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From Success to Significance: How to Define Your Business By Staying True to Your Core Essence
To address these three areas, you need to first understand what they are and what they mean to you and to building work that you love, which is integral to who you are and the way you conduct not only your work but also your life.
Core Values:
What do your clients expect from you? How do your employees fit into the grand scheme of your business? How do you implement a strategic plan? The answer to any of those questions rests on your core values. These values are the guiding principles that help you make decisions on a daily basis and define what you stand for as a company. They are the essential, enduring tenets on which you stand. You can spend a lot of time haggling over what they are, but that what really matters is that you have them and that you allow them to guide you. Walt Disney’s core values, for example, were imagination and wholesomeness. It’s easy to see how they continue to play out.
Core Essence:
What is it about you that remains consistent through fads and changes in public demand that determine where your product or service line is headed? Beneath it all, there is a thread of consistency. That consistency is your essence, steadfast and true. You may think of it as the combination of your core values and your purpose.
Core Business:
Quite simply, it’s the thing that you do best. Your company may do a lot of things, but it probably does one thing better than all of the others. Coca Cola, for instance, makes all different kinds of soft drinks, but good old Coke is an undeniable classic and without it, the company would probably not survive.
Address the Questions: Getting to your essence is a simple concept, but you’ll have to take an intentional path. Addressing these seven specific questions will make the journey quicker and more fun.
1) If you had to dump all of your products and services with the exception of the one that is most important to the sustainability of your business, which one would you keep and why?
In answering this question, don’t confuse what is most important to you with what is simply a comfortable habit. Frequently, growth is uncomfortable for a time. Go with that feeling and you’ll reward yourself later with tangible results.
2) Your best customer has just called you and told you that they are switching to your competitor. Why would someone choose your competitor over you?
Ouch. That’s a tough question. Maybe you honestly don’t know the answer or maybe you’re not even sure who or what your competition is. If so, take the opportunity to find out who else is out there and what edge they might have that you could learn from.
3) What is the one thing that you stand for so much that you are willing to lose customers and strategic partners for it?
When you know the answer to this question, your team and employees will intrinsically know it as well. Your actions do speak louder than your words, but words don’t hurt either. Don’t be afraid to speak your truth; let it speak in your advertising, your marketing, and all of your communications.
4) When you are gone, what is the one thing about you and your business that people will remember and talk about?
We all have the power to inspire and empower people. Before we can do that, we need to think about the kind of legacy that we want to leave. Be intentional about creating the kind of person, the kind of life that you want to be remembered for. If you want people to think of you as a compassionate, empowering leader, before your feet hit the floor every day, decide to take the actions that define you as such.
5) What does a company or individual gain by doing business with you that they cannot get anywhere else?
Don’t underestimate yourself and assume that other people or businesses are driven by the same values that drive you. They may use strategies that seem to speak your language, but take a deeper look at what drives them compared to what drives you. Again, it comes to intentions. Focus on what is unique and passionate about your business and your 3-5 core values.
6) Your biggest fan has to deliver a 30-second commercial about your business. What would this fan tell the 10 million viewers about you?
You’d be surprised at how people perceive you. Think long and hard about how your actions-the things that you do day in and day out-speak for you and how people respond to what you say and do. Perhaps engage your team in an exercise where each of you writes this commercial for another team member. This engaging activity will hold a mirror to the workings of your team.
7) Your closest colleague bursts into your office and says, “I’ve got the best news about your business and the worst news about your business!” What would those be?
The answers to that will be tied into what is most important to you and your business. What’s the best thing that could happen? What’s the worst thing that could happen? What would emotionally cripple you or your company? What would most empower you or your company?
When you know who you are, what you stand for, why you do what you do, and how to best accomplish it all with consistency, the sky is the limit. But don’t fool yourself. This kind of confidence is not a state of being. It’s a state of constantly becoming; intentionally becoming, every day, the kind of leader at home and at work who inspires and touches lives at every turn.
About the Authors
Bea Fields and Corey Blake with Eva Silva are the co-authors of Edge! A Leadership Story. Fields is an Executive Coach and the President of Five Star Leader Coaching and Training. Blake is an author, screenplay writer and the President of Writers of the Round Table Inc.
You Can Always Get What You Want
Most of us don’t work out what we want. And most of us end up with lopsided lives as a result. We may get work right and relationships wrong or the other way around. The 80/20 Principle records this sorry state. Twenty percent of what we do leads to 80 percent of the results. But 80 percent of what we do leads to only 20 percent. We are wasting 80 percent of out effort on low-value outcomes.
If we follow the 80/20 Principle, we can work less, earn more, enjoy more, and achieve more. To do this we must start with a rounded view of everything we want.
Do you enjoy life?
Am I living with the right person or people?
Am I living in the right place?
Am I working the right hours and do they match my ideal work/play rhythm, and suit my family and social needs?
Do I feel in control?
Can I exercise or meditate when I want?
Am I nearly always relaxed and comfortable with my surroundings?
Does my lifestyle make it easy for me to be creative and fulfill my potential?
Do I have enough money and are my affairs organized so that I don’t have to worry about them?
Does the lifestyle facilitate whatever contribution I want to make to enriching the lives of people I want to help?
Do I see my close friends enough?
Is the extent of travel in my life just right, not too much, or too little?
Is the lifestyle right for my partner and family too?
Do I have everything that I need right here: do I have it all?
What about work?
Almost everyone needs to work, whether it is paid or not. We should not allow work to take over our lives, however much we claim to enjoy it. The 80/20 Principle can provide a good measure and a good way to see whether you should work more of less. If you are happier outside of work than at work, you should work less and/or change your job. If you are happier at work than outside of work, you should work more and/or change your social life. You haven’t got it right until you are equally happy at work and not at work, and until you are happy at least 80 percent of the time at work and 80 percent of the time not at work.
There does not have to be any conflict between your work life and the things you enjoy outside of work. You may be able to work in an area that is your hobby or even turn your hobby into a business. Enthusiasm can lead to success, it is often easier to make an enthusiasm into a career than to become enthusiastic about a career dictated by others.
Whatever you do, be clear about the optimum point you are trying to reach and view it within your life’s total context. This is easier said than done: old habits are hard to break and the importance of a lifestyle is easily set aside for career.
Which type of career will make you happiest?
Do you have a high drive for achievement and career success?
Would you be happiest working for an organization, as a self-employed and self- contained individual, or employing other people?
Draw 6 boxes, three on top and three on the bottom, label the upper three High and the lower three Low. From left to right label the left two, “Prefer working in organizations,” middle two, “Prefer being a self-employed sole trader,” right two, “Prefer employing or organizing others.” Number the boxes 1 through 3 on the top and 4 through 6 on the bottom. Try to select the box that describes you best.
Box 1 people are highly ambitious but prefer to work in a context organized and provided by others. These jobs are with large organizations and the need for these jobs may be falling. If you want this type of role, you should recognize this and pursue your ambition, however unfashionable it may become. Large organizations still provide structure and status even if they can no longer provide security. I retired from this type of organization at a time when they did provide security in the form of a retirement plan. Few companies now offer retirement plans other than the 401K type plans.
Box 2 people are typically professionals who have a drive for recognition by their peers or who want to be the best in their field. They want to be independent and do not fit well into organizations. If you are like this, you should become self-employed as quickly as possible. You should also resist the temptation to employ other people as they want to avoid professional dependence on others as far as possible.
Box 3 people have high drive and ambition, hate being employed but do not want the lonely life of the sole trader. They may be unconventional, but they are builders: they want to build a web or a structure around themselves. They are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs. If you want to work with other people, but not for them, you are a Box 3 person.
Box 4 people do not give a high drive for career achievement but do enjoy working with others. They would ensure that they spend many hours a week doing so, either in a conventional job or in a voluntary role.
Box 5 people are not ambitious but do have a strong desire for autonomy in their work. Rather than set up their own firm, the best role for Box 5 people is as freelancers, working on particular projects for other firms to suit their own convenience.
Box 6 people are individuals whose need for career achievement is low but who enjoy the process of organizing and developing others. Many teachers, social workers, and charity workers are Box 6 people and are well suited to their roles. For Box 6 people the journey is everything; there is no need to arrive.
Many people gravitate toward their “right” box, but where alienation at work exists it is often because the person is in the wrong box.
What about money?
What indeed! Most people think it’s more important than it is and more difficult to get than it is. How do you obtain money in the first place? The best answer, one that works surprisingly often, is to do something that you enjoy. If you enjoy something, you are likely to be good at it. If you are good at something, you can create something that will satisfy others and they will generally pay you well for it. Once you have a little spare cash, it can be easily multiplied. Save and invest. I have a friend, Dave that does quite well pumping stocks. Dave has found some stocks that are cyclic and he has set guide lines for buying and selling. When a stock reaches his high goal, he sells and then places a buy order at the low goal. When the stock reaches his low goal, he buys and then places a sell order again at the high goal. He does not have to work hard or keep track of the stocks, only waits for the orders to execute. If this sounds complicated, then just buy a index fund and hold it for the long haul.
What about achievement?
There are people who want to achieve and then there are sane people. All motivational writers fall into the trap of telling you that you need direction and purpose in life. Then they tell you that you don’t have it. Then they put you through the agony of deciding what it should be. Finally, they tell you what they think you ought to do. So if you don’t want to achieve anything specific and are happy enough going through life having it all (minus achievement), count yourself lucky and read no further. But if you want achievement and want to increase it, the 80/20 Principle can help you. Achievement should be easy. It shouldn’t be “99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration.” Instead, see if it’s true that 80 percent of your achievement to date, measured by what you yourself value, has come from 20 percent of your inputs. If true or nearly true, then think carefully about this top 20 percent. Could you simply repeat the achievements? Upgrade them? Reproduce similar ones on a grander scale? Combine two previous achievements to compound the satisfaction?
About the Author: Hubert Crowell, Cave Explorer
I am currently doing graduate studies at Southeastern University, in Lakeland Florida and would like to share some of the insight on making decisions. For a Free Online Training Course on the 80/20 Principle please visit: http://hucosystems.com/articles/The_80_20_Principle_1.htm, which is available on my web site.
Do Affirmations REALLY Work?
Many successful people credit the use of affirmations for their success. Some even attribute affirmations to causing miracles in their lives. Why then do most people say that affirmations don’t work for them? Is it a question of using the right or “correct” techniques to get the desired results? Many people turn to books to search for answers on affirmation techniques. As many eventually discover, most books are woefully lacking when it comes to providing the needed answers.
Before discussing affirmation techniques, let us look at the purpose of affirmations. The sole purpose of reciting an affirmation is to pass on a command from the conscious mind to the subconscious mind. Many who have read the ground-breaking report “How to Magnetically Attract Anything You Want Into Your Life Right Now”, will already know that the subconscious mind has the ability to move towards or bring to life, anything that it accepts as being true. Tell yourself that “I will never succeed” and that is the exact outcome you will see. So how do we fix this? There are 5 rules to making affirmations work. I will discuss 2 of these below.
First, the subconscious mind must BELIEVE the affirmation to be true. If you weigh 300 pounds and you say to yourself “I weigh 150 pounds”, your subconscious mind will clearly not accept this as true. Similarly, if you say to yourself that you “earn $150,000 a year” when in fact you are financially broke, that is going to be a tough sell to your subconscious mind. So how do we get around this challenge? Very simply.
Use the phrase “I choose” in your affirmation. Instead of saying “I earn $150,000″, say “I choose to earn $150,000″. You get the idea.
Secondly, you must provide the subconscious mind with PROOF that what you are saying is true. Here is an example of what I mean. Let us say you are overweight and you say to yourself, “I choose to eat small healthy meals”. Will this work? Perhaps, but the truth is that when you are actually eating your meal, you may be thinking that you are either overeating or eating the wrong food. This negative feeling conflicts with your affirmation and seeks to discredit it as being untrue. In other words your mind doesn’t see the proof that your affirmation is true. Now if you look down at your plate and see a small healthy meal and then say to yourself “I always choose to eat small healthy meals and feel great about it”, you feel better and have actually provided your subconcious mind with proof that you are choosing to eat healthy. This process will easily take you in the direction you want to go.
These are just 2 of the techniques that anyone can use to boost the power and effectiveness of affirmations. Use them properly and they are bound to make your affirmations much more effective.
About the Author
Discover how to start attracting practically ANYTHING you want WITHIN 6 MINUTES! Grab your Free Mind Optimization Report now. You will learn about the powerful scientifically proven method that is helping thousands achieve their lifelong dreams. Go to http://www.mind-optimizer.com/FreeReport before we start charging for this ground-breaking report again.
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