Business Insights

Have you been searching tirelessly for a new job, but find yourself constantly frustrated with your results? If you’ve been unsuccessful in finding a new position or advancing your career, maybe it’s time to try a new strategy.

If you’re ready to learn how to land your perfect job, we recommend that you pick up a copy of Use Your Head To Get Your Foot In The Door: Job Search Secrets No One Else Will Tell You, by #1 New York Times Best Selling Author Harvey Mackay.

Mackay’s pragmatic, yet humorous style shows you that getting a job is a job in and of itself! He has penned the definitive A-Z career resource with time-tested, easy-to-apply methods to:

• Use state-of-the art researching skills and networking strategies
• Rebuild personal confidence in the face of rejection
• Create a daily “recovery” program and job search plan
• Take advantage of the way firms and recruiters make hiring decision
• Learn the best questions to ask in interviews and how to get the job

Mackay’s extensive knowledge of job search and career advancement is jammed into this powerful book. In fact he is so confident in this book he personally guarantees that, if you buy this book, practice its concepts and don’t have a job in six months, he will give you your money back!

A recent review by the prestigious Library Journal Review says:

“….this is a very useful book. The short chapters with descriptive titles make it easy to navigate, and Mackay offers tips—from changing your attitude to getting hired—both for those currently employed but wishing to position themselves better in their current companies and for those who are out of work. Highly recommended for job seekers and career changers at all experience levels.”

We think you’ll personally enjoy Use Your Head To Get Your Foot In The Door and hope you’ll pass this offer along to a friend who needs a dose of Harvey Mackay’s clever wisdom and secrets to jumpstart their career in this grueling economy.

P.S. Go directly to www.harveymackay.com/jobsecrets or buy the book from a bookseller and visit the www.harveymackay.com/jobsecrets site with the book in hand.

P.S.S. After you read the book, let us know what you thought and how it’s helping you with your job hunt!

I love the Olympics for many reasons. The sheer fun, joy and spirit we get to participate in while watching the athletes, their stories, their families, and the highs and lows – it all makes for a great way to invest time in observing others pursue their dreams partly for their country, partly for themselves.

I can’t help but ask myself what these athletes did to prepare for the Olympics. What physical workouts, diets, practice and dreaming did they do? What doubts, fears anxieties, lack of confidence, certainties and feelings did they experience on their journey to Vancouver? Mostly, what did they do to overcome these feelings that each one of us has at one time or another in pursuit of our goals and dreams?

The Olympics, I believe, gives us a chance to live vicariously through the participants, be it athlete or coach, spectator or staff member. In asking myself these questions and watching the games, I realized that I want to be on the field playing my heart out regardless of whether I win or lose. What about you? Do you want to be playing or watching? Cheering or checking?  Feeling the exhilaration of the game on the track or from the stands?

Either way, business is a game that you can either play or watch, enjoy or not. It’s your choice. Either way, the game is very short when you are playing full out or very long when all you do is find what’s wrong with it.

As I observed the games, I felt a sense of pride and joy and a sense of sadness. In every sporting event someone won the gold, silver or bronze. Many of the athletes didn’t win a medal. Were they losers?  I prefer to think of all of them as winners, just in varying degrees based on their own set of circumstances.

If they showed up, did their best and felt and knew that they did…isn’t that a win? I say yes!

Life is not about winning medals. Life is about showing up ready to play full out and doing the best YOU can do. Competition helps each of us see what is possible by pushing or pulling us to meet our potential and our goals.

Every one of the athletes came to the Olympic Games with a goal. A goal that they committed to, trained for physically and mentally and then went after with all their heart.

What are your business and personal goals? Have you committed to them and are you playing full out? Like the Olympic Games, your flame will burn out. My hope and wish for you is that you have no more game left in you because you left it all on the field, doing and knowing you did your very best!

Often when businesses face a change in direction, they look to a business consulting company for help. Finding a consultant who can honestly deliver that help with knowledge, efficiency and integrity can be a challenge. If you think your business could benefit from the help of a consultant, here are some things to consider when interviewing potential candidates.

First and foremost, a consultant must be able to listen. If a person can’t take the time to listen to what you have to say, it is highly unlikely they will ever understand your needs and objectives well enough to help you. Unfortunately, there are consultants out there who talk the talk but fail to hear what others have to say.

A management consultant should offer you a service, not a product. You are searching for help with problems within your business and you need someone who will work to solve those problems, meet the needs of the assignment, foster morale, or help plan new agendas. Be wary of someone who wants only to sell you this program, or that book, or this software. While all of these are great resources to have, a consultant must also provide guidance and teaching first.

Be wary of a consultant who boasts that “I can turn your company around” or some such exclamation. A consultant’s job is to empower your management and employees to implement change, make wise choices and design a plan to reach goals in the future. A wise consultant will help you to recognize how the company got to where it is and demonstrate how to make the right choices to accelerate improvement.

Obviously you will want to work with a consultant who has had plenty of diversified experience. A big caveat here is to avoid the temptation to search out a consultant with experience only in your industry.  In order to be truly effective a consultant must be able to offer a wide range of approaches to problem solving that can only come from having worked in many different situations.

When your business is failing, the last thing you or your employees need is someone telling you what a mess you’ve made of things or point out all the wrong choices you’ve made.  If a consultant starts out telling you things like, “boy, have you been doing things the wrong way” or is very patronizing, saying things like, “let me tell you how it should have been done,” you should definitely end the interview then and there.

Last but not least, a potential consultant will come to you with an open mind, waiting until all of your concerns and issues have been presented before offering any advice at all.  If a consultant appears to arrive at your door with a readymade, cookie cutter, one size fits all attitude to improvement, that is not the consultant you want!

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention www.OneCoach.com as the original source).

If you are a new business owner, one of your first objectives must be to brand yourself. Business coaches and consultants alike will all tell you how important it is to establish your identity. You want to be noticed. You want to be remembered. You want to stand out from the rest. You want your business to grow. Just what will creating a brand accomplish for you and your business? Consider these points:

A brand makes you memorable
Obviously, for clients or customers to come to you, they have to first remember you. By creating a brand that sticks in their minds, you increase the odds that yours will be the name that pops into their head when they’re looking for the types of services you provide. Whether it’s your logo design, add campaign or radio jingle, creating a solid brand will help drive business in your direction.

A brand creates credibility
Whether it’s factual or simply perceived, branding lends credibility to your business. When people see or hear about you over and over in a positive context they naturally believe that you must be good, reliable, trustworthy, etc. After all, they see your logo everywhere. They hear your ads repeated on the radio, or they simply hear your name connected with something they need or want. Therefore, you must be the go to person for that service.

A good brand saves you time
In business, time is money. Establishing a good brand for your company right from the start can save you hours of introduction time that can be better used as selling time. Imagine if every time you met with a potential customer you first had to explain who you are, what you do, and how you do it, before you even begin your sales pitch! Now imagine meeting with that same customer who has already been exposed to your brand and knows that information already! The time you save there is time you can put into giving a good sales presentation and getting the business.

A good brand helps you attract the right kinds of clients
A well thought out and relevant brand will make it easy for clients to connect you with the product or service they are looking for. To use a very simple example, if you were to brand your company as an insurance company for seniors, you won’t likely be the company Mom calls when her teens start to drive, but you will be the one that all those folks over 50 will call to get some reward for their years of good driving.

A brand provides a solid base from which your business can expand
A good business does not remain stagnant but grows and changes over time. Once you’ve established a memorable brand, it’s much easier to incorporate change under that same umbrella than it would be to try to create a whole new business. By expanding within your brand you never lose the valuable customer base that you have spent so much time developing.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention www.onecoach.com as the original source).

If you own a successful business, there is an excellent chance you had a great mentor somewhere along the way. Mentoring is an integral part of the growth and development of any business.  Business coaches often assign mentors within a group in order to promote good training and learning efforts.  While mentoring is a very current practice among businesses and companies, it is actually a very old and well established way of learning.  Most of us can remember a teacher, relative or friend who inspired us to learn and grow in ways that lasted a lifetime. A good mentor is first and foremost a teacher.  Instilling a desire to learn, and encouraging the ability to take risks involved with learning is a mentors greatest goal. So, how does one become a great mentor?  Here are a few guidelines to consider.

Understand the potential of the person you are mentoring. When you are aware of a person’s natural abilities and talents, you can guide them forward in the true areas of their interest.

Identify the personality traits that will help you better understand what drives a person to learn.

Establish in the beginning that you and the person you may be mentoring are compatible and can make the relationship work. Do you share similar values and beliefs? Are your work ethics basically the same? Do you share a mutual respect for each other?  And, as basic as it may sound, in order for a mentor/student relationship to work, you must like each other.

A good mentor is able to openly share personal experiences and achievements for the student to learn from both the failures and successes.

As a mentor, it is also your responsibility to help your student believe in his or her own potential and encourage them to develop their own interests and follow their dreams. Many people find it much easier to adapt the goals and directions of others rather than develop their own.

You will be there to instruct and to teach but also to encourage, reward and inspire. You will be the one to help your student up when he falters, and offer encouragement and reinforcement whenever he begins to doubt himself.

A mentor will encourage a student to venture out of their natural comfort zone to try new things and take new risks in order to broaden their horizons and expand their realm of experiences.

Understand that a mentor/student relationship will require quite a large investment of both time and energy in order to be successful.  It can be enormously rewarding and fulfilling for the mentor and an enriching and even life-changing experience for the student.

Your greatest challenge may be in maintaining the right balance of friendliness and familiarity.  It is essential to provide the right amount of support, encouragement and respect while being able to teach, counsel, and recommend ideas for change and improvement without becoming too personal and involved.

And finally, be open to the possibility that a relationship may not be working.  Not every pairing will be a good match, and it is far better to part as friends than to try and force a relationship.

If you liked this article, tell all your friends about it. They’ll thank you for it. If you have a blog or website, you can link to it or even post it to your own site (don’t forget to mention www.onecoach.com as the original source).