August 27th, 2008 by Jim Donovan
Labor Day has always been one of my favorite holidays. Actually, I like all holidays:-)
However, Labor Day is special because it celebrates the American worker who, lest we forget, is responsible for having helped build the quality of life available to us here in the United States.
Unfortunately, too many hard working American’s are struggling these days. Many have seen their jobs vanish to the global economy while others, still working, are struggling just to keep up with rising prices.
Back in 1974, I made a personal decision to take control over my destiny and started my own business. This came after seeing my boss, a man in his 50’s with a sick child and a wife in the hospital, fired at midnight on a Friday. I vowed then that I would not let that ever happen to me. People being treated poorly by some employers is nothing new.
While in my case, things did not go as planned, due mainly to a lack of knowledge and my destructive habits, I survived and, in the years since, have managed to remain self-employed in one fashion or another. While there have been (many) up’s and down’s, I would not trade it for anything.
Today, more than ever, it’s important that you take more control over your financial destiny. Whether you have a job or own your own business, chances are you rely on a single stream of income for your financial security. This can, as many have learned, be devastating.
Whether you, like millions of others, are supplementing your income with a network marketing or ebay business or are a blogger or affiliate marketer, it’s important for you to be doing something to add income streams.
What business could you start or join, part-time, that would give you personal satisfaction, be enjoyable (it has to be fun) and provide you with additional income?
If you’re not sure or would like to learn more about the ways you can increase your income and lower your expenses, take advantage of my Labor Day special offer for my debt reduction income producing home study course.
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August 25th, 2008 by Jim Donovan
In today’s business environment with increases in staff reductions and rapidly changing roles and responsibilities, it is crucial that all of your team members be fully engaged in the tasks at hand. According to a Gallup survey, 350 billion dollars are lost each year in American companies due to disengaged employees. How then do you minimize the impact of this costly problem within your organization? Below are 4 key strategies to help you grow your people toward peak performance and enable you to produce quantum results with your team.
Own your outcome
All to often employees are quick to blame circumstances the economy or a host of other causes for their less than stellar outcomes in a given situation. Only by taking personal responsibility for our outcomes and performance can we take back our power and create the results we desire. It’s quit simple, if the problem is being caused by the economy; I am powerless to effect it. If, on the other hand, I am willing to take personal responsibility for it, I have reclaimed my power and am in a position to impact change.
Make integrity a must
This is not an option. The only way companies will survive and thrive into the future is by making integrity an absolute must throughout the organization. No longer can people skate by with questionable behavior and slippery deals. The time has come for each person to be honest and truthful in all situations regardless of the outcome. The cliché “honesty is the best policy” became a cliché for a good reason, it works! However, in order to create this environment of absolute honesty and integrity, you as an owner or manager must be willing to allow people to make mistakes and it must be okay to mess-up once in a while without fear of repercussion.
Challenge people’s limiting beliefs
It is important for your people to understand the role their conscious and unconscious beliefs play in their ability to produce desirable outcomes. They must understand how every thought, action, and result is directly linked to their beliefs. By first identifying people’s limiting beliefs, a person can begin to replace them with more resourceful empowering beliefs, which will then enable them to create the results they desire.
For example, a belief that “I am not comfortable calling on ‘C’ level executives” can be shifted to one that feels better and is more empowering, like “While I am not totally at ease, I have a strong support team backing me up.” While this is not a fully empowering belief, it is a small step in the right direction. These “bridge beliefs” shift the person’s beliefs more toward the desired, empowered belief.
Link Values to Behaviors
Identifying a person’s high driving values and helping them understand the role these values play in their productivity and satisfaction can go a long way toward achieving peak performance. A simple question like, “What’s most important to you in your work?,” will generally elicit the person’s number one driving value. Continuing with questions like, “What else is important?” etc., will enable you to uncover the person’s high driving four or five values. Knowing this will help you better match specific assignments to individuals, understand how to better motivate people, and result in more harmony among your team members.
For example, a team member who lists “freedom” as a high driving value will be the ideal person to assign a task that can be done from a home office, while the person with “contribution” as a high driver will be well suited for a team project. Understanding your teams values will help you determine assignments and enable you to get the most productivity from team members while maintaining harmony throughout the organization.
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August 20th, 2008 by Jim Donovan
While I was, of course, excited to see Michael Phelps take 8 gold medals and set several Olympic records, I was even more impressed by 41 year-old Dara Torres and her refusal to let age stop her from competing in a sport where her competition was as young as 16.
When asked what she would tell her daughter, now two, when she grows up, she replied “You don’t have to put an age limit on your dreams.”
In keeping with that theme, the story below is an excerpt from my first book.
Do It Now
Recently, someone said to me “Yeah but I’m too old.” It saddens me to hear such comments especially in light of some of the facts below:
- Verdi composed his “Ave Maria” at age 85.
- Martha Graham performed until she was 75 and choreographed her 180th work at age 95.
- Michelangelo was carving the Rondanini Pieta six days before he died at 89.
- Marion Hart, sportswoman and author, learned to fly at age 54 and made seven nonstop solo flights across the Atlantic, the last time in 1975 at age 83.
- Grandma Moses had her first one–woman show when she was 80.
If you think you are too old to do something you’ve always wanted to do, you may want to reconsider and just go for it! Complete the following exercise:
What is the one thing you have always wanted to do but have been putting off?
Ask yourself: “If not now, when?”
What is your cut–off date for doing it ____________.
A woman once walked up to Wally (Famous) Amos after a talk he had given and remarked, “I’m fifty one now. If I go to law school I will be fifty five, in four years when I graduate.” Amos replied, “How old will you be in four years if you don’t go?”
Excerpt from Handbook To A Happier Life– A Simple Guide To Creating The Life You’ve Always Wanted, by Jim Donovan (New World Library)
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August 20th, 2008 by Jim Donovan
There are several versions as to how long ago this time-saving technique got it’s start. One tells of a young man approaching Andrew Carnegie, the head of U.S. Steel, while another simply has a man talking to the C.E.O. of a big company some time in the distant past.
In one version the man was paid $100,000 for the idea on how to be more productive. Regardless of the accuracy of the stories, the technique remains valid and is one of the most effective, simplest productivity tools ever used.
Whether you use a sophisticated computer calendar program, a complex time management system, a leather-bound written day-planner or, as Mark McCormick, C.E.O. of the world’s largest sports management company, IMC, simply use a legal pad. The idea is the same.
List the five most important things you have to do and do nothing else until you complete them.
I realize that this sounds overly simple in our exceedingly complicated world, but before you dismiss it, try it out for two weeks.
This simple technique, which has been used by high-level executives, entrepreneurs and others, for more than fifty years works.
One of the keys is that by listing five items instead of ten or twenty, you are really focusing your energy on what is truly important. If you eliminate distractions and do only the five items on your list, you will be directing your energy in the most productive direction.
Rather than waste your valuable time doing busy work, you will be doing what really matters to your success.
Of course, if you complete your list early, write another one, or do other less important tasks.
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August 18th, 2008 by Jim Donovan
In the last century, even in the last twenty or so years, business invested in equipment. After all, we were in the Industrial Age and our business equipment was our most valuable resource.
We upgraded and refurbished our equipment and machinery, built bigger and better manufacturing facilities and added new types of equipment as they became available. We then hired skilled individuals to operate and maintain our new equipment and protect our sizable investment.
Today we are living in the Information Age and your company’s most valuable assets are your people and their creativity. It stands to reason then, that investing in keeping them working at their highest, most creative, healthiest, most motivated levels of performance is a prudent investment and one that will pay for itself many times over.
If your employees have a clear vision of who they are and where they’re going, are highly self motivated, have clearly defined, written goals for their lives, are less stressed, are physically fit and healthy and are well balanced, happy individuals, your company will receive the highest return on your most valuable resources.
What are you doing to give your employees the “tools” they need to perform at their peak? Have you implemented a “book–of–the–month program to encourage ongoing personal development? Does your company maintain a library of personal improvement tapes and make them available to people who want to enhance their personal skills? What about seminars? Do you regularly bring speakers in for employee development seminars? Do you have a mentor or coaching program for your key people? Do you offer a healthy living program and encourage physical fitness?
Study after study has confirmed that every dollar invested in employee training and seminars results in increased performance, higher morale, less turnover & absenteeism and an overall increase in the growth of the company.
Is your “machine” running smoothly or is it clunking along in dire need of an overhaul? The success of your company in today’s business environment is largely dependent upon your ability to hire, train, motivate and retain your twenty first century machinery — your people!
Go here to learn how Jim Donovan’s seminars can help you protect your best investment
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August 11th, 2008 by Jim Donovan
Now is the perfect time to think about your future and begin to design the kind of life you’d like to be living. Unfortunately, too many people leave their lives to chance and happenstance, not taking the time to write down their goals and create plans to achieve them. This can be a huge mistake. Not having written goals would be like going on vacation without a destination, something most people would never consider doing. Yet, those same people will leave their futures in the hands of circumstance.
Having written goals will change your life. Spend some time thinking about what you’d like your life to be like. For the sake of this exercise, let’s set goals you’d like to have accomplished one year from now. Of course, you can set shorter and longer goals as well.
What would you like for your relationships? How about your health, career, and finances? How about your mind and emotions? What would you like to experience? What would you like to do, be, or have? Invest some time now to identify these things and write them down. This will greatly increase the likelihood of your accomplishing them. If you want to know more about this, there are lots of books, including mine, to help you. That’s not really the topic of this story, however, I’m asking you now to revisit your goals, particularly your short-term ones.
Do they make you want to jump out of bed each day eager to get going? Recently, I was feeling “less than great.” I was even bordering on becoming depressed, something I rarely experience. I felt unmotivated, and wound up being pretty sick for several weeks. Upon closer examination, and because I agree with Socrates that, “An unexamined life is not worth living,” I realized one of the things that I had done was to reset some of my short-term goals to be “more realistic.”
What I had noticed about myself was that in the interest of being realistic, I had lowered my expectations. While this may seem like a reasonable thing to do, in reality, it left me totally uninspired and feeling pretty unmotivated about my goals. For example, if you have a goal of making enough money to “pay the bills” how exciting is that?
Is that going to make you jump out of bed in the morning saying, “oh wow, I can’t wait to get going, so I can make money and pay the bills!” I doubt it.
When I understood what I was doing, I immediately set new goals. I set goals that were way beyond my reach. Goals that were huge enough to really get my juices going. Now, when I think about my new, bigger goals, I get excited just imaging what it would feel like reaching them and what my life would be like having accomplished them.
Now, let’s start setting some new goals for the coming year. Following is a simple exercise to help you become clear about your goals and begin creating the life you’ve always wanted.
1. Write what you do want. Be specific. List everything you want to do, be, have, and share for the upcoming year and beyond. Rather than writing “be thinner,” for example, write “I feel & look great weighing 175 pounds.” Instead of writing, “More money,” be specific. How much more per month?
2. Write each goal in the form of a positive affirmation, in the present tense (I am, I have, etc). Set goals in the key areas of your life – spirituality, health, relationships, social, career, things, and money.
3. Next to each one, write why you want this and how you will feel when you have accomplished it.
4. Write at least one small action you can take right now to move toward your goal.
Each day, read your list of goals, concentrating on the feelings associated with having them. The more you can feel the feelings your goal will produce, the faster you can draw it to you. Your sub-conscious mind does not know the difference between that which is real and that which is vividly imagined. Fake it until you make it.
After you reread your goals, seeing yourself as having achieved them, and are feeling the good feelings associated with having them, ask yourself, “What is the next action I can take to move toward this?” Do this daily and watch your life change.
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August 11th, 2008 by Jim Donovan
When she asked, “How do you do that”, I had the opportunity to make my pitch.
You enter the crowded room, looking and feeling great. You’re ready. Dressed to the “nines”, you’re wearing your best suit and have a hundred business cards ready to pass out to anyone you meet. This is what the ‘experts” say you should be doing to promote your business. They call it “networking.”
You’re ready. You begin your journey across the room, eyes scanning the terrain, looking for a friendly face. Half way through the crowd of other prowling business owners, like yourself, you inadvertently bump into a tall blonde woman in a red dress. Clumsily, you excuse yourself. She smiles and says it’s OK. Seizing the opportunity, you whip out your business card and blurt, “Hello, I’m Fred Reinhart.” You proudly add, “I’m in network marketing.” “That’s nice,” she quips, waving across the room to a bearded man in a three piece suit. Shaking your hand she adds, “I’m Kathy Johnson, nice to meet you.” Before you can mutter another word she is off in the direction of the man in the three piece. There you stand, hand out, wondering what went wrong.
What went wrong?
You did everything the books and seminars told you to do. You wore your good suit. You had plenty of cards on hand. You even bought an expensive cologne for the occasion. What happened? Where did you go wrong?
While the above scenario seems amusing, after it has happened to you a few times it loses its humor. Worse yet, people who have had this kind of experience simply conclude they are not cut out for network marketing and tend to drop out of the business. Their income’s suffer and they assume it’s their personality when, in fact, they’ve been taught the wrong techniques.
Care about the other person
There are better ways to network and meet prospective business contacts. For openers, (no pun intended) people are more responsive if you first show some interest in them and what they do. There is an old cliché that says we have one mouth and two ears for a reason. If you listen more than you talk, you will automatically find people more interested in talking with you and being around you.
The well known marketing consultant, Jay Abraham, once said that “Discovery is the fuel of competitive advantage.” Get curious. Become interested in other people and what makes them tick. Really care about the other person. If you take the time to investigate, you will find that even those people who appear quite ordinary have a story to tell. If you show an interest in them and their lives, you will not only increase your chances of doing business with them but you may gain a friend as well. After all, you’re in a people business!
Where’s the pain
One of the keys to gaining new customers and recruits is uncovering the other persons greatest need. What is the source of their pain? If you are speaking to someone whom you just met and, without learning about them, start talking about the opportunity to earn large sums of money with your company, you could easily lose them. Some of you are probably thinking, “Why would a person not be interested in earning more money?” Well, supposing they are in a high income bracket and have lots of money but their real challenge is not having enough time to spend with their families. In this case, had you cared enough to get to know them, you would have uncovered their real need. Knowing this, you would then reposition your company’s benefits to meet their needs. You could have talked about the freedom of not having to work a 9 to 5 schedule and the quality time you get to spend with your family. You have now addressed their needs and wants, not your own and your message will be received with more interest. Always remember that people do things for their own reasons not yours. Because one aspect of the business is attractive to you does not mean that is going to be the part that interests me. Invest the time to find out about my needs first and you will see your business grow more than you could imagine. The truly successful individuals in any profession are the one’s who always try to help the other person. Remember the wisdom of Zig Zigler who said, “You can have whatever you want if you help enough other people get what they want.”
How do you do that?
When the time is right for you to introduce yourself, there is an excellent and simple technique you can use. You can develop a self introduction that will cause the other person to ask, “how do you do that?” For example, if you are in a nutritional MLM, rather than say, “I am Joe, I sell vitamins and I can make you rich” (this actually happened to me at an networking event), you might say, “I work with people just like you, Mary, who need to stay healthy and have enough energy to build their businesses.”
This causes the other person, if they are at all curious, to ask, “How do you do that?” At this point, you have opened the door for a further explanation or “commercial” for your business. You can go on to explain the benefits of your products and services and, presuming you’ve uncovered the other persons needs, you can talk about the benefits of being in this business — in relation to their needs.
As an exercise, devise three or four ways to introduce your business. Let each one focus on a different benefit of your product or service. Test each of them at your next networking event.
Remember: people do not buy products or services, they buy benefits and solutions.
The more you focus on communicating the benefits gained from using your products or services, the more you will benefit from the increase in business.
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August 8th, 2008 by Jim Donovan
The title above is a paraphrase of the Emerson quote about how, Most men die with their music still in them.
Ask yourself the following question, “If I were to die today or tomorrow, have I done what I came here to do? Have I, at least in part, ‘played my special music?’” If you answered “yes” to the question, or are at least pursuing it, then I congratulate you. If your answer is “no,” I want to ask, “What are you waiting for?”
We are all special. Each of us has some special contribution to make to the world. Perhaps it’s to write a book. Perhaps your special gift is in being a great teacher or coach. It could be you are the next person to discover a cure for a major disease, or to start a business and be the best you can be at what you do. Are you a builder who’s passionate about your work like my friend, Tom? He sees his job as helping people achieve their lifelong dreams, and his work reflects it.
Whatever the passion within you, let it out. Life is too fragile and uncertain to postpone your dreams, hoping that “someday, I’ll really begin to live my life.”
Begin now! Whatever it is you’re passionate about, you can begin it now. Maybe you want to do something to help your community or church group. What are you waiting for? It saddens me to see someone who is near the end their life, never having taken a step to realize their dream. It saddens me that anyone should leave this earth with their music still in them. You owe it to yourself and to humanity to let it out.
Until one is committed,
there is hesitancy,
the chance to draw back,
always ineffectiveness.
Concerning all acts of initiative
there is one elementary truth,
the ignorance of which kills
countless ideas and endless plans:
That the moment one definitely commits oneself,
then providence moves, too.
All sorts of things occur to help one
that would never otherwise have occurred.
A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one’s favor all manner of
unforeseen incidents and meetings and
material assistance which no man
could have dreamed would come his way.
Whatever you can do or
dream you can, begin it!
Boldness has genius, power,
and magic in it.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
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August 8th, 2008 by Jim Donovan
With steadily increasing global competition, it is more important than ever that each employee in your organization have a clear understanding of the company’s overall vision, be in alignment with the organizational goals, and have identified how their day to day activities contribute to the accomplishment of these objectives.
No longer do people have the luxury of arriving at work, completing their assigned tasks, and going home, thinking, magically, that everything will continue to work out as before. We are experiencing a rapidly changing business climate, which demands shifts in attitudes and creative thinking in order to meet the challenges of the future.
How can your company accomplish this throughout your organization?
Beginning, as author Steven Covey, reminds us, “with the end in mind.” As an executive, you must ask yourself and your team what the “ideal” looks like in each key area. In sales, for example, what would be the ideal situation? How would it appear? What about manufacturing, administration, and distribution? If everything were operating perfectly, how would you describe it?
Bringing key management together for this type of strategic planing session will result in your having identified a crystal clear vision for the entire organization, with each and every segment of the business functioning at it’s optimal level.
This visioning exercise can then be adapted and used by each department to create a “mini” version for their own area of responsibility and, further, to the individual, enabling she or he to relate their job to the bigger picture as well as their personal goals.
Once you have a clear vision of what the ideal would be in each area of your organization, the next step is to identify several goals by which you can measure your progress. For the sake of this exercise, we’ll use a one year time frame, since this is a reasonable period to institute change, while allowing you to experience success early on.
Looking at each segment of your business, what would have to happen to accomplish your ideal vision? If, for example, in distribution, the ideal was to achieve 100% on time delivery and no more than a 72 hour turnaround, what are the measurable goals that would support it’s accomplishment?
When setting goals, it is important to use the S.M.A.R.T. method , whereby each goals is Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Timed. Specifically, what will you accomplish by when? Then, from your list of goals, you can develop 30–90 day milestones and further reduce those to identify the daily actions that must be taken in order to succeed.
For example, part of the vision for your sales department might be, “To be the best in our industry. To be the ‘gold standard’ by which our competition measures itself against.” This will likely translate to an increase in sales, improved customer retention, better referrals and so on.
From this, the sales woman in your New Jersey territory may, looking at her personal vision and goals, decide she wants to earn 50% more in commissions and calculates that this would require XX dollars in sales each quarter. From this, she has determined, based on past performance, how many sales per month she needs and, further, how many presentations she needs to make each week. This breaks down further into how many calls she needs to make each day in order to accomplish this, what additional systems she might implement to achieve better customer retention, and which networking functions would best support her vision.
With each and every individual, in each and every department, holding the same, clear vision and knowing their role in it’s accomplishment, you will experience a level of success beyond your wildest expectations.
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August 6th, 2008 by Jim Donovan
With the current economic recession, yes, I’ll use the “R” word, too many small businesses are finding themselves moving in the wrong direction.
In many cases, what were once growing, thriving businesses are now heading into a downward spiral of cutbacks, layoffs, and, in too many cases, bankruptcies. Owners are watching as their customers dwindle and revenues drop.
So, what can a small business owner who is trying to prosper in today’s climate do to turn things around?
While you may not be able to do much about the nation’s economy as a whole, there are proactive steps you can take, regardless of outside circumstances.
Following are six steps you can use as a way to get started turning your business around and moving, once again, in the direction of growth and prosperity:
1. Revisit Your Compelling Vision
If you do not have a crystal clear, compelling vision for what you want your business to look like in one to two years, create one now. Without this roadmap, you’ll be reacting instead of acting and, in this market, that can be a disaster. Be sure to include specific, measurable goals in the process.
For example, writing “Our company is a happy, flourishing environment, with great people serving our customers and creating growth and prosperity for us all,” you could add “and we are exceeding our goal of $x,xxx,xxx per quarter.” This adds a tangible measurable component to your visoin.
2. Fire Some Customers
This may sound crazy, especially in tough times, but if you take the time to analyze your customer base, you will most likely find that 80% of your business is coming from about 20% of your customers. I’m not suggesting you get rid of the other 80% just that you devise ways to let go of the high maintenance, low performing ones who you dread dealing with in the first place. Either let them go altogether or find a way to either automate or outsource having to deal with them. This will free up your time to devote to your “ideal” customer.
3. Analyze Your “Ideal” Customer
Once you know who your ideal customers are, you can analyze what drives them and what they have in common. Conduct a phone survey and find out why they do business with you, what they like and don’t like about your company and what they’d like to see changed.
The more clarity you have about your ideal customer, the easier it is to attract more like them. After all, isn’t that the type of customer you wanted in the first place?
4. Change Your Focus
Beginning immediately, stop, talking about anything that is not working. Stop defending and justifying why you’re not doing better. Stop blaming the economy or whatever else you deem to be the cause of your troubles. If something is not working, continuing to talk about it will cause you to start seeing more things going wrong and continue the downward spiral.
Ask only, “What’s working?” and continue asking every day. Make a list of what is working and have your team do the same, individually and as a group. Change the tone of your meetings. If you understand that you get more of whatever you focus upon, you’ll see why you want to do this.
5. Start Mining the Gold That’s Already in Your Business
Every business has “hidden” opportunities which can be mined, usually by either developing new markets for your products, creating new products for your customers, leveraging the relationships you’ve built, joint venturing with colleagues, suppliers, customers and, yes, even competitors.
Ask yourself what new opportunities you could tap into if you expanded your e-commerce offerings and maximized the technology that’s available today. Does your Web site give visitors a compelling reason to subscribe to your mailing list? Are you utilizing email marketing and auto responders to their fullest? What about social media, social bookmarking, video, podcasting, blogging, and other “Web 2.0″ tools?
6. Develop Systems and Follow Through
Hire a business coach/mentor or appoint someone in your organization to be your team’s “accountability partner” to ensure your renewed vision is being carried out and that you are steadily moving in the right direction.
While you can assign the task to someone already in the business, there are several advantages to bringing in a professional. A business coach/mentor provides a fresh viewpoint and can often help by not being bogged down in the day-to-day running of the business. They are objective and not invested in the politics if your company. They typically contribute knowledge acquired from a variety of situations in any number of industries. And a professional business coach/mentor will employ specific strategies and systems to help you make quantum leaps beyond what you may have thought possible.
Regardless of the specific actions you take, it is important that you do something proactive. Don’t just sit there complaining about the economy with the rest of the crowd. Above all, don’t wait for it to turn around by itself or, worse yet, expect the government to fix it. You have within you the power to change your life and your business, so go and do it.
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