1. Know your purpose.

Are you wandering through life with little direction — hoping that you’ll find happiness, health and prosperity? Identify your life purpose or mission statement and you will have your own unique compass that will lead you to your true north every time.

2. Know your values.

What do you value most? Make a list of your top 5 values. Some examples are security, freedom, family, spiritual development, learning. As you set your goals for 2007 — check your goals against your values. If the goal doesn’t align with any of your top five values — you may want to reconsider it or revise it.

3. Know your needs.

Unmet needs can keep you from living authentically. Take care of yourself. Do you have a need to be acknowledged, to be right, to be in control, to be loved? List your top four needs and get them met!

4. Know your passions.

Honor those things that make your heart sing. Whatever it is, do more of it!

5. Live from the inside out.

Tap into your inner wisdom by regularly reflecting in silence. Commune with nature. Breathe deeply to quiet your mind.

6. Honor your strengths.

What are your positive traits? What special talents do you have? List three — if you get stuck, ask those closest to you to help identify these. Are you imaginative, witty, good with your hands? Find ways to express your authentic self through your strengths.

7. Take time to play.

Give yourself time to recharge doing things you love to do or by just doing nothing.

8. Be aware of your self-talk.

Are you blocking your potential? Check out your first thoughts when you wake tomorrow. Are they supportive, encouraging or positive? Choose the kind of chatter that goes on in your mind. Become aware of the negative messages you give yourself. Gently catch them and turn them into positive affirmations.

9. Surround yourself with inspiration.

Keep a success journal. Write down your four or five greatest strengths and post them where you can see them. On the last Friday of each month, write down all your accomplishments both big and small.

10. Serve others.

When you live authentically, you may find that you develop an interconnected sense of being. When you are true to who you are, living your purpose and giving of your talents to the world around you, you give back in service what you came to share with others — your spirit — your essence.

About the Author: Ann Ronan, Ph.D., Certified Career Coach and author, works with professionals in career transition or career pain. She offers a free e-course on the Top Ten Ways To Live Authentically. To learn more about this step-by-step program and to sign up for free how-to articles and teleclasses, visit Authentic Life Institute.

Yes, firing a client. An alien idea ? I bet you have clients that drive you crazy, who make you cringe, who make you feel used and abused… so its Springtime – do some spring cleaning.

So many people when they start in business make the mistake of accepting people as clients, and often when their gut feel tells them not to. You get wise eventually. Trust me !!

Clients to possibly fire include:

1. those for whom you have delivered the work but they keep asking this question and that question and suddenly you find you’ve done many hours of pro bono consulting. Remember you are running a business not a charity.

2. getting paid – especially a problem when you accept young entrepreneurs as clients who are being funded by organisations that help them start out in business. You are not there to provide a free line of credit. Not to mention all the time and energy you spend on trying to get the payment.

3. you dread seeing their name appear in your email inbox – you know that they are going to bug you about something – usually something they hope to get for free except they are starting to do this too often and rarely email back to say ‘thank you’. They are making you feel used and abused.

4. when you started out you gave some clients a really preferential rate because you liked them and their business idea, you wanted to get the experience, you thought they would be successful and for later work would be able to pay you what you were really worth… but this has not happened and you are now attracting clients who are able to pay what you are worth. Unless you have a really good reason its time to move on.

So, work with clients who respect you, who value you, who appreciate your knowledge and expertise and who are willing to pay you what you are worth and promptly. It’s your right !

1. “Dig the well before you’re thirsty” – Confucius

Marketing, whether your business or yourself, is the one task that wise people do daily – YES…DAILY. You should do at least one thing each day to keep your marketing funnel full.

2. “The moment you begin to think of time as precious and that it has a price, the richer you will become.” – Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad’s Guide to Investing

Do you spend your time wisely or do you squander it procrastinating ? Successful entrepreneurs understand that how they spend their time determines their future. It’s critical to do the things that will move you/your business forward each day.

3. Have a wealth mindset

Successful entrepreneurs are focused, first and foremost, on being secure. Then on being comfortable and finally, on being rich. It is this focus on security that forces them to build systems and look at the big picture as opposed to doing what is best only for the short-term.

Successful entrepreneurs also understand that they need to invest in themselves and their business in order to reach their long-term goals. Doing things “quick and dirty” or for the fast buck doesn’t create the long-lasting success that you are looking for.

4. Have a sense of urgency

Successful entrepreneurs are not procrastinators – they get things done and done today! Their sense of urgency is borne not only of their appreciation for the value of time, but also as a way of insuring their clients are always satisfied. Why make them wait? Happy clients purchase from you and they do so repeatedly.

5. “Don’t feel overwhelmed…just do one thing at a time.” —

The above quote may sound familiar and is a trademark of all successful entrepreneurs. Have 100 things to do? Don’t know where to start?

Just pick one and do it. It doesn’t matter which one, just do something. Sitting and staring at the pile or fretting about how much you need to do won’t get you anywhere. But doing one thing, and then another, and then another will.

6. Be a “big picture optimist and detail pessimist”.
Direct marketing guru Dan Kennedy tells the story of how he travels a lot and never worries about the plane going to the wrong city or exploding in midair or experiencing some other trouble that would result in his never reaching to his destination (big picture optimist). At the same time, he plans for the plane to leave late and arrive late, for his luggage to be lost and for the food (when you get it) to be inedible (detail pessimist).

Using this approach in project (and travel) planning insures that you’ve anticipated the potential problems which Murphy’s Law usually provides and have solutions already in hand. The worst that can happen is that you never need your “Plan B”.

7. You can’t (and shouldn’t) do it all

Successful entrepreneurs know and understand that trying to do everything themselves is a prescription for overwhelm and burnout.

The truly successful create teams and delegate effectively. Having one (or several) good virtual assistants, a bookkeeper, a pre-paid legal plan, etc. takes the day-to-day minutiae off you so that you can focus on the big picture.

No matter where you are today, do one thing today that will move you forward in your goals. Remember Confucius : “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Take that step today and feel the momentum carry you forward.

This post is based on an article by Sandra Martini who requires that I add the following: © Sandra P. Martini, The Automatic Business Coach 2007. Get Sandra Martini’s FREE “5 Simple Steps to Putting Your Marketing on Autopilot” e-course/audio mini-workshop and her FREE small business success how-to tips at www.SandraMartini.com

We read these days that we have to be increasingly creative to survive in business, to ensure that our business survives. One of my MBA students is planning a series of workshops in Montreal,not only on this aspect of creativity and how we can all become more creative, but also how to manage creative people (creative in the sense of graphic designers etc) – if you want to know more about these or debate the subject leave you comments and email address so that can let you know when these workshops are rolled out.

Quantcast has launched a service that claims to enable marketers to search for websites by readership demographic.

“If a marketer is targeting black female readers, over 40, with an income over $60,000, then Quantcast’s new service serves up a list of websites which attracts that audience, and also tells you whether or not the site accepts advertising,” CMSWire reports.

Quantcast divides sites between those that measure raw metrics (“Quantified” publishers) and those that do not. In the latter case, Quantcast’s figures come from the site’s own reports of traffic and audience.

The service is complimentary to users.

A mind map can be defined as a diagram that represents ideas, tasks, or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea. Mind mapping can be used to generate, visualize, structure, and classify ideas, and as an aid in study, organization, problem solving, decision making, and writing.

Its a really great tool to use if you want to map out the structure of a book or a seminar you are preparing or to organise a special event.

Free mind mapping software is available such as Smart Draw and Mind Meister. The latter is really cool as it is an online product so you can work on it with members of your team wherever you are located.

Its not what you say to people that counts – it’s what they understand.

If you had a free session with a business coach what questions would you be asking ? Your answers will help me to better serve my clients by better meeting their needs.

If you are on Facebook please join my Starting out in Business group.

Joe Vitale suggests starting a post or sales letter using the pronoun “you” and making a statement that your readers already know to be true. This creates trust and a sense of comfort. Examples might be:

You probably already know…
You’re smart enough to realize…
Of course you’ve heard that…
You might be one of those people intelligent to spot this…

In doing this you are creating rapport through your use of words. And rapport is essential for building trust and confidence. And that’s essential for having any influence and impact over a reader’s actions.