How often do you find yourself in a new location needing to find a toilet in a hurry? Quite often when you are travelling right!

So you look around for a while until a sense of urgency kicks in and then in utter desperation your find some one who looks like they know where the closest toilets are.

That was my experience at the Fig Café in Port Macquarie on a weekend get away.

So you can imagine my surprise when I was greeted by a full life size version of a typical female toilet sign with a unique twist.

Now regardless of how much I needed to go and ‘relieve’ myself you have to admit even you would be jolted to respond with something out of the ordinary when you looked up to push open the door and are faced with this.

Now that’s what I call unique…

Well of course the café is after all called ‘The Fig’.

Yes after exiting from my small emergency I looked across at the mens’ and took a happy snap of the matching pair to capture the moment.

I’ll admit it’s a quirky way to continue the theme through out the establishment and yet it worked so well I can still remember the name of the café now even though I only went there once for less than an hour.

Think about your business and how you can imbed small messages in all you do to be unique and stay remembered.

What is your business theme?

How can you extend the message even further throughout your business?

It could be as small as painting a toilet door!

Tis the Season to be jolly tra la lalala, la lalala…

Yep it’s that time of the year when every one gets that little bit crazier, that little bit lazier or if you are lucky a little bit wiser…

Why because it’s the end of the year andyou have had a realization.

1)     The hash realizations that the end of the year is here and before you can take a break for Christmas you have to complete all the deadlines you promised before shutting the doors. If only you could plan out your business because now you are going to have to work like a mad person to get it done and even then probably work across the holidays season.

2)     Maybe you’ve finished everything early, realized you are ahead of schedule and can start to wind down because nothing is happening in business other than Christmas parties and holiday shut downs. Rather than plan out the New Year you decide to shut shop too and enjoy the festivities early.

3)     Some how, some one some where along the year hooked you up with a business coach and you now know exactly what you are doing and where you are heading in the New Year. There are a few final goals to tick off for this year before you take a break with the family and celebrate a good year but because you followed your coach’s instructions you are clear on what to work on when you come back in the New Year and it’s already looking like your best year yet!

Well after all Christmas is for many a time of reflection, a time to consider a year passed and year to come.

How was your last year?

As a result, which of the realizations are you now know having?

The good news is it’s never too late to do something else. So if you’re not enjoying your current realization maybe it’s time you gave your self and your business a coach for Christmas…

It’s always tricky asking people from money at Christmas right?

Wrong!

If you have provided great value, offered a service that others have appreciated and delivered on expectations then you should be paid… or may be not?

I hear you saying ‘hang on of, course you should be paid!

Really well let me say this,

You may have provided great value, offered a service that others have appreciated and delivered on expectations BUT…

Were you clear on the payment terms and conditions?

I am guessing maybe not because if you valued your time, your service, your experience enough you would have made the conditions of payment clear, backed yourself when you secured the offer and then you’d have every right to ask for the payment.

In closing your right to ask for payments is jut as much about your worth as it is your time, level of service and experience.

If this Christmas you want to be paid then check if you are valuing yourself enough if you are then of course you should be paid so go ask for your money.

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Saturday December 15th 10:00-11:30am

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Are you experiencing business pain or enjoying business pleasure?

It’s been said what you focus on is what you get which made me a little curious recently when I reviewed by client list and realized what I had been focusing on!

After a recent conversation with a potential new client I knew I had been focusing on helping others more than they wanted to help themselves…

See it’s a little like the Matrix movie where Neo is offered the red pill or the blue pill and told that he can continue to live in the world as he knows it or experience a new reality.

I had wanted to take a potential client to a new reality. A reality where she didn’t need to work long hours, be at the mercy of time consuming low paying transactions rather a world where business was much more simpler, where the pleasure of owning a business out weighted the pain.

What occurred instead was fascinating.

Even though her current situation was bringing her to tears, causing a rift in her relationship and creating physical exhaustion, the thought of putting herself first was so foreign that she opted out of the coaching.

Why is it that a person does more to avoid pleasure than they do to enjoy pain?

Simply.

We are creatures of habit and some where along the line this gorgeous women, mother, wife and business owner found it easier to make others happy because that’s what she has done her whole life.

In fact because people fear considering a new reality so much they’ll stay stuck in a situation well beyond the expiry date because it’s easier or maybe just too comfortable.

What can you do instead of choosing to stay stuck?

Say yes to your self this year. Say yes to something new, something different, something that scares the pants of you even if it means you have to put your money on the line to do it. When you really commit to yourself then you’ll experience what kind of new reality you can really create.

There’s a brilliant children’s book by Dr Seuss called “Oh The Places You Can Go”.  I have to admit I am a huge Seuss fan, a forward thinker with a sense of humour he is a great poet and knows how to make even the most obscure issue fun.

The book it self is masterfully written about the possibilities we all have, the highs and lows we are sure to face and our ability to make it happen!

What’s fascinating is that no matter how many people I speak to they all understand that their results are an outcome of the work they are prepared to put in. What I’ve found is that most business owners have all the right intentions and are prepared to work hard only don’t know where to start and how to put their plans in place to keep them alive.

If your business was like planning a holiday then surely you would take the time to write up even a loose plan in order for you to arrive at your ideal destination right?

In fact being in business is better than a holiday because you continually make changes and that guarantees your experience will be an interesting one. And if it isn’t, you have the power to make a change to ensure a different outcome.

Sure there are business plans you can put in place to help you stay on track but even then it comes down to taking action, and if you don’t know what action to take well quite frankly your business will become stale fast.

A mentor of mine has a whole office philosophy around how to get work done. We would have a design meeting and ideas would flow madly, then the tasks were delegated out to each specialist leaving only the essentials you are good at on the appropriate persons list. It was called something like Design – Delegate – Do.

Task: List anything new you need to achieve by

Designing it – start wit the outcome in mind and the purpose of why you want to achieve your new goal

Delegate it – are the tasks with in your area of expertise or do they need to be outsourced?

Remember you don’t have to do it all on your own anything longer than 20 minutes you are wasting your precious time so delegate it.

Do – take immediate action so you create momentum fast and make adjustments along the way as you discover what isn’t working over what works.

I am all for a good crusade but I gotta tell ya burning the candle at both ends will eventually catch up with you. I can vouch for that one personally.

Yep I have been guilty of lighting the midnight oil till the early hours of the morning while my gorgeous man sleeps soundly in the next room and for what? To realize that what I spent the last 4 hours sweating over could have been turned over in a quarter of the time by some one who actually knew what they were doing. Not to mention for way less that what my hourly rate would have been for the same amount of time…ouch lesson learnt the hard way!

You could say there is a huge level of satisfaction after you implement a job that has taken you hours to complete which in my case couldn’t be truer.  I felt a huge sense of achievement especially in the early days when I created my first website and a product. The difference is I now achieve more in less time because I have others help me with the workload. As a result I have loads more time with family, spend way less hours in front of my computer and have time back to do fun things.

So learn from my mistakes and outsource from day one.

Believe it or not it doesn’t have to be an expensive exercise and if you are hooked up with the right people then you can often trade services. This is super easy and can be informal, hassle free and a great way of complimenting your services with another business where the arrangement is mutually beneficial.

You would be surprised who in your current network could help so be sure to look over your existing contacts. No need to go it alone in business when now you can crusade with others.

Task: I am sure even with out creating a list you know what you love doing in your business and what you could do without right?

To make life easier divide a page in half list out all the tasks you can think off in your business against what you ‘love and want to keep doing’ verses what you ‘prefer not to do’.

Then take the list of ‘prefer not to do’ and research how, who and what specifically you can outsource. It could be as simple as have your administrative tasks done by a family member or virtual assistant. Maybe the time has come for your invoicing to be looked after by a book- keeper.

Small hinges swing big doors so be sure to consider even the smallest of repetitive tasks you can outsource as many small tasks means more time back in your day.

When the going gets tough and trust me it will over the years, the tough get going. That’s when you decide to go back to being an employee, loose sight of the dream you had and hand over your future to some one you feel can create more security for you than yourself.

Are you interested in knowing right now what the top 3 reasons are that stand in the way of a long and successful business future?

Lack of Support

Trying to do it all your self

Not having a plan

With the right people in your corner facing whatever challenges come your business way is easy.

1. Lack of Support

In Australia there is a concept called tall poppy syndrome. Have you heard of it?

Well can I tell you that until I became my own boss this ‘syndrome’ was as foreign to me as an Italian who doesn’t like coffee and where I come from that’s rare! Could it be then that so many business owners feel they have to go it alone and keep their struggles and success to themselves for fear of being judged, outcast or worse cut down?

Most businesses we know struggle their first year in business and often the second year can still feel like an up hill battle with more obstacles than expected. If instead of going it alone new business owners were able to tap into a network of support mmmm then maybe we could change the face of business forever.

Imagine a group of forward thinkers who like you were equally interested in growing their business through supporting others with a mindset of gratitude, contribution and collaboration!

That to me sounds exactly like the wave of new business owners I believe are the future. Like the members of Unique Business Connections where the sharing of challenges enables you to move past an obstacle at warp speed. It’s like grabbing a jigsaw and putting it all together again only with a group of people helping so the process is faster, more strategic and loads of fun.

No mumbo jumbo here because no matter how many years you’ve been in business some where along the way you forget to ask for the help you need. There’s the first rule you need to know about having a healthy business, when you hit a snag ask for help.

Even the most successful business owners turn to a support group for advice, they just have fancier name like a board, think tank group or master mind.

Task:

Create a list of people you need around you that you can call of for support from time to time including business advice, health and wellness, technical support, business networking groups and more.

I wonder if you like many business owners you are nervous about the next year and have maybe already been telling yourself it’s going to be a hard slog. Do you imagine long challenging days and late night for months to come?

It’s true that the media today reports more doom and gloom then we’ve ever seen and with the reports of job cuts, housing prices slumping and a government a little shaky it makes sense why you might be little worried.

Have you thought then about what you might be able to do to turn next year around before it slips away like the last 6 months?

Might I suggest that you could start with the one asset you can control the most! YOU

It’s true that the most important real estate we own is the one between our ears. Interesting then that according to research from Sydney University we only use 3% of our brain consciously while the rest is an unconscious response to the world around us. Any wonder we get caught up in negative press reports and but into the dullness they broadcast.

What if you could actually influence your world in a way that allowed you to shift your results instantly with out the need to reply anyone or anything else but you?

Does that sound too good to be true? Well it is! True I mean yet over 70% of the population choose to live according to everyone else’s rules instead of creating their own. The simple reason is we are more likely to continue doing what we are doing even when it doesn’t work because it’s all we know to do.

If then you knew another pain free yet effective way to change would you?

Chances are probably not and I know this because if you did take the chance challenge then it would mean you’d have to let go of all the stories, the excuses, the self talk and limiting beliefs that you’ve entertained to get you to where you are today.

That my friend is the very reason we the majority of the world population choose to be ordinary instead of extraordinary.

That makes for a fabulous excuse don’t you think! Rather than look with in and clean up our strategies to influence our future we kick back and tell the world we’re not strong enough, smart enough or brave enough to do what we really love so stay stuck in a job or business we hate.

Funny then how our children soon loose their invincible powers and follow suit living out the same lives their parents taught them to live or worse being angry at the world and retracting further into anxiety, depression and fear of not being good enough.

If you were to consider just for a minute what it would take to have your most incredible year what small step would you need to make today to start you on the path to living a more fulfilled life?

As a mentor of mine often says ‘ change isn’t by chance it’s by choice’.

Recently on an interstate flight home I was flicking through the inflight magazine and an article written about tips on business success caught my eye. Not surprisingly I read the entire article and while many of the points listed weren’t new there was one particular reference that was a shock.

There was a short brief from Hunter Leonard the founder of Blue Frog Marketing and he referred to a system he has designed called the ‘RAPID Benchmark’.

Hunter goes on to explain each of the stages of the benchmark;

Research data

Analyze market data and look for USP to set apart from competitors

Plan your marketing campaign

Implemented your plan with measures

Detect areas for improvements against your targets

Now the steps themselves were not ground breaking, at least I could relate to each as common parts to a successful business. What did come as a shock was according to Hunter one third of business owners don’t implement the last step!

If you thought for a minute about the steps mentioned in the ‘RAPID’ process could you say that you are applying each of them or at least a similar model in your business?

It would seem that so many choose to do all the hard work and fall short when needing to complete the finishing touches. Because of this the many new business owners neglect assessing the success of what they have done and their business quickly runs out of steam. What then will it take for you to take the time needed to reap the rewards from the harvest you have sown?

Incredibly it’s this last step that will propel business forward, allow it to grow, gather momentum and change according to the needs of it customer.

If you don’t have a smart, effective and simple system to apply to your business then consider becoming a Unique Business Connections member where you have systems, models and business training that can be applied to your business immediately.

Avoid being yesterday’s news! Stay in business longer with our trusted contacts, support groups, brainstorming days and business building programs.

More information here http://www.uniquebusinessadvantage.com.au/programs/