Category: Work

Activate Your Dreams

Marc Anthony is credited for the quote, “If you do what you love, you never have to work a day in your life.”  If you are actually going to do something you love and get it off the ground, you will work at so many tasks that you never thought you would.  The tasks will take so much of your time, and have so little to do with the end product you will wonder why.  Yet, you can do it if you are willing to run the gauntlet, and you like a business and a challenge.

You will need to find vendors to purchase the bits and pieces you will use.  There is professional insurance to find and procure. There is general liability insurance to protect you if someone gets hurt.  And you have to find a place (office, factory, brewery, etc.) to work. 

Do you need to hire people?  Are you going to hire outright or subcontract to a staffing agency?  Can you afford people to work for you when you are just starting out?  These are only 3 of the many questions you will have to consider.

You can have a fabulous idea, yet if no one knows about it, especially the people who could use it, the business goes nowhere.  You must market.  Marketing is too expensive when you are starting, so you have to be careful.  If you can find the right decision-makers (who are hard to find and get in front of), you have a free 15-20 minutes.  Use it wisely. 

If you really work at something, something you love.  If you are willing to put heart and soul into it.  If you refuse to give up.  Then, you are going to do great.  Just don’t let anyone make you think everything will be handed to you.

In the end, you will know that you worked hard and have done well.

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

What Can You Do?

We all have things we enjoy doing, and we do well.  We also have tasks that we have to do, and yet we hate.  My question for today and this week is, “How do you arrange your work so that you have more time doing the tasks you enjoy, and less time doing the tasks you hate?”

I can see the eyes rolling and people tiptoeing to towards the exits already.  Yet I am asking you to hold on and let me make my case.  There are actually many ways to lessen the load of work you hate to do.  Today I would like to show you a couple of those ways.

The easiest way to avoid the work you hate is to have someone else do it for you.  As you grow in a company, you have others working for you.  You can have one of them do the task for you.  Not there yet? Workers will trade assignments, so they can avoid an unpleasant task.  Need other ideas?

At home, you can hire someone to do the task for you.  Professionals usually do a better job, and you find the price is often worth it. If you don’t have the price for the tasks you required to be done, don’t worry. If someone does something that you need to do, they may need help with something that they despise, and you prefer. Rather than trading money, you are trading task completion. I am willing to believe that you find trading tasks better than trading money. Check to see if there are any co-ops in your area which trade tasks rather than cash.

Tomorrow, we will talk about other ways to do the things you like and avoid some things you do not. As I give you these ideas, I must tell you that we don’t get to prevent doing everything we hate in life. Some things will sneak up on us when we are least expecting them. We must always be on the lookout and wary of such events that life sometimes holds in store for us.

For now, I want to thank you for being with me today. I hope to be with you again tomorrow.

No Is Not A Negative

I have begun to understand something new. If I need more time, I can put some things off. Okay, so that’s not the new part, I have done that for years. What I’m beginning to find out is that if I put things off, eventually they will come back, and I will have to do them anyway. And when I finally have to face them, I find myself under even more pressure to complete the items I have put off plus all the new demands that have come into my life.

So, what’s the trick? Sorry, no gimmicks. The only thing I have gained is the understanding that I need to do things as they are due and not put them off. Putting things off only asks for more grief. Instead of putting things off, use a two-letter word at the very beginning.

Everyone likes to be popular and to be so, we quite often feel we have to tell people what they want to hear. What do most people want to hear? Yes. Just think about that for a second. How many people come in and ask you a question hoping you’re going to say no and leave excitedly when you do tell them no? No may not be the most popular word, yet it could be the most honest.

To use the no word you have to understand what your time constraints are, what your job is, and what the positive and negative would be for taking on additional work which belongs to someone else. Quite often, with a person leaning over your desk and expecting a yes, it is hard to calculate the positives and negatives. That’s why they didn’t just send you an email. I think the best answer at that moment is, “Let me check my schedule to see if I can do you the best job I possibly can for you, and I will get back to you.”

Actually, take the time to see how busy you are with your work. Calculate the standing of the person who asked and what positives and negatives they could do for you. And then give them an honest answer.

I cannot tell you the right or wrong thing to say. I can only tell you that if you have time and can do a favor for someone you believe would repay that favor in the future, helping out could be a good move. If you have enough to do already and the person is just trying to put off their work onto you make sure you are able to do your best with your work. And no may be the most appropriate answer.

However you give the answer, be honest and genuine. No can be as good an answer as yes depending upon how you hand it back to the requester. In doing so, give them good suggestions. Offer to get back with them if your workload changes. Give ideas for others who may be able to help. Show interest in their work and check back in with them from time to time to see how things are going.

We are all a team. Dedication to the team starts with ensuring you can do your job to the best of your ability.

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

Owed?

I have noticed that more and more people want more and more things for themselves, and they feel as though the things they want are owed to them.

I quite often ask the question, ‘Why?’ In this case, the why question is ‘Why do you feel it’s owed to you?’ This question followed by, ‘And what have you done to deserve it?’

Many people have gone over and above to earn the things they would like.  And yet, the questions above are still relevant.  Why, and What. Are you a mover and a shaker? Or are you the person who waits and then does most of what you’re told?  You showed up for work every day? That’s great. Isn’t that part of what the paycheck compensates you for?

 Did you lead a team or work personally to do something which caused revenue to grow within the company? Did you cut costs or overhead, or save the company significant amounts of money in some other way? Did you do something else that positively affected the bottom line? 

The question is what did you give to the company or others that makes you deserve the big-ticket item?

If you can’t point to something special you did, you can’t really grumble. Most people who want to earn the bonuses and rewards start off by first ensuring that the company they work for offers rewards and bonuses for excellent work.  Then find out what the criteria are for earning awards. And finally, make a plan and do what it takes.

Saying and thinking you deserve a bonus or reward and actually doing the work to earn it are two different actions. If you really want the glory, do the work.

 

Taking The Odyssey

The course that I’ve worked on and polished is set up right now in pilot mode, and ready for students. A pilot mode doesn’t have all the regular bells and whistles, and it does have many other things which students seem to like more.

Because this is a pilot, you have my full and undivided attention. You have my email, and you know that I will respond. We have more one-on-one calls. We have weekly group sessions. We can communicate in real time through the Reveille Facebook group. And you end up, with a product more focused to your needs.

I can write beautiful prose, make exciting videos, and give you whatever you want. If I do not give you what you need, I am doing you a disservice. And I refuse to waste your time and energy.

I have exciting things happening in the summer. I am rewriting the book I wrote, Humans Thriving In A Computer Run World. And I am also putting it into a class. It should be ready mid-August. I am also reworking my course, Always Employable. It should be out before the end of July, and I will keep you apprised of that.

The children’s picture book around my town is presently going through a change, and I hope to have it out soon. It is also the first book I am working to put out in a hardback edition. I will keep you in the loop as to when it will be ready.

You may think that it looks like I have a lot of irons in the fire. Well, I do. I am hoping they are things you will truly enjoy.

Thanks for being with me on this odyssey through life.

Mike

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