photo by today is a good day 

Are you sick of the word ‘bail out’ yet?

How about all the negative ads on the election?

Has the media convinced you yet that the world has ended?  Now all we’re waiting for is the coup de grace, pigs to fly, hell to freeze over, etc.

With all of the doom and gloom talk going on everywhere you look, I thought it might be worthwhile to revisit why business owners strike out on their own.  I brought this up in one of my advisory board groups last week and asked the question to the group.

“What was the driver for you to strike out on your own?” (start your own business).

I don’t know that the answers were surprising, but revisiting the topic helps put things in perspective (at least for me) and it might be helpful for you.  See if these resonate for you.

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I realized I had developed a full fledged habit the other day when my daughter used my standard ‘morning’ phrase to me when I was leaving the house the other day.

With parenting, I’ve come to realize that there’s not really a good way to prepare for everything you’re supposed to do – as the kids get older, you encounter new situations and as the parent, you’re supposed to know what’s going on and what to do.

As an example, a few years ago when our kids starting going to school and waiting for the bus, I realized that I should probably send them out into the world with something a little more directional and (hopefully) inspiring than just – ‘See ya’ or the ever popular and simple ‘Good-bye’ as they walked out the door.

But what do you say in those kinds of situations?  I still haven’t found the user’s manual for our kids and I’m not sure it would cover those kinds of things anyway.

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Photo by Kyknoord 

At this point it’s pretty much a cliche that Change is hard.  What’s new is the scientific understanding of why it’s hard to change – and how that understanding can help make change occur.

Unfortunately for a small business owner, especially in today’s economic climate, change isn’t  just likely, it’s a near certainty.

It is not necessary to change, survival is not mandatory.     -W. Edwards Deming

However that doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.

If you want to make enemies, try to change something.  ~Woodrow Wilson

You will resist change, your clients and customers will resist change and probably most importantly, your employees will resist change.  It’s human nature, but that doesn’t mean you can’t overcome that resistance.

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You may have heard of TED – no, not the weird guy down the street, but the annual conference on Technology, Entertainment and Design.

It’s been going on since 1984 and every year it’s expanded to become bigger and better.

The focus of TED is to bring together interesting people and challenge them to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (give or take a few).

The gamut runs from inspirational to educational and instructive to entertaining and very funny.  Imagine being able to hear from some of the most interesting people in the world in 18 minute chunks – for free!

If you’ve never had a chance to check it out, it’s well worth spending some time to explore – you can find the starting place at TED.org.

Below is one of the more recent postings from a magician / mentalist named Keith Barry.  I had never heard of him, but based on the show he put on here, I’m sure we’ll all be hearing a lot more about him in the future – fantastic stuff!

Take a look:

If for some reason the embedded player doesn’t work, here’s a link to the video.

Share your comments here – I’d love to hear your thoughts on the arm twisting.

Shawn Kinkade www.aspirekc.com

Have you ever had the experience of suddenly having a new insight into something? 

It could be during a heated conversation when you suddenly understand where the other person is coming from (and why they’re mad…) or sometimes you can ‘have the lights turned on’ when you’re listening to a particularly talented speaker.

It only took 15 pages into The Big Five for Life by John Strelecky for me to hit on a new way of looking at something.  This is a book that’s billed as a story about the greatest business leader to ever live and the ‘secret’ to his success.  It’s not a typical business book by any stretch, but there are a lot of ideas that a business owner could use to increase their success.

One of the things that I love about what I’m doing now is that I need to read a lot of books, specifically business books. 

• Many of them are extremely insightful and about as much fun to read as a statistics textbook. 
• Many of them are painful to read and not very insightful.
• A very few of them are both enjoyable to read and leave you with great ideas.

The Big Five For Life belongs in that last category – read on to find out why! Read More…