Support Smart Step, Inc in the 2009 StartupNation Home-Based Business Competition

Support Smart Step, Inc in the 2009 StartupNation Home-Based Business Competition

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I would love to have your vote in this wonderful contest for work at home companies!

Business Recycling

This is definitely out of my range of normal writing, but it has been on my mind a lot lately so I wanted to get it off!  Why do more businesses not offer recycling bins? 

Maybe it is because I am in the Midwest, maybe it is because the pickup service is not offered to businesses, or maybe it is because businesses just don’t want to implement a program.  Whatever the excuse, I believe it is worth adding, even if that means that the businesses have to push their disposal vendors to add that service, or if they have to buy new bins and train employees.  I believe it is worth it, and that customers would probably be happier about shopping at those businesses. 

I personally hate to see the waste and actually stop to decide if I can manage to get the trash home for recycling.  It would be a lot better if I could just recycle right then and there.  Whole Foods has a great program for recycling and more business should learn from them!

If we can do it at home why can more businesses not do it?  If you own a business, PLEASE consider adding recycling.

Your Financial Health and Your Start-up

Thinking of starting a business?  One of the most important things to take into consideration is how financially healthy your own finances are.  Why is this so important?  If you are in debt, not cash flowing your current monthly expenses, and don’t have an emergency fund then that impacts how you grow your business.  You have less room to take your time and do it the right way, there is no cushion to make mistakes.  So what why is that bad and how do you go about starting a business and having personal financial health?

Why is growing a business quickly under financial stress bad?  First, it is just plain stressful.  Stress is bad for your health, which ultimately affects your business.   Second, a business that is rushed due to lack of money will make poor decisions.  It becomes harder to make good decisions and not seem desperate to clients and vendors because you are worried about the house payment.  These bad decisions can range anywhere from pricing your products or services wrong, to selecting the wrong niche (or none at all), or bad financing.  What does it matter if you make a bad decision?  We will use picking the wrong niche as an example?  The wrong niche, or a more common problem no niche, makes marketing harder and more expensive.  If you are marketing to the wrong clients your growth is slowed because your customers don’t know they are your customers.  For example if you choose to market to the world instead of narrowing it down to mothers who suffer migraines your message will get lost on those who don’t have migraines while migraine sufferers who are moms may not stop to read your message.  You select no niche because you think you can get more sales faster, but it takes more money to reach your market because they are not looking at you! The brilliance of small business is that you can change quickly to fix mistakes, however too much change and too much radical change puts you back near the starting point and confuses your customers.  This costs you even more money, money that you did not have to start with.  So do yourself and your business a favor, start it when you are financially healthy.  How?

There are two ways that I recommend you start a business with financial health.  The first is to start your company on the side of your day job.  This will force you to start it slower because you have less time.  It also allows you a steady stream of income and will allow you to test the market to make sure the concept will work.  The biggest caution with this is ensuring that it does not cause trouble with your employer.  Don’t let it affect your performance at work and make sure if you are doing the same line of work that you don’t violate policies or lose your intellectual capital to your company.  The last thing you want is a legal battle or bad blood!

Second, you can take a couple years to focus on getting yourself on solid financial ground before starting your business.  Scale back on living expenses, pay down debt, and save up emergency funds and start up money.  Then when you are set, make the jump to owning a business.  This does not mean you don’t have to set the business off to the side.  While getting your finances together you can still write your business and marketing plan, start designing a website, or get some marketing materials ready you just won’t launch until the money is right.   

By being financially sound on the personal side you empower yourself with the time to build your business with thought, time and care.  Making it that much more rewarding and enjoyable.

How to Become a Coach

Coaching is a rapidly growing profession, people are looking for a good process to help people and at the same time people are looking for added support in moving forward in their lives.  This creates a win win for both the client and the coach.  Do you think you would be a good coach?  Interested in finding out how to get started?  Following is an overview of how to obtain your coaching credentials!

In the world of coaching there is not a universal licensing program.  There is however one organization that is a front runner in the industry and offers a very comprehensive credentialing program.  The organization is the International Coaching Federation (ICF).  They offer three levels of credentialing based on your level of experience.  The basic level is the Associate Certified Coach (ACC) and requires a minimum number of training hours, a minimum number of coaching hours and mentor coaching.  You can gain achieve these minimum’s in two different approaches.

The first is by going through an approved training program and the second is by reaching your requirements on your own.  For new coaches or those just thinking about becoming a coach I recommend going through a training program.  I suggest this because these programs are designed to help you meet the credentialing requirements.  For example in my training program through ICA I don’t have to find a mentor coach, it is part of the program they have in place.

What do you need to consider when selecting a training program?

1. Go to the ICF website and search for approved programs under the education section
2. Then begin to review each program considering the following:
   1. How do you want to take classes – in person or via distance learning?
   2. The Total cost to get the correct hours of training.  Some programs offer multiple levels and you actually need more than the first one to get enough hours for the ACC.  Your cost can range anywhere from $2,000 to upwards of $10,000.
   3. Is the program inclusive of all the requirements you need for your credentials?  If not are you able to get the other items on your own.
   4. How long does the training last?
   5. Do they cover specific niches or just cover the basic skills of coaching.  For example ICA has five learning areas that include executive coaching, small business, life, spiritual and career coaching in addition to the basics for all coaches. 

After you have selected your program you simply need to get started in the training.  Followed by practicing your skills on willing clients and you are on your way to building a successful coaching business!

Do feelings have a place in business?

Do your feeling have a place in your business?  Is intuition a must or should all the touchy feely be left for our personal lives?  At one time I would have said leave your feelings at home and get to work, but over the years of running my own business I have realized if you don’t take your emotions into account then your business grows slower than it could.  While at the same time you must manage your emotions to truly thrive. 

Many times my clients appeared to be doing everything completely right and their business still was not growing.  Why?  One reason is that they had an emotional block that was not letting them realize their true potential.  So how do you release your emotional blocks and listen to your inner wisdom?  I recommend three steps – not to be followed in any specific order, or used only once.

First, be very aware of your mood.  I am talking about noticing very small (or sometimes not so small) shifts in how you feel.  When I was trying to decide whether or not to close my event planning business I really focused on my logical decision making process.  I continually reviewed aspects such as “I am established, I have a good client load, and my marketing is in place”.  What I was ignoring was that after the birth of my son the passion for fabulous over the top weddings was gone.  I still love them, but my desire to be immersed in the dissipated.  How did I finally feel this?  I walked into my office day after day and my mood changed.  I could be walking on clouds and take one step in my office and immediately feel like the world was riding on my shoulders.  I was heavy.  Finally one day it dawned on me; this is not right and I just stopped taking clients.  Pay attention to how your mood changes when you are working on different projects?  Notice it and try and focus on what your emotions are telling you.

Second, take time for quiet reflection that focuses on your business.  When we think about taking time for reflection many of us jump immediately to reviewing our personal lives.  This is wonderful but we also need dedicated quiet time to think about our business.  If you don’t slow down and review what is going on you will keep spinning your wheels.  I am not talking about quiet time to review your books and marketing plan but time to just sit and think.  For one week try spending 15 minutes a day, preferably before you start work, just listening to what your business is saying to you.  You will be amazed at the level of calm and direction you receive.  Don’t let your to do list run through your head, instead focus on creating a calm.  Try staring at a fountain, nature or even a wall.  Listen to your business and your intuition.

The final step is to remove your feelings from the business.  But I thought this was about adding feelings?  It is but sometimes we need to pull our feelings out and put other people’s emotions in, to see how our emotions are affecting business.  One of my clients was having an issue with a business partner; she received an email from the partner that immediately made her feel like someone had shattered her window.  You may be thinking this was a mean nasty email, which is what I thought, until I had her read it to me.  The business partner had been on vacation and had emailed that she missed my client.  That was all, nothing more to the email.  I told my client to imagine someone was reading the email who had no familiarity with the issue or either person.  What would they think?  How would they feel?  By looking at how another would react emotionally to the same situation she was able see clearly how her emotions were controlling the way she ran the business.

Your emotions and feeling are one of your most powerful tools to run your business.  Let them be heard while affectively managing them and you and your business will thrive.

Stimulus Bad

I was in a meeting the other day with about 15 people.  As part of the meeting someone asked 2 people to stand up and debate the stimulus package – one side that it is good and one side that it is bad.  No problem on getting someone to debate the bad side, but a very long silence to covered the room when it was time for someone to debate the good.  Finally a brave soul stood up and after a few seconds of trying to figure out what to say said “I am getting ready to buy a house, so the home buying incentive would be good.”  Then he sat down.   We finished the meeting and I went on my way, not thinking too much about it.  However, as the days went by I began to think more and more about this.  Not ONE person was for this stimulus package.  It was not that anyone did not think something should be done, but every single person agreed that they were going about this the wrong way. 

So how do the guys in Washington think this is a good idea when most Americans are not in favor of it?  I came up with two answers.  First, Washington is out of touch with reality and their brains.  Nothing new here, what has the government done successfully (other than the military)?  Second, those of us who know this is bad and really don’t want the government to mess with our lives don’t have the time to spend chasing our reps and trying to get heard.  We are busy trying to make a living, provide for your families and live our lives the way we want to, because we know that Washington will not and cannot fix our lives for us.   Maybe we should all refocus on making our own lives better because of what we do for ourselves and we would not be as bad off as we are!  It is amazing how self responsibility works as a stimulus.

Finding the good in the bad

This weekend we went to Kansas City to visit my sister.  On this trip we went to UNO in the plaza and had what ended up being one of the worst meals we have ever had. 

We arrived at the restaurant and sat down at about 5:30.  It took at least five minutes for our server to come to our table for drink orders and to greet us. It took him so long in fact that our party of 9 had decided not only what they wanted to drink, but also what they wanted to eat.  Then it took another ridiculous amount of time for our drinks to come out.  Finally the drinks arrive – only 30 minutes to get our drinks!  As this time marker occurs we realize that our reservation for our carriage ride at 7 PM was not going to be achieved.  After another 15 or 20 minutes our appetizers came out.  Sadly they did not come with plates or silverware.  Another five minutes goes by before we get plates, I ended up asking the hostess to bring us silverware and as the minutes just kept adding up while waiting for silverware!  Next my niece had ordered one of the kids make their own pizzas and it still had not come out, so we had to remind the waiter about that so that she would be eating with the rest of us!  Finally the food arrived, by this point I had quit watching the clock as it was less painful that way, but it was a little over an hour since we had sat down.  Talk about slow service, we would have been further ahead to have ordered pizza at home.

You would think that bad slow service was all that could happen – not so it just kept getting worse.  My sister’s pizza had hair on it!  At this point our waiter really wanted to be anywhere but work, to give him some credit I do believe he was fairly new and probably never should have been given a table of 9 people.  So the manager came over, apologized and went to make her a new one.  Best part of this – they left the old pizza with the hair on it sitting in front of my sister.  It took at least five minutes for the plate to get picked up after the manager left the table!  Add to that my hamburger was dry and falling apart and we had three kids under the age of 4 with us.  So a dinner of pizza (everyone but me and the kids had pizza) took almost 2 hours and that did not involve us hanging out after we ate that was all waiting and eating time!  (This looks even worse when you think that our full order was given to the waiter within about the first 15 minutes of us arriving.)

So you may be wondering what my good in the bad is?  Well, my husband and I analyzed the events of the evening, as you do when both of you used to be restaurant managers, and both came to the conclusion that the appetizer we had – steak quesadillas were the best quesadillas we had EVER had.  How ironic that the meal we put at the top of our list for bad dinners produced the best quesadilla ever. 

It made me stop and think about what good is hidden in all the negative talk about our current recession.  To me two major things come up.  First, it always makes people stop and think about where they are in life and then try to get things going on the right track.  Second, this particular recession will force us as a nation and individuals to reassess what we believe is good use of debt and who should be given credit.  Without it being readily available at all times, we might have to stop and think about our purchases.  This hopefully will help us make better decisions because we do have to think about what we are spending our money on.  To me those two benefits alone make it not as bad of a recession.

Have you looked at the good amongst your bad lately?

Social services and Responsibility

Last night in Barack’s acceptance speech he had a couple quotes that made me go – YES!  At the same time they made me come back to one of my biggest issues with a lot of our current policies and tax laws regarding social services. 

The first quote – “let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other.”  I love this quote!  The things I focused on were responsibility, working harder and looking after each other.  This is exactly how we became a great nation.  If we are to achieve our dreams we must do each of these!

The Second quote – “the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.”  My main focus in this one is opportunity, we live in a land where anything can be accomplished and this is fantastic!

So where are my issues with our social policies?  A lot of our policies currently do not enable people to be responsible, work hard, and help others or to even have hope.  Just two that we can look at is welfare and EIC (earned income credit). 

With welfare it is very easy to get trapped in the system, where if you get a raise or a second job you end up losing benefits and in the end are worse off than you were when you were not achieving.  I actually had a friend that this happened to, as a single working mom she would have lost her daycare, health care and other services if she were to even work four more hours a week!  It was not until the kids were in school all day and her father’s schedule changed (so he could help with after school care) that she did not need help from the government with daycare.  This enabled her to get a good job and take care of herself and children.  Her first 6 months on the job she did not have health care, after 6 months she was able to quality for care.  When she was finally off assistance she said she felt more empowered and had a great sense of self than ever before.  She also will tell you that the system is broken in that she was penalized if she achieved and she always felt trapped.  Is that type of system good for our sense of responsibility, opportunity and hope?

Earned Income credit, actually makes me VERY mad.  For those of you who do not know what it is about here is an overview.  Basically the government gives you anywhere from $0 – $4,716 based on the number of kids you have and how little you make.  It is not based on anything more.  In order to get the $4,716 you need to have a couple kids and only have made about $16,000.  At first you might say, but it is helping those who don’t have money make it easier.  My response to you – go do a season of taxes for HR Block (a task I think every elected official should be required to do).  Many people actually game the system to just work as much as they need to get the most money.  They will call in the summer to see if they have hit the best income spot – and then STOP working!!!!!!  I actually had a girl at the desk be upset that she had not meet the best payout spot and was very upset, her mother actually said “but it is free money, maybe next year you will have to work a little longer.”   This system does not help our citizens to thrive and have opportunities.  Not to mention that it is not free money, many of us hard working people who actually pay taxes give this girl her “free” money. 

We cannot continue to put in place systems like these as they destroy our desire to achieve and make a great life for ourselves.  Be careful in how you recommend we “help” people as many times it back fires and becomes more of a bad spot on our nation. 

Change in Company direction

I have always enjoyed my work as a coach, but seemed to be struggling with the marketing and words to use that described my services (balance coaching).  After careful thought and an amazing sessions with my coach (http://www.createradiance.com/) I realized I was not acknowledging my true passion.  I was in the wrong niche! So as of last Thursday I am officially a wealth coach.  The big realization was that it is the one topic that I will talk to ANYONE ANY DAY about.  I keep gravitating towards it, and amazingly my marketing ideas started to flow and won’t stop!  I so believe that you need to be financially healthy to truly create a healthy life that I want to educate people and help them plan.  All without trying to sell them a financial product or a get rich quick scheme.  Just a loving caring environment to explore their relationship with money and set up a plan that will work for them.  So now begins my new journey to my real passion!

What is balance?

Everyone talks about leading a balanced life, but what exactly does that mean?  To me balance is taking the time to recharge so that I can continue to achieve, prosper and focus on what is important in life.  You can be more effective in your job on a daily basis if you work 9 focused hours versus 12 half focused hours.  At some point during the day your brain turns off and you are no longer as productive or as accurate as you could be.  Often times you end up needing to review what you have done the next day.  Wouldn’t it be better to end your day earlier, get in some exercise or quality family time?  Then you are become recharged, and don’t feel as if you are neglecting anything.  This allows focusing on work when you are there to be easier and more rewarding.  Try it for one week and see how you feel.