Focus on Results : Work Smart, Not Hard
In this article, I have occasionally challenged the notion that working hard is always a good thing. Sometimes, working hard means wasting your life on chores or wasting your life working for a company that doesn’t value you. Much better than working hard then, is to work smart. That means that you stop focusing on working for the sake of working and start working in order to get results. This is where it becomes important once again to assess your past mistakes and look at what has worked and what hasn’t. This will allow you to invest your time only where it counts and only where it matters. Freeing Up Mental Space And sometimes, this means finding ways to remove the unwanted distractions and clutter from your life. Work that does not take you closer to your goal is not work that is worth your time. Work that takes you away from the things you are passionate about is not worth your time. And so if you’re currently spending half your evening washing up and cleaning the house it’s time to stop! You worked incredibly hard in order to earn money for your family – you traded your time for resources – and now the little time you have left you’re going to spend washing up?? This is another cognitive shift you need to make in order to be truly successful – you need to start valuing your time more and be willing to spend your money to protect it. You need to recognize that Time > Money. So instead of spending your time cleaning the house, why not hire a cleaner to do it? You’ve worked hard enough to deserve one and this way you can work on more fulfilling side projects (and earn back the money you’re spending several times over), you can spend time with your family and friends, or you can spend more time enjoying the hobbies that you are truly passionate about. Likewise, you can give yourself more time by investing in a dishwasher, a robotic vacuum cleaner or maybe even a service that will deliver you readymade meals to your door for lunch and dinner! Invest in You Don’t think that this means you shouldn’t be spending time on your appearance though – you absolutely should. This takes us right back to our ‘law of attraction’ principle from the start of this book. Creating Business Models That Succeed This ‘results-focused attitude’ is also how you’re going to design your business models and choose your projects. Think about the resources you already have available to you, the contacts you already know and the skills that you already possess. If you are the editor of a magazine on a certain topic for example, then you have a huge captive audience. What business could you launch that you could aim at that audience? And as I’ve said already before: don’t think about success in terms of what others perceive as success.A lot of people will try and start businesses that they think will ‘change the world’ or ‘offer something completely unique’. But you know what? This type of business makes it much harder to find investors and much harder to market. If you want to make money quickly, if that is your goal, then you’re often much better off just using a tried and tested business model that countless people have used before. Don’t invest huge amounts of money into a business before you have verified it’.Use the ‘fail fast principle’ by creating an MVP and seeing if it is successful before spending lots of time on it. This will also let you stay lean and jump between multiple business models. If you’re willing to look for the shortcuts and if you understand the most important variables in each equation, then you can often sidestep the work and jump straight to the good part – earning lots of cash! Success really doesn’t have to be as hard as everyone makes it out to be. You just need to the right attitude and some gumption.
Do Successful Entrepreneurs Always Take Big Risks?
One of the things that make people wary of entering the world of entrepreneurship is that they are risk-takers by nature and they believe that they are going to be able to be a successful entrepreneur without taking huge risks. One of the first things that always comes to mind is the business loan or investment in a company. A business loan for tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars is certainly a risky venture and when the economy is poor would-be entrepreneurs simply give up before they start because they are afraid of those risks. But do successful entrepreneurs always take huge risks? The Truth about Successful Entrepreneurs The truth is, while entrepreneurs do take risks once in a while and should take a risk if the chances of success are good, most entrepreneurs are actually very conservative when it comes to risk. For example, a successful entrepreneur isn’t going to spend a hundred thousand dollars buying inventory for an online store without first spending a few hundred dollars in designing a website in order to test whether or not the product would be popular; such as a website with the products listed but showing how to start when someone tries to buy one. This gives the business owner real numbers to evaluate risk with a tiny investment. How Entrepreneurs Prevent Risks Entrepreneurs to become successful rarely do it out of sheer chance. Although there have been a few cases where a person was in the right place at the right time, they still had to develop the product and get it in front of people. But the majority of the time, chances have almost nothing to do with it. Instead, analysis and smart decisions are the frameworks of their business, both things geared towards minimizing the risk as much as possible. How Entrepreneurs Minimize Their Investment Also, entrepreneurs look for ways to save money, even if it’s only a few dollars, because each cost-saving action can add up to quite a bit of money. That’s why they look for very low-cost or free things that will allow them to make their business better without costing them anything. Some examples of this are: software, marketing, web design and much more. Successful entrepreneurs minimize the risk, save money wherever they can, and end up with an investment that is engineered to succeed – and that’s the right way to approach entrepreneurship.
Doing It Right As a Team
There are several reasons why there is a need to explore and even implement periodic exercises within a team for spoken communication training. Some of the elements that should be addressed within the spoken communication training are as listed below: Ensuring that all involved learn to speak clearly and audibly is the first step to effective communication. Taking the time and effort to stop where the impact is needed for all listening to understand the importance of a particular point being made help to emphasize the point. Using “clever” or bombastic language is often more confusing than enlightening. By the constant use of such language the listeners would either lose interest in what is being said or worst still go about doing things in a way that is quite contrary to the purpose at hand, thus causing even further complications. The idea of effective communication is not to impress but to ensure the contents of what is being said is completely understood by all. When delivering important instructions, adopting a method where the listeners are asked to repeat the said instructions, ensures a complete understanding of what is required by both parties. Also giving the instruction in an orderly format helps to keeps confusion levels minimal. If the intention is to keep everyone relaxed, simple and easy-to-understand language should be used. Avoid making too many jokes especially if the connotations are ambiguous, as it can not only cause confusion but also cause misinterpretation and the feeling of being slighted. Using active rather than passive language patterns is also encouraged. There is more emphasis on the importance of the action requirement through active language patterns. Qualities of a Good Leader Supportive A good team leader should be able to encourage and support his or her team. This is what can help build a strong team. Enabling people to be the best that they can be, also improves the general performance of the team as a whole. A good team leader also listens to the grievances and requests of the team and presents this to the organization. The leader should be willing to effectively represent his team whenever the need arises. Great Interpersonal Skills and Strong Relatable Character A good leader should have good character. He should be someone that the team members can easily talk to. A good leader knows where to strike the balance between being friendly and authoritative at the same time. If a team respects their leader, they will be able to follow and work together effectively. However, a team that fears their leader will not be able to work well together. Confident A good leader should always be confident in everything that they do. A team may easily fail to follow a person who seems to be unsure about themselves or the tasks in hand. The team may also fail to respect such a leader. A confident leader can also easily inspire others to be their best and work hard at attaining their set objectives. A confident person is more likely to lead a team effectively. Committed to Excellence There are different types of teams. There is a team that may just try to complete assignments fast without paying attention to quality. There are others that can’t be bothered and normally fail to meet objectives or deadlines. These teams have weak leaders who fail to lead them in the right direction. A good team leader should always have integrity and commitment to excellence. They should seek to have the performance from the team. Such a leader ensures that the team remains productive at all times. As a leader, you have to set high standards and equally high expectation levels. This will help your team embers to aim high each time. Focused If a team leader isn’t focused then it’s very hard for the team to work together to realize their goals. A distracted team is likely to postpone assignments or even fail to work together if at all they don’t share common objectives. A focused leader will be firm at ensuring that every member of the team participates in helping achieve the set goals and objectives. He normally has his mind set of increasing productivity and the output quality of the team. Excellent Communication Skills You can’t lead people if at all you can’t express yourself effectively. Communication is about just being able to be understood. You need to watch out for small issues that may bring a communication breakdown. Learn to be polite and to talk to your teammates with respect. A leader who constantly yells doesn’t inspire his or her team. You should also not issue orders. Learn to discuss and make requests or assign roles. You should also learn to be listener. This is a very effective communication skill. You can learn a lot and get to work well with others if only you learn how to listen first. Innovative An effective leader should know how to think outside the box. Such a person will be able to make the team develop and progress well. Motivating A team will not be able to perform well if they aren’t motivated. You need to keep the team in high spirits. You don’t have to give incentives but just simple things can keep your team motivated. For instance, if someone does something good, it’s good to take not and compliment them. There are teams that acknowledge “the employee of the month/year”. This form of appreciation is also very effective as it motivates the team members to work hard. Once your team a member excels in a project you should congratulate or show them some appreciation. This will motivate them to work harder. Good at Conflict Resolution A team is normally made up of people of different personalities and ideologies. This means that from time to time, there will conflicts among members. A team leader should be able to resolve these conflicts without taking sides or making unfair judgment. He should always ensure that the team gets
Top 3 Business Strategies for Online Entrepreneurs
So, you want to be a successful entrepreneur. But which business strategy do you choose? There seem to be so many out there, with each so-called guru touting a different philosophy, that it can be very difficult to narrow down a business strategy that actually works. However, when you remove all of the window dressing and break the strategies down to the basics there are only three that makeup nearly all of the entrepreneurial ventures that are out there. Which one you choose will depend on your personal preference, your unique skills, and where you see a hole in the market. Service Providers The first of our three top strategies is providing some type of service. There are many occupations that provide a service where someone can become an entrepreneur. Graphic design is one good example; freelance writing is another. Whenever you are doing a service for somebody else and they are paying you for it (while not in the employee of another person or company) you are an entrepreneur. Affiliate Marketing Another big boom in Internet entrepreneurship is affiliate marketing. With the creation of websites like Clickbank, the affiliate programs offered by leading retailers like Amazon, and the big profits that could be potentially earned, affiliate marketing is one of the most popular entrepreneurial ventures today. With affiliate marketing, you find the customer, send them over to the seller to buy the product and the seller pays you a commission. Of course, you have to find the right product not to mention have a solid plan for getting in front of people that can be difficult. Info Product Creation Rather than being the person that receives the commission when someone buys a product from someone else, you could be the person that they are buying that product from. You could create an info product of some kind that you’ll be able to sell to the Internet at large. One of the more popular ways to do this is by publishing Kindle content on Amazon, but the products on Clickbank are also part of this strategy. Combining Strategies Of course, you don’t have to just stick with one. You could combine two of the above strategies or you could combine all three if you like. There are no rules when it comes to entrepreneurship. If you can create something that sells, or make money at something and be successful, you are an entrepreneur.
The True Meaning and Significance of Team Building
The term team building may not be new to us but it is not surprising that many of us still do not have a full understanding of what this term really means. More often than not, we see team building as an opportunity to get away from the humdrum of everyday work and experience a paid vacation with our colleagues. To others, it is merely a waste of corporate or organizational time and money as it does not really help build teams, but only gives employees a reason to take a long break from work. It can be quite difficult to fully define what this term really means. When used in a business context, it refers to a wide range of activities geared towards the improvement of team performance. It can be pursued through many different kinds of practices which can range from simple bonding activities or exercises to complex work and situational simulations to multiple day retreats that are all designed to help build or develop a team. The term should not be confused or interchanged with team recreation, because team recreation merely consists of different activities for teams that are purely recreational. Team building is often associated with business organizations and is generally discussed within the theory and practice of organizational behavior and development. However, it is not limited to enterprises and organizations alone – it can also be applied to school groups, civic organizations, sports teams, and many others. Many business and organizational executives, managers, leaders, and even regular employees believe that this concept plays an important role in any environment because it focuses on and specializes in bringing out the best in a team and in each of its members. With improved team performance, teams can better ensure that there are enhanced leadership skills, positive communication, and self-development within the team. This can result to an improved ability to work closely together as a team to solve problems more effectively and efficiently. While there are business enterprises and organizations that focus on specific individuals and personal goals (with rewards and recognition that single out the achievements of certain individual employees), this does not mean that teams no longer have a place in the company or organization. This tendency of focusing more on individual achievements only emphasizes the growing challenge of developing effective teams within the workplace, civic group, sports club or school organization through team-building activities.
Top Tips for Sticking with Your Budget
So you have a family budget. There’s only one problem – you haven’t stuck with it! Maybe your budget is nicely outlined and detailed but sits unused on your computer or in your desk drawer. Formulating a budget is a challenge, but once you have it done, it doesn’t do any good unless you stick with it. Of course, sometimes you do need to compromise, and your budget does need to be somewhat flexible. But you can periodically tweak and adjust your budget and still stick to it. Here are some creative and even fun tips for sticking with your budget. Have a Look-See Maybe your budget didn’t work out because it didn’t fit your needs. Take a fresh look at your budget and ask some of the following questions: Is it too detailed? You might find it exhausting trying to keep a budget that has dozens of categories. Is it too simple? If your budget is too general, you may have let it slide because there just weren’t enough details to get a true grasp on your finances. Does your budget include alternatives? If your family is not the creative type, you may have had trouble coming up with alternatives to the budget cutbacks. For instance, if your budget revealed that you needed to cut back on eating out, and you didn’t have an alternative plan for what you were going to do instead of eating out, you might have slipped up and deviated from your budget. For some people, this is natural; others need to write in alternatives. Are you realistic about your income? A budget may fail if your income section is more about goals and ideals than actuals. Are there rewards? A budget should have some rewards worked into it – a vacation, a movie out, or a new pair of shoes. Include Fun Alternatives As noted above, having alternatives to fill the void created by cutbacks is helpful to keep your budget. Having creative and fun alternatives may be even more helpful. Here are some ideas. Instead of eating lunch out, pack a fun lunch Bento-style. Lunch-in can be a fun picnic, indoor or outdoor. Staying home for dinner can be fun if it involves a cookout or, if you’re really in the mood to be creative, experimenting with a homemade solar oven. Cutting back by getting rid of cable need not be too painful – high-speed internet access is generally a whole lot cheaper than cable, and the family can have fun gathering around the computer for movie night online. Instead of going to the movies, make your own. Have a family make-a-movie night and put on plays, puppet shows, or what-have-you. Capture the fun using your digital camera or webcam. Look up how to make your own skin cleansers, household cleaners, and even shampoo online. Learn how you can make these things for pennies, saving by shunning store-bought versions and having fun in the process. Sometimes, just getting creative and customizing your budget to fit your family can go a long way toward encouraging everyone to stick with it.
Tips for Running a Creative Business
Creative businesses often have the same challenge. That challenge is how to be creative and successful. This isn’t always easy to achieve, so these ten tips have been provided to help you in your venture. 1. Put your focus into one area and become good at it. If you focus on what you’re good at as opposed to doing what people want, you’ll notice you have a greater chance of success. This is because you specialize in one area, allowing you to offer more value in your specific area of work. 2. Plan where you want your business to go. If you have a good vision of what you want, this will be very helpful. You can always change your plan as things in life change, but having your plan written down will keep you focused on your goals. 3. Do different things. When you change things up a little bit, people are bound to notice and pay attention to you. Realize that if you only offer the same things as everyone else around you, you won’t stand out in the crowd of businesses. Taking risks gets you noticed. 4. Pay attention to the numbers. You may work in a more creative field but that doesn’t mean you can forget about numbers. You have to ensure that you have a regular cash flow and without an organized way to go through all of the numbers, you’ll never know how successful you are. 5. Share your ideas to revolutionize. Talking to others is the key to a successful business. Having a great diversity of ideas can help you to adopt an innovative way of doing things for your business. Collaboration helps you to succeed in this world. 6. Have proper protection of your ideas. You don’t want to ever run into the issue of someone stealing your ideas. Be sure to be able to defend your ideas if you ever do run into this unfortunate issue. Your ideas are the essence of what you and your business are, so ensure that you know how to protect yourself including use of trademarks and/or copyrights as needed. 7. Take a digital approach to your business. Engage with your customers, employees, and suppliers. Learn how to use different social media platforms to help promote your business. This will help you to extend the boundaries of your business and how to appeal to people to support you and your business. 8. Don’t lose hope. People always make mistakes but it’s important that you move away from them and learn from them. You need to be determined to run a business of your own so don’t give up easily. 9. Always strive to improve. Continuous improvements help to make a business succeed. This includes looking back at things that went wrong and making them better. 10. Have fun. You’re supposed to have fun while running a creative business. Having fun makes work enjoyable, even the more routine tasks that form part of any business. It’s not easy running your own creative business but when following these tips, hopefully, it can help your business run a little bit easier.
The Future of the Workplace
Remote working has been hailed as the green option, but there are problems with it. Few of us can afford to dedicate an entire room in the house to being an office, particularly if others are at home. From an environmental perspective, being sat in home offices with lights on, boiling the kettle and having the radio on for company burns energy just for one person. The office of the future is far less likely to be in our homes than in a shared hub, where technical problems can be dealt with by a shared IT manager and people can gather around the office coffee machines. Such hubs will eliminate the need to travel. Staff walking to work will be fitter, less stressed and less likely to miss work at the first sign of snow. From companies’ perspectives, it becomes easier to know when someone is working, and from an individual’s perspective, having company and being able to clock off at the end of the day leads to a far healthier work/life balance. From a green perspective, rather than 20 kettles being boiled three times a day, single cup coffee machines offer a manageable solution, whilst office technology – which might even include and; hot desking’ (sharing desks and machines) – doesn’t need to be set up several times over and could result in better access to newer technologies. These hubs may even offer shared transport to bring in those who are further afield, offering greater job prospects to those living in remote areas. Hubs could even provide a solution for people being left behind by poor broadband access: with such a concentration of people, the economics of providing high-powered broadband become feasible. Around them will spring services – the local farmers can offer up fresh foods to take home far more easily than a trip to the supermarket, meaning that the food we take home is fresher and healthier, and supports the local economy. Our currently endangered library services could be located at the hubs, along with and; Internet cafes’ that allow access to the internet to people within local communities who might otherwise be without. Training can be shared across companies. Those who are starting their own businesses will be able to access shared services and advice, reducing the chance of business failures. The benefit to society of businesses succeeding will create a virtuous cycle, offering opportunities, help, and resources to those who might otherwise never have had the knowledge and experience to take their great idea to the outside world. Being huddled around a shared coffee machine in an office hub will offer support and community, company costs will be reduced, and the environment will benefit. The sooner we start thinking about how to deliver the benefits, the better.
The 10 Most Powerful Tips for Leaders
So with all that said and done, there is an awful lot to take on board here. Hopefully you have a much better idea now of what really makes a great leader and how you can win the respect of your team and steer them to victory almost without trying. But still, putting all this into action can be challenging and that’s why it’s useful to break this down further and to recap on some of the most potent tips we covered throughout this article. So here they are… 1. Have a Vision You Believe In This is by far the single most important point if you want to make sure your team respects you and that you are making the right decisions for your organization. 2. Focus on Your Mission Statement As a leader, you need to see the bigger picture and that means focusing on how to deliver results and how to grow the business. 3. Build Resilience and Plan for Contingencies Make sure that your business is able to handle crises and that you know what you’ll do in any of the worst case scenarios. 4. Hire the Right Team Your team should be diverse in their skills and their abilities but they should be united by the common goal that you all share and the common vision. 5. Give Your Team Autonomy and Credit This is the best way to make work intrinsically motivating for your team and to ensure they work hard and passionately. 6. Stay Calm, Be Respected This will keep your team calm and it will make you seem more confident. This is most important when you are challenged by dissidents and when you are going through tough times. By showing your passion, doing what’s best for the team and being friendly but distant, you can endeavor to be respected. This is better than being liked or feared. 7. Be One Step Ahead Use financial modelling and other techniques to stay one step ahead. 8. Take Responsibility If things go wrong, you must always take responsibility. This gives your team confidence and assurance but also wins their respect. 9. Be Knowledgeable You won’t be the best at anything and you need to know how to delegate. BUT you should also make it your business to understand the role of each team member so that you can oversea the course of your ship. 10. Take Risks It is important to take risks and be courageous as a leader. This is again what will allow you to grow and what will make your team achieve above the rest.
Team building exercises Help Your Business Performance
Team building programmes can help your business by improving the communication, levels of trust and general understanding between the members of a team. It is important that you plan it carefully. A negative experience can irreparably damage your team’s morale and have the opposite effect that you were hoping to create. If you have no in-house expertise in this area it may be worth calling in the experts. Depending on your budget and/or plans this could involve someone offering an initial consultancy through to designing and administering a bespoke programme for you. One of the benefits is that they have experience of using a range of recognised diagnostic tools and instruments. This means that you can be confident that it is a positive experience, meets all of your chosen objectives and makes a positive contribution to your business’ performance. There are a number of different types of team building exercises that you could use depending on the areas that you want to address. For example there are problem solving exercises with an objective of encouraging flexible thinking and creativity. There are also planning or communication activities and these can develop the importance of these business processes, as well as exercises that have the aim of developing trust between the members of a team. Within these categories the activities can take a range of different forms from social and/or group bonding activities through to personal development activities or activities to analyse team roles and dynamics. One of the first factors you need to take into consideration is to ensure that there is understanding of the need for the session and one way of doing this is to connect any activity to the team’s day to day work and any obstacles that have been identified. It is also important to create a sense of ownership and to follow up any of the outcomes of the session as agreed. Other ways to help your team building session to be a success is to get the individuals within the team involved in the preparation of the event. This could be by simply seeking initial feedback on their issues and concerns, holding a survey of what the team members think the obstacles are in improving productivity or getting a small group to work with the consultants to plan the whole programme. By making the event something they can buy into rather than something that is ‘done’ to them, team members will have a positive approach to the event from the beginning. If some of the team members are hostile to the idea of team building exercises, possibly because of negative experiences in the past, try linking it with other activities. Perhaps the whole team needs training on a new computer system. Rather than a simple IT training session why not link in a team building strand to the event. As well as things to build into your event there are also a number of things to try and avoid, for example try and make sure that the session is pitched at the right level. While some may enjoy fun ice breaker type activities, chances are your team are already very busy people and if they think that you are wasting their time it will probably put them in a negative mindset for the session. Similarly though overly complex tasks or physically or emotionally draining activities should also be avoided, you want to try and engage everyone. While there are many benefits to be gained from taking your team out of the office for some outdoor and/or physical development activity make sure you take into account the makeup of your team and make sure that all members of the team will be able to contribute to activities and complete them in a satisfactory way. Team building programmes can give a business a vital competitive edge over their competitors by not only improving productivity but also improving morale and leadership skills, developing new procedures and processes or identifying blockages that are holding back the team’s and therefore the business’ performance. They can also help teams to identify their strengths and weaknesses and to clearly identify the team’s goals and objectives and to help them feel ownership of these goals and objectives.
