We frequently find ourselves with busy schedules full of meetings, sports events, appointments and other day-to-day activities that we forget to take a moment to observe what is going on around us. Slow down and take a step back to look around you and reflect on what is happening. In our attempt to check every box in our schedule, we miss those small lessons and opportunities to reflect. While it's important to acknowledge that there is always room to learn and grow, we should acknowledge and appreciate the small milestones we have gone through to reach our end goal. It is important [...]

The Top 3 Myths about Building a Strong Culture Business is about the people; we’ve all heard that before.  But as leaders, many of us don’t put enough focus on why this is truly important in our business.  People drive everything good and everything bad that happens in our environments.  They can be our best asset and competitive advantage and they can be our greatest liability.    The truth about people is that we all bring different experiences, ideas, perceptions into an organization.  We don’t do it on purpose, but it is not something we can ask people to turn off.  But underlying all these experiences, ideas and perceptions are an [...]

SALES – that word makes most people cringe.  Unless you are truly wired like a salesperson, it is not a term that most people find complimentary.  But what most of us don’t realize is that we are ALL in Sales, ALL the time.  We sell to our kids, spouses, employees, and customers.  We sell our ideas, opinions, beliefs and products/services.  We just don’t call it sales, we give it another name that sounds more flattering. I want everyone to embrace their inner sales skills and realize that each of us needs to master this to truly be successful.  Sales is about [...]

“Be a team player”.  We hear this statement throughout our lives.  While you’re in school, while you are playing sports, in our first careers – we hear about the need to be a team player and stay positive.   We go through our lives and careers being told how to be a team player.  But what we don’t learn early enough is there is a fine line between being a team player and being able to set boundaries for your life and career that allow for balance.  Many of us are the first people to volunteer for things in the [...]

How much of your focus is on finishing strong in 2018?  What impact does that have on your mindset and energy you take into 2019? Focus Leads to Success – so what we do through the end of the year will accelerate our sales and drive us to a record 2019!! Many business owners start talking about their focus and goals in 2019, which usually means they aren’t focused on the rest of this year.  What if the focus and accountability for 2018 would help drive profits and business into their 2019 year? This strategy can be a huge missed [...]

Empathy & Perspective What’s one thing you can do to significantly impact your chance of success?  Practice more Empathy. Empathy is no longer looked at as just a soft skill, but something that is increasingly necessary for leaders and managers to increase their effectiveness and drive high performance from their teams. For many people, they believe that Empathy is like Sympathy, but there is a very distinct difference.  Empathy is the ability to sit in someone else’s seat and look at the world from their perspective.  It’s very different than sympathy which is feeling for them, sharing in [...]

GIG Economy: What does it mean for your business and how will it change the landscape of your business? How many of us even know what the GIG economy is?  The dictionary defines it as “a labor market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs.”  The gig economy gets its name from each piece of work being akin to an individual 'gig'. The topic of the GIG economy is becoming more and more prevalent with an ever-increasing number of articles and meetings touching on this subject and how it is changing the [...]

"The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start and keep going." -Unknown As we go through life, there are so many “races” that we run both personally and professionally.  And most of the time those races test our mental fortitude and sanity, they push us to be a little uncomfortable, and sometimes they completely exhaust us.  But I would guess at the end of most of lifes “races” we would do it all over again even knowing how hard it would be.  Why is that? I believe its because when we are [...]

Have you ever considered the difference between the price of a decision vs the cost of a decision?  I recently attended an event and had the pleasure of hearing Terry Slattery speak about his book, The Cinnamon Story. His message regarding the differences between focusing on the price you are paying for any product, service, or staff versus the cost you are spending to achieve your targets and goals, brought this simple yet complex conversation to light. In business, whether we are looking at this issue as a consumer of products and services or as a provider of products and [...]