Archive for mindset
Are you the thermostat or the thermometer?
Posted by: | CommentsWhen it comes to running a business, belonging to an organization or living your life, there are ups and downs – things beyond your control that impact you directly.
For your business, the economy can tank, making it harder for you to make sales.
A trusted employee can leave. A marketing strategy that’s worked for years can suddenly stop sending you new business.
Whenever things go bad, you have a choice – to be a thermostat or a thermometer. A thermometer reports current conditions – what’s the temperature right now. That’s all it can do.
A thermostat however, Read More→
Don’t wait for perfection
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Do you have a project or a new product in mind but you’re not quite ready to get started on it? Perhaps you’re waiting for a particular resource, or a chunk of free time to work on it. Or perhaps you need some extra money to put your plan into action.
I know because I’ve done this too – waited for the time/situation to be just perfect before getting started.
But then last week I was reading Prince Charming Isnt Coming
: How Women Get Smart About Money by Barbara Stanny. In this book, Stanny talks about how women often wait for a man to look after their finances for them. There is one particular passage that jumped out at me.
“Please note: “Mr. Right” or “Prince Charming” need not be a man, or even a person. Our prince could be an ideal job, an insurance settlement, the lottery jackpot, or just an amorphous “something” – anything that we fantasize will save us financially. To become genuinely smart with money, we must get to the point where we can say with total conviction, I can do it myself.
This passage really grabbed me by the throat and made me realize that there are a number of projects I’ve had on hold because I didn’t have everything perfect. Read More→
What’s your relationship with money?
Posted by: | CommentsIf you are in business you must focus on making a profit. Without profit, without earning descent money, you don’t have a business, you have a hobby.
Putting your focus on profit doesn’t make you a Ferengi. It is a necessary part of the business world. When you have a j-o-b, someone else is responsible for marketing, office space, administration and designing a business plan. You show up, do your job and get paid for your time.
But when you own your own business, even if you have employees, you are ultimately responsible for every part of your business. That’s why you charge a higher hourly rate than you would if you worked for someone else. Very few entrepreneurs bill 40 hours per week.
But in spite of this, many entrepreneurs have an uneasy relationship with money. And it is a relationship, as I was reminded by Iyabo Asani in a teleseminar I attended last night. In this teleseminar she said that money represents an exchange of energy. You provide a services (expend energy) and the customer gives you money in exchange.
However, if you have a problem relationship with money, it spills over into other parts of your business life. If you always feel there is never enough money, then it is often because you lack value in yourself. This can manifest itself in a lack of clients or in attracting clients who can’t or won’t pay what you’re worth.
What Iyabo said made a lot of sense to me. I know in my own life, my relationship with money hasn’t always run smooth. I don’t come from an entrepreneurial background so making money isn’t always seen as a good thing. This makes for some interesting thought processes when you’re in business, let me tell you.
However, when I focus on money, when I focus on cleaning up my relationship with money, things improve.
How? Read More→
Seth Godin says Real Artists Ship. Do you?
Posted by: | CommentsThe other day I was listening to the Marketing Over Coffee podcast featuring an interview with Seth Godin, talking about his new book Linchpin.
While the entire podcast was interesting – as always – there was one section in particular that stood out. Godin said, “real artists ship.”
By artists, he didn’t necessarily mean people who put paint on canvas. He broadened the term to mean anyone who is creative and bringing something new to the market, in particular entrepreneurs. What he really meant is successful entrepreneurs finish what they start and bring new products (or services) to market. They don’t spend forever making it perfect. They get it close enough, then release it.
During the interview they discussed a few well-known cases of companies taking forever to get a new product to market. In some cases, they never quite manage to release.
This got me to thinking about Read More→
Mindset – Whether Business or Baseball It’s All the Same
Posted by: | CommentsThis past weekend the Toronto Blue Jays had a reunion weekend celebrating the two World Series wins in 1992 and 1993. In the weeks leading up to the weekend, Joe Carter gave a ton of interviews promoting the event.
Any Blue Jays fan remembers Carter leaping with joy after he caught the final out to win the World Series in 1992. And there are few moments more exciting in Canadian sports history than Carter’s walk-off home run to win it all in 1993.
What fascinated me about the interviews Carter gave was his discussions about the mindset Read More→
