Category: Uncategorized

Learning Needs to Be Continuous

Please let me start by saying that I am excited and sharing some good news.  I ask that no one feels as though they are being solicited.  I am just lucky and happy to be nearer a life goal I have almost always been just out of reach in attaining.

I have some great news to share.  As you may know, I am working on learning life coaching and becoming a coach. Yesterday, I completed my latest course in Life Coaching. In the last three years, I have enjoyed 3 courses in Life Coaching and one in NeuroLinguistic Programming through Achology, out of Scotland.  It dovetailed very nicely into my Masters in Adult Education and Training.

I do have to say that my work in the classroom is not done either as a teacher or a student.  The more we learn, the more we see that continuous learning is one aspect of our future we cannot do without. If we are going to make a positive addition to our surroundings, we need to have knowledge and understanding of what we are doing and why?

For now, I am finally exploring my options and locations for my first office and am working on making a dream come true.  I hope to be able to offer local sessions and groups live, and the same type of service throughout the world via Zoom or FaceTime.

This is not a solicitation; however, if I can ever be of assistance, I am only an email away.

I shall not bore you with details and minutia, yet with your permission, I will keep you abreast of the significant milestones as I attain them.  I do want to let you know that my success is in large part to the kind words and needed encouragement you have given me along the way.  Thank you very much.

Tomorrow we will continue the regular blogs and discuss what we can learn about our futures by understanding the past.

Thank you for being with me today.  I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Your Time Is Now

We have talked this week about building your business.  We likened your work to that of a farmer.  Mainly because entrepreneurs and farmers have the same types of concerns. Both need to work hard and make excellent products. It feels as though the work is never done because it is definitely not a nine to five Monday through Friday job.

Nobody can do the work for us. Each of us holds the responsibility for making our dreams work. No matter how you might try to outsource your desires, the same thing will almost always happen.  You end up with the ideas of those you hired and not your own.  If you are going to make your mark in this life, you must be the one to reach out and do so.

Hard work?  Yes.  Is the work beyond your scope? No.  You may have to learn, talk with others, gather ideas, make plans, remake plans a time or two when they don’t work.  Use elbow grease and midnight oil more than you might wish, and many other things.  In the end, we learn that we are far more resilient and able than we ever gave ourselves credit for having.

I don’t want to just leave you today with the idea that you can do this.  Your entire effort is so much more than that.  You are the only one who’s destiny is to make your dreams become realities.

Believe in yourself.  Find the good in your plans and ideas. And do not let anyone talk you out of or giving into abandoning your ideas.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

How We Market

As people with ideas, we have more in common with farmers than we think. Farmers do not get paid to plant a crop. And, they do not get paid to grow a crop. Farmers only get paid when they reap their produce and sell it at a market.

I don’t know of many people who get paid for just having an idea. We don’t get paid for sharing the idea with others, or opening an office, or building something. We get paid when we take what we have developed in our markets and sell it to our customers. Only then do we receive compensation.

How we market, or what we do is vitally important. We can turn off customers as quickly as we can pique their interest if we are not careful in what we do. And, unfortunately, there is a lot of bad advice out there.

I once had a person from a significant training center, who told me that the way to create customers was to use click-bait to get everyone’s address I could. I was supposed to continue sending them letters to purchase my goods and keep the pressure up until they quit or I did.  I did not do this because I look at my clientele as friends.  I do not put undue stress on my friends.

I write blogs and articles, let people from around the world know what I am doing and how I can help.  I try to make my website, Facebook group, and blog available to as many people who wish to use them. Everyone is welcome. And yes, in the new year, I will be offering life coaching at reasonable rates. And although I will advertise, I will assure you that I will not pressure anyone. I only have so much work time in the day, and I want to work where I can make the most significant difference with my clients.

If you are interested in working with a Life Coach, feel free to contact me or look up my website: www.reveille.rocks.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

How to Plant Seeds

Yesterday we talked about planting our ideas, like seeds into fertile areas where they have a chance to grow. Today I thought we should talk about how to do that planting. It can look very hard, and yet it is easier than you think.

Many times, we feel closed off. We find that we don’t have many friends that we go out and talk to daily. Sometimes, we are afraid of talking seriously with our friends about our ideas for fear that they may think we have gone off the deep end, or they make take offense over a thought we have presented. And yet, avenues for positive results abound.

It is easy to float an idea on a Facebook group, a chat room, Instagram, Pinterest, tumbler, LinkedIn, Facebook, or any other areas where people meet online. You want to take care that you are protecting your idea so that no one else steals it. To do this, talk in generalities and look to see how a general idea of the sort is taken.

Worried about talking to your best friends about your ideas? Afraid of negative reactions? Fearful of having fewer people to invite to your next birthday party? Friends are friends. And good friendships last a lot longer than a few ideas, whether they are good or bad.

We always fear things before we do them. 65% of the time, we are wasting our time, because the worry never happens. We find ourselves, after doing the thing we feared, wondering what there was to fear about. We also ask ourselves why didn’t I do this sooner.

The Internet and worldwide conductivity is a marvelous tool. I take live coaching classes from Scotland. My blogs are read in 58 different countries. We talk face-to-face with people around the world. We ca,n FaceTime or Skype almost anyone, anywhere.  With all the various avenues to share ideas and good thoughts, why are we not sharing more often?

These are just some things for you to think about. It seems to me that where ever people gather we can share good ideas and help them to grow.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Be A Farmer

We all have quality ideas from time to time that could make a significant difference, large or small, in the quality of life that others may enjoy. We may not realize how needed are ideas are to help others. Yet, we must get them out where either we or others, can find them and possibly bring joy to life. The problem with keeping a good idea bottled up is that it has a limited shelf life. To counter the limited lifespan of a concept, we need to learn to act like farmers.

Farmers are responsible for helping things grow. They don’t do this by keeping the seed bottled up in the silo. Farmers plant seeds. They give nutrition of the soil for the seeds, and water. And as the plants grow, the farmers tend to them, removing weeds and harvesting when the crop is ripe. Seeds are sometimes blown by the wind, or maybe carried by animals or birds to other more favorable spots, and thus migrate from one area to many others.

Ideas are a lot like seeds. Ideas need nourishment to grow. A thought will never grow to fruition if it’s bottled up and kept in the dark of one person’s head. Ideas, like any other seed, need to be brought out into the light. The seeds of thought need to be shared with others, just as the fruit of this knowledge will be. After all, an idea that does something good for you will also most probably do good for others.

Don’t let one or two thunderclouds of discontent slow you down. Farmers grow abundant grain crops, yet not everybody likes oatmeal. Remember to focus your ideas, not to everyone, just to those who would make good use of the thoughts you have.

There is a secondary benefit to you. When the first idea goes out into the world and produces benefits for those who use it, you find yourself with room for another idea to germinate into a seed that you can then go plant.

I advise, go be a farmer. Plant the seeds of ideas wherever you can. You never know what may grow or how well it will help others.

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Mountains or Molehills

If you want to make Impressive sales, take your clients’ mountains and make them molehills.  People like to talk.  All you have to do is give people a good reason to talk about what you did for them.  People are going to talk about you, and what you did, whether it was good or bad, you just need to give them the road map to a positive conversation.

If you have read my blogs, you have seen this before.  If you do a beneficial job for someone, your client is going to tell a few people. If you do a poor job, they will tell everyone.  The only question that you have control over is what you want people saying about you. 

If you give your clients a poor deliverable, you just put a mountain in the way of where you want to go with your business.  If you provide an advantageous product, the worst you may have is a few molehills along the way. Think about everyone and everything you are taking on your journey to the future.  There will be enough high hills as you make your business journey, do you really want to get all that over a mountain if you do not have to?

Work with your clients.  Learn what they do and what they need. Understand how your work can help them to do their jobs better, and explain the benefits to them. You may need to modify your wares a little, just as a tailor tucks and hems for a suit or dress to fit perfectly.  In making this available to the client, you are doing two great deeds, one for your client, and one for you.

Thank you for being with me today.  I hope to be with you again soon.

Build Your Work to Your Customers Needs

Do you have the best product ever invented?  Did you design it from scratch? Is this the best of its kind product, high quality, low cost, and stuffed with extras?  There could be only one problem you failed to consider. Does it meet your client’s needs?

You can design, build, and market great inventions; however, if you do not meet the needs of your customers, your sales will probably come from a discount store, if even there.  You must give your customers what they know they require.  If you have a product that is so revolutionary the average client does not understand the concept or its capabilities, then you know what your first marketing has to be. Teach everyone.

Start your patents and copyrights to protect your ownership. Copyrights could be as easy as putting a copy of your work and records into an envelope, mailing it to yourself, and then saving the packet unopened.  This is your proof as to when you came up with ideas or wrote things.  The fact that the envelope was postmarked and unopened is proof in most courts as to when you did the work.

Now, not many customers? Not sure who they are? Not hard.  Figure out who would use your product and go to where they gather. How hard is that? Not very. Most cities have a chamber of commerce, a Better Business Bureau or some other group of business people.  There is usually some after-hours meeting where, on occasion everyone gets together to say hi and talk with everyone else.  Everyone exchanges business cards and although this is not the place for a presentation, it is an excellent place to get leads that you can call or visit later and talk more in-depth.

The most significant part of starting a new product is getting it out in front of the right people and showing them how this new tool will make their life easier.  Doing this also makes your life easier because you are getting the word out to the right people. 

Thank you for being with me today.  I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Give More Than the Client Expects

I remember once when I worked in an office where I had to occasionally change out the toner in our copier system. Every time I would open the new box of toner, there was a piece of candy inside along with a note reminding me to put the old toner cartridge in the box and send it back. I always thought it was pretty neat when they gave me a piece of candy for doing it. As a worker, I appreciated the thought.

A piece of penny candy is a little thing. Yet knowing that a reward is in the box when you’re going to do the task anyway, breeds a little excitement and joy. And it is absolutely a fantastic marketing ploy which helps people to remember that brand of toner.

When you give more than the client expects, it doesn’t have to be extensive or costly. Quite often it’s the little things that people remember. Especially those actions a business doesn’t need to provide; and yet, goes out of their way to do so. Something to think about might be what you could do over and above for your customers? What might they enjoy? What might help them to remember you a little bit better?

In our internet age, it feels as though there is always somebody trying to take our business. With claims to build a little bit better, a little bit cheaper, or a little bit faster, brand loyalty has to count for something, and what you are really selling is the reason to stay loyal to your brand. Clients will stay because they know you are giving them deliverables that are over and above what is needed.

I have seen people go from one company to another for as low as 25 cents more per hour. Making them more susceptible to new layoffs. They wanted fast money and forgot about brand loyalty. I have known many people to do this and then end up unemployed.

Think of your brand, think of your product, and consider your customer. What could you do to foster better brand loyalty? Nothing that breaks the bank, and nothing that would cause significant upheaval. Just something that allows the customer to think of you and brand loyalty.

Thanks for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

Meeting the Customer on Their Ground

Although we live in a remarkable age where we can virtually be anywhere in the world in milliseconds, thanks to the World Wide Web, you may find that you do better in meeting your client face to face. There is a positive human emotion that comes out, and we stop seeing people as objects and start to see them as people. We find ourselves viewing a kindred spirit, rather than looking at a picture on the screen.

Sometimes it is just physically impossible to be there in person. And sometimes, you just have to work around the difficulty of understanding what not being there represents. If you can be there, even if only for a significant action or a start, you will find it makes a world of difference. You have a much closer relationship and a more in-depth understanding of those with whom you have spent even a little time.

If you live in the middle of the United States and are working with people from India or Siberia, it is tough and expensive to get there. However, I know people in Colorado Springs who fly to China to talk with the factory owners who build their products. Being able to speak face-to-face removes a lot of assumptions and gives us a better feeling of what is going on, and how we can help to make things better.

Quite often, in business, we have to send deliverables to other people. To complete those deliverables, we have other manufacturers who have to send the products to us first. I believe this makes us all part of one large shipping chain. And if our customer doesn’t know us personally, they measure us based on the quality of goods and timely delivery.

Even in life coaching and other work which is dependent upon reaching and helping people, our deliverables are often timeliness, understanding, caring, and truthfulness. People will measure us based on our work, no matter what it is, or how it is sent to them. How would you feel if you received a worksheet to accomplish that held even a few grammar and spelling mistakes?

I believe that each time one person interacts with another, either way, they always leave an impact. I have something for you to think about today. What type of impression do you want others to have of you?

Thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.