By attending you will learn these priceless techniques:

 The 6 keys to a winning team…

 How to build a supportive & productive culture…

 How to effectively communicate with each other…

 How to develop a open relationship with your team…

 And more…

Food at 6pm with the workshop running from 6:30-8:30pm.

Please RSVP so we can plan accordingly.  Profit Club and 1on1 clients and their teams attend at no charge. See the flyer below for information on how to RSVP or Click Here to register.

Thank you for taking ACTION in your business!

To improve your initiative, do the following:

Change your mind-set. If you lack initiative, recognize that the problem comes from the inside, not from others. Determine why you hesitate to take action. Does risk scare you? Are you discouraged by past failures? Do you not see the potential that opportunity offers? Find the source of your hesitation, and address it. You won’t be able to move forward on the outside until you can move forward on the inside.

Don’t wait for opportunity to knock. Opportunity doesn’t come to the door knocking. You’ve got to go out and look for it. Take stock of your assets, talents, and resources. Doing that will give you an idea of your potential. Now, spend every day for a week looking for opportunities. Where do you see needs? Who is looking for expertise you have? What unreached group of people is practically dying for what you have to offer? Opportunity is everywhere.

Take the next step. It’s one thing to see opportunity. It’s another to do something about it. As someone once quipped, everyone has a great idea in the shower. But only a few people step out, dry off, and do something about it. Pick the best opportunity you see, and take it as far as you can. Don’t stop until you’ve done everything you can to make it happen.

Help Your Team To Seize An Opportunity Today.

If you need help unblocking yourself or your team from taking initiative, CONTACT ME to set up free business strategy session to get you and your organization on the right track.

Don’t forget to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter for tips and advice on how to grow your business.

Start to put yourself on the road to improvement by doing the following things:

• Find a mentor. Players become catalysts only with the help of people better than themselves. Find someone who makes things happen to help you along the way.
• Begin a growth plan. Put yourself on a program that will help you develop your skills and talents. You cannot take the team to a higher level if you haven’t gotten there.
• Get out of your comfort zone. You won’t know what you’re capable of until you try to go beyond what you’ve done before.

If you follow these three guidelines, you still not become a catalyst, but you will at least become the best you can be–and that’s all that anyone can ask of you.

Take one of these steps toward growth today.

I found a few incredible truths in a Dr. Seuss book titled, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!

You have brains in your head.

You have feet in your shoes.

You can steer yourself.

Any direction you choose.

I believe that with all my heart. My prayer is that you steer yourself in the right direction and make right choices that will empower you to become a talent-plus person, build upon the foundation of your abilities, and life your life to its fullest potential.

Maximize Your Talent By Steering Your Entire Life In The Right Direction.

If you’re looking to learn new methods on how to manage and grow your business, consider learning the Rockefeller Habits to put you on the right track.

Don’t forget to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter for tips on how to succeed in business and in life.

Gather a representative group of employees or managers from across the company, or if you’d rather, your senior management team. Ask the group to pretend there’s a team of Martian anthropologists studying American business, and they’re trying to understand your company’s corporate culture. Each individual is to come up with the names of five employees–ones who aren’t in the room–to send to Mars. (Note: If you’re a start-up and your list has to be the four or five initial founders or employees, that’s fine.) The Martians don’t speak English, and they don’t know what a good PowerPoint presentation is, so whatever the Martians learn will have to come through observation. Given that, which five employees would best convey the good things about your company, just through their actions? Don’t choose people because they know how to present well, nor eliminate someone because I mentioned this. Don’t over-engineer by choosing a balanced team that represents each function in the business. Just choose the five who would best give the Martians a sense of what’s good about the economy.

When each individual has five names–no more, no less–go around the room and determine the top three vote getters. Important side note: Don’t let these lists out of the room. This is simply a thought experiment and the conversations around the three individuals chosen should stay in the room. Starting with the employee who received the most mentions, initiate a conversation about these people. Who are they? How do they go about their work? What would customers or co-workers say about them? Why are they important or valuable to the organization? Another approach is to go the opposite direction–ask people to recall employees who didn’t work out and brainstorm about what went wrong.

As you jot down what’s being said, you’ll begin to see themes and patterns emerge. Don’t be surprised if the words that pop up are less polished or humanitarian than you have hoped, and for Pete’s sake, don’t squelch those who utter them! Your goal is to know what the real core values of your organization are, not the Chamber of Commerce’s notion of what they should be.

If you’re looking to learn new methods on how to manage and grow your business, consider learning the Rockefeller Habits to put you on the right track.

Don’t forget to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter for tips and advice on how to grow your business.

Let’s make the 2^nd quarter and the 2012 year incredible and plan for success!

 If you are looking to improve your focus, increase your results, spend your time more wisely, then this is the workshop for you.

 On Tuesday, March 13^th, we will be having our GrowthCLUB 90 Day Planning Day from 8:30am to 4pm.  It will be held at the DMACC Campus in Ankeny.

 During the day we will be creating a clear 2^nd quarter action plan and will focus on the 5 actions to grow our business – leads, conversion rate, number of transactions, average dollar sale, and margin.  We will also spend time on the 6 steps to a great business – mastery, niche, leverage, team, synergy and results.

 Please RSVP at your earliest convenience as there is pre-work required. Keep the momentum going with a clear plan of action for the next 90 days!

See the flyer below for more details.

Click here to download the registration form. 

If you want to get a head start on your second quarter planning, CONTACT ME to set up a free business strategy session to get you on the right track.

If you’re looking to learn new methods on how to manage and grow your business, consider learning the Rockefeller Habits to put you on the right track.

Don’t forget to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter for tips and advice on how to grow your business.

To get started, ask your employees a three-part question: What should we start doing, what should we stop doing, and what should we continue doing? Have them think about these questions from both their perspective and the perspective of customers. This initial survey will let people get things off their chests, especially if they haven’t had the chance before. Compile the data, call a meeting, and brainstorm some solutions. Don’t make it a chore; make it fun. Then, in your company newsletter (you do have one, don’t you?), report progress on some of the stickier, long-term issues that have cropped up. That’ll pave the way for introducing a more systematic ongoing process for collecting this feedback using a manual or electronic logging process.

This ongoing process encourages and requires your employees to log recurring problems they and your customers are experiencing. Suggest that you want to hear about anything and everything that caused them to spend more than a minute doing something that shouldn’t have needed doing. What are customers requesting that can’t be provided? Where are they being hassled in the process of doing business with your firm? You might even prime the pump by holding a weekly prize drawing, and offer a raffle ticket for each hassle submitted until the habit becomes established. To make it clear this isn’t a top-down directive, make your own executive-level list to share:

What are 10 things that make your job a hassle?

The key is to get raw, unedited data. Even if a problem occurred and was resolved, it needs to be logged so patterns and trends can be observed. At the Ritz Carlton hotels, noted for winning two Malcom Balridge awards for outstanding quality service, personnel are required to log all incidences of customer or employee problems or concerns and turn them in daily to the general manager. This data points out opportunities for improvement that save time, improve working conditions, and increase customer delight.

If you need help collecting and using feedback in your organization, CONTACT ME to set up free business strategy session to get you on the right track.

If you’re looking to learn new methods on how to manage and grow your business, consider learning the Rockefeller Habits to put you on the right track.

Don’t forget to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter for tips and advice on how to grow your business.

Molly Bolanos of Mostly Muffins says increased managerial sophistication through executive training and coaching has allowed her to re-evaluate and re-define her role.

“I’ve realized that my unique ability is connecting with people–selling who we are and where we’re going. I don’t have to manage the numbers anymore, because I have a structure doing that for me. The potential now seems endless. Now, when I think about how to grow the company, the key strategic question is, Who do I need to be, and what do I have to do to get there?”

With consulting help, Rudy realized he had been giving his middle managers too little authority and too many confusing instructions. He backed off, took some training to work on his personal style, and gave many of his day-to-day oversight functions to a newly hired president. Thanks to the management structures he’s put in place, along with the measurements and meetings that keep it all humming, Rudy is free to work on new projects and acquisitions.

“It’s absolutely amazing how all of this has changed out company,” he says. “Today I have time to think and try things. This is my true talent–listening to what people need, talking to competitors and customers, and adjusting my business accordingly. When I am focusing solely inside the company, I cannot move the company ahead. I am much more the CEO that I was before.”

Lesson Learned:

If things aren’t going exactly the way you want in your business or if you feel like you’re spending time doing the things that you hate to do, consider taking some time to improve upon yourself. Almost all of the most successful business people in history would recommend that you have a coach or even multiple coaches to help give you perspective, refocus your energy, and grow your company to it’s full potential, which is limitless.

If you’ve considered using a business coach but aren’t sure what to expect, CONTACT ME for a free session.

If you’re looking to learn new methods on how to manage and grow your business, consider learning the Rockefeller Habits to put you on the right track.

Don’t forget to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter for tips and advice on how to grow your business.

What makes people hate their jobs?

Do Your Employees Ever Look Like This?

What makes them non-productive, complaint-happy deadwood? The answer: recurring problems and hassles. I’m talking about the situations, problems, and mistakes that happen over and over and over again, never getting fixed. Recurring problems and hassles are are worse for customers, who don’t have any incentive (like salary) to hang around.

Don’t get me wrong: Humans like challenge.

When problems crop up in ones and twos, we gear up to perform. Struggling to a solution can be exhilarating, even affirming. Solving customer problems is at the heart of business and can actually build loyalty and lead to new opportunities. But recurring problems are something else entirely. They’re like water on a rock, wearing your organization down day after day, leaving associates and customers frustrated.

Believe it or not, recurring problems eat up more than 40 percent of the average employee’s time. 40%!

Why so much? Because a problem is never just one person’s problem. The person who discovers the glitch has to talk about it with not one person but several, and probably more than once. Fixing the problem, or even just putting a Band-Aid on it, means bringing progress to a screeching halt.

To reduce your costs, shorten your cycle time, and generally improve your internal working environment, you need to systematically gather data on what’s hassling your employees–and then DO something about it. And because your employees are often closest to the customer, their hassles are usually related to what’s hassling your customers, giving you tremendous insight into ways to serve your customers better. Their hassles are your opportunities.

To learn more strategies to improve your business and make both your employees and your customers happier Click Here.

If your looking for other ways to grow your business and aren’t sure where to start,  Click Here for a free coaching session.

Don’t forget to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter for more advice and tips and feel free to leave your comments in the box below.