14 Easy Ways to Get Insanely Motivated

 Here are 14 quick strategies to get and keep yourself motivated:

1. Change the channel: Re-tune your mind. Condition your mind Train yourself to think positive thoughts while avoiding negative thoughts.
2. Condition your body. It takes physical energy to take action.  Get your food and exercise budget in place and follow it like a business plan.
3. Avoid negative people. They drain your energy and waste your time, so hanging with them is like shooting yourself in the foot.
4. Seek out the similarly motivated. Their positive energy will rub off on you and you can imitate their success strategies.
5. Have goals–but remain flexible. No plan should be cast in concrete, lest it become more important than achieving the goal.
6. Act with a higher purpose.  Any activity or action that doesn’t serve your higher goal is wasted effort--and should be avoided.
7. Take responsibility for your own results. If you blame (or credit) luck, fate or divine intervention, you’ll always have an excuse.
8. Stretch past your limits on a daily basis. Walking the old, familiar paths is how you grow old. Stretching makes you grow and evolve.
9. Don't wait for perfection; do it now! Perfectionists are the losers in the game of life.  Strive for excellence rather than the unachievable.
10. Celebrate your failures. Your most important lessons in life will come from what you don't achieve. Take time to understand where you fell short.
11. Don’t take success too seriously. Success can breed tomorrow's failure if you use it as an excuse to become complacent.
12. Avoid weak goals.  Goals are the soul of achievement, so never begin them with "I'll try ..."  Always start with "I will" or "I must."
13. Treat inaction as the only real failure.  If you don’t take action, you fail by default and can't even learn from the experience.
14. Think before you speak.  Keep silent rather than express something that doesn’t serve your purpose.

The above is based on a conversation with Omar Periu, one of the world’s best (and best known) motivational speakers.

9 Things That Motivate Employees More Than Money

Don't show 'em the money (even if you have it). Here are nine better ways to boost morale.

The ability to motivate employees is one of the greatest skills an entrepreneur can possess. Two years ago, I realized I didn’t have this skill. So I hired a CEO who did.

Josh had 12 years in the corporate world, which included running a major department at Comcast. I knew he was seasoned, but I was still skeptical at first. We were going through some tough growing pains, and I thought that a lack of cash would make it extremely difficult to improve the company morale.

I was wrong.

With his help and the help of the great team leaders he put in place, Josh not only rebuilt the culture, but also created a passionate, hard-working team that is as committed to growing and improving the company as I am. 

Here are nine things I learned from him:

1. Be generous with praise. Everyone wants it and it’s one of the easiest things to give. Plus, praise from the CEO goes a lot farther than you might think. Praise every improvement that you see your team members make. Once you’re comfortable delivering praise one-on-one to an employee, try praising them in front of others.  
2. Get rid of the managers. Projects without project managers? That doesn’t seem right! Try it. Removing the project lead or supervisor and empowering your staff to work together as a team rather then everyone reporting to one individual can do wonders. Think about it. What’s worse than letting your supervisor down? Letting your team down! Allowing people to work together as a team, on an equal level with their co-workers, will often produce better projects faster. People will come in early, stay late, and devote more of their energy to solving problems.  
3. Make your ideas theirs. People hate being told what to do. Instead of telling people what you want done; ask them in a way that will make them feel like they came up with the idea. “I’d like you to do it this way” turns into “Do you think it’s a good idea if we do it this way?”  
4. Never criticize or correct. No one, and I mean no one, wants to hear that they did something wrong. If you’re looking for a de-motivator, this is it. Try an indirect approach to get people to improve, learn from their mistakes, and fix them. Ask, “Was that the best way to approach the problem? Why not? Have any ideas on what you could have done differently?” Then you’re having a conversation and talking through solutions, not pointing a finger.  
5. Make everyone a leader. Highlight your top performers’ strengths and let them know that because of their excellence, you want them to be the example for others. You’ll set the bar high and they’ll be motivated to live up to their reputation as a leader.  
6. Take an employee to lunch once a week. Surprise them. Don’t make an announcement that you’re establishing a new policy. Literally walk up to one of your employees, and invite them to lunch with you. It’s an easy way to remind them that you notice and appreciate their work.  
7. Give recognition and small rewards. These two things come in many forms: Give a shout out to someone in a company meeting for what she has accomplished. Run contests or internal games and keep track of the results on a whiteboard that everyone can see. Tangible awards that don’t break the bank can work too. Try things like dinner, trophies, spa services, and plaques. 
8. Throw company parties. Doing things as a group can go a long way. Have a company picnic. Organize birthday parties. Hold a happy hour. Don’t just wait until the holidays to do a company activity; organize events throughout the year to remind your staff that you’re all in it together. 
9. Share the rewards—and the pain. When your company does well, celebrate. This is the best time to let everyone know that you’re thankful for their hard work. Go out of your way to show how far you will go when people help your company succeed. If there are disappointments, share those too. If you expect high performance, your team deserves to know where the company stands. Be honest and transparent. 

SOURCE: www.inc.com

 

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Planning Less Daunting, Let's Call It Something Else

We need new vocabulary for business planning. Just don't call it a 'business plan.'

What typically comes to mind when you read or hear the phrase “business plan”?

For many people, the mental image is a big boring formal document. It’s like a high-school term paper or a university thesis, a daunting task to be finished with a huge sigh of relief, then stored away in a drawer and quickly forgotten.

That’s why many young people say, “Don’t bother to plan.” And if you ask successful entrepreneurs whether they had a business plan to start, many will say they didn’t simply because it’s cool to say no. It’s sort of like asking people whether they studied in high school.

But probe further, and you’ll find that many people who suggest bypassing a business plan will recommend that you set strategy, goals and priorities and follow up with frequent course corrections. Which, of course, is business planning. It just doesn’t sound like the popular image of a business plan.

Smart entrepreneurs develop a streamlined plan—straight to the point, but built to be managed and changed. Form should follow function. If you don’t need to show a document to investors, bankers or other outsiders, why even bother to print anything out? Keep the plan simple and easy to deal with—an electronic PDF that you review and revise at least once a month. It should set forth your strategic focus, target market and point of differentiation, as well as specific steps to implement your strategy, including assumptions, tasks, milestones, responsibilities, dates, deadlines and key measurements.

Now that we’ve laid out what to do, we ought to find a better way to refer to the planning needed to start, run and expand a business. Should we call it “business management” maybe? Or even better, how about “Steering the business”? I’ve asked about this wording problem on Twitter and in my blog, but I’m afraid nobody has come up with a suggestion that grabs me.

I have been playing off a post on Amex OPEN forum by Ivana Taylor, under the title, A New And Improved Goal Setting Process For Your Business (And Life). She’s writing about business planning, and I think she gets it right with the idea of establishing goals. So instead of “business planning,” maybe “goal management”? Or “goal keeping”?

SOURCE: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/222369