Business success has many variables. One variable that is especially important is your attitude. Many challenging situations will arise over the course of your business life and a positive approach can sustain you longer than you might think.

What is a positive attitude all about? It is not just seeing the silver lining in every dark cloud, but also being able to see the possibilities in each situation. These possibilities may not always be to your liking but they could be in the best interest of the business. You don’t relish building a profile on every social networking site, but you know doing so can increase business contacts and maybe even sales.

Why do you make the tough decisions? Simply put, you love what you do. The love of money will be given serious second thoughts when sales fall like rain. How about that first grouchy unsatisfied customer? He or she will be a test of wills for anyone.

Part of going into business for yourself is to make a difference – in your life, in the world and in your family. All of these dynamics play into your attitude towards your business when things are not going so well. Is it time to pull up stakes or dig in your heels?

With the right frame of mind and a positive attitude, you will choose the latter. Tough times mean reevaluating your priorities. If you still believe in your product or service, you will do what you need to do so it doesn’t disappear. If you choose to pull up the stakes and quit, it can wear on you for years to come – you can even hate yourself for quitting while you wonder “what could’ve been if I had just stuck to it.”

Love is infectious, even in business. Your winning attitude will motivate you, staff and family to pitch in wherever they can. It might be making dinner so you can work longer hours through the week on business tasks. The trade off can be more family time on the weekends.

Staff will do what you need them to do when their efforts are appreciated. Employees who feel valued work harder and more effectively to get the job done. When you win, so do they. Keep in mind being appreciated doesn’t ALWAYS mean giving them more money either. Things like an email telling them what a good job they are doing, rewarding them with time off, and even giving them an opportunity to learn more are all great ways to show your staff you value them. This is a great idea even for your vendors. If vendors love you, you can be sure you’ll always get the best deals, delivery times, etc.

Loving what you do means that you won’t just sacrifice the business for quick fixes to problems. To remain successful, only solutions with the future in mind will do. The tough decision here could be passing up a deal that would hurt you down the road even if it temporarily increased business revenue right now.

A positive approach doesn’t make everything rosy, but it does help to make things bearable for the moment. You’ll be able to see the big picture when you open your mind. Any challenges and demands can then be met with grace and fortitude. Loving what you do plays a major role in business success and longevity.

I love what I’m doing whether I’m programming a website or talking to all of you beautiful people. :) What are you doing? Do you love it?

It seems that business and stress go hand in hand. Many entrepreneurs expect some level of stress before they even get started. Well, that doesn’t have to be the case. Learn to be stress free as you achieve your success.

It is not a big secret that no one has discovered yet. Some people just don’t pay much attention to the mind-body connection. Trust me, there is one. How do you think those monks in the mountains achieve such a high state of consciousness? The only secret is that it takes practice to get good at it.

Your mind may be looking forward to working the business, but your body may not. It takes a lot of stamina to run a business and a home. Learning to balance the two isn’t easy but plenty of successful entrepreneurs are happy in a business that they love with a family that loves and supports them.

Get Moving

A healthy body equals a healthy mind and attitude. When you exercise, endorphins are released into the bloodstream. These are “feel good” chemicals that lighten your mood, improve your focus and lead to a more positive attitude about life. If they could bottle it there would be none left on the shelves.

You don’t have to hit the gym everyday to get this benefit. Try an exercise like yoga or taking walks with the family. Getting outdoors (especially for home business owners) also provides a healthy dose of vitamin D from the sun. Vitamin D helps with calcium absorption in the body for strong bones.

A body, that feels good and moves well, increases your confidence level. A confident person is better able to handle challenging situations within their business. Creative solutions to problems come more readily.

Get Support

The second way to relieve stress is to have a healthy support system. You may run the business, but you couldn’t do it without the family in your corner. It takes a lot of time and effort to grow a new enterprise into a successful one. That is time away from your family.

But, if you love what you do and who you do it for, you will be more likely to strike a balance that is agreeable to everyone. Good communication is the key to dealing with business and family issues.

Schedule Your Time Wisely

Set up a schedule for business and family. Refuse to sacrifice one for the other unless absolutely necessary. Remember, you are the boss and you can set up your business to suit your needs. What doesn’t get done today will still be there tomorrow.

A healthy boss makes for a healthy business. You can focus on your success in business better if you are already enjoying success in life. No matter what, remember that YOU have control. Run your business, don’t let it run you.

What do you find helpful to deal with your business stress?

We will always make mistakes. The keys to overcoming your mistakes are to:

• Learn the mistakes.
• Know what you did incorrectly.
• Accept that you made a mistake.
• Use the mistake to better yourself and your business.

Not until you are willing to embrace those things, will you be ready to find out the hidden treasures that can be found when mistakes are made.

As a business owner, you know all about mistakes. You made little ones as you got started. For some, too many mistakes and they find that the business life is not for them. And, maybe it isn’t.

Being in business for yourself requires a thick skin. You will have customers that are impossible to please, competition that seems to outdo you at every turn and unsuccessful marketing strategies. But, you live and learn. You will only be able to continue building your business if you have the right attitude – a positive one.

Turn your mistakes into big money.

It is human nature not to want to feel isolated. That extends to the business world. A business owner, who is brave enough to point out the mistakes they have made and how they learned from them, will have a following among other entrepreneurs. You can take that on the lecture circuit and gain a wide audience.

Networking is a part of doing business.

Your connections can be helpful when sales are slow or when you are looking to put together a new business venture. Targeting budding businesses with your brand of sage advice is one way to turn a negative into a positive.

What about customers? Maybe you hired someone who wasn’t the best at customer service. Every business owner knows that poor customer service can break a business. Instead of sitting back and brooding about your misfortune, take action.

Use this opportunity to revamp your customer service policy. That employee may be better in another area of your business. This may be the time to automate your customer service with autoresponder messages, a FAQ section on your website or an answering service.

Challenges force you to take a look at your business. Is there a way to improve an existing process? Of course there is. Use a mistake such as sending the wrong product or a failed online checkout process to make changes that will increase sales in the future.

What sets you apart?

You are willing to learn from mistakes (by using suggestions like those above) to continue to move forward in your business pursuits instead of leaning on them like crutches. Excuses rarely accomplish anything good. Mistakes can sour your mood. Shake it off and find out what you can learn from them to make your business a success.

It’s really not a mystery how people become a success.  They provide something of value.  All too often on the sites many of us frequent, such as Twitter, I find the majority of users thinking that if they just get their spammy message in front of enough people, the numbers dictate they will eventually get rich.

This is simply not true.

What these people are showing us, is that the only value they have to give is spam.  Links from strangers who we don’t know or trust telling us to do something we don’t know why we should want to do in the first place… is pointless and disgusting.  Ick.

Now, I’m sure these people do have actual value to give somewhere inside them – but just don’t know how to convey it.  So, we’re going to start small with some tips.  Future articles will definitely build further on this topic, as it’s becoming more and more necessary to get the message of value out there.

1.) Focus.
How many people do you know – especially on Twitter – who have a few hundred people following them, but are following 2,000 themselves?  This tells me one thing right away – they click ‘follow’ on everyone’s profile, in hopes that they will get some reciprocal or auto follows.  This is how many of the Twitter auto-spam scripts work.  It also tells me they are interested, not in people, but in scamming someone.  Whether this is the intent or not, it’s the message they’re sending.

So, your rule for following people should be: ONLY follow people YOU are interested in learning from.  If that’s only 30 people, then that’s all you follow.  You may have hundreds of followers by using tricks, but none of them are actually interested in anything you have to say so all of your scam effort has been useless.  As far as the content of your posts, your rule can be: would YOU follow YOU?

2.) Have Patience.

Social media marketing, whether on Twitter or otherwise, should be treated just as marketing and networking in the real world – with patience and persistance.  Building a smaller organic list of followers – who actually care about you and what you have to say is far more valuable than hundreds of followers who simply auto-follow everyone that follows them.

Having patience with this process is key.  By providing value to your followers, you’ll recieve mentions on other people’s posts – which in turn, build your followers naturally.

3.) Give.

All-too-often online marketers do only one thing: ask for something.  Click this link, come and follow me, visit my blog, buy my product, etc.  No one, I repeat, NO ONE is intersted in listening to someone they don’t know, trust, or respect.

By all means, share a useful link.  Re-quote a mindful thought you heard or read. Give a short tip about your expertise, or give away an entire product.  Giving is the only thing the Universe accepts as paymet for all it’s done for you – and will do for you.  Give, and you will recieve goodness back 10-fold.

The caveat to giving is that it must be done with the recipient’s best interest in mind.  For example, if you’re giving only to get something back – that’s not really giving – that’s a scam.  This isn’t easy if you’re not used to it and it may take an entire shift in the way you think, but figuring out how to make this little change in the way you do things day-to-day can impact your life forever.

In summary, your only focus online (and in “real” life for that matter) should be to give all you can.  Provide true value to your network and that network will support and sustain you through the thick and the thin.

How do YOU provide value?

Vision boards have been used in some way for many centuries. Great achievers have either had a natural or learned ability to envision their success before it happens. I would imagine even cave people used sketches of dreams to make them play-out in real life.

As vision boards have expanded from stone, to scroll, to black and white images, color photography, digital audio and video – grabbing the full emotion of a future goal we want to achieve has become easier. Combining many of these into one tool multiplies your chance for success.

Key Elements of Vision Boards:

1.) Powerful statements in the present-tense. I, personally, use “I Am” statements for this – such as, “I am driving my brand new Lexus.” These statements can be as bold as you wish. The only trick is to phrase them as if you are actually doing and living the phrase today. You may think this is lieing to yourself, but it’s not. It’s a type of dreaming where you actually FEEL and SEE everything around you happening exactly how you wish it to be. This is what puts the law of attraction into action.

2.) Emotionally-moving images. These images, when you see them, physically take you into the mindset of achieving something specific. It could be a picture of a physical thing (like a car or house) – or it could be something with a strong emotional connection for you – like your family on vacation conveying your desire for freedom.

3.) Being honest with yourself. In order to use vision boards effectively, you may have to back off of your “I have 10 million dollars in the bank” vision at first. Not that you can’t get there, but MOST people will have too difficult a time believing this statement in their gut. This isn’t a hard and fast rule, but it’s something to keep in mind when you’re developing your statements.

4.) Regular use of your completed board. All of your effort putting together a vision board will be pretty useless if you’re not looking at it daily – preferably many times per day. It helps to have a portable version of your vision board – if you’ve made a physical board with pictures and quotes, maybe take a picture and put it on your phone.

5.) Updating your vision board images and statements regularly. You’ll be surprised after even a few months of how quickly your life starts to change. You’ll find yourself reaching goals in your visions and wondering why you set your sights so low! This is a great feeling, and there is no where to go but up. Keep revising and adding to your vision list, removing ones you feel are no longer important (ones that don’t emotionally move you), or adding some words to your visions to make them more emotionally compelling.

The Future of Vision Boards

There is some average vision board software out there today. There are programs you probably already have on your computer that can be used to make your very own vision board (both Mac and PC have video edition software you can use to make photo slideshows with text-overlays). However, nothing out there solves the single problem I have always had with vision boards:

MAINTAINING A ROUTINE

Yes, I’m at a computer most days, yes I have a laptop and could take that to watch my vision board. Yes, I could carry around a poster board in my car or fold up a piece of notebook paper. Yes, I could write all my visions down on index cards and read them daily… But none of those things fit into my routine to look at something multiple times per day – WITHOUT FAIL.

My solution was to create something myself. Good Plum is in the process of developing vision board software for the Apple iPhone so you can create, edit, and view your vision list whenever and wherever you are.

But I need your help! The programming is just getting underway and I need suggestions on a few things so that the end product is exactly what you feel it should be.

Have you used vision boards in the past? What was the greatest and worst thing about using them? If you were to buy a vision board application for your phone, what would it HAVE to include?

We don’t need to deal with price right now, because the price will be very small in comparison to the value you’ll get from the software – also because I’m not doing this to get rich, but to share a tool that I, myself, am extremely excited to use and share with others.

Get in touch with me or leave a comment below if you have suggestions or opinions on the direction of our vision board program for the iPhone.

I was reminded today of the thin line between winning and losing.  As I (sadly) watched the Wisconsin Badgers basketball team lose a 12-point lead to Michigan State, and eventually the game, it showed clearly what they do differently when they lose compared to when they win.

Execution of fundementals.

They missed easy shots, they threw the ball away, they got lost on defense… all things they did very well for the last 5 games (that they won) and the first 30 minutes of today’s game.

How can you relate this to winning at what you do?

1.) Define What is Winning for You

Winning can be different things for different people.  For instance, if you’re a writer – a win for you may be publishing daily blog posts, or finish the next chapter in your book.  It might also be scoring a top 10 search result from great SEO writing or even creating a million dollars in sales from your next sales letter.

Whatever your situation is, clearly define what a win is for you.  Most of the time it won’t be like basketball – or any other sport – where a final score at the end of the game is the final answer.

2.) Know Your Fundementals

For the most part, the fundementals that lead you to success in your venture will most likley be related to two things: work ethic and skill.

Work ethic could be things like perservering through the times you don’t want to work (write, program, sell, recruit, etc.).  It’s these instances that make and break people.  If you can maintain persistance, chances are you can excel at what you’re doing.

Skills can obviously be learned, focused, and refined.  If you feel like you need a new skill to win – by all means go learn it – but be careful that you don’t overwhelm yourself with learning new things and lose all focus on developing business.  It may be possible that taking on a partner to bridge the gap of your skills is the better option.

3.) Create a Game Plan

Having skills and work ethic can only take you so far.  Without knowing how and when to execute, you could be a real talented nobody.

How does your week look?  Write down some broad guidelines for how you spend your time each week.  Time management is typically the biggest key between people who get ahead, and people who don’t.

How many calls do you make on what days?  How often to your write and how much?  If you don’t know what to expect from yourself daily, weekly, monthly and long-term – no one else will know either.

Leave room for refining your schedule – as things change and it’s not fair to yourself or your family to be completely inflexible.  

4.) Keep Score
 
Keeping score in the business of winning at what you do can be tricky.  It’s not always fair to get down on yourself if you miss a writing appointment or don’t get through as many sales calls as you planned.  However, if you have your game plan set – you’ll be able to keep score easier, knowing if you lost a day or won a day.  

At the end of a week or month, you’ll have a clear idea of where your weak spots are and can adjust to get better.

5.) Believe

Every post on Good Plum can really come back to this.  If you don’t believe you deserve to win in whatever it is you’re doing, there’s nothing you can do to get there.  It’s cruel but true.  It doesn’t even matter what you say outwardly.  Saying, “I believe I deserve to be successful” doesn’t mean you will be if it doesn’t resonate within the core of your soul.

If you have work to do in this area, keep watching Good Plum for posts on the law of attraction, or do some research on your own.  The work you do increasing the level of belief you have in yourself will pay off in multiples down the road.

Good luck!

Unlock Your Social Potential

A socially-empowered person achieves so much greatness, basically because of the people that catapult him to success. He earns the trust and all-out support of the people, whom he had helped before. He never runs out of help. He can do anything with the plethora of people behind him. All because he knows he maximizes his social potential!

See, if you know your social skills and you make use of them, you will reach self-empowerment. Self-empowerment is making a general overhaul in your life and turning yourself into a happier and more successful person.If you can be one of those people-persons, then I can’t see any reason why you will not succeed. You just have to know how to start.

1. Be genuine.

Hypocrisy will just bring you all the way down. Be genuinely nice and interested to people. Once they perceive that you are Mr. Hypocrite with selfish intentions, you might as well say goodbye to self-empowerment.

2. Be the greatest listener that you can be.

To earn the love and trust of the people, listen to their problems and sympathize with them. Do not just hear them out, listen to them with your heart. Make eye contact when the person talks to you. Listen as if every word matters, and it does. Brownie points when they find out that there is a confidante in you.

3. Laugh out loud.

I do not mean that you force yourself to laugh for every joke cracked by someone, albeit you do not find it funny at all.This means finding humor in things and not being too darn serious. A person oozing with an awesome sense of humor attracts crowds and eventually, attracts success.

4. Don’t forget yourself.

In the process of fluttering around like a social butterfly, you might forget yourself, allowing everyone to push you over. Remember, love and value yourself before anyone else. If you deem yourself respectable and worthy of affection, people will flock to you and not trample on you.

5. Do random acts of kindness.

You don’t have to do a John Rockefeller and blow your savings to charity. Little acts of kindness matters the most, and this can be as simple as giving someone a surprise you-take-care card or helping an elderly cross the street. When we were kindergarten students, kindness was taught to us and greatly practiced. Now is the time to revive the good deeds and this time, let them stay for good.

6. Contact your old friends.

Sad how some friendships are destined to goodbye, but thanks to technology, you can do something about it. Relive the good old days by flipping your yearbook and look for the great people whom you want to communicate with again. Adding these old friends to your roster of support peers will surely make you feel good all over.

7. Develop your personality.

Are you grouchy, grumpy and generally morose? Whoa, you can’t go through life with those. Get rid of the bad traits and habits that perpetually hamper your growth. And really, who wants a grouchy friend anyway?

8. Be confident.

Be able to stride to the other corner of the room and introduce yourself to people with that winning smile of yours. Just remember: be confident, not arrogant.

9. Practice control.

When angry, don’t snap at anyone. Never throw a tantrum. Stay calm and collected. Be adult enough to take control of situation and transform your anger into something more productive and passive. As soon as people think your anger goes to volcanic proportions easily, they will find it hard to come to you.

10. Keep nurturing your relationships.

Your relationship with your family, friends and significant others is too precious that you must not neglect it whatever happens. Go out and have fun with them. Do things together. Happiness will never fly from your side as long as the people who matter the most are close to you.

In the end, using people for self-empowerment means becoming a better and more lovable person. It’s a win-win situation: the people know they can turn to you anytime and vice versa.

Daily or weekly reflection happens whether you do it actively or not.  Our minds are always reflecting back on what’s been done, and then internalizing the effects of those events.  In an extreme scenario, a child who’s father leaves at a young age obviously goes through reflection – both immediately and long-term.  The immediate reflection, done subconsciously, affects how that child treats other situations through their life.  This is refraction.

Keep in mind, that refraction is a term that I personally use.  I’m not sure if it’s used by anyone else with the same definition, but as long as you know what I’m referring to that’s really all that matters.

My goal is to consciously reflect and refract as much as possible, so that the subconscious reflecting and refracting that is going to happen whether I like it or not tends to follow more closely what I am consciously doing.  Below are a few notes for you to absorb about reflection and refraction:

- Daily, consciously feel the effects of your day.  Accept them for what they are.
- Look for decisions or thoughts you would change, feel how the outcome may have been different.
- Accept that you cannot change what has already happened, but be thankful you will make a different choice next time.

To be clear, refraction doesn’t necessarily mean you made a wrong choice and you need to change, though it can mean that.  Refraction can also deal with a situation you feel that you could be catapulting into a bigger, better situation – but you’re just not taking action.

Feel free to leave comments and questions below.  This is a newer topic I’m still figuring out how to write clearly on.

Meeting people can be difficult for some.   Even outgoing people sometimes struggle with what to say to someone when you meet them.  Last week, Scott Young wrote about simply saying ‘Hi’ to people… anyone, really.  This is great advice when taken to heart.

I’d like to dive into a few things you can say to anyone, pretty much anywhere.  The key to any of this is to practice.  Like anything else you might have some fear in doing – it won’t go away without working at it.  Something you can try before you actually do it in real life, is to do it in a mental practice – simply envision yourself in a situation you find yourself in frequently (in line at Starbucks) and then picture yourself saying one of the phrases below.

Remember, people like to talk about themselves (yes, everyone).  Most people are also uncomfortable talking to strangers.  So what we need to do, while taking these two things into consideration, is get them talking about themselves while at the same time dropping their guard.

Hi!
Hi by itself can be uncomfortable… many times, the person you’re saying hi to will say hi back, and then you’re back to square one.  What we need are conversation starters.

The complement: “Nice boots, are those snake skin?”
Seriously, in a past sales job I had in Los Angeles, this sentence was used as a dramatic example of how to get someone talking.  You can replace either part of the sentence, obviously.  If I like someones jacket, I might say, “I really like that jacket, where did you get it?”  Easy.

The share-alike: “Ah, I love tea too, have you tried the London fog?”
If you’re somewhere that it’s not invasive to over-hear someone (like them placing their order at a coffee shop), relate to them about their drink choice.  You’ve automatically broken the ice and have a conversation started.

The follow-up: “It was nice meeting you, are you on Twitter/Facebook?”
Depending on the person and feel you get from them, you’ll typically know after the first sentence if you care to talk to them further.  You have to assume the only way that will happen is if you ASK.  If you’re in a crowd that might be typical Twitter or Facebook users, you can use that line.  You can simply ask for a web site or email too.  Or, have some business cards, or mini-cards, printed up and tell them to check out your blog if they have time.   “I’d love to hear from you what you think about my site” is a very easy way to turn a passer-by into a contact.

Long-term, I like to acquire people’s mailing address and birthday to send them greeting cards (yes, I do this – and yes, you can send me your address and birthday and you’ll get a card, too!).  If you don’t send cards, simple emails and messages on Facebook to let someone know you’re thinking of them is a powerful way to maintain and build that relationship.

Now that you have a few different things to say to someone you meet for the first time, let me know in the comments if you have any stories about meeting (or not meeting) a stranger, or if you have any other greetings you’d like to share!

Monica Valentinelli, author of the freelance writing blog, mlvwrites.com, featured a guest post from me today titled: “Goal Setting Success: Magic Checkmarks on Your Goal List.”

The post talks about having success with goal setting. Goal setting does not work, at least all by itself. There are so many factors that play into our success; writing down and setting goals is just a small, almost insignificant, factor.

From the article:

The answer to our dilemma lies in a gray area between belief and action. Success from goal setting relies little on the method you use to set goals – the program or paper you use, the outlining method, the way you break them down, etc. So please, don’t get caught up into any of that!

Goal setting is simply a bi-product of something we all have somewhere inside of us that we’re either using, or we’re not: vision, belief, and motivation.

You can read the post in it’s entirety right here.