Tag: Take Risk

Are You Stretching Big Enough or Doing Too Much?

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Sometimes it is hard to know when we need to give more and when we are doing too much. Here are some guidelines to help you decide when to back-off or step-up.

Doing Too Much

This state of being comes with an uncomfortable level of overwhelm. We know to create something new and build it there is an initial window of effort that will take a great deal of organization and discipline to achieve, but this is different than taking on too much. When you are really doing too much you may have these indicators:

  • An increased level of activity that has no end date
  • You do not find much of what you are investing your time in as enjoyable
  • You are overwhelmed a large percentage of every day
  • You have not been in control of your time even before you added the most recent activities
  • You cannot relax or simply sit quietly
  • You feel the need to always be doing something towards your goals
  • Your family, friends, and mentors feel left out of your goals and often your life

Stretching Bigger

When we stretch we are uncomfortable, but that is for a short period of time. Stretching will take us to the next level of our journey. Here are some indicators that are more closely associated with as short-term achievement investment:

  • Your achievement has an end date
  • You had control of your day before you took on this new state
  • You have dedicated time during the day to work in this state and then you stop
  • You are able to relax during the day
  • You are actively driven and committed to the outcome but you are not overwhelmed most of the time
  • Your family, friends, and mentors are in support of your goals

If you really want to stretch and you are actually doing too much then try letting go of some things and re-engaging with the rest of your life. The things you focus on grow. If you are focusing on too many things you cannot bring your best to any one of them and you cannot grow. Be the expert and find your focus so you can be stretching to your best and not simply stretched-to-thin.

3 Things You Need to Create for Your Own Free Teleconference Call

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Have you identified that you need to be speaking more often in your business to increase your marketing reach and share your expertise? Do you have a lot knowledge and experience to share? Do you really want to engage an audience in the growth that occurs with the content you teach? Have you thought about sharing your story online?

Woman Speaker

When thinking about where to speak people often think about the easily recognizable avenues, like local service clubs, the library, board of trade, chamber events, or  renting a space, etc. OR getting invited to speak at a conference, someone else’s event and stage. There are a lot of different places you can speak, but one place that is easy for everyone to get to is either in a webinar or a teleconference call.

Webinar vs. Teleconference Call

If you are going to do a webinar you will also need to have a presentation ready. This is a wonderful way to help people using both audio and visuals. To be able to attend, a person must have access to the Internet and a browser.

The teleconference call is strictly an audio event. The nice thing about this is it can be accessed anywhere your attendee has access to a phone. These events can be listened to while driving, at the kids games, or while focused in their office.

You will need to know your client well enough to understand which media is going to be available to them and powerful for them.

1. A Place to Promote It

You will need to promote your teleconference calls. If you want people to come they will need to know you are hosting it, when it is, and how to get access. Here are six places you can promote this type of event.

  • Website
  • E-mail signature
  • Voicemail message
  • Back of your business card
  • Newsletter
  • Through other people’s newsletters or websites

2. An Invitation

If you create it they will not come unless they know about it. You have to create an invitation that people will see more than once. Assuming that people you are inviting already know you (like your newsletter list) then they will need to see the invitation a few times before they take note that it is for them, that they are welcome. Sometimes when it is free it will be more easily ignored as “not for me”. And sometimes when there is a cost the benefit has to match exactly before they will read the details.

For instance, I have the Free BLITZ Entrepreneur Club Expert Calls. I have experts from all over the world with incredible business experience in so many different disciplines come and share tools and actions they used for their successes. Sometimes we have a great turnout and sometimes we don’t. There is a large portion of the people I share this with that do not show up for these incredibly valuable calls, not because they aren’t valuable but because they don’t see them as valuable for themselves. Reaching everyone more than once is the key. Each time there is a new person on the call I know that something shared was seen as valuable to them and they have made the choice to create the time to show up.

My point is that you don’t want to send one invitation and expect people to show up.

3. The Teleconference Line

There are many different teleconference lines available, some for free, some for a cost. Many have options for both. Here are a few things you can look for in the call line:

  • Can you personalize the line?
  • Can you record the call?
  • Can you block certain callers?
  • Can you control the sounds in the call (enter/exit/speaking permissions)?
  • Is there advertising?
  • How may attendees will be able to join the call?
  • Can you have break-out sessions?
  • Can you have presentation settings and Q&A sessions (differ in control)?
  • Do you get the same phone number each time?
  • Can you change the password?
  • How much storage space is available?
  • Do people need to raise their hand to ask questions?
  • Are their toll-free numbers available?
  • Can you download the recordings or are they hosted?

You may not need all of these features but you will want to know which ones are most important to your calls. If you have 50 people regularly on your call then knowing that some lines might allow only 15 people max. is necessary. If you have 100 people and you need them to be able to raise their hand during the call then you need software that allows you to access that feature.

Here are a couple of free software packages I have tried and liked. Note that digital phones can still cause issues with any program.

What you might notice about these three things you can use to create your own teleconference call is that the first two are the same two things you need for any speaking engagement that you do. Marketing your speaking is still the most important step.  If people don’t know you have something to offer they cannot take advantage of it and you still don’t get to share.

Succeed or Fail: The Double Negative is NOT Positive

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We were talking about the Positive Optimist last week. It is the ideal place to be for your current attitude and your overall outlook if you want to move forward and grow. So what happens in the times we cannot find the positive view of a situation or the optimistic outlook for our future and what can we do about it.

Have you ever known someone who always seems to have bad luck? No matter what great thing they may be doing, the worst always seems to happen to them. I used to think that these people got more than their fair share of bad occurrences, but then one day when my engine blew up in my car I saw the difference.

My first statement was, “wow, I am so glad I was not on the highway when this happened”. Everything with this event was positive. I had a mechanic that could get me an engine that only had 62,000 km on it, I did not have to travel for business during this period, I had another vehicle and people that would work with me when I was without a car. Brian, my husband, and I discussed this and realized the same event was happening to a friend. They had similar opportunities, but they treated it differently and their experience was painful to listen to. So much blaming and nagging.

Ground Rules

Positive does not mean supportive it means you are looking at the best side of whatever the situation is that is unfolding around you. The “glass half full” view.

Optimistic does not mean a successful outcome, it means you understand the circumstances, you have weighed the risks, and you have a reasonable expectation of how a situation will unfold.

With the person that is a Negative Pessimist there is no positive or good side to the event and there is no perceived outcome that will work to make things better or can be used in future work.  It is a “fail before you start” attitude.

Negative Pessimist

There is no value in this mindset. While in this mindset you have no perceived future with an outcome that will lead to a success. If you cannot see the path that will lead you to success you cannot get there. With your mind shut to a positive outcome you will also likely miss opportunities that are always occurring.

Four Quadrant analytics Negative PessimistThe final result is a negative business growth which will culminate in the loss of money. The people that you will attract to your business and your circles will help you stay in this mindset because they will be willing to capitulate your circumstances and validate the blame.

To make a change, take 100% responsibility for your circumstance, don’t  complain about where you are but look for how you can change it and find people that will bring you up with them. These people will only help you if you are not dragging them down, so you must change your outlook and look for the things that can make a difference in your life.

This shift is not easy and you will not be able to do it alone. If the people you currently surround yourself with are always putting up blocks to your success, make time to share your ideas with people that can see past the blocks to the final outcome.

Often the only thing we can control in our lives is our response to the things that happen to us. Those people that respond positively, surround themselves with positive, forward-thinking people, and expect a good outcome for their efforts can accomplish so much more than those people that choose not to.

6 “Musts” that make a Great Entrepreneur

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This is part of my presentation that I like to give to high school and college level students. I’m sharing it with you so you can see the qualities and experience that went into the business you have built.

Must be educated

OK now you’re thinking, “she’s nuts.” “I didn’t have to go to school to get an MBA to run my successful business.” True, but you did have to have some type of education; whether it was training, apprenticeship, experience, or a traditional education you definitely did not come into your business without skills and knowledge.

In the book, “The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind,” T. Harv Eker talks about failing over and over again at his jobs, but as the book eludes, he does become very wealthy.  His first big idea took a few thousand dollar investment to open a fitness store, which he grew into a chain in 2.5 years and sold for over a million dollars.  He attributes his skills and education to the jobs he had.  He explains how he viewed each job as a paid education to owning his own business.

Must see something where others do not

There are so many opportunities out there. The best ideas are usually fairly simple in concept and sometimes very hard to implement but it is the idea to do something in a way that no one else does it that allows a business to stand out and become successful.

Yesterday I had the privilege of being at an expo where Amanda Lang of CBC News was talking to Peter Aceto, the CEO of ING Direct Canada. When ING Direct Canada opened in 1997 people could not believe that there was a bank that had no physical presences. The founders of this bank knew there was a better way to ensure people could “save their money” and that was to cut out all the overhead. “How do you build a bank without a bank”, was the question they had to answer. As we know, it has become a very successful business model, started in Netherlands in 1991 and now in over 40 countries. It even has competitors, like Presidents Choice Financial launched in 1996. Someone saw the need and then looked for a solution that was not what everyone else was looking for.

Must be willing to Act

This is the key component of an entrepreneur. We have all heard someone say, “I could have done that,” or “my 10 year old could have done that better”, and yet they do not act on it. The entrepreneur can see the opportunity and does something about it to make the change. They are willing to take a chance, to struggle, to build, to create, to manage and to succeed or to fail.

Yesterday I also had the privilege hearing Amanda Lang of CBC News interview Sir Richard Branson. She asked him why he did what he did even after his businesses were successful. He explained that in the beginning of a business the owner need to be the figurehead or brand. The business, if built correctly, would become the brand as it grows. To do that he likes to “exercise his creativity” and he has acted on many of those creative moments. In his company Virgin there are over 300 branded companies. He explains that he does what he does so that “at the end of the year you hope to have enough money to pay the bills so you can go on creating.” Like many entrepreneurs he works to be able to create more and his simple answer to “why?” was “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”.

Must be willing to risk their own…

We all know of the very successful entrepreneurs like, Gates, Jobs, Brin & Page, Trump, etc. Our society holds entrepreneurs in high-esteem because what they do seems unreachable to the average person. But when these people started out they were just average people. They were scoffed at. They worked out of their homes or garages. They enlisted friends to help. They risked their own money to make things happen and they risked being known as a dreamer or unrealistic. The entrepreneur must risk a lot to find their path to success.

Must have unshakeable vision and dedication

It is very uncommon for a business to be instantly successful. It took Google many years to even make their first commercial product. Their vision was so clear they were able to get funding for their development even when they did not know how it was going to become commercially viable. They answered a need with their authentic passion and it paid off.

Must be willing to learn, grow, and change

An entrepreneur must be familiar with every position within their start-up, from bookkeeping to sales. To be able to understand how to communicate to suppliers, prospects, clients and past clients as well as your peers and competitors the entrepreneur has to take on a bigger role.
Who?

There is so much to learn about being an entrepreneur that as you go through the process of implementing you will be inundated with tonnes of new information, ways of thinking, and ideas. If you do not accept the opportunities to change, your business will not be able to make the changes it needs to grow and become successful.

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