Faucets and Drains

Faucets and drains are two things designed to work together.  Water comes out of a faucet and goes into a sink.  Once in the sink, it flows toward the drain and goes away.  Or you can stop up the drain and let the sink collect water.  As a personal business coach in The Woodlands and in Houston, I look for the faucets in a business such as cash flow, marketing, advertising, operational and financial processes, administrative and management style, and most importantly, the people. And I also look for the drains.

Interestingly, there are several ways to look at faucets and drains in business.  A company invests a great deal of money in an advertising program.  The money is the faucet.  It pours out into the advertising program.  The advertising program is wildly successful at bringing in new and profitable sales.  The sink, the company’s cash reserves, start to fill up.  The drain, which is the money going out for advertising, is slower than the faucet that is bringing in new sales causing more money to back up in the sink.

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Networking Is One Letter Away From Not Working Part 2 What Is Your Goal in “Networking”

As we saw in the previous post, the word “network” was first used in England in the 1550’s to describe a finished product, a fish net.  A fish net was a piece of network.

When you think about it, a nice piece of network is about catching more fish, and as time went on, bigger fish.  In personal business coaching in The Woodlands and in personal business coaching in Houston, I collaborate with many different business owners and types of businesses.  They are all casting their nets to market their business, and in many cases, to expand it. Read more

Indifference: The First Enemy From Within

We are not born with courage. And, we are not born with fear. Both courage and fear are acquired through our business and life experiences. Collaborating with and supporting clients as a personal business coach in The Woodlands and as a personal business coach in Houston we encounter fears that are holding us back, yet we don’t recognize them.

One such fear is indifference. It is certainly okay to be indifferent at times. But, if indifference is dominating your reactions and thought processes it will lead you in a bad direction. Indifference is about a fear of setting priorities or knowing how to set priorities. Read more

Building a Winning Culture: Establishing a Clear Purpose

In previous posts I have looked at building safety and sharing vulnerability which are two components to building a winning culture. A winning culture is one where people want to work at the company they are at. It is where, in your personal relationships that people want to be with you.

The third component to building a winning culture is to establish a clear purpose. I clear purpose is critical to guide the actions and decision making within a company or in relationships. Read more

Building Safety (Part 1)

As a personal business coach in The Woodlands and also in my business coaching in Houston the first thing I must do to build trust and rapport is to create a culture of safety. This is true in collaborating with and supporting individuals and groups.

Whether it is the small business owner, a large corporation or individual clients my primary goal is for them to feel safe. If you don’t feel safe you will always minimize your sharing of what is going on that needs to be addressed. In other words, without safety, fear rules. And when fear is your guiding force, whether it be in your business or personal relationships it will ultimately lead to difficult situations because it promotes a lack of trust. Read more

How to Have Your Best Year Yet Part 3

In the last post I shared with you three more questions to ask yourself on your path to achieving your best year yet. Altogether here are the six questions presented to this point.

1. What did I accomplish in the past year? Or what did I accomplish in the last 12 months? You can start having your best year yet at any time.

2. What were my major disappointments?

3. What did I learn?

4. How do I limit myself and how can I stop? This question, to me, is one of the most challenging. You have to take a deep introspective look at yourself and come to an understanding of how you may limit yourself and how can you stop.

5. What are my values? As with the other questions, there are no right or wrong answers here. If is important to define your values. It will give you a mirror into how you conduct your business and your life. It will show you your priorities in how you accomplish things.

6. What roles do I play? This is critical. Identify all the roles you play in your life. Most people are fascinated when they discover all the roles they play?

In this segment, I will finish up with the last four questions. As I have shared in the last two posts, I do business coaching in The Woodlands and surrounding areas, including Houston. Not all business coaches offer the same types of services. I am definitely not the business coach for everyone. It is important that you interview your coach thoroughly and that they do the same for you. This is a collaboration. My practice includes not just the business, but the personal side. The two, in my opinion are strongly linked and it is a must to address both areas in order for a client to achieve the success or results he or she desired. My role at times can be strictly as a business coach. Other times it can be more focused on self-improvement business coaching. And, when you put it all together it adds up to what is personal business coaching. All business coaching, in the end, is personal. It is about what you, not the coach, is going to gain from the coaching relationship.

In striving for your best year yet, it is important to have someone to hold you accountable. This may be a coach or someone else. Regardless, when you have accountability, you increase your odds greatly of achieving your goals.

On the road to your best year yet, here are the last four questions.

7. What are my goals for each role? You have defined the roles you play. Now what are the goals for each role.

8. What is my major role for next year? This is a great question because your answer guides you to where you will want to focus a large part of your time and energy in the coming year. And most importantly, it starts you on the path to creating priorities.

9. What are my top 10 goals for next year? This brings greater focus.

10. How can I make sure I achieve my top 10 goals? Here is where you put in the action steps you must take to achieve your goals and to have your best year yet.

In the end, everything you have done can be distilled down to one page. Start with listing the top two or three priorities in terms of behavior and habits, not goals that will allow you to achieve your goals.

Next, write a paragraph about your belief system that will enable you to achieve your goals. This is your new paradigm.

Next, write down your major focus and how you are going to make it a reality.

Finally, write down your top 10 goals for the year and when you wish to have achieved them during the course of the year.

Keep it brief. The goal is to fit it all on one page of paper. When you have it you now have your blueprint for your best year yet. Keep it where you can read it once a week. When you do, you will be on your way to having your best year yet.

How to Have Your Best Year Yet Part 2

In the last post I started with three questions to ask yourself on your path to having your best year yet.

1.What did I accomplish in the past year? Or what did I accomplish in the last 12 months? You can start having your best year yet at any time.

2.What were my major disappointments?

3.What did I learn?

In my practice, which for the most part is as a personal business coach in The Woodlands, there are different roles I must play to be effective for my clients. Part of what I do is collaborate with them on purely business challenges. That is the business coach role. I may also collaborate with them on personal challenges that can lead to breakthroughs in their business. That is when I do self-improvement business coaching or what some call personal development business coaching.

When focusing on how to have your best year yet all these roles come into play. After all, I believe you must look at the whole situation. It is easy to develop strategies for the business but maybe those strategies don’t fit the leadership style or the person. Then adjustments need to be made as we discover what needs to be addressed. The exciting aspect for my clients and me is that they are not the same person today as they were two weeks or a month ago. When you are involved in the business coaching process, regardless of who you collaborate with, you must be willing to stretch.

So, you have answered the first three questions. I find that these are relatively easy for most people to address. Based on your accomplishments, your disappointments and what you learned, here are the next three.

4. How do I limit myself and how can I stop? This question, to me, is one of the most challenging. You have to take a deep introspective look at yourself and come to an understanding of how you may limit yourself and how can you stop.

5.What are my values? As with the other questions, there are no right or wrong answers here. If is important to define your values. It will give you a mirror into how you conduct your business and your life. It will show you your priorities in how you accomplish things.

6.What roles do I play? This is critical. Identify all the roles you play in your life. Most people are fascinated when they discover all the roles they play?

Once again, write down the answers to these questions. In the next segment we will start putting together the goals to have your best year yet.

How to Have Your Best Year Yet- Part 1

When you come to the end of a calendar year, it is a wonderful time to reflect on our past year. What did you accomplish? What were our disappointments? What did you learn? These are a few questions that can get you started on reflecting and evaluating.

I have learned over the years in my personal business coaching in The Woodlands and surrounding areas, that this reflection is good to do annually, yet if you truly want to stay on track with your goals, it works even better to do a quarterly evaluation. If you are getting off track, you can more easily alter your course to refocus on your goals. If you get too far off, the difficulty and energy required to get back on track is much greater.

In a way, your life is like a football game. If you divide your year into quarters, you can see how you are doing at the end of each quarter and make the necessary adjustments to win, to achieve your goals. That’s what football coaches do.

At times, a large part of what I do when I collaborate with clients has to do with their personal development in their business. Yes, we find ways to improve processes, hire better people, streamline operations for efficiency, be more effective in our communication in the teams we have, create and execute a better marketing plan and the list can go on and on. To achieve these things, the client has to embrace the idea that self-improvement business coaching will accelerate the process of his or her successful performance.

Quite simply, you and your business will only rise to the level of your self-improvement, which in essence is your personal development. Fortunately, the clients in The Woodlands I have collaborated with over the years understand this. They understand that something has to change on the inside before it will manifest itself on the outside in attaining their goals both business and personal.

To start on your path to having your best year yet ask yourself these three questions as regards your business and life. Why look at your business and life? As a personal business coach in the Woodlands, or anywhere for that matter, I see that there is always a dynamic link between your personal and business life. If you achieve a goal on the personal side, it may have a great effect on the business side and vice versa. Once you have your answers to the following questions, write them down. Writing down your answers increases the odds of taking the necessary actions to have your best year yet. Here are:

1. What did I accomplish in the past year? Or what did I accomplish in the last 12 months? You can start having your best year yet at any time.

2. What were my major disappointments?

3. What did I learn?

Those three questions will get you started. In the next post I will give you three more questions to accelerate your process of having your best year yet!

Are You Willing to Stretch?

Since 2005, I have been a personal business coach in The Woodlands. Whether you are in The Woodlands, another state or a foreign country, all business coaching is personal. Good business coaching is always about a person or persons, in the cases where I collaborate with and support teams.

Today, there are many different types of coaches who can fill various needs. There are health coaches, financial coaches, life coaches and the list goes on and on. Regardless of the type of coach you are, all business coaching as well as coaching in the other disciplines does include some aspects of self-improvement business coaching, self-improvement coaching or as some call it, personal development business coaching or personal development coaching.

All coaching is geared in some way to your self-improvement and personal development. The one foundational principle behind all types of coaching is this. It is your willingness and ability to stretch. When you stretch you are looking for ways to grow, learn and develop. And when you hire a coach, whether it be a personal business coach, life coach or some other coach you are saying that you are willing to stretch and, most importantly to be held accountable for the results of your stretching.

When you decide to stretch you are saying that you no longer want to be the same today as you were yesterday. Only when you stretch and bring more value to others will your business and life change. It will change because you have decided to improve yourself.

You are like the rubber band. As a rubber band, if you choose to stay in the box or the bag as a rubber band, you are worthless. The only value a rubber band has is when it is stretched. Unlike the rubber band, you have some inherent value. It’s only when you decide to stretch that you become of more value and can hold more of the good things that business and life have to offer.

No matter what type of coach you collaborate with: business coach, personal development coach, personal business coach, self-improvement business coach, life coach, health coach or coaches in other disciplines, be ready and willing to stretch. That’s what the coaching experience is about.