by Anne Alexander

Let’s say you’re the CFO of a real estate development company in Houston.

Let’s say you and your team has been working their tails off for many months.

Let’s say it’s an absolutely gorgeous spring day, in the low 70’s, no humidity.

Well, if you’re like this client of mine (who gave me permission to share this story), you’ll get a “wild hair” and close up shop for the afternoon and take everyone to the zoo!

My client, let’s call her “Jane,” and 14 of her staff went on a spur of the moment “field trip” to the zoo. They had an absolute ball! After all, it’s not every work day you get to pet four inch cockroaches and ride a carousel with your colleagues.

Jane also gave some funds to a few of her staffers to buy animal toy gifts from the gift shop. The next day everyone got one of these as a memento for their desk to help them remember the fun they had.

This little outing gave her staff a huge morale boost. They had a great time and got to connect with each other on a personal level. Jane used to do more of this when her staff was smaller, but like many of us, over the years, some of those good habits had slipped.

The next morning, her staff came to her office and gave her flowers and a thank you card. One of them commented that “you throw the best staff meetings!”

If you have a staff, when was the last time you celebrated with them, maybe even for “no good reason”? If you work solo, you still need to get out and have some fun, refresh yourself with something out of the ordinary.

In The Leadership Challenge by Kouzes and Posner, one of the best selling leadership books of all time (and my leadership bible), one of the five leadership practices is called “encourage the heart” and one of the two corollary commitments of that practice is to “celebrate the values and victories by creating a spirit of community.”

This is exactly what Jane was doing last week when she took her team to the zoo.

“Community may not be the stuff of ordinary organizations, but it is the stuff of great ones, ones with strong cultures,” said Kouzes and Posner.

What can you do this week to celebrate your company culture and your team?

See you at the zoo!

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Anne Alexander, president of Authentic Alternatives, Inc., based in Fort Collins, CO, works with business owners and managers all over the U.S. to develop strategies and systems that dramatically increase their bottom line profits. Visit the Good Business Blog to read more articles from Anne and other Good Business Experts!

If this clip doesn’t light a fire in you, then I highly recommend you reconsider your decision to be in leadership - as a business owner.

This video is a clip from the movie “Any Given Sunday” where Al Pacino gives a speech to his beaten down, broken team to either come together and fight or die!

Are you willing to fight for the life of your business? Are you willing to die for your team?

Well, many in small business don’t feel like they have a team because most don’t have paid employees. However, their team are people even more near and dear to them. They are their wives, their husbands, their children, their brothers and sisters who all contribute in one way, shape or form, because they believe in you!

Do you believe in yourself enough to lay your life on the line for your business? If so, then this piece will resonate well with you. If not, I challenge your motives for being in business! Because if you aren’t willing to die for your cause, then why would anyone else want to take a chance on you? If you are not giving it your all and selling the others around you that they are in fact on the right path, on the right team, how do you expect them to give their life and devotion to YOUR cause!

As you’ll learn from the clip, you can turn your fate around by focusing on the “inches". Your fate good or bad, is 6 inches in front of you. That’s the difference between life or death! Take one wrong step and your life could end. Take one right step and your life will begin!

What are your 6 inches to success? We would love to be your support for helping you achieve your goals! After all, your life depends on it!

Good Luck!

Jeff Levin
Online Entrepreneur
Founder of GrowthPOD.com
The I Promote You. You Promote Me! Network

by Marty Smith

Are you “investing” your time working ON your business or “spending” it working IN your business?

The challenge I find a lot of Business Owners face today is that they are so busy working in their business that they cannot see the full potential of their business. So many times I look at a business and think the owner is doing well, only to discover on talking to them, that they are not even earning as much, (when their income is converted to an hourly rate), as their top employees.

A while ago, we had a client who owned a commercial cleaning business. This client used to work each week doing the cleaning himself. When asked how much would it cost to employ someone to do the cleaning he was doing, he replied “about $600 per week”. He was then asked how much extra business he could generate if he spent this same time in a week looking for new customers. He said he could generate about $5000 worth of new business in a week.

It’s obvious, looking from an outsider’s perspective that the logical thing for the owner to do is employ a cleaner to work in the business so that the owner can work on the business.

How much mundane work are you doing that could often be completed by a teenager after school? Think about your business. How much work do you do that could be done by a junior or a casual, or maybe even a semi-retired person?

What are your opportunity costs? What value do you place on your time? How much extra business could you generate if you employed someone to do the day-to-day work?

What would it mean to your customers and your business if you were “freed up” to follow-up enquires that haven’t been chased up, socializing with customers, encouraging them to come back, or phoning existing customers to see if there is anything they require? The bottom line is you could be spending time on vital sales and marketing, but you’re bogged down doing the day-to-day, time-consuming, physical work that someone else could be doing.

How much time do you spend developing new marketing strategies, analyzing Measure & Test results, instigating relationships with other businesses and the host of other necessary activities that make the difference between a successful business and an average business?

There are a lot of things that a Business Owner needs to get done in an average day. Successful Business Owners are those that do the things that are important in maximizing profit rather than concentrating on the “urgent problems” that arise every day.

Use professional advisors to help you in areas you aren’t an expert. Get yourself a competent accountant and hire a bookkeeper, these sorts of people will save you time and money.

For example, if you were to invest in a Real Estate Development, you would take it for granted that you needed to hire the services of a Project Manager to advise you or to co-ordinate the Architect, Draughtsman, Town Planner, Finance Manager, Construction Manager, Marketing Manager, Sales Manager, etc.

When we get involved in business, most of us do so with little or no assistance at all. Yet “a business” as an investment can and does, when well managed, out perform every other type of investment.

Take the challenge and look at your business as an investment. Look for a return on your invested capital as well as an hourly rate of pay in excess of your top employees.

Review what happened last year, analyse the results you achieved, see what adjustments you need to make to obtain the results you require, plan next year and look at what assistance you require to obtain the desired result.

Remember above all else, time spent working on your business is far more important than time spent working in it.

Marty Smith is an ActionCOACH Business Coach. To learn more about Marty visit www.actioncoach.com/martysmith.

by Jim Reilly

It would help if we were able to understand the way people behave towards each other. Understanding this would make life much easier, especially when it comes to interacting in a social and business environment.

In the 1920’s, Dr. William Marsden, a Psychologist, designed a system called the DISC Personality Profile. The DISC system places people into one of four different categories:

D - Dominant

I - Influential

S - Steady

C - Compliant

The DISC Personality Profile is a personality analysis that can be used to predict the behavior of individuals when they work on their own or with others. However, there are limitations…people seldom have just one personality. Everyone is dominant in one personality type but another may be close.

Read through the characteristics of the various personality types and you will start to learn how people can be expected to behave when you interact with them.

High D’s like to be in control…they like to be on top and give the orders. High D’s like to be innovative pioneers, have active minds and like to be stimulated. At times quality can start to drop, especially it they are involved with many activities at the same time. Typical high D’s do not like to get immersed in details…so, a good area to focus on is to have a checking system in place and set aside time to track performance.

High I’s like to have fun, are outgoing and very friendly. Typically they are good motivators and team leaders. To manage a high I, you need to win them over and be their friend. Keep in mind that the High I have great people skills and to get in the game, you need to be very sincere…never fake! Typically the high I (like the High D) does not like to dig into details and they can improve by being more task oriented.

High S’s are steady people and don’t like to be rushed. When everyone else is stressing out, they are calm. They like to think things over, thus avoiding quick decisions. The high S can plan things which is a great support for the high D. The high S can improve by changing their ways with respect to time…make quicker decisions and don’t look back!

High C’s have a tendency to collect data, facts and figures. Another perspective is that they like to do things very well, if not perfectly. The high C likes to work on their own and they often view their standards as much higher than any. The high C will want the high I to be less friendly and more task oriented, while the high I will think opposite. One area for the high C to work on is to be more confident in their approach to decision making and not fear arriving at a wrong decision.

Making sense out of this…

The DISC profile can give you a good indication of people’s behavioral styles at work. Why not help your team by helping them have a better understanding of their own personality style, as well as the prospects and customers they are interacting with. Give some thought on how this can help improve customer satisfaction and retention which in turn could be a major contribution to the revenue stream of your business?

Jim Reilly is a business coach and seminar presenter with ActionCOACH Business Coaching, the world’s #1 coaching firm. For more information on Jim’s upcoming events or to lean how Jim can help your team, visit www.actioncoach.com/jimreilly or email jimreilly@actioncoach.com