How can we take inspiration from this time of year into our own lives and businesses? I think by using this sense of renewal to make a fresh start in how we manage our work load this year. However small the change, positive steps to adjust how we deal with work pressures can significantly improve the quality of our lives.

Certainly it’s been a necessary concern for me having taken time off before last Christmas dealing with illness and my son’s special needs requirements. Now the endless cycle of children’s winter bugs are coming to an end (fingers crossed), it is far easier to look to the coming months and make positive plans.

Having written extensively about the need to make a healthy work-life balance, I’ve looked at managing my own expectations and work-load. Despite the pressures facing me, I realised that I had to curb my desire to achieve all my plans by yesterday. One of the biggest priorities I have is to be more mindful of the pressures I place on myself. I can’t take away external pressures or life circumstances but I can do something about the pressures that I heap on myself!

I know that I’m not alone with this. I see it reflected so many times with fellow business owners – as a group of active, self-motivated people, we place a lot of pressure on ourselves to do everything and to do it well. Juggling domestic and work duties, especially as a SME business owner, makes it hard to see the wood for the trees at the best of times; in current economic circumstances, the pressure to succeed becomes even more intense.

As business owners responsible for the well-being of our businesses and of our households, it’s vitally important to recognise that we need to look after ourselves too. So many of us say that we can’t afford to be ill and yet, by getting little rest, overloading our schedules, not eating properly, relaxing, or exercising, and generally just doing too much in too little time, we make it more likely that we will fall ill or burn out. And this does have a tangible cost on our business and our families.

I hope that the Easter holiday helped you see how good it feels to spend time doing the things that you love to do (even the inevitable DIY work). Retaining that feeling of well-being and good health will help improve performance at work. So even as you return to work and start looking at your inbox and in-tray, take a deep breath and think about your SMART goals and priorities. What really needs to be done, what would be good to do, and what will you put to one side for later? Do you need to do it all yourself or thinking about your own hourly cost to the business, what can you out-source for someone to do more proficiently, efficiently, and at less cost?

While in the coming months, I know that I will re-launch my newsletter, run training programmes and workshops, and work with some exciting clients, I aim to do so at a pace that allows me to offer my best work, keep healthy, and provide the support my family needs. I’m also going to make sure I build in time working in my garden, getting fit by starting a running regime, and delegating more.

In the words of the well-known cosmetics adverts, more of us self-employed business owners and professionals need to acknowledge that we also deserve time and care. I hope that you’ll agree that we’re all worth it!

Sumi

Britain’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are expected to lose billions due to colds and flu as the winter months take their toll on employee  health.

By Anthony Hill 06 October 2011

According to research by office supplies company Viking, illness brought on by cold weather in the coming six months will cost smaller firms as much as £3.4bn. The report showed owners of SMEs  collectively lose 63 million days a year through absence, with two thirds attributed to the annual cold and flu season. Sickness rates are on average 27% higher in winter.

Researchers also took swabs from 300 workplaces and the common bacteria Bacillus and Micrococcus, which indicate poor levels of hygiene and cleanliness, were found on the vast majority of office keyboards. Viking’s hygiene expert Lisa Ackerley said the overwhelming presence of bacteria was “very worrying” as office workers tend to start coming down with illnesses around this time of year.

“Keeping equipment such as keyboards, phones and desks as germ free as possible is even more important during the cold and flu season,” she added. Meanwhile, research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development has shown that stress is now the leading cause of long-term sickness absence in the UK workplace.

I think that  Keeping your nerve during slower months… is an important mind-set for the SME business owner and salesperson. Staying professional and keeping the momentum going is the key to keeping income coming in the long term…

Thanks, Michael!

Last month, I wrote about how creating momentum began by taking actions, however small, that led you towards your final destination. http://olsonsalesandmarketingservices.wordpress.com/2011/08/22/creating-momentum-%e2%80%93-first-think-then-act/

A useful follow up to this is how focusing on perfection can acually lead to paralysis and a reason why you fail to take action at all. At what point do you decide it’s good enough and move on? In the next edition of my newsletter which due out later this week, I’ll be looking the balance we need to make between careful about the details so that the quality you provide is high and not getting anything done at all.

I’ve been mindful of this balance as I made the move over from wordpress.com and set up this new site. It can be very seductive to play around with coding, widgets, and plugins as my long-suffering VA, Angela knows to her cost…

But once I set on a date to announce the launch of this new site, (over) perfection took second place to practical functionality. I can revise and introduce new feautures over the coming weeks, but the fact that the site is now presentable is what matters to my readers and community.

Committing to a date was the main thing in creating that focus – from that point on, children’s sickness not withstanding, it became easier to build up momentum and achieve a goal which I’d earmarked before the summer holidays had begun. Now I can, for a while at least, bask in the satisfaction of ticking off a big item on my to-do list.

If you want to read about more on performance and productivity, plus practical tips and guidance to help you grow your business and attract new clients, then feel free to subscribe to my fortnightly newsletter by using the subscribe box on the right hand side of this page.

Referencing Brian Tracy, the productivity guru, wanting to experience this pleasurable feeling of accomplishment and achievement again, will certainly encourage me to move on and complete further goals over the coming weeks!  In the meantime, I’m off for a celebratory cup of tea…

Today is the start of a new era for me with regards to blogging! After research and soul-searching, I made the decision to move from my wordpress.com site, to this wordpress.org site you see today. Despite the reassuring, “takes only five minutes!” quick and simple rhetoric, it was a much longer and more convoluted affair. It’s been a fascinating,frustrating, but ultimately fun experience and I’ve learnt a great deal from it.

I am really looking forward to all the potential possibilities of plugins and so don’t be suprised to see more changes and new features over the coming months. I’ll also be converting my existing main website into a wordpress.org site too. I’ll share with you interviews and information from wordpress experts and hope you’ll feel confident to make the transition too.

Many thanks to those of you who are joining me from my old site. I’ll be adding audio and video pieces over the next few weeks, so please don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed on the top right hand of the page so you can take advantage of each new post.

Sumi

For some time now, I’ve followed on Facebook the journeys of two young children from Oregon, USA. Ethan Jostad and Faith Fulmer were diagnosed with particularly virulent forms of childhood cancer.  Through posts, updates, videos and live feeds, 9 year old Ethan and 8 year old Faith (mostly through their parents) have shared their ups and downs with over 30,000 people from all over the world.

Sadly, last Monday, Ethan lost his fight and yesterday, Saturday 13th August, he was cremated and a service of celebration was held to commemorate his short life, with a live stream showing the service for those of us who were unable to attend.  Faith (whose page is called Faith’s Friends) is now at home receiving hospice treatment. Both children have inspired much love and admiration with their courage and determination.

Ethan and Faith’s families are setting up Foundations to help other children with cancer in the USA as a lasting legacy – they want to be sure that their children are able to make a difference after their deaths.

As you know from my last post, making a difference is a fundamental principle in my life, and I see my clients and my community as equal partners in helping me do so.  This is why I’m writing to tell you how I would like to make a difference, with your help, to childhood cancer sufferers in the UK.

Seeing how charities helped Ethan and Faith with toys and computer kits helped them as they became bed-bound, I want to help other children in the UK  who are reaching the end stages of their own fights and are frightened and dispirited. I want these children to feel uplifted and cherished the way Faith and Ethan have been when complete strangers showed that they are thinking of them through gifts and cards.

I  want to put together a small cookery e-book that will raise funds for children hospices supported by Children With Cancer UK  .

So, knowing my friends and community  like their grub, I hope you’ll have some wonderful tips and recipes to share.

I’d like an emphasis on healthy eating with a few “naughty but nice in moderation” recipes so that it can help people with cancer/cancer survivors or with other illnesses. Fun, uncomplicated but tasty recipes will be especially welcome…

You don’t have to have full weights and measures – guidance and a pinch of this and that are fine as long as people can make decent food from the instructions!

Inspiring stories or other useful snippets (à la Reader’s Digest style) are also welcome. I want the readers to enjoy a happy book, inspiring book which gives them lovely things to eat and gives terminally ill children better end-of-life support.

I’ll be collecting ideas and thoughts until November and then want to publish around Thanksgiving time so people can buy as presents all the way to Christmas and raise money at the same time.

I will put the names of each contributor by their recipes (give me as many as you can!). Please could you share this with your other contacts, and mention this to your friends?

Thank you all for your support with this project – you are such giving, loving people.

Thank you for helping me make a difference,

Sumi

For Londoners, and for people in cities across the UK, it has been a turbulent and distressing week. Watching pictures of burning buildings and homes, of people being robbed in the open street, looting and violence, it has been hard to understand the thinking and emotions of the people involved.

We have been seeing the worst people can do to each other this week but thankfully, we have also seen the best.

We’ve seen communities rallying around to support the homeless and the dispossessed, mustered together by Twitter, broom in hand, cleaning and repair in the damage, the dignity of a bereaved father appealing for calm & unity, and a website set up to help the Malaysian who was robbed and beaten by a gang of youths in broad daylight.

The troubles have inspired many people here and outside the UK to make an active contribution towards repairing the damage inflicted on the vulnerable. It has been heartening to see instances where people are striving to make a difference for good.

As making a difference is a subject close to my own heart, I’ve made it the basis of my blog today.

As you’ll know from my work and newsletter, I help fellow business owners and managers work more effectively & productively to grow their businesses. As well as giving me personal satisfaction, my work allows me to make a real contribution to the lives of others through charitable work.

One of the objectives I had when I set up my business was to establish a charitable body, in memory of my late father and in honour of my mother.

The aims of this body will help four main causes: vulnerable children (offering schooling, healthcare, and life opportunities), vulnerable women (particularly in the areas of childbirth and genital mutilation), vulnerable animals (abused and threatened with extinction), and the environment. I hope it will be a legacy that my children can support in the future.

I know that many of you have specific charities or causes which are close to your heart. Some of you are actively involved with these causes and some of you wish you could do more to help.

Whether it’s supporting projects through activity or through financial donations, the way you approach your business work can help you have a real impact elsewhere. By working “smartly” and charging the right prices for your work, you’ll have the funds, time, and resources that will allow you to make a real difference to your clients, your community, and to your friends & family.

This might seem a quite commercial approach to some people – talking about money is inappropriate when all they want to do is good work. This is part of an over-all mind-set block that prevents many small business owners from asking for money or charging to reflect value. They feel that they are taking from other people when actually their intentions are the very opposite.

When I create products and services which will generate income, a proportion will go towards paying bills and looking after my home & family, but an increasing proportion will, over time, support my charitable work. This is not a new concept – many religious and humanist traditions include “tithing” in their cultural practises.

In my mind, my clients and community are helping me in my charity work – each time they invest in my products and services, and each time I share knowledge and value, we are all working together to support my causes and make a difference to the world.

As I’ve said before, intention and good wishes aren’t going to make a difference, but action (and resources) will. You are not short-changing anyone by working efficiently & to your highest capacity and then charging appropriately. By being mindful of your intentions to do well and make a difference, you are being true to your ideals and ethics in a very practical way.

This is why I dislike the phrase “giving something back” as it implies that you’ve taken something away in the first instance.

I hope that this approach will motivate you and inspire you. Always keep in mind as you give value and integrity in your work, that your clients are helping you support the charitable causes close to your heart…

Incoming search terms:

• business ethics and integrity
• integrity
• ethics and integrity
• integrity ethics
• people with integrity

Making sure social media doesn’t become anti-social…

We’ve all been there, “I’ll just take a quick look…” and minutes, and even hours, later, you’re still checking your social media accounts at the expense of the work that’s piling up around you. That guilty feeling of knowing that a much of a day has been spent on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or your online platform of choice, can nag and undermine any sense of achievement you might have otherwise felt interacting with your peers and your community.

We’re all getting more involved in social media marketing to boost our personal and business profile, and to engage with our community. But if we are to make a real success of it and still have a business to run, we need to take control of the way we deal with social media. This is why I decided to devote my recent book on creating systems and structures which would help us do this.

My newsletter last week touched on the fact that I was going to be looking at time management in the forthcoming editions. With the school holidays upon us, and wanting to balance family time with work commitments, many of us are going have to manage our lives very adroitly over the next few weeks. A combination of good systems, good habits, and the right attitude will help us do this well without having to compromise on quality.

The newsletter looked at how a positive attitude and a sense of purpose can help you set goals and stick to them. In that context, How to manage Social Media Marketing in 30 Minutes a Day, is about taking responsibility for how you approach social media, so that you can be sure that the time you spend (for business) can be utilised most effectively. In it, I look at goal setting and defining intentions so that you have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve. I’ll be touching on aspects of this in the next edition of the newsletter.

With everything changing with the arrival of Google+, I’ve already started thinking about what needs to go into the second edition which means more juggling of my editorial schedule. Next week’s newsletter will include an editorial planner to help you plan your content creation over the next few weeks.

I have been suffering from email and wireless connection issues all week and I seem to have lost emails and not all my emails are getting through. If you have sent me something/are awaiting a repsonse, please could re-send or email to let me know?
Many thanks! Sumi

I firmly believe that inside us, all have the knowledge, experience and insights we need to become successful. We invest time and money learning new skills and keeping up to date with the latest trends and technique. We write to-lists and set goals. We think about how great our personal and business lives would be like if we achieved our goals and what we define as success (otherwise known as visualisation)

Yet, many of us feel a sense of disappointment, or frustration when goals are not met, plans fail to come into fruition or deliver the results we expected. Or we run round, chasing our tail with ever growing to-do lists, a sense of overwhelm and underlying anxiety, while family and personal demands are juggled between business priorities.

Why is that? Why don’t we keep hold of the clarity, enthusiasm and insights that come from a training event? Why does our passion, self-confidence and commitment to change ebb away even when we know that taking the right action will transform our personal and business lives for the better?

The fact is there is a world of difference from deciding to make a change, and actually having the determination and commitment to see it through. Making the decision in itself can be a big step for many of us – either out of choice or from necessity. However, the real test is making it happen – for change is an uncomfortable process for many of us, and there are many internal and external obstacles to make the path difficult.

Examining what makes us resistant to change and enjoying success is often a difficult process, forcing us to really dig deep into our backgrounds, upbringing & conditioning, and our current circumstances. It’s easier to blame outside forces and circumstances than to take responsibility for what we can control in our lives. It’s easier and we’ve all done it but it doesn’t actually move us any forward…

Many of us lack a sense of accountability, discipline, self-confidence and right mind-set to be successful. But these internal barriers can be overcome – accountability coaches, groups or buddies; mentors; good systems and support infrastructure are all part of the tool-kit of successful, high-performing individuals. But for some, even getting this set up can seem too much of a bother or expense.

My own (great) challenges in these areas have brought insights and understanding in how I live and work. I have come to see that there is much I can do to make things happen that supports my wish for a healthy work-life balance. And seeing how having this clarity and sense of purpose uplifts and inspires me to take meaningful action, I want to be sure that this is what I can bring to others in my work.

This is the impetus which drives the focus of my workshops, classes, programmes and writing: goal-setting, action-taking, accountability, support and implementation. So with a few months remaining until the end of the year, I’ll end by asking you to spend a little time reflecting on what it is that is stopping you from reaching the success you deserve? And what steps will you take to remove these barriers? I’d love to hear your thoughts!