Business blog: The 10 pillars of the most successful small businesses in the world.

1. All businesses require a Vision.

2. All Visions are personal and impersonal.

3. Every company is an organisation

4 . An organisation is an organization of systems

5.  There’s no such thing as customer service, there is only customer commitment, a promise, this outrageous promise has become your brand, built on your word, reflected in every decision and action you take, all employees must understand and be an expert at the part they are to play in keeping the promise, the effectiveness of every system is based on the function it plays and how it validates the promise; if this is not happening, what are you gonna do about it?

6. Master the money, bottom to top, all must be a master of money, truth of the business is the money, how it makes it and how efficiently it runs

7. Your people are not your business and your business are not the people, your business is its own reality, your people are only interested in the business as long as it gives them what they want for themselves, the business provides them; the business must provide a philosophy that meets their needs so they meet what the customer wants according to the agreed upon standards; what are the rules of the game?  No rules = no business

8.  The business is a good idea, if it’s a bad idea there is no business, so get out! If its a great idea, great stick with it, commit and be consistent. Exude Passion for it.

9. We know more about our business than anyone else, we need to coach and train our people so that they know and deliver what we know, until then they are at risk of harming our business

10.  A business must mean something, it has to do something that means something, if it produces meaningful results to the customer that’s what it means.  Adding value to business and peoples lives.

Stop and focus.  The Vision begins to take form.  Dream to envision, be specific – The specificity asks questions, keep asking the questions.  No idea how you going to do it?  Who/what is the success model, why, what are we saying about how we provide it better than the others; a medical service that runs better than a racing crew does.  Unlikely excellence? Think Kick Ass Quality (KAQ), make a list of the attributes your business will have – visually, functionally, emotionally, financially – keep a pad by your side noting about these – Notes to myself, insights? Impressions, uncommon impressions. Call it your Entrepreneurial spiritual scrapbook.

Excerpt, and adapted slightly, from the Gerber’s Dreaming Room

Personal and Biz blog: Stress to Success

Wednesday  the 4th November was National Stress Awareness Day.

Thepassion2perform specializes in helping small to medium size business owners go beyond stress through to maximizing their personal and business success.

Stress is very topical at the moment.  Stress is an endemic feature of our western society.  Success is something that many of us aspire to in the UK.  In many respects its what the UK represents globally.  People flock here with the hope of it.  Many people are so hungry for it that they forget about themselves and their own needs as human beings (more of this in later blogs).

Having had direct experience of the impact of negative stress in my life I have first hand evidence of the powerful impact it can have for the worse, if left to grow uncapped.  For many the formula looks like this:

Stressful job + busyness in and outside of the job + ambition + stigma of stress and denial that stress would affect us + sporadic attempts to prevent it through exercising occasionally + lack of quality time with those who are important to us + deluded that we’re somehow protected from it so we can keep pushing ourselves like we’re superhuman  = recipe for the negative effects of stress on self, family and work.

Whats been your experience of stress?

• Do you sometimes think or feel not like your usual self?
• Do you get tetchy and irritable for no apparent reason?
• Do you sometimes go into a negative mindset or outlook on life issues?
• Do you experience relationship issues and not sure how they get started?

These are all signs of stress.  The reality is stress is on the increase, its a fact, the complexity and demands of modern life plus too much information overload does it too us. Why is this? Well its quite simple although for millions of years we’ve been living quite stressful lives, as we have evolved we have had to survive and fight for our food and our lives without modern day niceties pretty much up to only 50 or so years ago.  Its in our genes to be survivors but what the past didn’t have was the high expectations we now have, the busyness and the information overload we take in every day.

Basically the stress response is our bodies saying WARNING your in a dangerous place here, be weary. And before 50 years ago for millions of years it literally could have been a matter of life and death. The natural reaction back then would be to fight your way out or withdraw from the danger.  Our millions of years of genetic history’s tells us still to react in this way and to be on guard when our lives are out of balance. What we mean by out of balance is ‘work hard no play’ or ‘work hard play hard’ which tends to result in denying ourselves what is really important to us, and focusing on none or one passion and human need only while neglecting most others.

Here are a number of typical stress symptoms to be aware of:

Physical symptoms:	Emotional symptoms	Mental symptoms
Pounding heart   Headaches Sweaty palms Indigestion Skin rashes Shortness of breath Holding of breath Cold hands Sleeplessness Too much sleep Fatigue Nausea Stomach tightness Muscle tightness Pain	Mood swings   Irritability Depressed mood Anxiety Lack of sense of humour Abrasiveness Hostile attitude Nervousness Irrationality Loss of direction Cynicism	Forgetfulness   Loss of concentration Poor judgement Disorganization Fuzzy perception Confusion Lack of interest in pleasurable activities Deterioration in ability to calculate Difficulty in thinking Diminishing use of imagination Negative self talk

Take some time to read through these and circle which ones are relevant to you or have been in the last year.  If you’re a business owner experiencing some of these symptoms, ranging from mild through to severe, then they are basically your body warning you.

Just like when the oil light comes on in our car it’s a warning that our oil is low before our car breaks down. We have a choice to listen to it or ignore it.  Sometimes its turned off without having done anything.  What a relief! But then it comes back on again.  Each time we ignore it the risk to damaging our car increases.  Its gonna putt out at some point in the future.  But why wait until then? Perhaps we’re in denial and hope that the inevitable won’t happen when we are so busy getting on with other urgent things that have to be done.   Or conversely doing nothing because we’ve been stunned into freeze mode with just too much to do.

The reality is that we’re talking about our bodies, our minds and our business.  Your body and your mind are the best instrument and asset you have for making a success of you and your business.  It all starts from you.  If you know your instrument well, look after it and keep it finely tuned then it will play beautifully and people will want to hear you play it.  People will be attracted to you.  Good bands don’t think about avoiding how bad they’re going to sound they imagine how good they will sound and aspire to that.

So how about we apply this to ourselves? Lets start thinking about what we can do to help us feel really good every single waking minute.  The more positive, focused, passionate and energetic you are the more likely you will feel in tune with yourself and your environment and actualise success in your business.

In this place you are at your best. This is the place that inspires people to buy from you.  So how do you get you and your business there? Well awareness that there is this place is the beginning.  So spend some time imagining what life might be like for you in this place.

They say that the actualizing of you desires and dreams happen twice, second in real life and first in your imagination/minds eye.  So spend sometime wondering over the following questions:

How can i grow my positive energy?

What am I really passionate about that I can do today, and be fully present with?

What positive attitude do I choose to take on tomorrow?

What will I wake up saying to myself in the mirror tomorrow that will stay with me through the day?

Remember what it feels like when your on holiday, the tranquility, calmness and natural happiness?  Really remember what you were feeling, seeing and smelling at the time.

You hold that memory and feeling inside you every day whether you choose to access it or not.  Now take that feeling and apply it to your business environment. What do you notice is different in the way you handle your day to day problem-issues?  What do you notice with your symptoms you circled above? How have they changed?

What will you do differently going forward as a result of this blog?

Live life with passion,

Jan

Business Blog: Pinewood Studios; video is the new marketing cool tool

Only  month ago I had never thought I would be hanging out at Pinewood Studios with 007, Harry Potter and the like.  As you may or may not be aware it’s in the world class league of production studios as many world famous films are made, produced and edited there.  I must say it was a great experience, not because I  mingled with famous people and I’ve been invited back to star as an extra, as that would be far from the truth, but because it felt like I was observing something that was ‘great’  something that had made a huge success of itself in the world arena.  There’s something big and bold about Hollywood sending movies over to little Old Blighty to be finished off with the magical final British touch.  Not to  mention the filming of 007 and Harry Potter right here north of London

However, we did meet with SWAT.TV, a new TV and online TV channel completely for Personal Development, to pick their brains about how to make movies and max out on You Tube and the like.

You Tube is the new google of online video (now owned by Google).  Video is the cutting edge of marketing yourself and your business and video will make you and your business different from the rest because it provides a richer experience than just words.  We found out how easy it is to make video using a Flip cam and easy to upload onto You Tube.  1-3 minute videos mean you can make them to complement, or instead of, your blog and gives your audience a richer experience.  We also talked about social media and ways to update all your social media via one web tool instead of the time intensive updating one by one, thanks to tubemogel.com and ping.fm

So to grow your market presence:

1. Decide on what subject to video yourself on and do it – upload onto You Tube etc

2. Get blogging daily, include video and update other social media with the same information

3. Build the business presence using as many social media sites as you can and keep them updated frequently using cutting edge tools available.

Happy Days,

Jan

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success.
Henry Ward Beecher

Personal and Biz blog: Intro-Drastic Fantastic

I decided, after an inspiring day at Pinewood Studios, that procrastination will be beaten by just getting on with it.  This entry marks the beginning of regular entries going forward on thepassion2perform blog.

It will meet a mixture of needs including both Personal and Business.  The Passion 2 Perform specialize in working with individuals and small to medium size businesses in social sectors (for-profit as well as not-for-profit), helping them to move from ‘stress to success’ and inspiring people to live their life and business with ‘Passion, and Perform’ at their very best, using the unique approach that The Passion 2 Perform brings.

So to cut a long story short, there is a focus on Personal and Business.

Personal and Biz blogs: These blogs aim to engage successful people and  aspiring to be successful people who are finding the process rather more stressful than they had hoped.    Focus on managing stress and identifying, and optimizing, ones passions to perform better in life and work/business.

Business blog: These blogs seek to engage small to medium size business owners in the social sector (for-profit and not for profit) providing specific information, tools, strategies and techniques that help you grow your business.

Actually I started writing blogs a little while ago as a guest writer on Potentio’s blog so if you are familiar with this blog you may be familiar with the first few blog entries.

Once again I’ve decided to mark this special event by  writing about an inspiring call I had with a friend and fellow coach a month or so ago, Birgitt.

We were talking about Napoleon Hill  in the context of achieving our goals in life – she wrote the book Think and Grow Rich. Birgitt advised if you’re interested  in buying the book buy the version published in 1937; the roots version.  The basic premise of the book is that we are all connected unconsciously, by tuning into what it is you really want, you get what you focus on, Failure = feedback not failure. Napoleon Hill interviewed hundreds of people about success, including  Edison who had 100’s of failures yet saw all of these as only feedback until he had success.

Every morning and every night say out load to yourself I’m so happy that I know my purpose in life and within 3 weeks your subconscious will tell you.

What ever you’re thinking about magnifies in your brain and either resonates with you or knocks you out of tune as if you are an instrument to be played well.  Rather like a magnet this process will either repell (-) or attract (+) what you want depending on the way you think about what you want.  Whether that be customers or happiness.  Who wants to listen to the out of tune instrument? but when the instrument is well tuned and played with skill and creativity who doesn’t want to listen?

Thoughts are king, desire it and be specific – burn bridges behind you so you cannot retreat.  This is what I call Drastic Fantastic; a massive level of commitment to turning your passions into action, dreams into reality.

Saying good bye to the past isn’t new, a fundamental structure of life is after all births and deaths.  Life is about things, ideas, ways, behaviours, relationships, etc being born and coming to an end at some point, for what ever reason, in the short term or the long term.  Allan Cohen writes in ‘Dare to Live your Life’, if you really want to change your life and achieve your dreams then you have to identify the old ways/patterns that are hold you back and literally say goodbye to them. Bury them in a wooden box, or what ever, hold a memorial for them and gives thanks to them, because without them you wouldn’t be where you are now, they served your purpose back then, but not anymore.

Move on beyond procrastination. Do you really want to look back on your life and see you had many great ideas and only lived but a few?  Do you really want your life to be a ‘someday I’ll day it’ or do you want to be a ‘I live my life and business with passion and love every minute of it, good or bad, its all good’.  This is the win win attitude that enables people to live their life purpose and by doing so you’re doing good for you, business and humanity (more about this later).

Essential Ingredients for all successfully achieved Goals:

1. Fix your mind to exact thing you desire
2. Determine what you expect to do in exchange for it
3. Determine exact specific date when you want it
4. Create a definite plan and start talking about it whether you’re ready or not
5. Write out a clear statement and what you will get – it becomes a physical thing then external to you and out of your head
6. Every morning and night read it out loud

This approach requires sufficient imagination, dreaming, planning, hoping, Positive Mental Attitude (PMA). Also requires a Burning desire, faith, a definite plan, and hanging out with others in a mastermind type group, inc a minimum 2 people.

Having read this, what are you now going to do differently going forward?

I hope you found this as interesting as I did and thanks for reading this far.  Next subject is on Business blog: Pinewood Studios

Until next entry …

Jan

First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus