by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Aug 28, 2012 | Entrepreneur, Life Thoughts
Timely commitments speak volumes about your intentions. If you are consistently missing time limits or deadlines, delaying outcomes or otherwise just holding off on completing promised projects, what message are you giving to the recipient?
“When you find someone who you think is an ‘A’ player and effective, you should go back and see if they were an A player and effective previously. And if you can see that he or she was accountable, collaborative and inspiring in his or her previous work, you can expect the same kind of performance going forward.” Jim Schleckser
As business owners, we are inundated with unlimited requests for our time and expertise but when you overcommit or plainly don’t back up your word with actions, you are shortchanging yourself, your clients, partners or colleagues. Consider the nonverbal communication you are sending when you don’t deliver the promised results in the appropriate timeline.
Meeting your demands in timely manner is good service on deliverables. It demonstrates your committed resolve to get the job done; a dedication to responsibility. If you can remember a time of disappointment or frustration when you were waiting for a response, final product, contract or any other form of collateral and you perceived an extensive delay, what thoughts consumed you about the contributor?
“Do unto others as you would have them do to you.”
As said in the Freelance Switch article 14 Essential Tips for Meeting a Deadline, “Your reputation as a freelancer is pretty much the only thing you have to go on — your bread and butter.” As we continue to build and foster relationships, both online and off, your reputation will become a predictor of future business and partnerships.”
While we may hit a few roadblocks in the process: technical issues, data requirements, brain-cramp, logistics, team members faltering, with proper planning, insight and time padding, you should meet or beat every deadline, whether explicitly implied or merely an unspoken exchange of expectations.
When you evaluate your “proficiency” for meeting deadlines, you must also review your level or reasons for procrastination. Putting something off only perpetuates additional anxiety and stress. We all may procrastinate on occasion. It could be a chronic issue for some while for others; it’s only a problem in certain areas of their life. Procrastination is continuously frustrating because it creates a domino effect in wasted time, lost opportunities, disappointing work performance, and generally a bad perceived feeling of self.
Procrastinating allows less important tasks to usurp your time and space when you should be more focused on projects that take a higher precedence. Most people don’t have a problem finding time for the things they want to do, but once a task is presumed challenging, time consuming, or boring, procrastination takes over.
If procrastination produces negative results, then why do we allow this behavior? Procrastinating actually reinforces itself in two ways. 1. It is difficult for most to institute change or accept that a real change is required. We tend to divert our attention away from a task to do something we want to do, something that is more desirable. 2. Procrastination can help to feed ego when the deadlines are met at the very last minute and you or others pat yourself on the back for getting it done. If the project isn’t as acceptable as you had wanted, you blame it on time restraints. Either way, you are reinforcing the habit of putting things off.
University of Cambridge states: “Often we try to disguise our avoidance by being very busy doing things that may be interesting, and even useful, but don’t contribute towards the main goal – even doing something we normally hate – rather than writing, for example, just before an essay deadline!”
Recognizing your behaviors and tuning into the purposes will guide your future actions and reactions. Learn what drives you and if change is needed, then start with simple steps. Persevere, knowing that change is a positive tool affecting your personal and professional relationships.
- Honor your words, unspoken guarantees and anticipated recipient results
- Plan your time and projects with dated action steps
- If required, seek assistance early on, don’t wait until the last hour
- Over deliver
- Don’t keep someone waiting or wondering
- Correspond and update as needed
Harvey Mckay: “Deadlines aren’t bad. They help you organize your time. They help you set priorities. They make you get going when you might not feel like it. And meeting deadlines successfully is one of the best motivating factors out there.”
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Aug 8, 2012 | Entrepreneur, Guest Blogger
And One More Thing… Be In 2 Places At Once by Clemens Rettich
Every small business owner, regardless of what goals they are dreaming of must do two seemingly contradictory things: focus on the future, and be completely in the present.
You cannot be successful in growing a small business if you do not keep your eyes on the future. You know where you are going, or go nowhere. You must create your own future as much as you can, or live a future created by others.
You must also be fully present or miss everything that matters right now. You will run off a cliff because you were too busy looking at the sky. Each moment you are not present for, you will not live at all.
So how do you focus on the future and live in the present? How do you plan and execute simultaneously? How do you remain grounded and fly at the same time?
The answer lies in the concept of the Great Performance. A Great Performance in sports or the performing arts is based on 3 fundamentals that business owners could learn a lot from.
Practice for 10,000 hours.
Being really good at planning for the future and at acting with intelligence in each moment is the product of one thing: experience.
10,000 hours of experience.
This has implications for growing a small business.
You must have the resources to be patient. If you create a financial plan that has you hitting maximum net income in 24 months, and you are betting the existence of your business on that timeline, you could be in trouble. Make sure you have the resources to go the distance.
Master The Script
Great performers spend the time between performances practicing the fundamentals of their discipline over and over and over again. They rehearse the script or score or choreography until they have absorbed what matters on a cellular level.
In growing a small business this means:
- Write a simple story. Create a simple and compelling vision for what next year, or the next decade looks like. If it is longer than a page, shorten it.
- Master the five fundamentals: finances, human resources, marketing, operations, and management. Read, attend seminars, and take courses. When you come across a gap in your understanding make a note of it and look it up.
- Build a team. We talk about the team in business a lot. Drive it deeper by thinking ensemble or band. A band is incomplete without a drummer. An orchestra is incomplete without a brass section. In your business focus on developing specialists each with a set of skills required for a whole Great Performance.
- Embed everything. Commit to the two fundamentals of great operations: publishing and training. Write everything that matters down. Then train, meet, talk, rehearse, practice, and train some more. Recording what matters embeds it into the documents of your business. Training and practice embed it in the people of your business.
Let Go
When your 10,000 hours are up, and if you have spent them in learning, recording, and practicing, it is time to let go. Letting go involves trusting yourself and your team enough not to over-think the details, to micro-manage, or study threats and opportunities to death. Act.
Trust and be present. Show up clear and rooted in the present, not weighted or distracted by the past, or fearful of the future.
There are 4 components of letting go a business owner must tend to.
- The never-ending conversation. Great business owners don’t ever stop learning through conversation. They talk to everyone and listen to everything. The experienced business owner connects those thousands of points of information or the energies of thousands of relationships to her decisions in subtle and nuanced ways.
- The never-ending dues. You are never too good or too old to acknowledge your debts, to invest in more learning, to continue your practice, or plan your next step. At the letting go stage the practice focuses on deeper skills of leadership and communication; the planning is more strategic than tactical.
- The conductor’s baton. Put down your violin and pick up the baton. The orchestral conductor is concerned with the success of the performance. Her job is to be present to the largest picture possible: the performance of the entire piece, the experience of the audience, and the energies and dynamics of a 2-hour performance. I tell my clients that if they are spending more than 30% of their time focusing on operational concerns, we have not yet reached the stage of letting go and must continue to work towards that.
- The continuous present. This is the heart of mastering the Great Performance in business: the ability to see the whole performance, the past, present and future of your business as one single point. That is the true resolution of the question “How do you live in the moment and plan for the future?”
Business leaders who have earned this position see the details on the shop floor and the strategic objectives for the year as the same thing. Both are the product of one vision and a consistent culture. They don’t see yesterday’s economic news and tomorrow’s plans to enter a new market as isolated points. They deeply understand their intimate relationship.
The future is the natural extension of things done right in the present. The present is the only place where real decisions can be made and real action taken. It is in the present that the vision for the future is created. The future is the present anticipated.
The greatest performances come from a place of understanding you cannot control everything. The weather happens. Period. You trust you have the foundations to make the best of whatever happens. And if you don’t, that is not a problem for the future; it is a problem for right now.
Guest Author: Clemens Rettich
Business Coach, Writer & Workshop Leader
Twitter: @ClemensRettich
Clemens Rettich Business Consulting Ltd.
Designing for Great Management & Business Growth
Follow his blog: Small Business Fundamentals
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | Jul 8, 2012 | Guest Blogger
The individual who wants to reach the top in business must appreciate the might and force of habit.
He must be quick to break those habits that can break him – and hasten to adopt those practices that will become the habits that help him achieve the success he desires. – J. Paul Getty ::
I found this quote as I was reading Jack Canfield‘s book The Success Principles. . . It was interesting to learn that 90% of our behavior is habitual. 90 percent!
“What ever habits you currently have established are producing your current level of results.”
This is such a simple idea. How many of us have areas in our lives that could use more productive habits? I think the most intimidating thing when recognizing something needs changing is knowing what to do next. There is no manual for our specific needs, wants or dreams and how to achieve them . . . or is there?
If you want to be a chef – where do you start? In the kitchen right? You buy recipe books and spend your free time buying the tools. You start baking, cooking and learning how to become a gourmet chef until you can produce a 5 course meal for 6 people in your sleep.
Regardless of where you need more productive habits – I think the success habits you are searching for can be found when you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve, from short term to larger long term goals, and consistently performing the actions necessary to reach them.
“Success is a matter of understanding and religiously practicing specific, simple habits that always lead to success.” – Robert J. Ringer, Author of Million Dollar Habits
One great take away from my reading of Principle 34 . . . “Good or bad, habits always deliver results.” How true!
Below are 7 ways I have helped myself reach my goals. I sure hope they help inspire you!
Success Habits : 7 Ways to Reach Your Goals
- Start with identifying the most important specific things you are doing that need improvement.
- Go through your list and come up with at least 3 alternative actions for each item that could help you change the bad habits.
- On note cards (or on the note pad on your phone), write out each specific thing that needs improvement with the alternative actions. Each day review these actions – over breakfast, waiting in line at the grocer, Lunch . . . when ever you have time to review them. Knowing where you can improve and learning an alternative response that then becomes a success habit takes time.
- Have 100% commitment to your goals. Stand firm and don’t give in. . . you are the most persuasive person when you don’t want to do something, are too tired, or don’t have enough time. Stick with it. Results take time.
- Stay motivated. Read books & blogs by people that inspire you. Subscribe to magazines, take classes, reach out to and find a mentor. Go through your social networks and create the environment you need to achieve your goals. That means unfriending or friending, unfollowing or following until you have the right balance for each social network you use on a daily basis. Each network is a unique environment. Because so many use social sites on a daily basis – making your online experience one that will help you stay motivated, positive and on task is up to you!
- Drink plenty of water. I know some of you are asking – “What the hell does this have to do with success habits?” Well, let me tell you. Water plays a vital role in healthy brain function. So put down that soda, tea or coffee and make a commitment to drink half your body weight in ounces daily. How can you develop your new success habits if you can’t focus?
- Review your results regularly. If you start to see that your new success habits are producing the results you had hoped for *woo hoo! Congratulations! It’s time for you to add a new goal to your list. If not, it’s time to review your alternate actions that you came up with (# 2) and hit reset. Just because you didn’t see the results you wanted with one action – it doesn’t mean that the situation is hopeless and success can’t be yours.
In an article published in the European Journal of Social Psychology in July of 2009, researchers stated that “The time it took participants to reach 95% of their asymptote of automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days; indicating considerable variation in how long it takes people to reach their limit of automaticity and highlighting that it can take a very long time.” So if you want to banish bad habits – be patient and stay committed!
I have to say that Jack Canfield has some amazing FREE resources over at The Success Principles to get you started on your new success habits!
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Share the success habits you have developed!
How do you stay motivated to reach your goals on a daily basis?
Thank you to Danielle Hatfield for submitting this post. Danielle is proud to be the Chief Dirt Digger at Experience Farm, the Community Manager and Editor of Linking Triad, Managing Partner of Linking Greensboro, and that chick who is responsible for hatching @gsotweetup. You can also follow the wonderfully incredible Danielle on Twitter @dhatfield.
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | May 29, 2012 | Entrepreneur
Follow your passion. We all hear that but what does it take to make your dreams come true?
Blood, sweat and tears. Oh my!
As children we may have dreamed the biggest dreams, the treasures of life and what we wanted for our future. As our life unfolded and we matured, that may have evolved into a different vision. Our personal lives and experiences, shaped and molded us on our journey, helping us to discover what we are truly made of. We learned lessons along the way, accepted what we could not change, while continuing with additional drivers toward our goals. We saw what we wanted and we took every step, every measure, to ensure our pot of gold was within reach.
Steve Jobs: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
Richard Branson: “My biggest motivation? Just to keep challenging myself. I see life almost like one long University education that I never had – everyday I’m learning something new.”
Oprah Winfrey: “Every time you state what you want or believe, you’re the first to hear it. It’s a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Don’t put a ceiling on yourself.”
Robert Collier: “The great successful men of the world have used their imagination? They think ahead and create their mental picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building – steadily building.”
Brian Tracy: “Personal development is your springboard to personal excellence. Ongoing, continuous, non-stop personal development literally assures you that there is no limit to what you can accomplish.”
Linda Chandler: Think P.I.G. – that’s my motto. P stands for Persistence, I stands for Integrity, and G stands for Guts. These are the ingredients for a successful business and a successful life.”
Anita Roddick: “I have always found that my view of success has been iconoclastic: success to me is not about money or status or fame, its about finding a livelihood that brings me joy and self-sufficiency and a sense of contributing to the world.”
Warren Buffett: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”
Jim Rohn: “Formal education will make you a living, self education will make you a fortune.”
Michael Gerber: “The entrepreneur is not really interested in doing the work; he is interested in creating the way the company operates. In that regard, the entrepreneur is an inventor. He or she loves to invent, but does not love to manufacture or sell or distribute what he or she invents.”
Biz Stone: “Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight success.”
Walt Disney: “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
What are your motivators?
by Ace Concierge | Virtual Assistant | May 21, 2012 | Delegation, Organization
We are repeatedly bombarded by data overload via our push notifications, social media notices, text messages, phone calls, e-mails, Skype chats and news alerts on a daily basis. It is marvelous to always be connected, in touch and just a mere keystroke away. You are never alone and continuously up to date in both your personal and professional life. But there is a hitch and that is the negative impact it has on our concentration.
As a technologically in-tune society, we must learn to filter the urgency of our incoming communications in order to remain dedicated to the tasks at hand. The constant interruptions have a pronounced impact on our productivity and efficiency level, never mind time management. If we continue to allow outside distractions to compete for our time and focus, we are unable to give our absolute attention to our present moment and activities.
Computerworld reports that we are now living in a world of “interruption technology.”
Learning to unplug and tune out can present a challenge for many, but as an entrepreneur, it is paramount to your success, effectiveness and time management. Researchers at the University of Kent in Australia monitored the eye movements of 100 people using an eyeball-tracking camera. They asked the participants to read a section of text on a computer screen, before disturbing them with one-minute messages – like phone calls. The research subjects were then told to resume the original reading, while the eye-tracking camera analyzed how they did so. The investigators discovered that there was an average 17% increase in the total time it took to read the whole passage on the screen.
Psychology lecturer Ulrich Weger was quoted as saying: “I wasted time by reading emails whenever they came into my inbox. I noticed that once I had started reading the name of the sender, I read the first line of the text. Once I mastered that, I continued reading the entire message, and once I got to that point, I felt compelled to respond because there was no point in leaving an already half-finished task. Then sometimes I needed extra information to answer the message, so had to add other tasks.” Which meant it was harder to get back to the original task.
Now just imagine all of the alerts and communications you receive during the day; probably much more than what was instituted in the above research. If there was a 17% increase in the length of time it took to read the passage, can you imagine how your output is affected with a continual barrage of steady disturbances?
Here are a few tips to assist you in halting unnecessary diversions:
- Schedule time on your calendar to tune out and turn off
- Let others know you are “off limits” during certain working hours
- Close the door or put on earbuds
- Silence your Smartphone
- Just say NO to social media! (Facebook and Twitter updates are always accessible).
- Shutdown everything that notifies you of an alert, sound, or other announcement (your e-mail will still be waiting for you).
- COMMIT to your decision to focus and jump in with gusto
- Once your project is completed, come up for air, stretch, respond to voicemails, text messages and other communications.
- Grab an energy snack to refuel for your next session
Remember, being offline is an industrious act toward completing your projects, achieving your goals and remaining on task. You will see a considerable increase in your productivity as you continue to shield yourself from outside disturbances.
Turning off isn’t just for the business world. We are electronically tethered 24/7 and this crosses into our personal boundaries. It becomes too much when we allow technology to consume our time and energy away from the present moment, sacrificing the things that truly matter.
How do you tune out and limit distractions?
