HAPPY entrepreneurial MOTHERS DAY to YOU…
Congratulations on another fabulous year!
(If it hasn’t been so fabulous, then lets talk.)
I love this time of year.
Daughter and I have our tradition now where we sit down and mindmap our goals/dreams for the coming 12 months.
Exhibit A (to the left) is last years offering. I can’t wait to dig into it and see what we “asked” for, and what we got! Then we do the same thing for the next year…
A most rewarding way to spend Mothers Day morning, for both of us 
Stop Selling and Start Storytelling…
“After a lot of thought, it’s pretty apparent to me what the most valuable overall skill is for future CEOs and world changers—the ability to tell a story. We live in a world where we are sold to hundreds of times a day and have become ridiculously blind to those trying to sell us something. But we’re always up for a good story.
Storytelling is what made us love the advertisements in magazines that, as children, we would rip out and put on our walls and asleep under with inspired awe. Stories are the most powerful form of inspiration and persuasion in the world.”
By Jason L. Baptiste for ChangeThis.com
Twelve Gentle Rules: How a Couple Can Live Together Peacefully When One of Them Is an Entrepreneur…
“Clearly, when it comes to business-building, some degree of obsession is required—or soon the business won’t be around to obsess about. The problem arises when entrepreneurs try to simultaneously enjoy a thriving family life while they are growing a successful company. Business-building introduces the obvious pressures that arise when free time is scarce, but the financial risk and uncertainty also become sources of tension. Combined with the classic entrepreneurial personality—the tendency to need to be the boss, to make the decisions, and to go it solo—the entrepreneurial life can be difficult for spouses to endure. At the very least, this cocktail can introduce resentment and friction into the relationship.”
These 12 gentle rules go a long way in making the cocktail an enjoyable one… By Meg Cadoux Hirshberg for ChangeThis.com
Strategy for Personal Success is Just as Important as for Business…
“Just as we need strategy for business success, we need to plan for successful lives. Without one, we allow all kinds of forces to push, pull, twist, and turn us into mental and emotional pretzels. Our inability to say ‘no’ pushes us into time-wasting activities; a lack of strategic direction allows us to be pulled down a career path we never wanted; good intentions to volunteer in the community are twisted into negative comments when we’re not able to meet the time commitments; and we’re emotionally turned around when the relationship we let wither finally ends.”
Strategy for Personal Success: Discovering Your Purpose By Rich Horwath for ChangeThis.com
International Womens Day… You Ought to be Congratulated!
I could not let this day go by without acknowledging International Women’s Day.
“Thinking is the Hardest Work a [Wo]man can Do”
This quote applies as much today as it did when Napoleon Hill originally said it…
Especially during the life-cycle of building a Mother of a Business, it makes perfect sense to ask a number of provoking, asset-protection, risk-minimisation questions to get YOU, the Business Owner, thinking along the lines of Starting with the End in Mind TODAY, regardless of how old the Business is.
Taking such initiative is paramount for ALL Business Owners who seriously wants to successfully transition the Business while YOU are in the best position to do so. In most cases however, Business Owners will not have commenced the all-important discussion about what to do when the time has come to Finish Unfinished Business, to Exit, to essentially not run the Business any more, whether that be by choice or otherwise.
But when to do it? Continue reading at Westpac Bank’s RubyConnection.com.au…
How Small Changes in Our Day-To-Day Spending Can Shake the World…
Given that we women influence 80% of the purchases made, imagine the power we wield if we got really deliberate about how to use said influence? Time to start thinking about it…
“We are, to some degree, what we buy. Or at least we can become a bit closer to who we want to be based on the products we use, consume, and wear. As consumers our brand alignment can function not only as a means for public self-identification, but also as an important source of self-affirmation.
The brands we purchase can become, in a sense, our personal position statement.
Each of us can define ourselves publicly, and we can simultaneously feel good about who we are privately, as a direct result of our consumption patterns.”
The Substitution Economy: How Small Changes in Our Day-To-Day Spending Can Shake the World… By James Marshall Reilly for ChangeThis.com
Shift and Reset… How to Make “Stuff” Happen
“I am angry. There are real problems facing the world, and we, as a society, are not doing enough to address them in the right ways, not the ways we know are possible. The old way isn’t working, and we know it.
We continue to reward the same behaviors we have rewarded in the past while expecting different results. We profess interest in really doing things differently but settle into routines that are comfortable and safe, and we are fooling ourselves. There are lots of excuses for not making real, demonstrable changes in the way we live, work, and how we interact as individuals and engage in groups/communities. I have heard them all. I have used many of them myself. But they are bullshit. All excuses are. A person either truly, deeply, genuinely cares about changing things or he doesn’t. You can step up and do what it takes, in whatever way you can, or you need to acknowledge your limits and accept the results.
What might be possible if we were really committed, as individuals and as a society? I’ve thought a lot about this, and instead of remaining angry, I choose to embrace the question and figure out how I can use the anger to make things happen.”
Continue reading the latest from ChangeThis.com By Brian Reich
How Resilient-Ready are You for 2012?
Tom Peters recently blogged about Flourish, the latest book by Martin Seligman, founder of the Positive Psychology Movement. Their research has shown that the building of personal strengths such as courage, optimism, work ethic, honesty and perseverance all have a positive effect on peoples’ mental wellbeing. The process of building a positive mindset is not trivial or easy, as evidenced by Seligman’s work with the US Army. However, if it piques your interest, why not try Seligman’s “Three Good Things” exercise? It sounds simple, but over time its effects can be profound.
Three Good Things Exercise
Each night before you go to sleep:
1. Think of three good things that happened today.
Anything from the most mundane to the most exalted works, as long as it seems to you like a good, positive, happy thing.
2. Write them down.
3. Reflect on why they happened.
Determining the “why” of the event is the most important part of the exercise, and can open up your mind to ways you can increase the positive experiences you have. For more information: www.authentichappiness.org
Adopting the Three Good Things habit will have personal and professional benefits. For many years, Tom has been encouraging leaders to focus on TGRs (Things Gone Right) as opposed to TGWs (Things Gone Wrong). Measure TGRs! Try discussing three TGRs at every meeting in 2012. It’s a great way to discover how to make TGRs happen more often…
… an excerpt from the latest Tom Peters Times… enjoy
Ho Ho Ho! the beauty of being a solo Business Owner at Christmas…
Bit of fun…
Being a one person ltd company:
- I can have a Christmas party for all employees (me);
- invite my wife or partner (but not both!)
- spend and get tax relief on it.
- there is no taxable benefit in kind as I stayed with the rules
- If I had tried to spend out any other way then I could easily be paying a marginal FBT.
- So I can take the partner out for a nice meal knowing that the tax man is effectively funding our meal (and they don’t need to know that either).
- I feel good, partner feels good. Success.
