Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

Welcome to the April 28, 2007 edition of Carnival of Career Intensity.

Ironman presents The Division and Diversification of Labour posted at Political Calculations

Christopher J. Brunner presents What Makes Women Entrepreneurs Different from Men? posted at GreatFX Business Cards

CA presents You are intelligent; you cannot think posted at IQI Strategic Management, Inc.

Think Happy Thoughts Happiness Blog presents Is Happiness Just Pleasure? posted at Miguel Trujillo

Elvis D presents Sunday Shorts posted at OneSmallWindow.

Michael Anuzis presents How to Negotiate a Pay Raise with Game Theory posted at Empowering People Through Information.

Matthew Paulson presents Making Money Work In Your Early Twenties posted at Getting Green.

Murad Ali presents Landing the job you want: Interviewing Techniques posted at The New Business World.

edithyeung presents Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office? posted at Edith Yeung.Com: Dream. Think. Act..

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of career intensity using our carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

I was giving a speech in Fort Lauderdale, Florida – about 45 minutes north of Miami, Florida –  last week and someone asked me why they should work with a business coach.  Since I don’t think this question is specific to Business Coaching in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, Miami, Florida or any specific location, I thought I would share the information with you.

Below are five key benefits of working with a business coach:

When you work with a business coach you will make and keep more money.

What has been holding you back from doubling or even tripling your income?

In most cases we find that the limiting beliefs in the minds of our clients are the major barrier standing between them and the success they truly deserve. Once those limiting beliefs are exposed our clients feel free to aggressively attack the challenges in their business.  Your business coach is free from all of the limiting beliefs that are holding you back.  He/she can help you to understand your true value in the market place.  Armed with this information you can go out and confidently command higher prices.  Let’s face it, you create value for your customers.  They place a dollar amount on that value.  Your business coach will help you understand the premium the market will pay for your services.

Once you are focused on the value you create for your customers you will naturally bring more money to the bottom line.  Your customers are always going to be focused on what they get out of the relationship they have with you.  If you deliver fantastic value for your customers they will not be overly concerned with how much you charge.  This allows you to bring more money to the bottom line.

When you work with a business coach you take action.

How do you currently decide what you do each day?  How would that process differ if someone were holding you accountable to achieving the goals you set for yourself and your business?

Your coach will help you set a strategic plan for the future of your business. You and your coach will then create an action plan that will help you achieve the goals you have set during the planning process.  You will track your progress and your coach will push you.  You will develop aggressive new habits that are action-oriented. 

Coaching forces you to strike a balanced between work and the reason you are working.

Why do you go to work every day?  Is it just to make money or does it fill a deeper need? 

Balance is the key to stimulating creativity.  Working excessive hours and weeks upon weeks at a time is a recipe for stress, illness and burnout.  Your coach will help you look at the big picture.  He/she will help you understand the role that work plays in your life.  You will learn to be intraspective and reflect upon the needs of your life beyond money. 

A business coach will help you make better decisions for yourself and your business. 

Do you have an objective sounding board for discussing big decisions?

Your coach’s only interest is in helping you succeed.  He/she is not a relative.  They are not an investor in your business.  They exist to help you build the business and the life of your dreams.  When you have a big decision to make you need to speak with someone who has a firm grasp of the big picture - as it relates to you.  Since your coach is interested in you first as a person and second as a business owner, he/she can offer objective advice and feedback on your situation.

Working with a coach will help you have a lot more sustainable energy.  

Do you confidently run to your office to aggressively dive into your work?

When you have someone behind you in a supporting capacity you will have more confidence.  As you enjoy more and more success your confidence will grow.  Confidence and momentum will leave you feeling more energized after work each day.  The days will fly by by and you will feel like you can take on the world.

These five benefits are just the tip of the iceberg.  Their are literally dozens and dozens of benefits of working with a business coach.  The only way to find out exactally how much you will benefit from a coaching relationship is to set an appointment to meet with a coach for a free business audit.

Working with a Business Coach in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Miami, Florida or anywhere on the planet is a great move that will benefit you and your business.  Call a coach today.

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

As we ramp up our coaching business in Miami, Florida I am speaking with may small business owners and entrepreneurs.

One of the burning questions I am asked is: “What Should We Work on First?”

Here are three things that I recommend you focus on when you begin your work with a business coach:

Develop a Plan for the Next Three Years, One Year and Ninety Days

Most business leaders do not take the time to plan for the future.  A business coach can help you get a grip on the things that are important.  A business coach will also help you remember why you got into business in the first place.  Once you have crystallized these ideas you need to put them down on paper.   

After you have written down your expectations for the next three years you need to determine what you want to accomplish this year.  You business coach will help make these expectations actionable and convert them into goals that you can focus on immediately.   Breaking you goal into one-year and ninety-day segments will help you measure progress, generate momentum and work on high-value tasks.

Identify and Focus On your Best Customers

Many business owners and leaders spend their time and effort working with customers who provide limited value to their business.  All customers are important, but a customer who spends $400,000 is more valuable than a customer who spends $400.  That’s a fact. 

You need to know who your best customers are and you need to focus your time and energy on them.  Why?  Two reasons:

1). The top 20% of your customer base probably makes up 80% (or more) of your business’s revenue.  They deserve your time and your attention 

2). If they trust you enough to give you a sizeable amount of business right now, they probably have potential to give you more business in the future.

If you think about it logically, you probably focusing on a group of customers who complain the most, the loudest and spend the least.  This is true in just about all the businesses with whom we work. As responsive business leaders we want to make everyone happy.  Your business coach will help you adjust your plan so that you spend most of your time with the customers who are most valuable to your business.

Identify and Create More Relationships Like Your Best Customer Relationships

As we have already discussed, all customers are not created equal. Identifying high-potential customers is critical.  When you prospect for new business you should not just be looking for any customer with a pulse and a wallet.  You should look for customers who have the potential to become high-value clients. 

How do you find these potential customers?

This process begins by studying the group of your best customers.  Frequent interaction with this group will help you understand what they look for in a business relationship and where you can find more businesses like them.

Your coach should be familiar with how to conduct this research.  He/She should be able to help you quickly identify the drivers of these relationships.

Focusing on these three things will immediately help you prioritize your work and aggressively drive revenue growth.

 

 

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

Business coaching is hot – especially in Ft. Lauderdale, Miami and all of South Florida.

There are many, many people who claim to be experts and advisors in ways to help you run your business. 

How can you sort through them all and separate the good from the bad and the down right ugly?  Here are 7 questions you should ask your business coach before you hire him or her:

Who have you coached and what have the results been?  You don’t want to be the first client your coach has worked with.  Let them practice on someone else.  Many coaches figure it out as they go along when they start their coaching practice.  You don’t want to be a lab rat for anyone.  You deserve expert advise from a professional with experience.

Where did you learn to do what you do?  Your coach should have a combination of business experience and formal education.  If they only cite a certification from a coaching association you should run away as fast as possible.  Some of the coaching certifications out there only require that a person call in to a series of conference calls in order to be “certified”.  If you are paying for coaching you want someone who has been around the block a few times. 

What is your coaching process? Your coach should be an expert first and foremost in drawing answers out of you.  You will need to do the hard work of developing you business.  Your coach should be able to describe his/her process for getting the most out of you.  If they can’t, chances are good that they are just “winging it”.

What business discipline do you specialize in?  Many business coaches claim to be experts in everything.  Remember the phrase:  “Jack of all trades and master of none”? For example: If you need sales and marketing advice you should go to someone who has worked on sales and marketing issues over the years.  They should also have some form of education in this discipline.  If they can’t tell you three or four business problems they solved in their area of expertise, then there’s a good chance they read a text book on some theories and never put them into practice.

How will we measure our progress?  Working with a coach makes you feel better.  There’s no doubt about it.  But when you are paying someone to help you get your business on track you want results.  Your coach should be able to help you benchmark your progress as you work together.  Specific, measurable results will not only help you understand how you are progressing, it will also keep you motivated.  Your coach should have a system for measuring your progress.

What resources do you have to help me?  Your coach should have a network of professionals with whom he interacts regularly.  For example: He should know several qualified accountants, attorneys, web designers, printers and other business-to-business professionals.  The coach should have thoroughly vetted these folks to make certain that they will provide you with fantastic service.  Most importantly, your coach should trust these people and the service they provide. 

Will you guarantee my satisfaction with your coaching?  This is critical.  You must trust your coach.  Trust starts with the elimination of risk.  While it is always tricky to guarantee results – different individuals progress at different rates –  it is completely possible to offer to refund your money if you are not happy with the service you receive from your coach.  Let’s face it, you are going to open your life and your business up to this person, the least they can do is to make sure you feel good about your emotional and financial investment.

These seven questions are a good start in helping you understand what makes your coach tick.  You should feel completely comfortable in having a direct conversation with your coach about these topics.  Good coaches are not inexpensive.  You should be able to realize a huge return on your coaching investment.  This return is dependent upon the quality of the individual you have selected as your coach.  Take your time and do your homework.  You’ll be glad that you did.

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

Welcome to the Carnival.

Here are this week’s top five posts submitted to the Carnival of Career Intensity.

Joseanes presents Two Weeks Notice – Why? posted at Money And Investing –  Reasoning and alternatives to the Two Weeks Notice “rule.

It is very common to think that when leaving a company you should give Two Weeks Notice. Some companies even make you sign papers expressing you will, although I have been fortunate not to face those types of contracts.I certainly think that a Two Weeks Notice gives the opportunity for the employer to ease some of the pain of loosing a valuable resource. That is a very nice thing to do that shows that you really care about the company you are leaving and about leaving a nice impression on those that have worked with you.

However, there are some things that we might want to consider.

Click here to read more.

Hueina Su presents Life Balance Lessons: 7 Keys to Avoid Burnout posted at Intensive Care for the Nurturer’s Soul

Chronic stress from work could lead to burnout, which would greatly impact a person’s physical & emotional health, relationships, work, and everyone related to him/her. When you are burned out, you can’t function at your best, and everyone you care about suffer with you. It’s not difficult to see that there is much at stake. Here are some proactive steps you can take today to prevent burnout and return to balance.

Click here to read more.

Ryle presents Using Web 2.0 for Career Development posted at The Thinking Men.

Web 2.0 refers to the usage of the World Wide Web as an interactive medium, inviting users to take part in shaping the content of their favorite websites. A few examples include Wikipedia, Myspace, and Del.icio.us. All these sites allow users to create their own content, which then becomes available for everyone to read. Many magazines and newspapers have done articles stating that Web 2.0 is the next evolution of the Internet and the Web, and a conscious person will want to take advantage of Web 2.0 for career development and advancement. So what can you do with Web 2.0 to further your career?

Click here to read more.

Murad Ali presents 5 Steps to Preventing Workplace Violence posted at The New Business World.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics 95% of the 7.1 million U.S. employers reported at least one act of some type of workplace violence in 2006. These acts may include anything from assault, armed robbery to even homicide. With the recent bloodbath at Virginia Tech, where two professors died, and another homicide at Delphi in Michigan many managers and business owners wonder what they can do to reduce the chance of violence in their workplace.

Click here to read more.

Dave Prouhet presents How to Resolve Conflict in the Workplace posted at Business Advice Daily,

Conflict happens. It happens in all areas of business. Disputes can arise between employees, between business partners, between a company and a client. And if such issues are not settled, bad things can happen. Good people quit. Profitable relationships dissolve. Great companies go under. This has always been true, of course. In a global economy, the implications of conflict are more profound than ever before.

Click here to read more.

That concludes this edition. Submit your blog article to the next edition of Carnival of Career Intensity using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

Spending more time on the beach may seem like a crazy suggestion even coming from a South Florida Business Coach.   

That is exactly the advice I gave to a client yesterday. 

I received a call from a stressed out Miami business owner.  She was panicked because she could not see a way out of a particularly thorny problem that had surfaced in her business.  The problem was financial and it involved another person so the degree of tension was high. 

After asking her to take a couple of deep breaths I asked her where she thought she did some of her best – and most creative –  thinking. 

She responded that she often found that a walk along the beach would often help her clear her head.

I then asked her to share with me all the feelings she had related to this particular problem.  After 90 minutes of conversation, some of it at a high decibel level and some of it through tears, my client was finished.  She had literally relieved herself of all of the emotion associated with the problem.  She said she felt as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

It was at that point that I advised her to go home and take a long hot shower, read a book and then go to bed. 

I asked her to wake up early the next day and go to the beach to watch the sunrise.   I asked her to sit in a chair and stare at the horizon for an hour before she headed into the office.

She followed my suggestions to the letter. 

I spoke with her a short while ago (it is not even 24 hours since she had a meltdown).

She called me to say that she came up with a creative way to solve the problem.  When I asked her what her inspiration was she responded with two things:

1. Getting the emotion of the situation out of the way – literally beating it to death on the phone last night – allowed her to think about the issue from a purely logical perspective this morning.
2. Going to the beach – a place she associated with relaxation– stimulated her creativity.

In the end, only time will tell if she has a solid solution to her problem. What’s important is that she feels better about the situation and she realizes that she is in control.

Ultimately I can come to only one conclusion:  Business Coaching in South Florida means that clients get to spend more time on the beach.

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

“Every day you’ve got to get up and play hard.”

– Jeff Immelt

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

If you want to improve the profitability of your business you need to read this next post.

During the past year I piloted my entrepreneur coaching system and the results have been phenomenal.

My team and I coached 20 small businesses and independent professionals.  These businesses each had less than $1 million in annual revenue and less than 100 employees. Most of the business owners were in the process of deciding if they wanted to stay in business or go out and look for jobs.  Some of them were overwhelmed by the complexity that had engulfed their lives.

We worked with these fantastic people for the past nine to twelve months.  We coached them on Strategic Planning, Sales, Marketing and basic Organizational Skills.  

Ninety percent of our coaching was done over the phone.  We had weekly sales and marketing teleseminars, monthly on-on-one sessions (again via phone) and quarterly workshops with a mastermind group in Miami, Florida.  (Yes, everyone loved to come to Miami four times last year  – but the focus of our sessions was on their business – although some of our clients brought their families and made a vacation out of it.)

What were the results?

All the businesses grew their revenue by 50% or more.  Six of the businesses are on track to produce revenue over $1 million in 2007.  But the most amazing part – every single business doubled their profit during the year we worked with them.

You read that correctly.  All 20 businesses doubled their profit!

What are the secrets to this amazing success?  They stick to the F.A.C.T.S.

Focus – Coaching forces business owners to prioritize their activities.  They learn to look for a return on the investment of their time from everything they do.  If it is not a “high value” activity, they don’t do it.  Period.  Some activities can be delegated.  Many activities are unnecessary yet business owners do them because “that’s the way they’ve always done it”.  We help them sort and prioritize how they spend their time.

Accountability – Our coaches do not let business owners off the hook.  If the client sets a goal, the coach keeps forcing the business owner to take action toward that goal.  Sometimes the work is tough but the results speak for themselves.

Confidence – The business owners build more and more confidence each time they see results.  Coaching helps them learn to celebrate all the small victories that will eventually lead to larger victories.  Confidence is responsible for a good portion of the success each of our successful entrepreneurs enjoy.

Tactics – Many business owners only know one way to do things.  For example:  Several of our clients focused solely on advertising as a way to bring in new customers.  This is expensive and often ineffective.  We work with our clients to develop at least seven different ways to acquire a new customer.  This helps to diversify how they fill their client pipeline.  Using this philosophy, if something doesn’t work they stop doing it.  

Strategy – Everything our clients do is guided by a strategic plan that fits with their personal mission and leads to achieving their goals.  They run their businesses in alignment with the way they live their lives.  Our first task in working with a client is to remove the barriers that prevent them from achieving success.  Normally these barriers consist of their own limiting beliefs.  Creating a strategic plan that not only addresses their business goals but does so in a way that helps them align with their personal values and mission is our first priority.

Congratulations to all 20 of our business coaching success stories.  As we expand our coaching practice we look forward to many many more of these phenomenal success stories in Miami, Florida.

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

“He who can, does.”

– George Bernard Shaw

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

The Carnival of Career Intensity will Return April 21, 2007.

We took a couple of weeks off to focus on some important issues in our lives and our business. 

Everybody needs a vacation to recharge their batteries and restore their creativity.

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

Life happens. 

It is how we respond to the things that happen to us that determines what we become.

I need to take the some time off from blogging to manage one of the little curve balls that life has thrown at me.

I’ll be back on line and better than ever on Tuesday, April 10.

Don’t worry.  It’s nothing I can’t handle.

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Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

“He who can, does.”

– George Bernard Shaw

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