This then brings forth a very important question: how can a person develop a highly successful business?

What are the factors that need to be employed in order to achieve a high degree of success?

Many different elements need to come together in order to achieve success. There are three most common ones, though, and arguably, they’re also the most important. That is, you need to have inspiration, motivation, and facilitation come together in order to be successful. If you have these three things, you can indeed have success in your business.

First, what is inspiration?

It can be most commonly defined as a focus on and an opening to creative thinking or enthusiasm with your mind, with a particular focus on a given activity. Almost all successful people first get inspiration externally in order to become successful themselves.

For example, if you’re a musician, you have probably taken inspiration from other successful musicians you’ve listened to even before you considered seriously embarking on a musical career yourself. And it’s also true that you’ll probably have several sources of inspiration before you start on your own path as a business person.

For example, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, and Ted Turner are all sources of inspiration that may inspire you to have your own business and be as successful as they are. If that’s your own focus, then certainly, business moguls like those just mentioned could be a prime inspiration for you.

Where does motivation come in?

But, what is it that makes you want to wake up every morning and put a great deal of effort into your business? The answer can be summed up in one word: motivation. By definition, motivation is the means and reason in which a person seeks to achieve a goal.

There are many factors that can contribute to the motivation to succeed in business. Some are motivated to earn income, others are motivated by personal satisfaction, others can be motivated because they feel that they have the ability to contribute something great to society.

Regardless of the origination of motivation, one needs to possess motivation in order to succeed in business. Moving forward listlessly will not yield success. There needs to be something pushing the proprietor to achieve success. When this motivation is strong, really nothing can stand in anyone’s way and succeeding becomes a foregone conclusion.

Bring it all together with Facilitation

But while motivation and inspiration are certainly helpful, they can’t make your business succeed all by themselves. They’ll also need you as the driving force that will achieve your objectives. What you need, then, is a way to put your plan into action.

It’s fortunate that many trailblazers have blazed their own trails in the past, and by doing so have set forth processes that you can model for your own success. There are hundreds of business books showing you how to create a business plan or personal self improvement plan.

Of course, you don’t have to follow the model exactly, and it still doesn’t mean you’re going to have an easy time of it. That’s because it’s usually not easy to attain anything of true success and merit.

However, you do have the ability to attain success because many other people have done so, too. And that means that you have a shot at it as well. Why not do so?

Did you know that there are only 168 hours in the week? That is not a very long time at all if you think about it. A large majority of us do not get done want we would like and end up putting off until tomorrow what could be done today. That is where effective time management comes in.

Here are five tips that can help you use your time in much more effective fashion:

1. Schedule your day for everything you need to get done. Make time for work and time for play, and put it on your schedule. Follow your schedule religiously, and stick to it. Your schedule should list your priorities in the order you need to get them done. If you want to spend some time at the gym, make sure you put it on your schedule and make it a routine.

2. Before you go to bed every night, list what you are going to do the next day, starting with first thing in the morning. You can also do this right after you get up and before you start your day, but regardless, have a to do list that you follow every day and then stick with it. When you’ve got one task completed, mark it off and move down to the next thing. Keep going until you get to the very last task you need to complete. If you follow this method, you’ll rarely get behind.

3. DON’T make television, your cell phone, social websites, etc., part of your day. In other words, these things should not go on your schedule. If you get everything else done and want to play a little bit, then you can do some surfing or watch a little television. However, wait until you’ve gotten everything else complete to do this.

4. Get the “have to” things off your list first, and then put the ones that can wait until another day after those. Nobody’s superhuman, after all, and there are going to be times when you can’t get everything done on your list. Staying realistic about what you can and can’t do on a particular day is going to give you great peace of mind as well as make you more efficient.

5. Mix harder with easier tasks to keep from getting overwhelmed. If you wish, interchanging hard tasks for easy tasks and vice versa throughout the day can help keep you from getting burned out. If you have several big or difficult jobs in a row, see if you can spread them out over the course of a week. You can also make a to-do list for the entire week so that you can spread out the harder jobs on different days, including picking specific days for specific projects.

As you may have noticed, it is all about planning ahead. It is always beneficial for us to think about what complications might occur within our schedule, so just be prepared to take a detour when necessary. Other than that, planning ahead is the best way to keep your schedule intact, and your time productive.

There are options available however which enable you to have the best of both worlds and ensure that you can continue to manage your business expenditure wisely whilst also growing your business (in spite of the difficult times).

One such option is a government grant.  In times when businesses are managing within tight budgets, government grants are an excellent source of additional funding for business development projects. Combining these with some of the tax concessions being offered by the government at the moment, there are a range of opportunities available to help the astute business owner maintain business growth.

There are numerous government grants regularly available for funding of business development projects (too numerous to name them all here).  However to give you a taste of the opportunities available ,  I thought I would share with you a grants program I recently came across being offered to small business owners.

Known as the Work and Family Fresh Ideas grants program the Australian Government is  offering grants of between $5,000 and $15,000 to small businesses to support them in implementing family friendly work practices.

This is just one example of how a business can get free money to support business growth.  The exciting thing is that grants are regularly offered in a range of areas across a range of industries and sectors so with persistence, you are sure to find one to match the development needs of your business.

Having had experience working within government agencies, I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the application process for the Work and Family Fresh Ideas was straightforward.

So  as I regularly state to my clients – what have you got to lose? Start thinking about the projects you want to implement in your business and then take the time to investigate what grants are available to assist you to get the funding to make it happen.  You never know there may be a grants program out there perfect for your business and how much more enjoyable to be able to implement your project without impacting your profit margins!

By the way if you are interested in the Work and Family Fresh Ideas grants program you will need to act fast as applications close on Friday 24 April 2009!

Whilst perhaps aimed at a more esoteric audience the email definitely had something to offer in the context of thinking clearly in business,  backing your own judgment and quick decision making.

Here are the key points from the email:

1. Within each of us, there are numerous voices competing for our attention.
   
2. It can be difficult to decide which one to listen to, particularly when their messages are different and sometimes conflicting.
   
3. One voice, however, is the speaker of truth. IT is the one which encourages you, gives you hope, and pushes you to trust and believe in yourself.
   
4. Conflict within oneself is often caused by internally dueling voices. As we move through life, we get mixed messages from the various aspects of ourselves. (If we are rely on external feedback to make our decisions this challenge is only further exacerbated.)
5. Some of our voices, such as the naysayer or saboteur, can speak so loudly that they drown out the voice of truth.
   
6. Listening to your true inner voice – often the voice of understanding, support, and self-assurance – can help lessen and even resolve internal conflict.

So how will you know that you are listening to the ‘true inner voice’?

Here are some hints:

1. Connect with it whilst in a relaxed and alert state.
2. Understand that it if you feel confused or are focusing upon past failures or self doubt this is NOT the voice that serves you.
3. Pay attention to the voice that speaks to you with understanding, and compassion – the one that bolsters your spirits and urges you to go after your goals.

So how does this feed into business life?  In executive coaching one of the more common agreed objectives is supporting an executive to ‘own their role’.  This inevitably translates into increased assertiveness, confidence and a clear internal reference point for decision making ie knowing that you know what you know and being willing to communicate that to others.

There is little space for qualitative data such as the ‘gut instinct test’ in the Boardroom.  At the end of the day it is all about the facts and figures.  Having said this it would be interesting to poll senior executives to determine the extent to which ‘gut instinct’ plays a role in decision making? I suspect the results may be surprising.

Perhaps this is where the trusted inner voice has a role to play in testing the quantitative data.

So if you are tired of the mental gymnastics give this concept some thought.  Particularly if you’re results oriented and future focused but your faith in your own judgment or ability to succeed is lacking. The more you listen to and believe in what your true inner voice is telling you about your value and your potential, the stronger that voice will become – as will your assertiveness and confidence levels.  And the more you disregard the voices that can interfere with your resolve to succeed, the quieter those voices will become.

Give it a try – I am sure you will be pleased with the results.

Some businesses I recommend are:

Sarah Salas & Associates – marketing consulting

Exponential programs – business building programs

Marketing Results – internet marketing

Annie D – brand consultant

All of these businesses provide important yet different input from a marketing perspective and having used all of their services I am confident in recommending them to you. Happy marketing!

As many of you know my work experience is varied but the foundation of where I have come from is the professional services environment working as an insurance lawyer both inhouse and in private practice.

I was a good lawyer, yet the one thing I was never really exposed to in a formal sense was marketing.  When I was a young lawyer I was advised that it was the job of the partners and senior practitioners to procure work.  So in the early part of my career I was not required to bring in work but was to market for the firm by producing quality work at the operations level.

I then moved inhouse, so the way I marketed there was by being civilised and helpful to the people sitting around me.

Back into private practice and by this time I had a much better understanding about what this whole ‘marketing’ thing was about.  I needed to do so much more than just being a good lawyer if the work was to keep coming in.

Which of course begs the question, why is it that professional services firms introduce the concept of marketing so late in a practitioner’s career? (That is a whole other blogpost).

When I started my current business, I had to market, otherwise there was no work.  Given my limited exposure to marketing in the law I effectively started from scratch and have been on a massive learning curve ever since.

So where are you at in your understanding of marketing?  How good are you at doing it?  How knowledgeable are you about it?  A quick and easy way I found to test this was to complete a free marketing autopsy.  Marc Dussault has been a mentor for me in the marketing arena almost from the start and his marketing autopsy is a fantastic way of determining where you are really at in terms of your marketing.

Try the marketing autopsy for yourself and determine  where the opportunities to better market in your industry lie.  In the current economic climate differentiation is going to be the key so if you haven’t got your marketing plan sorted then there is no better time than now to do it.

Whilst her introduction meant I had to work a bit harder at the outset to engage my audience, I could hardly be critical of her as I had the same reaction (albeit internally) when initially asked to speak on it.  How was I going to make this topic interesting and engaging?

I have repeatedly found there is always a way of presenting something old and traditional in a new and innovative way. Being set the challenge on the topic of ‘file management’, I was not going to let myself or my audience down.

I decided to discuss file management in the context of effective time management.  After all, my audience members by the very nature of their work definitely could benefit from improvements in this area.  As we are all well aware, the time available to us in each week is finite – there are only 168 hours.  Within that 168 hours we will eat, drink, sleep as well as work.  So in order to maximise the amount of time available to do the things we love we need to be highly efficient and effective in the use of our time.

Having spent some time immersed in the topic of effective time management, I started to reflect on the tools I use in my business to improve my time management and hence the main focus of my posting today.

As mentioned above my experience has been there are always new and innovative ways to approach the ‘old’.  Some clever software developers have done exactly this with the concept of reading.

I want to share with you some software I was made aware of which has allowed me to dramatically improve my time management.  If like me you spend a lot of time on your computer reading documents, then you must look into the software package known as Rapid Reader.  Now I am no techy so please don’t ask me to explain the mechanics of this system.  However what I do know is after installing the program (which was easy) I went from reading approximately 150 words per minute on the screen to 750 words a minute after using the package for only 15 minutes.  Incredible gains and TRUE!

This process has to be experienced to be believed.  Even better you can use it for email, word documents and PDFs!   As well as the speed gains, your eyes are going to love you for it – how often have you gone home from a hard day on the computer at work and felt like your eyes were going to burn out of their sockets?

If you are serious about increasing your productivity (and want to give your eyes some down time), particularly if you work in an environment where you are reading large volumes of documentation on screen then you must give this software try.  It horrifies me to think how much time I wasted in the past before I had access to this tool.

So what have you got to lose?  Once you’ve started using it like me you will be able to use the extra time to focus on more valuable work activities or even create some time off.  Thank goodness for innovative approaches to old ways of doing things.

Click here to access the software.

Give it a try and let me know what you think.

Here we’ll be sharing information about supporting individuals and businesses to achieve success from a place of inspiration.

Stay tuned and we’ll be back soon with more info.

Thanks!

Inspired Reality