JLM & Associates offers personal development counseling to help you take control of your personal and business success. Learn how to seize the kind of income you deserve and achieve the successful future of your dreams.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Business Should Be Easy

Have you ever heard an otherwise bright person use the expression, "That was too easy!" when describing a business transaction that occurred with no hassles and very little effort?

You can do yourself a favor if you begin to count the times things seem to effortlessly fall into place. I think you'll be surprised by the unusually high number.

However, we all seem to have some perverted stake in the feeling that business should be difficult. Because we feel that way, many times we unknowingly hunt for the trouble areas and exaggerate them to justify our original negative feelings. We create problems for ourselves where none existed before.

I'm not suggesting that all business is supposed to be easily accomplished, but I am suggesting that the natural flow of business is easier than we think it is.

I gave a keynote address recently to a group of business owners, and soon afterward was given a major contract from an executive who was in the audience. Interestingly, I had previously moved mountains in an attempt to get the attention of a decision maker in that particular organization to no avail.

Business is like that. When you plan and execute that plan, many times nothing happens. Likewise, sometimes when you expend the least amount of effort, great rewards come. There is a lesson to be learned here by those who are alert to it: Never, never, never say, "That was too easy!" such a proclamation suggests that the time has come to unearth inherent problems.

Believe me when I say that in such cases there is no problem, only erroneous assumptions that problems are lurking nearby. Business is the easiest part of the workday. It is systematic and the system is supposed to work. To think otherwise is to create problems, not to find them.

Sunday, January 21, 2007

Failing Enough To Win

There are a few good reasons for not taking personal initiative, but we often seem to find a number of bad reasons. The worst perhaps, is the fear of failure. It is the worst because most of the time you must fail enough to win.

Consider: You start playing baseball as a kid, you go to bat and ten times at bat, seven are outs. You keep this up. You pop up, you strike out, you dribble the ball to the pitcher, seven of ten times. Yet you persevere. You keep failing 70 percent of the time. You are out of called strikes, easy fly balls to left field, topped balls to the shortstop.

You keep up this spectacular failure rate until one day you are twenty-five years old and you would be totally disgusted with yourself, except a professional team just offered you a contract for a few million dollars a year

They did this because while you have been maintaining your extraordinary failure rate, you have been batting .300 and professional baseball teams pat a lot of money for failing this often. Look it up. They care about hits. To get 150 hits, you must be willing to fail 350 times.

Unless you are willing to do this, you don't get any of the hits. When your turn at bat comes, you must be willing to step up to the plate and strike out in order to hit consistently. This never changes. To win anything, you must go to bat, and you must be willing to get egg all-over your face a good deal of the time. That's just the way it is.

Two out of every three new business venture fail. So, nobody should risk starting a new business? Nobody should invent anything? Ninety-seven percent, or more, of direct advertising results in absolutely nothing. However, you'll notice that your mailbox hasn't gotten any emptier during the past few years. A lot of businesses are thriving on the three percent or less that might result in a sale.

Any teacher knows that only a small minority of students listen or care about what he or she is teaching, but that teacher lives for the few that will be inspired

When you fail, you are in great company. Literally.

Hey you only live once. So fail enough to know that you are alive. Fail away and make something happen. Take the initiative with your life and so something important. Make sure you fail enough to win.

The key here is the "enough." Never bat just once. There is too much at stake. Make sure you get to bat 500 times. Insure your 350 outs to get your 150 hits.

The world is littered with the potential of good folks who are afraid to bat. It's a tragedy. We could use the hits..

Heck, it's the runs batted in, not the strikeouts, that you'll remember anyway.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Work With Others To Reach Your Goals

Being a successful entrepreneur requires an abundance of optimism and a healthy measure of self-confidence, but as in many aspects of life our greatest strengths are also our greatest weaknesses.

Unrestrained enthusiasm is like lightening. It can strike anywhere. Enthusiasm needs to be counterbalanced by self-discipline and accurate thinking.

If you're good at selling and working with others, but not so proficient at running the office, perhaps your answer lies in forming an alliance with someone whose strengths compliment your weaknesses and vice versa. If you are a good outside person, make sure someone on your team is an equally good inside person.

In virtually every type of business, it is rare that the individual who starts and builds the business has the temperament to run it after it reaches a certain level of size and maturity. Most entrepreneurs don't have the patience for the systems and discipline required for the day to day management of the business.

If you find yourself in this position, conduct a realistic assessment of your strengths and weaknesses. Determine what you are best at and what you prefer not to do. Then look for a partner or associate who shares your basic values and commitment to the business or profession, but whose interests lie in the directions where you most need assistance.

When two or more people work in perfect harmony toward a common objective, the results can be awe-inspiring. Your alliance with other people can and should add up to a level of performance that far exceeds the sum of the individual contributions of each member.

Monday, January 08, 2007

The Art Of Fantasy

You're sitting at your desk, but your mind is a thousand miles away, lost in a daydream.

If a colleague comes along and says, "Hey, wake up. Stay on the ball!" You'd probably feel embarrassed, and dismiss the daydream from your mind.

We tend to think of daydreaming as distracting from productive thought. Napoleon Hill, author of the classic book Think and Grow Rich, however, said, "Imagination is the workshop of the soul wherein are shaped all plans for individual achievement."

I agree with what Napoleon Hill said, because without daydreams the psyche shrivels. Fantasy can be an economical way of trying on alternative ways of feeling, acting, and being.

Fantasy is especially useful for revealing our unfulfilled wishes. Here are three fantasy exercises that I often recommend to my clients to help them uncover desires and beliefs that may not yet have crystallized in their mind:

1. On a typical weeknight you're watching the evening news, you hear the winning numbers for the lottery and find out they match the numbers you've played, and you've just won $10 million dollars. After recovering from the shock (and calculating what amount would be left after taxes) you decide the first thing you'll do is...

2. While hiking in the mountains you notice a cave in a wall of granite. You crawl up to the opening and look into the darkness. In the distance you hear running water and a voice calling, "Let me out. Let me out." And...

3. Design a utopian society that could conceivably exist in your future. How is that society governed? What are the social and political mores? Who works? When? For what? How and by whom are children raised and educated?

Keeping your imagination active with "fantasies" like these will enable you to conceive of possibilities others overlook.

Psychologist Carl Jung once wrote, "Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever come to birth. The debt we own to the play of imagination is incalculable."

So, don't be afraid to let your imagination explore possibilities that extend beyond the boundaries of current reality.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Take The Time In 07

We often underestimate our ability to handle a problem that we have not faced before. We can erroneously believe that we can't do something only because we haven't tried or thoroughly thought about it.

M.Scott Peck, psychiatrist and author of The Road Less Traveled, makes this point when he describes how, at the age of 37, he first learned how to fix things.

Until then, he had considered himself a mechanical idiot, usually unable to do simple home repairs. Then, one day, he was walking and happened upon a neighbor repairing his lawn mower. Peck remarked, "Boy, I sure admire you. I've never been able to fix those kinds of things or do anything like that."

The neighbor responded, "That's because you don't take the time."

That answer struck home and Peck gave it careful consideration.

A few days later, the parking brake on a patient's car was stuck and she knew there was something that could be done under the dashboard that would release it, but she didn't know what.

Peck lay down on the floor of the front seat of her car, took his time to make himself comfortable there, examined the situation for a few minutes, saw at first a jumble of wires and tubes and rods, but then gradually figured out what most of them were for and focused his sight on the brake mechanisms. He traced its course and located a latch that, with a little pressure, sprung loose and released the brake. He felt like a master mechanic!

Of course, most of us don't possess sufficient technical knowledge to solve all of life's mechanical problems, but there are many for which we could devise a reasonably effective solution if didn't rush to judgment or despair.

Instead making yourself comfortable and taking the time to understand the problem, then thinking it through until a solution is found, can transform you from an armature into a master.

Too often, we try something hastily and when that doesn't immediately work, we give up and seek a repairman, or a psychiatrist or a consultant for people problems, when what we really need to to do is invest the time the problem demands.

So take the time in 2007 to solve the problem.