Rules for Exceptional Leadership

Robin Sharma believes there are certain skills and attitudes that allow you to rise to extraordinary success:

• Leadership is not about your title, it is a way of thinking! Everyone can show Leadership.
• Leadership is what you do when no one is watching.
• How excellent are you when you are the only person in the office…. How passionate are you about your business at 5am in the morning, when everyone else is in bed.
• You have to be willing to think, create, produce like only 5%
• Consistency is the mother of mastery
• Small daily improvements when done consistently over time lead to Mastery…. These lead to a world class business ….which in turn lead to a tsunami of results!!

The new rules of Exceptional Leadership

1) You’re paid not just to work. The place where your greatest fears live are where your greatest growth lies. This ability to stretch yourself out of your comfort zone will allow you to grow as a leader.

2) The old model of leadership is obsolete. Now anyone can show leadership.

3) A job is only a job if you choose to see it as a job. Your job is an opportunity for you to express more of the talents that you have.

4) Your number one competitive edge is growing leaders at all levels. Your job is to grow more leaders. If you are not doing this you are just enabling followers.

If you are developing talent all around you and you are growing more leaders, your business will become unstoppable in the market place. You will also feel fantastic about your work because you will be provoking and inspiring people to do work that they have never done, that’s Leadership!

Leadership is about three simple things:

1) Inspiration. Creative businesses where born in a moment of inspiration.
2) Influence. Your team will behave exactly the way that you behave.
3) Impact. Less Talk more Do, Ideation without Execution is mere delusion. In the age of dramatic distraction there is a need to roll up your sleeves and FOCUS on a few deliverables.

Success The number one trait of success:

• It is not your intelligence; you are already smart enough.
• It is not your history; it does not matter.
• It is not your environment.
• Number one factor in success in education, in business, in sport, in life is Grit.
• GRIT: You do not give up….The super successful spend at least 2 hours and 44 minutes every day for ten years mastering their art. You stay focused on the one thing that, if you do it well, will become your lasting legacy.

• The 6 Devotions of Leaders without Titles.
• Be so good we can’t take our eyes off you. How can we deliver more value to our clients. Be so good at what you do that you create your own economy. We need you to be a master of your class.
• Go Minimalist like Michelangelo. Build your days, your life around one thing. Clarity is power.
• Avoid the arrogance of Success. When you become successful in business, or leadership you become susceptible. You still need to have fire in your belly.
• Leave people better than you found them. “The business of business is people” If you take care of the relationship then the money will take care of itself. Ask: How can we have a world class Customer relationship? How can we give our customers massive amounts of value? How can we surprise them? If your customers do not love you, your competitors will take away your customers.
• How can you offer 10 times the value than your competitors do?
• Remember that failure is greatness waiting to happen. Success is a numbers game, look at the number of failures and rejections that James Dyson had before his vacuum cleaners were eventually accepted.
• Implementation Disciplines
• Train yourself to get up at 5 am – When you have most energy, most passion, most focus. Spend the first twenty minutes exercising, the next 20 minutes focusing on your plan and the final 20 minutes reading. It will take up to 66 days to change deep ingrained habits, so be prepared for massive self discipline
• Next 90 days spend the first 90 minutes on your biggest single opportunity, on your Number ONE opportunity.
• To double your income and productivity, triple your investment in personal development and professional education. The personal who knows the most WILL win
• Write down Five little acts of excellence that you will achieve every day. Then reflect on three achievements at the end of each day.




Finally

1: Who did you become? Did you spend all your potential?
2: How many people did you help? How many leaders did you grow? How much value did you create for your clients?

• “I want to be thoroughly used up when I die. Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I want to make burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations” George Bernard Shaw

How To Get Paid Faster

One of the toughest things you must do as a businessperson is get paid! You work hard for your clients to provide them with a valuable service, and then spend months chasing your money. The truth is, many invoices get put on the back burner, because unlike credit card companies who will immediately report the late payer to a credit agency, the smaller business will usually not do this. It's a tough call, sometimes, but you're the one who will suffer if you don't make it.

The First tip is the one you NEED to use for this month while people have any money to give – We all know it will get doubly hard to collect money in Jan/Feb

Follow up every day until you receive your money. Obviously, you should try to get paid before this need arises. Once your client realises your payment policies are lax, s/he will opportunistically attempt to exploit it. And remember - every minute that you are working to get paid is a minute that (A) you are working a second time for money you've already earned and (B) you are not working on a new job, which still needs to be finished on time, and you're running that job later by the minute.

You will need to consider ALL these tips in Janauary so you do not have a list of unpaid invoices in December 2015 !

Make your payment policies clear at the time your services are retained. However your business is approved, at some point, your client must agree to your estimated price for the work they want done. If your payment policies are stated clearly on your contract, bid, or whatever document you use to bind the contract, you are ahead of the game.

Accept all forms of payment and encourage credit card payment. If possible, take credit cards. In this way, you are sure to be paid in timely fashion even if the client doesn't have the funds at the current moment. Shop for a merchant account provider and set up credit card processing for your business.

Get a deposit in advance. Unless you have a relationship of long standing with the client, get money in advance, and then plan to collect some more midway through the job. Usually, this is 30/30/40 - 30% in advance (to bind you, and to enable you to purchase materials), 30% upon completion of some agreed-upon benchmark, and the balance upon completion. By the way, make sure it's clear that "completion" means on the day you deliver it - not whenever they feel like it.

Always let the customer pay when they offer. One of the dumbest things business owners do is shoot themselves in the foot by not accepting a payment when it's offered. Many times, a client will ask, "Do you need a cheque now?" and the business owner says, "No, that's okay, we'll get it at the end." Don't do this! If the customer is happy to pay up front - let him!

Make arrangements for payment before you deliver the final product. Hold back enough so that they will need to pay you before you deliver the finished job. It is notunprofessional for you to do so, though many business owners consider this a "low-rent" practice. It's not low-rent - it lets them know that you are a professional accustomed to being paid for your work in a timely manner. Just say something like, "Hey, Mr. Jones, I have your job all ready to deliver. Can you have a cheque ready for me if I swing by around 3 PM?. The balance due is €470.78."

Apply your payment policies to every single customer. Don't give your friend Joe's buddy a bye on this. If anything, treat friends of friends with even less trust than a stranger - they often attempt to take advantage of your cozy relationship with their brother, buddy, whatever. If this guy has not paid you by your due date, call him immediately and ask for payment. If you are put off till the next day, call again the very next morning.

Contact the credit agencies. Printing a warning on the bottom of your invoices is fine, but if you fail to follow it up, you won't ever be taken seriously. Contact the credit agencies and report late-payers. If it's their first time, call the client first, and let them know that you're terribly sorry to do it, but unless you receive their payment before the 30 day deadline, you will have to report it to the credit agencies, thus damaging their credit. It's a powerful incentive to pay.

• Don't fail to send people to a collection agency if you don't get paid. Often, collectors will pay up to 50% of what you're owed, just for the opportunity to try to collect it.
• If you can show up in person to collect it always helps. People have a much harder time making excuses face to face.
• Before doing business with somebody make sure that any needed paperwork is completed; failing to have contracts or agreements in writing can significantly delay payments.
• If you can afford to, hire someone to follow up on your accounts receivable; this gives you a more professional gloss and makes payment seem more urgent. Even if it's your spouse, who uses her maiden name to make the calls - in this way, your amiable relationship with the client is not jeopardized by crass calls about money, if that's your view on the subject.
• Have a cash reserve that you can use for refunds when necessary. That way you won't be hesitant about taking payment up front.

Take two minutes to learn a LOT about your business...

Good Morning,

This test will give you a lot of information about your business. Take the test, it will only take you two minutes but will show you where you are in your marketing and pin point things you can improve on straight away.

Have a fantastic week,

Coach Chris

http://www.actioncoachireland.com/index.php/Assessment-Tools/measure-your-marketing.html

The Comet Effect

Some years ago, I joined a technology SME to head it up through its next phase of growth.  The business had started up long after the impact of a previous recession and was doing well on the back of a growing economy.  From the outside, things looked rosy but inside, it maintained the same informal approach to systems and procedures, communication and control as it did in the start-up.

There was a disconnect between what the senior manager was aiming to do and what everyone else in the organisation thought was happening. 

This is what I call the “Comet Effect”.

It can occur where the owner or senior manager focuses on growing the business virtually oblivious to all else in the operations.  The effect can emanate itself in some very negative ways. 

Middle managers and staff can be left to carry out tasks and make decisions they are not comfortable with or out of sync with the direction of the organisation.  They can become demoralised or maybe even leave.  Costs can run out of control because no one is made accountable.  Inefficiencies can lead to the same thing because appropriate processes and procedures aren’t put in place. 

Poor control increases risk to the business with all kinds of negative outcomes.  Poor communication and inadequate involvement of staff de-motivates employees who become less productive.  Staff turnover increases with direct cost to the business.

It isn’t rocket science to know how to stop the problem but it does involve a serious injection of structure into the business.

Depending on the particular business and the maturity of its management framework, there are lots of things to consider to gain better control over the business.  Here’s just a few examples of what we installed in this business to improve things:

• Three year rolling business plan were shared with staff members who were also kept updated on ongoing progress.  Growth plans were designed to be seamless with other business operations.
• A skills gap analysis was carried out for business needs and appropriate training was subsequently introduced.
• Monthly accounts were revised vs budget with KPI’s agreed and included for team management and accountability.
• Performance incentive schemes were introduced to gain team ownership and buy-in with departments.
• HR policies and the Health & Safety system were updated and made fully compliant. (Yes – this did save significant costs and reduced worries about what could happen if non-compliant!)
• Closer relationships with key suppliers were developed to improve manufacturing performance and reduce costs.

Emphasis on business development plans is obviously key to growing the business.

However as the business grows, inadequate attention to installing the right structures elsewhere in the organisation, commensurate with the particular phase of growth can have a negative effect in many different ways.