There’s so much power in the gaps between our activities. How will you use that time to serve you and your team this week?

WATCH this..When you have 3 min, to be enlightened on how changing your thoughts on a situation can change everything about it. CLICK HERE

 BE this…aware that you can control your feelings rather than your feelings controling you. This paradigm shift is a trait of all great leaders. Once you are in control of your emotions and not allowing them to drive you, you will do more and more of the types of things that will propel you towards higher levels of effectiveness.

TRY this…do jumping jacks, toe touches, knee lifts, or simply walk up and down some steps or through your building for 3 minutes. That’s all it will take to get the blood flowing to your brain and ignite your motivation.

READ this… Here’s 5 ways to build your Self Discipline

DO this…when you have 3 minutes this week, write a note of encouragement to a team member who really needs it. As their leader, it could mean a great deal to them.

Champions realize that their job is the hard stuff. Having those crucial conversations, following through when no one else will, being encouraging when no one else can. YOU are a champion or you wouldn’t be reading this. SHOW UP as one in each moment this week…your team is watching you and I stand firm in believing in you!

LOOK at this… a picture of yourself when you were 12.  What would you say to that person?  Are you living the life you imagined?  What would that 12 year old say to you?
 
TRY this… create a complete list of each of the things you know you need to accomplish this week and next to each one write how long you think it will take.  Now categorize each item under 3 different categories… A.  Will make me money now.  B.  Will make me money later.  C.  Necessary for sanity and health and important relationship maintenance.  At the end of the week review the list and see how long each task actually took.  The difference might surprise you.
 
READ this…Facebook will automatically convert your business fan page to a timeline at the end of this week.  THIS ARTICLE will help you navigate this important change for your business. 
 
REWIND to …. January 1.  What were your intentions for this year?  How is it going?  Do you need to hit rewind or reset all together?  
 
WATCH this… John Maxwell’s 5 Levels of Leadership- about 30 minutes.  Good stuff if your intention this week is to be a better leader.
 
CONSIDER this… You are more than capable of creating the life you want.  You influence others more than you think that you do.  What influence will you have this week?
 
I believe in you!  You are strong, smart and more than capable of starting and ending this week with the clearest of intentions.  You don’t have to do anything that goes viral, or doubles your annual sales, or gets noticed by anyone other than yourself.   You just have to do better than you did last week.  Just one step.  You’re one, small, clear intention away from wherever you want to end up.  Be the best you that you can possibly be this week!

Congratulations to all those starting the Amp Up Your Leadership course this week!  Good luck on your journey!

Thank you to all the Master’s Class participants that attended Lunch with Lynda last week, about building better customer relationships and sales conversions. You are amazing business owners!

Thank you to Cathy Dick for producing our first ever props for creating a persona.  It’s been cool to see how they are in use!

Thank you to so many that have encouraged me to create these lists and keep sending them.

Lynda’s Launch List will help you save time, and other resources to propel you productively forward this week.

TRY this… FB has a video app that anyone can use from your FB account.  Simply click on chat and click on the picture of the little video camera on the top right hand side of your chat box.   Like magic, it hooks you up to Skype and calls the person.  SAVE precious TIME not driving to an appt but instead, see if you can change just ONE appt to a video call this week.  It’s like you’re face-to-face without the trip time.

READ this… and know who to, when to, and how to delegate.  CLICK HERE to read the article.  GREAT stuff!
EXPECT this… from people that want to meet during your peak performance hours… that they deliver a high level of value.
ACCEPT this… only premium performances from yourself and your team this week.

WATCH this… (language warning – this guy is raw but wonderful!)  Gary Vaynerchuk, author of Crush It! and business owner that knows how to make money through social media – 2 min Q & A excerpt from fantastic 1-hour speech to Inc audience.  Worth the 2 minutes and then you’ll want more for sure.  CLICK HERE  to watch video.
DO this… the next time you get angry.  Grab some ice and put it in both hands and squeeze tightly.  Doing this each time you feel super angry can program your brain to associate the level of anger with pain and will help curb those strong emotions in the future.
 
If you have read down this far I KNOW that you are a champion.  You have the deepest desire to win!  It is that passion and drive that will make this week productive and make you an even more effective leader.  Dig deep, keep going.  Reach higher.  People are watching you.  You make a difference.
  
Thank you to Kimberly Eakin and Allen Foster who submitted items this week for consideration on the list.  You guys are so dog gone smart – I appreciate you!

Lynda speaks at HH Hunt

Had a great time last week speaking at the annual Employee Appreciation luncheon for HH Hunt Corporation.  I taught them how to deal with annoying people by using the Enneagram personality system for typing themselves and others.   We had a lot of laughs and they discovered escape hatches that would be useful during the most difficult conversations.

I did my best not to annoy them

Let’s table the super big and obvious reasons why any relationship you’re in would fail, be it with a client, spouse, friend or child.  Things like lying, cheating or stealing from someone you are in a relationship with are the big three that have to be avoided and if made habits of will be destructive.

For this article, let’s focus on the 5 “creeper” habits that can ruin any relationship.  These are the things that “creep” up on you.  You do them enough and they’re a pattern.  That pattern then erodes the foundation of your connection with that person and ultimately leads to relationship failure.  Here they are:

1.  Taking the other person for granted

There was this statistic that I found out about from my friend Jeanie Patterson that said that 68% of customers stop doing business with you because of perceived indifference.  Basically, they just don’t think you care.  Oprah said at the end of her 25 years of doing her show that the big thing she had learned was that people want to be heard.  If you don’t take some time to hear what someone you’re in a relationship is saying to you and you don’t recognize and thank that person for what they are giving to you (their love or their money or their friendship or their kindness) then you are going to be a heap of trouble.

2.  Not making the effort to communicate

Let’s face it.  Consistent and effective communication is an effort.  For many men, and woman as well, the idea of having to do regular “check-ins” to see how things are going with the person they’re in a relationship with seems unimportant.  If everything seems to be fine, why would you have to check-in and see how things are.  Well, you really need to.  People don’t always tell you what they are thinking – many times they just tell you what they think you want to hear.  Going along with things and not making waves is what most people want to do in order to avoid conflict.  Silence can not be properly interpretted either.  One person’s silence is a measure of contentment and the another person’s silence means they are withdraw and angry.  The problem comes, like a volcano, when the pressure of holding back becomes too much and and an explosion happens.  Put it on your calendar to do regular check-ins with anyone you’re in an important relationship with.  They deserve to be heard.

3.  Forgetting why you’re in the relationship in the first place

If we remembered why we started a relationship in the first place we could probably stay on track much better and have better experiences with people.  Waking up every day and remembering why you walked down the isle and married your spouse could be helpful in keeping you focused on the true meaning behind your relationship.  Going into the office and reviewing your customer list and remembering how hard you worked to attract and service them and how generous they were to choose you and your business over your competitors would help you make better decisions every day on how to thank them for that and serve them better.  Remember they why  in every relationship.

4.  Not being honest… with yourself or them

I mean really honest.  Honest looks like this.  You tell the other person when you are unhappy and give them an opportunity to fix it  if they can.  You tell a company when they’ve done something to upset you so they can become a better company because of that information.  You tell your employee when they aren’t performing at the level you expect of them.  You discuss with a neighbor when they are doing something that is infringing on your privacy or peace of mind.  More importantly, you need to be honest with yourself.  Be honest about how you feel.  Be honest with yourself by owning your feelings and your actions.  Don’t be cruel with yourself, just be honest and look at the reality of what you need to own at any given time.  We all have parts in the play.  What was your part and what was theirs?

5.  Not honoring your commitments

This is such a hard one to do all the time and it is a daily practice that none of us can master.  It’s the practice of this principle that improves us, though.  Do you honor the commitments you make to yourself?  If you tell yourself you are going to do something do you do it?  Do you let other people and priorities get in the way of what you know you need to do for you?  It’s starts with you.  If you can’t say yes and no to you, then you’re going to find it really hard to do it with other people you’re having a relationship with.  No is an amazing word that will transform you.  If your YES is big enough you have to say no to things.  Your life, food, and time plates can only hold so much.  If those are filled with the things that will ultimately make you joyful, happy, healthy and have really fulfilling relationships they are going to have some really big YESes on them that will force you to have to say no more often.  Trust me, it will be worth it, though.  The people you say yes to, including yourself, will be very happy with you.

If you research “integrity” on-line there’s all types of definitions that people seem to have woken up with this morning and posted.  Also interesting is that many of them seem like “new agers” or Scientologists if you use Google search as your measure of who “ranks”.  When I was 16 years old (I’m 45 now) I attended a week-long personal development conference called Insight, which, at the core, was designed to teach you personal integrity.

I found a description of personal integrity that I thought matched what I was taught. 

“Personal integrity is the quality of being honest with yourself and others, and living a life that is aligned with your moral principles. Developing personal integrity requires examining your beliefs and value system, and taking conscious steps to behave in ways that are consistent with your personal moral code.”  (you can find the whole article at http://www.wikihow.com/Develop-Personal-Integrity)

I went to the conference and understood the teachings and thought they were important, but didn’t live my life in alignment with them… at all, which only goes to prove that knowledge doesn’t always (or rarely) equal change.  In fact, I couldn’t have been farther from practicing integrity at any level.

I’ve discovered a couple of things.

1)  Personal Integrity is like anything simple but hard to execute.  It’s a practice… like Yoga or meditation or meaningful and effective prayer.  It’s easy to understand, hard to practice, almost impossible to master.

2)  Personal Integrity is where all personal and professional development starts.  You can’t climb any mountain that you would ultimately want to stand at the top of without personal integrity at the foundation.  Oh, you can climb lots of mountains and trust me, you can make barrels of money that you can spend on whatever you choose, but at the end of the day, at the end of the climb, if you don’t have personal integrity you are going to be one very unhappy camper.

I’m more in alignment now and do my very best, daily, to practice personal integrity.   The lessons that have taken me here have been quite painful ones and  I miss the mark all the time.  Just like Babe Ruth, though, who struck out way more times than he hit home runs, I keep stepping up to bat and swinging at it, though.

Robert Downey, Jr. recently said that living an honorable life was something he wanted to aspire to.   He had borrowed that from a mentor of his and so I made a decision to borrow it from him.   I know I haven’t always done the best job leading an honorable life so it will challenge me to mold and construct a new one, starting in 2012, that I can be even more proud of this time next year.   For this reason, I have set as a goal for myself to have “365 days of honoring others”.   it is my intention to honor those who have given so unselfishly to me and others.

focus.  Truly the one thing I believe is the difference between accomplishing a goal or truly making an impact.   I’m not exactly sure what form the focus will take this coming year, but I do have some ideas.  Spending the last month in quiet contemplation has given me a perspective on my strenghs, weaknesses, and what potential actually means, that I have rarely taken the time to digest.

adventure.  I woke up one day realizing that the only answer for me is to embark on every day with a feeling of adventure.   I can’t control anything or anyone (and even myself sometimes) but what I can do is look upon the upcoming days and year as though they are an adventure.  Adventures are exciting and fun and unpredictable.   It’s been the unpredictable part that I have fought against and now I am ready to embrace it fully with the strength and conviction that God dreams much bigger and more wonderfully than I ever could and if I simply surrender to what He wants the realization of potential that I have always sought will be realized.

A friend of mine sent me an article he found interesting about ROI (return on investment) for social media.

Here’s the article:

http://www.copyblogger.com/social-media-marketing-roi/

and here’s how I responded:

friend,

the main point from the article was:  “The answer is to use social media sites to get attention in the first place, and show people you’re likable and trustworthy. But when someone is ready to learn more about your business, bring them back to an asset you control — bring them back to your website.”  

To get attention, be likable and trustworthy, takes talent… not just time.  Talent.  real Talent.  That’s really what’s missing.   Tons of people are trying to entertain, engage and captivate, but so few have the talent to actually do it.   So they spend an incredible amount of time, energy and sometimes money (although time is always money for a business owner) and that’s the real reason they are not getting results.   They don’t have the talent or who they’ve hired doesn’t have real talent.    This is not to insult anyone.   I’ve had the good fortune to work with many talent people like Brett Sharp of WSLC and Danny, Zack and Monica from WXLK and so many others that are down right TALENTED.  

If you’re talented it’s pretty easy to get people to listen to you on the radio or watch you on tv, or follow you personally on FB or twitter… or if you have another strong talent that you’re trading off of.    The major problem comes when you are really doing it (and need to since time is money and it’s about spending time on social media so one day you will make money from the potential customer) to eventually drive people to engage with your product or service.   There are far fewer talented people out there then there are businesses that need customers.   I think that’s the real reason businesses aren’t seeing higher profit margins from their expense item of social media marketing.

 Attracting, engaging, developing and eventually selling to an audience ain’t easy.