it.

Are you ready to win?

Your Business is a Reflection of You

"Do you know what my favorite part of the game is? The opportunity to play." Mike Singletary, Hall of Fame Football Player and Coach

One of the fundamental principles of my work with clients is the idea that your business is a reflection of you. That may sound simple, but when you dig into that concept, it opens up a wealth of ideas that help people design the businesses they really want.

Your business is as much a part of you as your family or your outside interests. When you start a business, you have a vision as to what that business can bring to your personal life. We desire success in business so that we can enjoy a fulfilling and abundant life. The two go hand in hand.

When you are worried about everything that's going wrong in your business, and that worry becomes your focus, your business will suffer right along with you. If you go to work every day knowing that business is a series of circumstances and actions that can all be handled, and with the attitude that there is always a way to win the game, your business will be a reflection of that mindset.

The way you carry yourself in your business shows up in your relationships. relationships are the essential building blocks of any business. You have to have relationships with your employees, your suppliers and, of course, your customers. If you being the best of yourself to these relationships, you will enjoy more productive and profitable responses from those who do business with you.

A coach can help any business person recreate how he or she is occurring in the business. If you are unsatisfied with your business, and your relationship to it, give us a call. We can work with you to redesign your relationship to your business so that it reflects the positive, fulfilling attitude of a winning entrepreneur.

Are you ready to win?

Time Management 911

“Difficulties in life are intended to make us better, not bitter.” Dan Reeves, American Professional Football Coach

Even the best time managers have to deal with the unexpected. As far as I know there is no system available on the market that prevents emergencies from happening. Call it Murphy’s Law or bad luck, you can be sure that something will come up to put a wrench in your calendar, just when you least expect it. The key is knowing how to handle the unpredictable, and accepting it as a regular occurrence.

We’ve talked a lot about putting things in time. At Possibilities Unlimited, we train our clients to put all their business and personal activities in time so they can get real with what they have to accomplish. It’s also an accountability system that keeps important activities like sales from falling off the radar screen.

This topic came to me yesterday while I spent upwards of six hours taking my dog to two different vets, one of which was a doggie ophthalmologist forty miles away from my house. Needless to say, this was a pretty big wrench in a day that I had already planned out.

I looked at my calendar and started ticking off the things I could postpone, or not do at all. We call those, respectively, “Not Happening Now's" and “Never Happening Now’s.” There were a couple of things that I needed to keep in the schedule, like an important client call. This blog could wait until the next day, as could the time I had set aside for updating my client database and working on some accounting issues.

I also delegated a few tasks to other people, and recruited some backup on the home front from my husband. At the end of the day today, I will reassess my calendar for next week to make sure I have integrated the things I needed to postpone.

Your calendar should have a couple of hours each week open for handling the emergencies that arise. Leave yourself some wiggle room to move things around to accommodate the fire drills that inevitably occur. If you find yourself with extra time on your hands (and I want to know who you are!) go back to your list of “Not Doing Now’s” and pick on to work on.

Accepting the fact that emergencies are a predictable part of doing business and life, and having a system for working them into your calendar will alleviate the stress and worry of trying to get it all done. You will sail over hurdles instead of letting them stand in your way, and you will be better prepared to win the game of business.

Are you ready to win?