Dave Crenshaw's Blog, page 53
July 11, 2012
Business Improvement Begins with Accountability
Have you ever heard of Bob Bowman? Perhaps you have or haven’t, yet you’ve certainly seen the results of his professional work. You’ll see it again very soon during the upcoming Olympic Games. You see, Bob happens to be Michael Phelps’s swimming coach.
Consider this for a moment: what if Michael decided, instead of coaching with Bob, to read books, get swim tips from websites and listen to passing tips from other swimmers? Certainly he wouldn’t be in the place he is today.
Yet too many people do just that when it comes to their own career and businesses improvement. These “tip addicts” believe that with lots of studying and listening they too can rise to the top.
Watch this brief video if you want results that last beyond the moment.
Action Steps:
Think about who holds you accountable. Your friends? A mentor? A coach?
Please share, on this page, how you are getting—or plan to get—accountability.
Principles to Learn:
Everyone needs someone else to hold them accountable for their actions and results.
Your friends are great for moral support, not so much for getting you to the next level with your business career.
Mentors provide great accountability because they’ve been where you want to go. However, because they have inconsistent schedules their help isn’t always available.
Coaches are dedicated to your success because their success literally depends on your success. Hiring a coach is one of the best things you can do, as an employee, as an executive, or as a business owner.
July 2, 2012
The Entrepreneur’s Mirror: For Entrepreneur and Business Alike
Self-knowledge is extraordinarily important. It’s also extremely difficult. In fact, Benjamin Franklin famously remarked in his Poor Richard’s Almanac that:
There are three Things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond, and to know one’s self.
This free tool will make your quest for self-knowledge, both as a business and entrepreneur, a whole lot easier.
Watch the video, use the tool TODAY, and see how it works for you.
Action Steps:
Start by looking into the Entrepreneur’s Mirror.
Consider one or two of your business’s strengths.
Look at one or two things about your business that drive you nuts.
Ask yourself, “How did my business inherit these strengths and weaknesses from ME?”
Share your insight using the comments box.
Principles:
Your business is a reflection of you, your strengths – and your weaknesses.
Self-knowledge makes for a more effective business – Know Thyself!
Improving yourself can often be the fastest way to improve your business.
Liberate your business from the clutches of chaos! Get a free ACTION PLAN to find out how you can harness chaos and harvest freedom! Click here to complete the free Chaos Assessment: HarnessChaos.com
June 27, 2012
How To Be Focused By Ignoring Attention Magnets
How to be focused? First you must have control over what you’re paying attention to.
Our lives are full of distractions. Everywhere you go, someone or something is trying to get your attention. Some of these options can be downright entertaining.
If you’re like me, you have no problem coming up with distractions all by yourself! Jumping around like this can be fun, but it takes time away from more important activities. And that’s a big deal.
How do you stay focused in a world designed to make it easy to lose focus? Watch the video to find out.
Action Steps:
Identify your attention magnets. What are some of the things you obsess over to the exclusion of your very best activities?
If you’re comfortable with it, leave a comment to share how you put a barrier between yourself and your attention magnets.
Principles to Learn:
Everyone has something they obsess over to the exclusion of things they’re best at doing. These activities are called “Attention Magnets.”
Identifying your Attention Magnet is the first step to putting a barrier between it and your Most Valuable Activities.
The difference between a time-waster and an attention magnet is obsession. Attention Magnets tend to be a lot of fun. The problem is they distract you from the best things you could be thinking about.
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June 20, 2012
How Focused Is Your Advertising Message?
Marketing used to be art. Now, effective marketing looks like rocket science. Analytics, A/B Multivariate testing, CRMs and metrics are just a few ways entrepreneurs could craft their advertising message. Yet these tools go unused by most small businesses.
Why? Because most business owners are just plain too busy to use or master them. So, instead, they play guessing games with their marketing. This chaotic approach is closer to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey than real strategy.
In this brief video, I share one simple question that any small business owner can use to instantly stop the guessing games. In no time, you’ll begin crafting more focused advertising messages.
Action Steps:
Watch this video and ask yourself: Am I playing guessing games with my advertising message?
The next time you close a sale, ask your customers this question: Why did you buy from us?
Ask your employees to ask this question, if they’re the one making the sale: Why did you buy from us?
When you get the answer, please share the responses you get on this page.
Principles:
When you’re guessing with your marketing, you are wasting a lot of money and a lot of time trying to figure out how to get people to buy.
Your customers’ answer to the question “Why did you buy from us?” will get you very close to the Most Valuable Message.
The Most Valuable Message defines the core reason why people do business with you.
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How Clear Is Your Advertising Message?
Marketing used to be art. Now, effective marketing looks like rocket science. Analytics, A/B Multivariate testing, CRMs and metrics are just a few ways entrepreneurs could craft their advertising message. Yet these tools go unused by most small businesses.
Why? Because most business owners are just plain too busy to use or master them. So, instead, they play guessing games with their marketing. This chaotic approach is closer to pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey than real strategy.
In this brief video, I share one simple question that any small business owner can use to instantly stop the guessing games. In no time, you’ll begin crafting more focused advertising messages.
Action Steps:
Watch this video and ask yourself: Am I playing guessing games with my advertising message?
The next time you close a sale, ask your customers this question: Why did you buy from us?
Ask your employees to ask this question, if they’re the one making the sale: Why did you buy from us?
When you get the answer, please share the responses you get on this page.
Principles:
When you’re guessing with your marketing, you are wasting a lot of money and a lot of time trying to figure out how to get people to buy.
Your customers’ answer to the question “Why did you buy from us?” will get you very close to the Most Valuable Message.
The Most Valuable Message defines the core reason why people do business with you.
Free your business from the clutches of chaos! Get a free ACTION PLAN to find out how you can harness chaos and harvest freedom! Click here to complete the free Chaos Assessment: HarnessChaos.com
June 13, 2012
Employee Management is Culture Management
Have you ever seen a business caught in the crossfire between management and employees? It’s not pretty. It’s distracting, and most of all, it’s damaging to customers.
Employees are more powerful than you may think. First, there’s more of them than the boss. Second, their interaction dictates a company’s culture.
When one relationship goes sour, it’s easy for more to follow. You’ve seen it before. In a heartbeat, a business goes from running like a Swiss watch to running like a failed banana republic.
The trick is to focus on culture management instead of employee management. These simple action steps will show you how.
Action Steps:
Create a strong company culture by hiring people whose beliefs and values are in tune with your company.
Ensure that managers and employees communicate regularly via one-to-one huddles.
If you are making a promotion, do it based upon personality traits and learned skills, not just past performance.
Become a life-long learner. If you’ve just been promoted to a position of more responsibility, it’s your responsibility to update your skills—and even your point of view—to ensure success in your new role.
Let’s talk. Share your insight—and horror stories—by commenting below.
Principles to Learn:
Business growth and stress often cause management relationships to deteriorate.
A strong company culture arises when people of harmonizing beliefs and values are working together.
If you’re too busy to meet one-on-one with those you manage, you’re just plain too busy!
Consistent one-on-one meetings, away from the hustle and bustle of the business, will reduce workplace chaos.
The Peter Principle states that people are often promoted to the level of their own incompetence.
This post was sponsored by Dave Crenshaw’s Keynotes and Events. Top rated speaker, long-lasting results. Invite Dave to speak to your group! View demo and get a free price quote at: http://DaveCrenshaw.com/speaker
June 6, 2012
Business Partners and Monsters
Entrepreneurs, especially new ones, often think that getting a partner who shares their vision and energy is the fastest way to grow a business. Unfortunately, they’re most often wrong.
It’s not because business partnerships can’t succeed. They can. However, partnerships that fail do so because they are set up to fail from the very beginning.
If you’re thinking of finding a business partner, or know someone who is, watch this brief video—before the partnership turns into a monster.
Action Steps:
If you decide to take on a business partner, follow these steps for greatest success:
Create hierarchy and a clear division of power. No business partner should have the same amount of equity as any other.
Consult with a contract attorney to put your agreement in writing.
Create a clear division of roles on an organization chart.
Schedule regular business partner meetings.
Comment below and share your business partnership experiences or perspectives.
Principles:
Perspectives of partners often change once the business starts making significant money.
Successful businesses need leadership. Uneven equity, although largely symbolic, helps establish that leadership.
Division of responsibility creates clarity in the day-to-day workings of a partnership.
Regardless of how busy you get, keeping to your partners’ meeting schedule is essential to your business partnership success.
A coach or mediator can help ensure business partners meetings remain open, candid and honest.
Liberate your business from the clutches of chaos! Get a free ACTION PLAN to find out how you can harness chaos and harvest freedom! Click here to complete the free Chaos Assessment: HarnessChaos.com
May 23, 2012
My Top Five Books for Motivation
Are you looking for some new ideas, some different ways of seeing things? I have read more than a few books for motivation and personal growth. Some, of course, have shown themselves more valuable (to me, at least) than others.
I’d like to share with you a handful of my favorites, so please watch this short video and see which are your favorites, too. Then, please share with me your top five books.
Action Steps:
Watch this video, then look into any or all of the books below:
The Power of Focus by Canfield, Hansen and Hewitt
The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People by Steven R. Covey
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Lincoln by David Herbert Donald
The Secret Code of Success by Noah St. John
On this page, please share which five (secular) books have had the greatest impact on your life.
Principles to Learn:
Seeing the world through the eyes of certain writers can help us hit the refresh button on our own lives and careers.
A book does not have to be a conventional self-help manual to help you improve your lot in life.
Even authors from decades past can have useful insights into current business practices.
This post was sponsored by Dave Crenshaw’s Keynotes and Events. Top rated speaker, long-lasting results. Invite Dave to speak to your group! View demo and get a free price quote at: http://DaveCrenshaw.com/speaker
May 16, 2012
How Employee Motivation Leads to Employee Loyalty
The customer is king, of course. But your staff is much like your army, and you need their loyalty to succeed.
Have you been using employee motivation methods to your best advantage? If not…well, here’s your chance!
In this short video I’ll discuss some ways you can enhance the performance of your workers by increasing their loyalty to both you and your business.
Action Steps:
View this video and consider whether you’ve taken every measure to improve the both between your employees and your business. These should include:
Adding employee skills and knowledge
Making you workers feel part of a cause
Paying fair wages
Creating a foundation for office friendships
On this page, please leave any specific suggestions you may have, on ways to improve employee loyalty. Thanks!
Principles:
Employees need regular, varied opportunities to grow professionally.
The emotional life of your workers is an important as their financial well-being.
The most successful businesses also function as positive social settings.
Liberate your business from the clutches of chaos! Get a free ACTION PLAN to find out how you can harness chaos and harvest freedom! Click here to complete the free Chaos Assessment: HarnessChaos.com
May 9, 2012
Taking a Work Vacation
Are you worried that you can’t take a vacation without work falling apart? Does the idea of a stress-free getaway seem impossible to you?
There are many steps you can take to avoid this problem, if you budget your time wisely.
In this brief video I’ll explain how to best arrange your schedule so a work vacation is as fun and relaxing as it should be.
Action Steps:
Think about your past vacations. Then watch this video while asking yourself if shaping your schedule could have made you more productive – before, during and after your vacations. If so, then just follow these tips to be more productive:
Commit to vacation
Move processing schedule
Allow for power down time
Allow for power up time
Take along a gathering point
Please share any suggestions or questions on this page.
Principles to Learn:
Vacations are critical to your success in both the short and long term, but they must be properly planned.
Processing time should never be skipped, only moved.
It’s inevitable that great ideas will come, even on vacation. Having a gathering point handy will help you clear your mind and enjoy your vacation more.
This post was sponsored by Dave Crenshaw’s Keynotes and Events. Top rated speaker, long-lasting results. Invite Dave to speak to your group! View demo and get a free price quote at: http://DaveCrenshaw.com/speaker
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