7 Tips for Developing Systems for Success

Wherever you are today with respect to growing your
business or organization, developing systems and processes
represents a crucial part of setting the conditions for
success. Because it's so important to establish a robust
foundation before your company explodes with new business,
this article offers seven ideas for systematizing your
organization.

Before your company can respond to rapid shifts or prepare
for expansion, you will want to look around for leaks and
cracks. Ask, "How do communications and work products flow
from suppliers, within the organization, and to customers?
Who hands off what to whom? Is this ideal or should we
optimize processes?"

The answers may reveal areas where no methods exist, where
methods are still too vaguely defined to cement, and where
critical gaps reside that should be sealed before everyone
can perform effectively on a grander scale.

For example, it might be comfortable in the early stages of
a business for people to communicate very informally.
However, informal communication by itself cannot support a
consistent way of operating once more people become
involved. If you plan for growth by systematizing as soon
as possible, you'll lay a solid framework and avoid an
"implosion" later.

Another major consideration is the amount of irreplaceable
intellectual property that might be stored in the heads of
your employees or contractors. Contributors to your
organization might ebb and flow without your retaining a
fraction of what they know. Can you afford to let them walk
away without capturing their wisdom in your company's
knowledgebase? Can people go on vacation without causing a
standstill?

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Take Time to Do a Little "Task Triage"
------------------------------------------------

Look at each of the applicable areas of your business, such
as:

. Administration
. Project management
. Production management
. Information technology
. Quality assurance
. Marketing/sales
. Customer support
. Other functional activities

In each area -- and even more importantly, across areas --
you'll find possibilities for streamlining, strengthening,
and documenting your processes. Many processes will begin
in one functional area and continue through other areas
before completion.

The handoffs between people or functions often represent
the weakest links because of the possibilities for
miscommunication, bottlenecks, delays, and data entry
errors. So be especially alert for those areas!

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Seven Things to Consider When Systematizing Your Business
------------------------------------------------

As you proceed to develop and fine-tune your processes,
consider the following.

1. How mature are your processes?

Especially while in a startup mode, many of your methods
might be in a "mushy," formative state. It can take time to
develop a repeatable pattern for accomplishing work. Even
if your business has operated for a while, new activities
will inevitably emerge. Consider whether each is mature
enough to justify formal documentation, or whether less
formal "desk instructions" would suffice in the meantime.

2. Can you streamline processes before documenting them?

Before documenting your processes:

-- Evaluate whether all activities are truly necessary.

-- Consider where activities can be simplified, automated,
or eliminated.

-- Research where obstacles to productivity exist.

-- Ponder all areas with the greatest potential for waste,
errors, mistakes, and hidden drains on your bottom line.

-- Think about how streamlining each area would improve
your profitability, customer satisfaction, and internal
effectiveness, and prioritize your efforts accordingly.

3. Who should document your systems?

People often don't have the "extra" time to document their
own tasks, since they already spend all of their time doing
their regular jobs. Another option might involve "job
shadowing," where an intern or new-hire continually
observes, discusses, and documents what an expert performer
does.

This relieves the expert of that burden, while providing a
way for the intern to learn and contribute value
immediately. Alternatively, you could hire a procedure
specialist, and if a client engagement benefits enough to
pay for it, that's ideal!

The intern or specialist also can recommend ideas for
improvement that surface from a having a fresh perspective.
All resulting procedures would be fine-tuned with the
expert's help and become part of the company's information
library.

4. How can you go about systematizing?

Begin by asking, "How do we [...]?" and then fill in the
blank with the activity you wish to systematize. Diagram
all steps required to complete that process, across all
functional areas.

You may discover that if you routinely perform certain
steps in a given order, those are good candidates for
step-by-step procedures. In areas where the steps vary
based on the circumstances, a list of guidelines might be
more appropriate. If you are able to automate procedures,
consider using electronic support systems.

5. What types of documentation should you produce?

-- Systems, at the highest level, represent collections of
related processes.

-- Processes, depicted as diagrams or process maps, provide
overviews of tasks that transform inputs into outputs by
adding value during each task step.

-- Procedures cover the step-by-step, "how-to" details for
performing task steps. Procedures might appear in training
materials, job aids, and work instructions. Similarly,
guidelines show what rules to follow in more variable
situations.

6. What can you delegate or outsource?

If you have designed your processes to be easy to follow
and repeatable, so that others can produce the same result
each time, you are ready to delegate. And if you can hand
off to someone with less expertise without losing speed or
quality, hurray!

7. What can you continuously improve?

Always be alert for ways to eliminate, automate, or
simplify every activity that you perform routinely. Your
time is valuable, so your goal should be to spend time on
the activities that will contribute most to your company's
profitability. For every step, ask, "What value does this
add? What's a faster, less complicated way of getting this
done? Can a different view of this system expose new
possibilities for streamlining?"

In conclusion, systematizing your business may seem like an
overwhelming effort. But if you prioritize the areas to
simplify and document according to what will have the
greatest impact on your bottom line, and enlist outside
help, you'll be well on the road to success.

----------------------------------------------------
Adele Sommers, Ph.D. is the author of the award-winning
"Straight Talk on Boosting Business Performance" program.
She helps people "discover and recover" the profits their
businesses may be losing every day through overlooked
performance potential. To sign up for more free tips, visit
her site at http://LearnShareProsper.com

Successful Money Making Mindset - Step Into the Barrier Zone

Have you heard the advice, "Step out of your comfort zone?"
You may not realize it but there's a secret to this
advice. Just stepping out of your comfort zone is not
enough. We can all give examples where we've been in
uncomfortable situations and then have been quite happy
going back to our comfort zones. But these situations
didn't have a significant impact on our wealth. It
encompasses more than simply stepping out of your comfort
zone; you need to step into the barrier zone to make money
and increase your wealth.

The Barrier Zone is where you put all the things that are
BOTH uncomfortable to you AND that hold you back. That's
The Barrier Zone. Items that are in The Barrier Zone can
be there for a number of reasons: you might not know how to
do something; you might have been told that you're not good
at it; or you might think you need more experience or
knowledge. A few examples that might fall into each of the
three zones are listed below.

Items within The Comfort Zone might have the following in
it: My home, my spouse, my normal routine, my job, and my
friends.

Outside The Comfort Zone may have: Meeting someone new,
going to a new place, not a normal routine, starting a new
job, and learning a new skill.

Examples of items found in The Barrier Zone could be
investing in the stock market, buying my first house, and
starting my own business.

What's in your Barrier Zone? First, take the time to list
1-3 items that you really wish you could accomplish or know
you should achieve to make money and become wealthy. Next,
take one of the items and talk with a friend or spouse and
ask them how you could complete it successfully? This will
provide you with a new prospective, impart support, and add
momentum to completing this task. Next, identify the first
step you need to do for that item to get done. Sign up for
that class! Make that phone call! Talk with an expert!
Don't worry about the other steps right now, those will
come later. Commit to following through on just that one
step because that very first step is the hardest. Lastly,
share with your friend or spouse success and your progress
in becoming wealthy. Celebrating your success with others
will keep you energized and motivated.

It's an amazingly liberating experience when you
successfully conquer and accomplish one of the items from
your Barrier Zone to move your money making abilities
forward. You'll feel GREAT! You'll wonder why you didn't
attempt it sooner. You'll also look forward to undertaking
the next thing on your Barrier Zone list.

----------------------------------------------------
Sharon Marsh, Ph.D., entrepreneur and wealth coach, is the
founder and owner of Professional Wealth Solutions, LLC. Go
now to http://www.buildwealthmakemoney.com for Free Wealth
Building and Money Making tips. Read. Act. Energize your
wealth program.

Track Down Harmful Beliefs That Keep You from Accomplishing 20 Times More

Everyone is hobbled by false perceptions of opportunities
and threats that lead to wasteful and inappropriate
efforts. Millions establish internet based businesses and
few make significant income because they believe they can
easily make a fortune with little effort. Why? They read
and hear a lot about the exceptions who do well in this
challenging medium. Yet tens of millions shun profitable
franchise operations that would earn them vastly larger
incomes than they enjoy now. Why? They read and hear a
lot about a few unethical franchise operators who offer
poor opportunities.

Do you believe everything you read in the newspaper and see
on television? You're in trouble if you do.

Organizations do even worse. Why? The false perceptions
of each individual are multiplied as it usually takes
agreement to move forward. Fewer and less appropriate
opportunities are pursued as a result.

What can you do? Assume that all of your beliefs are based
on misperceptions until you've checked them out.

Apply Sophisticated Thinking

In his wonderful book, The Unschooled Mind (Basic Books,
1991), cognitive psychologist Professor Howard Gardner
argues that people usually think at three different levels.
Gardner defines the five-year-old's mind as the first level.

Five-year-olds usually live in a world where others take
care of them and keep them safe from harm. That belief
persists when most people become adults and prevents many
from becoming independent, fully functioning adults.
Overprotection after age five makes matters worse. Another
common example of the five-year-old mind is that confident
people falsely believe that they are superior in every way
to others. Ask any roomful of five-year-olds if they are
terrific at something and almost all will agree.

The second level of thinking develops when training,
usually in high school and college, gives teens and young
adults a grasp of sophisticated concepts that are
counterintuitive to the five-year-old's thought process.
Here's the problem: The student memorizes the concepts long
enough to pass the examination.

But Gardner argues that relatively few adults reach the
third level of thinking where they can apply the
sophisticated concepts to real-life problems. In the
absence of that faculty, almost everyone reverts to the
five-year-old's misconceptions for making decisions.

The person who can apply the principles learned in school
to a real-life situation becomes a disciplinary expert. But
those effectively working minds are few and far between in
most organizations. Think of what could be accomplished if
you consciously shed your five-year-old's misconceptions,
applied sophisticated adult reasoning to expert knowledge,
and questioned common assumptions of the prevailing
five-year-old mind.

Round Out Your View

When only an experiment will do, cross-check your idea in
other ways to get a better sense of what you are about to
try. Consider Columbus. While some feared sailing west
across the Atlantic believing they would fall off the edge
of the Earth, Columbus knew better. He had made a point of
studying the early Viking explorations of North America. In
fact, in 1477, 15 years before heading toward the
Caribbean, Columbus visited Iceland to learn more about the
northern "islands" across the Atlantic.

I'll Get Right on It

Even if people attempt to apply sophisticated thinking,
they will still jump to conclusions too often. If service
was slow the last two times you went to a given store, you
may decide this store will always offer poor service and
don't go back. Statistically, two experiences do not
constitute a trend. It's possible that the manager was away
on vacation on both occasions and the rest of the employees
took it easy.

The executives of one award-winning multibillion-dollar
manufacturer were clearly intelligent, well educated, and
widely admired for their decisions. Ever curious, these
managers wanted to measure the quality of their decisions.
They knew good decision making has to reflect solid
statistically based data, and they wondered what
statisticians would say about their decisions.
Statisticians were assigned to follow the executives around
for six months to watch them in action. Almost without
exception the executives treated random events as
representing what was typically occurring in the business.
Executives were constantly trying to eliminate these
few random variations in performance. All this scurrying
around kept the executives from having time to work on more
promising opportunities for gain. Despite learning this
profound insight, the organization faltered by continuing
to mistake the actual trends. The lesson: Be sure you are
focusing on the areas where action will do the most good.

This example also shows how wide the gap can be between
perceptions of management quality and actual effectiveness,
another example of misperceptions. You have probably
noticed the frequency by which "widely admired" companies
rapidly fall from grace as performance plummets.
Misperceptions have pulled them away from good
opportunities.

Copyright 2007 Donald W. Mitchell, All Rights Reserved

----------------------------------------------------
Donald Mitchell is chairman of Mitchell and Company, a
strategy and financial consulting firm in Weston, MA. He is
coauthor of six books including The 2,000 Percent Squared
Solution, The 2,000 Percent Solution, and The 2,000 Percent
Solution Workbook. Free advice on accomplishing 20 times
more is available to you by registering at
=====>

http://www.2000percentsolution.com .

Good Design Doesn't Get Done In A Day: Part 2 of 2

Unfortunately once you've finished designing your piece,
the work is not over. There are several additional pieces
to consider when you're working out your timeline:

Other timing considerations:

- Time for other vendors' work. Writing, proofreading and
photography have to happen before the design portion of a
project can begin. Get timeline estimates from all vendors
and make sure that everyone involved in the process knows
when their deadline is. For example, if you have a writer
working on copy for a one-page sales website you'll need
that copy at least a couple of weeks before the site is
launched. This lets the designer use that copy to design
and code the site. Once the design is complete allow enough
time for printing. You'll also need time for web coding,
backend development, hosting setup and domain name
propagation. Printing is an often-overlooked time component
- and it can take quite some time to do properly! For most
projects I'd suggest allowing a minimum of one week to
print the project. Two weeks will prevent the printer from
rushing and will give all the final pieces plenty of time
to dry as well. And remember that if your printer isn't
local you'll have to allow enough time for shipping your
printed materials as well!

- Time to distribute. Once a website is launched or a
printed piece comes off the press, the process isn't over!
If you're producing a website, and not planning to market
in any other way, be sure that you allow enough time to get
noticed by the Search Engines. This can take several weeks
or even months. If you can afford to market with both a
website and some other method, you'll have a much more
effective marketing campaign in a short time frame. Some
ideas for this include promoting the website in your email
newsletter, in your partners' email newsletters, hanging or
mailing flyers, doing a postcard mailing, or distributing
an article online.

It also takes a bit of time to get printed materials out
into the world. Allow a couple of days to address, stamp
and send any mailed pieces. You'll save money if you allow
enough time to send your materials bulk rate - but that
often results in your pieces taking longer to deliver. If
you're distributing flyers or putting an ad in a magazine,
find out about the vendor's lead times for these activities
as well.

- Time for your target market to react. This is especially
important if you're producing marketing materials or a
website to promote a class or an event. You need to make
sure that all the designed materials are available to your
clients early. Do it far enough in advance for them to
consider your offer, budget for it, find out more about
your company or your offering and then make their
purchasing decision. A good rule of thumb is the more
expensive your class or event is, the more time your target
market will need to consider and justify it. It's also good
to get things out early enough for people to plan their
schedules around it. If your target is solo entrepreneurs
it might be hard for them to clear their schedule for a
full day if given 1 week notice - even if they'd really
like to come. But if you give them 3 weeks notice it might
be easier to schedule. If your event requires people to
travel you should certainly give more advance notice so
that they can book a flight at a reasonable price and find
a hotel room.

With all of these considerations, it might seem that you
need to start planning your design project many months in
advance of your event. But the truth is that a lot of these
steps can be done quickly. It still is advisable to allow
as much time as possible to address each step thoroughly
and without rushing the project. If you follow this method
your finished design will usually be better and more
effective.

----------------------------------------------------
Erin Ferree is a brand identity and marketing design
strategist who creates big visibility for small businesses.
Through her customized marketing and brand identity
packages, Erin helps her clients discover their brand
differentiators, then designs logos, business cards, and
other marketing materials and websites to reflect that
differentiation, as well as to increase credibility and
memorability. http://www.elf-design.com

5 Steps to Organize Your Way to Efficiency

It's 10:38am and you are on a roll. You are so deeply
involved in your work, that you barely notice the world
around you. You are in the zone. You just need to verify
the date on that invoice…but where is that invoice? It was
right there a second ago. Nothing throws off your
concentration faster that disorganization. You may have to
spend the next 10 minutes looking through drawers, the
piles on your desk and maybe even the recycling bin to see
if it accidentally ended up there.

Are you one of those people who say they have their 'own'
filing system? This usually is just a cover for 'I
basically know what each of these various piles are here
for and can probably tell you what's in some of them.'
There is no telling how much time can be lost in a day due
to disorganization. Imagine if every time you needed
something, it was right where it was supposed to be. What
a time saver that would be! If you are trying to find a
way to avoid losing precious minutes out of your day trying
to find that file, email, invoice or pen, the following
tips may be valuable to you.

1. File everyday. Don't let papers build up on your desk.
Piles of paper sitting on your desk not only hamper your
efficiency, they create stress as well. Imagine sitting
down to work with nothing but your current project on your
desk. Now imagine it (if it doesn't already resemble this)
with piles of work everywhere. You can feel the stress
those piles create. Set aside 15 minutes each day to
create files, label them clearly and set up a filing system
or just keep them in alphabetical order. This will be a
great time saver the next time that you are looking for
that invoice. The 15 minutes a day you put into this will
be regained and then some in the time that you don't have
to spend searching for things.

2. Organize your computer files. Just as you set up a
filing system for your papers, you need to arrange a filing
system on your computer. Not being able to find a document
on your computer is every bit as frustrating as losing one
on paper. But this is very easily avoided, since every
time you save a document on your computer, you are asked
where you would like to save it. If you have just been
randomly saving your work wherever your computer prompts
you to, it's time to clean up. Create folders for larger
topics and subfolders within each topic. For example, if
you work with contracts, have one folder called
'contracts', and within this folder have a subfolder where
you keep your contract templates called 'templates' and
other subfolders for each of your clients where you can
store copies of the contracts you have with each customer.
You should also regularly organize your desktop in order to
avoid sitting and staring at it unproductively for long
periods. You need to eliminate the clutter on your desktop
by erasing any shortcuts for programs that you don't use
often. This will enable you to quickly access your
frequently used programs.

3. Make to-do lists. Do you ever feel so overwhelmed with
work that you don't even know where to begin? Making a
to-do list at the start of each work day is such a simple
step, but will help enormously to keep you on track. You
will avoid starting one task only to realize that you have
something more important that needs to be done first. I
personally have found to-do lists to be the most effective
time saver and I am constantly amazed at how doing such a
small thing as creating a list makes me a great deal more
efficient.

4. Be neat. It's incredibly simple and amazingly effective
at saving you time. Put things back in their place when
you are finished with them. There is nothing more
irritating than having to stop working in order to find
your pen. If you don't have them already, find some
organizational objects for your desk such as, a cup for
your pens, a box for your paperclips and an in-box for your
newest tasks. Keep the supplies you use frequently such as
staples, staplers, highlighters and hanging file folder
tabs in one easily accessible place.

5. Keep a calendar. With all of the responsibilities you
have in a day, you can't possibly expect to remember
everything. A calendar will keep you on track and help you
to avoid missing important meetings, appointments and even
family events. If you use Microsoft Outlook, and have your
computer on throughout the day, use its calendar or you can
find many free calendar programs online. Just do a Google
search for 'free online calendars'. If you don't work at
your computer all day, consider buying an agenda to keep
you on track, or a handheld such as a Palm Pilot or Pocket
PC, or check if your cell phone has a calendar you can use.

Organization is the key to efficiency. Using these few
simple steps will help your work day run considerably
smoother. Taking the time to get organized is just the
first step. Maintaining organization is the solution for
helping you to remain effective in your work. Take charge
of your time by following these tips, it will cost you
little time, but will ultimately save you considerable
hours.

----------------------------------------------------
Kelly Sims is a Virtual Assistant and President of
Virtually There VA Services. Please visit her website to
sign up for her monthly newsletter providing useful
information that enhances and simplifies the lives of busy
entrepreneurs. =>

http://www.virtuallythereva.com .

Discover the Gratitude Process for Increasing Cash Flow

To succeed in business, your chances for success increase
if you have in place a business plan and business systems.
In addition to these foundational pieces for business
success, another area that is often overlooked but is
critical for building a profitable business is the
conditioning of a business owner's mindset.

There are many methods and philosophy's to do this. One
method that is effective and easy to implement is based on
gratitude. Wallace D. Waddles, in his book The Science of
Getting Rich, expresses his views as follows: "The grateful
mind continually expects good things and expectation
becomes fate." To expand on Waddles statement, one can
look within their own life to find things to be grateful
for. One can condition one's mind to continually seek out
and find these things to be grateful for. After awhile,
one begins to do this on an every day basis, going beyond
the looking-for-things-to-be-grateful-for phase to the
expectation phase that good things will be present in ones
life to be grateful for.

Ron Rogers from The Ron Rogers Group, Inc was in a
situation where he had a customer that had not paid him for
services rendered. Rogers was worried that the customer
was not going to pay and he continued to worry. The
customer finally ended up having to file bankruptcy and
never did pay Rogers. That was exactly what Rogers was
focusing on and it's exactly what happened. The customer
did not pay Rogers.

Realizing that, as a business owner, his mindset was
focused on something in his business that he did not want;
Rogers began to work on reconditioning his mind. On a
daily basis, he started using the gratitude process where
he began writing down everything in his business he was
grateful for. He wrote down and clearly defined what he
wanted for his business. This time Rogers wrote that he
wanted to increase his cash flow by creating more referral
business.

Rogers wrote in his journal that he was grateful for a
specific customer. He was grateful for all the value that
he was providing for that customer. He was grateful that
this customer was paying him on time and that this customer
was happy with his work. Even though he wasn't receiving
referrals he wrote that he was grateful that this customer
was creating a positive buzz about his work and that this
customer is referring people to his business.

After a few weeks, referrals began to come in to Ron's
business and cash flow increased. Ron was able to take
what he already was grateful for in his business, write it
down and make it much more powerful by using the gratitude
process. He conditioned his mind to attract what he wanted
in to his business and life by using gratitude.

Another powerful way to enhance the gratitude process is to
take a special object, which is small enough to carry in
your pocket, and use it as a touching point to remind you
throughout the day what you are grateful for in your life.
In the movie The Secret, a rock was used as the special
gratitude object. One can use, in place of the rock, a
locket, a coin, even a piece of ribbon. Each morning, as
you place the object in your pocket and every time you
touch the object, think about what you currently have in
your life that you are grateful for. At the end of the
day, when you empty your pockets, think of your day and all
the things that you were happy to have experienced or
received.

Other people prefer to use a visual reminder as part of
their gratitude process. One method is to place small
colored pieces of masking tape around their house (i.e.,
door knobs, bathroom mirrors, refrigerator handle, on a
hair brush, etc…), in their car, or in their office work
space (e.g., on the phone, computer monitor, desk, etc…).

To summarize the gratitude process, start by writing at
least three things you are grateful for on a piece of paper
or in a journal. It doesn't matter what the three things
are, begin by focusing on the things in your business and
your life that you are grateful for. Bob Proctor,
acclaimed lecturer and author, suggests starting sentences
and affirmations with, "I'm so happy and grateful now
that…" Next, be clear on what you want out of your
business and then write that down on a piece of paper or in
a journal.

Use the gratitude process on a daily basis to begin making
profound and profitable changes in your business life.

----------------------------------------------------
Resource City Connections, your knowledgeable and nurturing
business community, for business owners and entrepreneurs
looking to accelerate their business. If you're ready to
super charge your sa1es, easily attract perfect customers,
and have more fun and freedom, get your FREE success tips
from Resource City Connections on how to improve Cash Flow
by using The Law of Attraction. Go to
http://www.acceleratecashflow.com Now!

Think Strategically, Act Bodaciously

"Bodacious" means to be bold, outstanding, and remarkable.
Take those attributes to work and you're on your way to
building a fulfilling, bodacious career. Does having a
bodacious career sound exciting to you? It is! After
starting as an $8 an hour customer service rep, I rose
through the ranks of AOL, accepting four promotions and
surviving over six layoffs to become the head of corporate
training for 12,000 employees. Along the way I learned I
needed to be bodacious to achieve the career I wanted. Out
of that experience I created my "cheat sheet" of essential
Bodacious Career Builders. Here's one of them: Think
Strategically, Act Bodaciously.

Thinking strategically is intentionally thinking about the
big picture of your career and life. You have to determine
where you want to go before you can get there. Otherwise,
it's all just happen stance.

It's all too easy to spend 100% of our time on the daily
to-do list. There's always something that's demanding our
attention. Between our jobs, kids, spouses, parents,
finances, community involvement, and anything else in our
lives, there's always something that must be
addressed...now! Clearly, if we don't make deliberate time
to think strategically, time will zoom by and we'll have
done a ton but achieved little.

Take time to strategically create a future that's
satisfying and rewarding. You can do this by following the
example of a common business process that all companies use
to map out their path - the business plan. But this
version will be your personal step-by-step strategic action
plan that will take you from dreams to reality.

Creating a personal business plan may sound odd and
over-the-top, but it's useful, and practical, and it gives
you a strategic platform on which to build your dream. As
with business, the main purpose here is to take steps to
make you more effective and efficient with your time and
resources. By laying out all the details, you reduce the
risk of failure and increase your chances for success.

There are three main parts to your personal business plan:

Step 1: Capture the current state of your situation Like
the maps throughout your favorite mall indicating "You Are
Here," Step 1 helps you understand your current situation
as thoroughly as possible. Take stock in your overall
position. Does the job still hold meaning for you? Is the
reason why you once said "yes" to the job offer still
compelling enough to keep you going to work?

Step 2: Identify what you want your desired future to look
like Put your current reality aside and dream of the
future. What do you want from your career? How will your
future career look and feel to you? What will be your
role? What will it be like going to work every morning?
This is when it's valuable to invest the time and
concentration to examine exactly what's inside your soul
bursting to assert itself. Key points are to be honest
with yourself, and to look within.

Step 3: Determine what you have to do to get there Now
that you have been able to paint a picture of your ideal
future, it's time to plot a plan for getting there and
bodaciously implement it. Step 3 is the difference between
getting stuck in emotionalizing your dreams, feeling
frustrated that they haven't already happened, and thinking
negatively versus staying calm, confident, focused, and
productive. You need to build a plan consistent with your
vision while being flexible and resilient in the face of
ever-changing times and shifting circumstances.

Dreams don't come true overnight and they usually don't
manifest without some bumps and twists and turns. Such
events will challenge your resolve to make sure you really
want to achieve your goal. That's why you need to decide
up front that you're going to love every minute of it!
Remember, you're bodacious!

BODACIOUS CAREER BUILDER: Consider the bigger picture of
what you want from your career. Create your personal
business plan to get there and bodaciously implement it.

----------------------------------------------------
Mary Foley, author of "Bodacious! Woman: Outrageously in
Charge of Your Life and Lovin' It!" and founder of the
Bodacious Women's Club, inspires women to be courageously
in charge of their lives. You can be inspired, too! Get the
free audio "Live Like Your Nail Color!" today at
http://www.LiveLikeYourNailColor.com .

Cold Calling Executives - a Way of Life

If you plan to cold call high-level decision-makers expect
a mental transition to come. The time of transition comes
to different people at different points in time, often
without the seller even realizing it has happened. The way
you think will morph into the very kinds of thoughts top
decision-makers think. Seemingly, suddenly you will have
their perspective of the world and be able to communicate
in a way that gets fast results.

You'll no longer be stuck in the quagmire of low-level
decision-makers who make decisions within limited decision
making capacity as dictated by the high-level decision
makers. You will be free to think and move through business
transactions with the same abilities as higher levels of
your prospects' organizations.

A case in point.

This week on the fourth day of waiting in the hospital's
Intensive Care Unit (ICU) for "official" updates re: my
sister-in-law's health disposition. Finally, on the fourth
day I flipped over to my cold-calling-executives mindset.
Nurses said they could provide no information, seven
different physicians said they were not the attending
physician and could not counsel the family.

For whatever reasons these medical professionals were
limited in their problem solving ability. The hospital
administrator was the next logical stop - as he was "the
buck stops here guy who was accountable to share holders."

One call to his office resulted in an on site visit by his
personal assistant; the appearance of the previously
unknown "attending physician"; and the collection of
family's constructive feedback was reported back to the
hospital administrator.

The hospital administrator immediately recognized as did I:

1. If his well-educated highly-paid medical staff was
failing to connect with the patient's family, he (the
hospital administrator) had a systems problem in need of
fixing immediately.

2. If just this one hospital patient had 7 siblings, their
spouses, children and grandchildren in a room who were
feeling emotional pain and suffering from neglect -- he
(the hospital administrator) had a big, unnecessary PR
problem looming on the horizon.

3. In a litigious society his (the hospital
administrator's) hospital had huge potential exposure for a
lawsuit.

4. If this one situation had been brought to his (the
hospital administrator's) attention, odds were at least 100
more just like were lurking in the shadows.

Contrary to the beliefs of most people who have reason to
visit a hospital the physicians and nurses were not/are not
the ones who resolve systems issues.

When our family was not communicated with, it became clear
a breakdown in the hospital's communication protocols had
occurred. How sad and frustrating that well intended,
highly skilled and talented medical professionals who
wanted more than anything to care for their patients and
their families failed to do so because of an ineffective
system. How sad and frustrating that a family who respected
and wanted the counsel of those medical professionals did
not receive it on a timely basis. As you begin to think
like a "Top Dog," you'll see and experience considerably
less frustration in your personal and professional life,
because you will know: who to talk to and how to talk to
them, all for the purpose of resolving the problem and/or
making things better.

That third point is an important one -- even in the midst
of emotionally high-charged situations, high-level
decision-makers are not interested in assessing blame,
condemning, or venting anger. They are interested in making
things work better for all involved.

When making things work better for all involved becomes
your predominant mindset take note. This is evidence that
you have made the transformation to "Top Dog" thinking.

----------------------------------------------------
For your mini-course "Jealously Guarded Secrets to Cold
Calling Company Presidents" visit
http://www.ColdCallingExecutives.com ! Or call Cold Calling
Expert, Lead New Business Development Coach, Leslie Buterin
(like butterin' bread) at (816) 554-3674 9-3 CST (that's
Kansas City/Chicago Time) Find much more on our
http://www.coldcallingexecutives.com/blog/index.html