Are you stretching yet?

 

Good morning!  When was the last time you felt uncomfortable? In your life, your business, or both? If you haven’t felt uncomfortable – in a good way – for a while, it might be that you haven’t been stretching a lot lately. Not that discomfort of the truly uncomfortable kind is something to seek out, but just like shedding an old skin, growth can be itchy and feel a little like a rash, even. So this is an invitation. For all of you who are in business, especially those of you who’ve recently joined the Master Mind Your Business to Success Program (or the waiting list for it)… I challenge you! Post here an answer or comment to one of these questions: (1) What could you use help with right now, today, in your business? Remember that the ability to receive help is the #1 most underdeveloped skill in most businesses. (2) What’s going phenomenally well right now? How and why does that reflect what you truly want in your business? (3) If you’re a Master Mind participant, either with us or through your own Master Mind group, which one of the 9 steps is staying with you most and why? Sometimes the most important shifts can feel like splinters in our mind. We want to know what they are because they can lead to business breakthroughs.  Write me to tell me what you’re committing to. Better yet, post it on the blog so everyone can support you in your BOLD declaration! Now, after you’re done reading this week’s issue of Start It Up, get off your butt and go do it! Love and Success, Monikah J. Ogando, “The Entrepreneur’s Explosion Coach” Feature Article Deciding What to Do Each Day                                                                                                     Guest Author: Rich Schefren Gee, what do I want to do today? If you ever started your day by asking yourself that question, then pay very close attention because the question above is the beginning of an ineffective day. Strategic entrepreneurs don’t start out their day asking “what do I want to do?” They ask themselves “What are the most important, highest leverage activities that need to get done?” and create a list of the most important activities that answer the question. After that, they estimate the amount of time each activity should take. Next, they analyze the list of important activities that must get done and determine which activities they should do themselves and who they are going to get to do the remaining activities. Then when they start work they tackle the most important, highest leverage task or activity first. They do not ask the question of themselves “which one of these task do I want to do now?” Remember no entrepreneur is born effective you have to cultivate it and you do that by practicing the habits of effectiveness. You wouldn’t want an employee who worked on what they chose and you should respect your business at the very least as much as you want your team to. Here’s a quote from the Harvard Business Review, June 2004 p59 “Jack Welch realized that what needed to be done at General Electric when he took over as chief executive was not the overseas expansion HE WANTED to launch. It was getting rid of businesses that, no matter how profitable, could not be number one or number two in their industries.” So, today, be conscious of the choices you make when deciding what to work on. Are you picking tasks based on what you want or are you picking your activities based on what your company needs from you? If you pick the most important task to work on first you’ll be more effective, your company will be more profitable, and you’ll be able to work less so you can actually pick fun things to do outside of work instead of the poor substitutes you’ve been using to fill your work days. So remember – it’s not what you want to do – it’s what your business needs done. At age 22, Rich Schefren’s very first business involved taking over a failing clothing store, which at that time, was doing 1.5 million dollars in sales (even though the breakeven was a whopping $3 million!) Within three years, the store was cranking in well over $6.5 million — with 25% of it dropping directly to the bottom line! He’s been profiled on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Entertainment Tonight, ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, MSNBC, Vogue, GQ, MTV, VH1, The Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, Cosmopolitan, The Daily News, The New York Post and many others. He lives in Boca Raton, Florida, with his wife and two daughters.