FM Walsh & Associates Inc.

After a particularly tough session where things did not go as smoothly with a new training program as I wanted them to, I headed back to the office where I fumed and steamed for a couple of days over how things could have been done differently. Basically I beat up on myself and wasted a lot of energy and time that could have gone into other projects. I sent myself on a dead-end detour. We all make mistakes; they’re part of life. Take the time to acknowledge them, learn from them and then move on.

Cyrus Curtis, who once owned the Saturday Evening Post, had a sign in his office: “Yesterday ended last night.” What a great attitude. Dwelling on our mistakes does not undo them. The past is done - look forward to accomplish your goals.

I recent spoke to the Vancouver eWomen Chapter on the “5 Deadly Sins of Business Development”. After the presentation, one business owner came up to me to say that she had stopped delaying making difficult decisions about her business and was surprised at how much less stressed she was. For months she had kept on an employee who was not performing, rationalizing that with more training and support things would get better. They didn’t. After much stressing out, she finally let the employee go and immediately afterwards felt like a 100 pound weight had been lifted off her shoulders. That was her cue to stop delaying on tough issues. She enjoys running her business a whole lot more these days. Part of being successful in business involves making tough decisions. Putting those decisions off for long periods actually increases your stress and anxiety. Postponing something doesn’t guarantee a better outcome – better to measure out the pros and cons and then go for it. That way your energy goes into building the business, not worrying.

After many requests, I am once again offering this seminar in Vancouver. If your bottom line is not performing the way you want it to, join us to learn how to:

• Identify profitable target markets and the most effective way to reach them
• Bring in more customers
• Develop a marketing system that works for you that will generate more business and more revenue

When: Saturday, September 29th, 2007 9:30AM to 12:30PM (Breakfast will be provided)
Where: Boardroom, 744 West Hastings, Vancouver

Click here for more details.

Space is limited to 12 people - the last time we offered this course it sold out in 3 days!

I recently discovered a great blog – Oddee. They describe it as “ A blog on the oddities of our world” and it is great reading. Their recent article is on the unfortunate effects of badly placed advertising.

A business associate spent a good part of last week with me working on a strategic plan for my company. It was tiring and stressful at times. What I realized is after finishing this exercise is that the challenge in thinking really big is that you can become paralyzed by the sheer size of what you want to do. The enormity of it hits you – rather like standing at base camp on Everest – where and how do you get started? Don’t get me wrong – I am a big fan of thinking as big as possible. What my associate reminded me to do is to take the big picture and chunk it down into manageable steps. That way you get rid of the paralysis and the feeling of overwhelm. The same way you climb Mount Everest – one step at a time.

One of the biggest challenges most of us face is managing email – we are inundated by the stuff and the common reaction is to leave it sitting in your inbox until you decide what to do with it. And then you spend hours scrolling up and down staring at it; this steals productivity from your day. A recent Wall Street Journal article quotes Julie Morgenstern, time-management consultant: “People’s workloads are so intimidating now….You use email as an escape. It gives you a false sense of accomplishment.” One of her best ideas is to ignore email for the first hour of the morning and focus on important projects instead. This is something I started doing 2 months ago and I really noticed a big increase in my productivity. Check out the article to learn about other ways to take back control from your email.

One of the most common mistakes I see women make in business is the need to
make things perfect. Prospects are not called, new market opportunities not
followed up with because “they’re not quite ready”. They still have to
finish the website or make changes to the marketing piece or do more market
research before they can wade in.

News flash: You do not have to be perfect to succeed in business! In
fact, if you insist on perfection, you are almost guaranteed to have a much
lower level of success. What creates results in business is taking
action, not perfection. Sandra Yancey, CEO of eWomen Network, openly talks
about how her business venture nearly went under due to her need for
perfection in the early days. It was only when she stopped focusing on
perfection and got serious about taking action that eWomen took off and is
now the fastest growing network for women in business in North America.

You will make mistakes in business - we all do. That is a fact of life.
Trying to be perfect is an illusion that you will never achieve. It wears
you out, it does not give you any competitive advantage and while you are
trying to get everything ‘perfect’, your competition is out there landing
clients and making money. I challenge you to take action today on something
you have been procrastinating on.