Hitting Rock Bottom at Work and Surviving

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It’s rare today that your first job is also your last job. In the course of many people’s careers, as they gain time and experience, their positions change. Increased responsibility, in most cases, should mean increased pay. It can be tricky identifying a good time to move to a new position. If we’re fearful of the change, sometimes it takes hitting rock bottom, sometimes repeatedly, before we wake up and choose to be survivors and not a victim. How do we go from hitting rock bottom to surviving?

A lot of it lies in our perspective, how we internalize change, and how we incorporate our growing pains into the fabric of our lives. We can always increase our resiliency, or our ability to bounce back despite setbacks.

Our lives are such a kaleidoscope of colorful events if we choose to see it this way. It’s easy to focus on the pain, on what’s not going right. The real test of our character is our ability to face setbacks, discomfort, and failure and see it for what it is—find the lesson learned in the experience, and move on to better things as a more humble and compassionate person.

When we are at the bottom looking up, we often feel alone and unappreciated as we wonder if anyone cares about us or sees the pain through our tight smiles. Sometimes we ask ourselves what the point of going on is if we feel like our work isn’t valued. If we’ve royally screwed our personal relationships up (or lack thereof) by putting our job ahead of what’s really important to us, then it really can make us question the worth of our lives. Sometimes we hit rock bottom, because we are no longer interested in our job. We could be worn out or stressed to the max. What may really be going on is that we’re ready for a change. We’re having trouble finding purpose in what we do for our job. And we think that holding on to the way things are will keep things the same. However, when we resist change and hold on so tightly to the past or the future, we lose sight of what we’re doing in the here and now.

I have found throughout the years that a storm always precedes a fresh new beginning. Always.

When I find myself blocked or resisting a change in my job, it’s usually because I’ve outgrown the job. I’m ready for a new challenge—whether it’s more responsibility or a new career field. If I find myself anxious or dreading going into work, a storm is definitely brewing. Are you there right now?

Why not try identifying the why behind the pain, discomfort, boredom…the sooner we’re able to move past these negative feelings and beliefs, the sooner our next job will surface.

Hitting rock bottom means the only way to go is up. That we’ve outgrown the current experience and our soul is yearning for something more, something bigger, and something beyond our current situation. So ask yourself what you truly long for and how you can do something right now, today that will get you one step closer to that longing.

Step a little outside of your comfort zone.

Enlist the aid of someone with the experience and willingness to be a safe place that you can be vulnerable and explore what it is you really want.
You are definitely worth it—and the people whose lives you touch in your job will be profoundly affected by your interactions when your job is your passion. Who knows, your relationships may just fall into place as well. When you value your worth, and recognize the tenuous web that intricately spins us all together it will begin to make sense the sooner you work past the pain, longings, and yearnings, you will find happiness, compassion, and success in pursuing your passions.

If you are looking for fresh appraoch for relations, check out, Secrets of Successful Relationships. This online course is based on the groundbreaking work of John Gray, the world-renowned author of the phenomenal bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. In this course, Dr. Gray’s wisdom is presented by Rich Bernstein, the President and CEO of Mars Venus Coaching, who has been happily married for 33 years using these very principles. This course isn’t just about learning secrets; it’s about putting them into action to create new habits.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations

Intelligence Is Overrated: What You Really Need To Succeed

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Albert Einstein’s was estimated at 160, Madonna’s is 140, and John F. Kennedy’s was only 119, but as it turns out, your IQ score pales in comparison with your EQ, MQ, and BQ scores when it comes to predicting your success and professional achievement.

IQ tests are used as an indicator of logical reasoning ability and technical intelligence. A high IQ is often a prerequisite for rising to the top ranks of business today. It is necessary, but it is not adequate to predict executive competence and corporate success. By itself, a high IQ does not guarantee that you will stand out and rise above everyone else.

Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality, and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. Additionally, Nobel Prize-winning Israeli-American psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, found that people would rather do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don’t, even if the likeable person is offering a lower quality product or service at a higher price.

With this in mind, instead of exclusively focusing on your conventional intelligence quotient, you should invest in strengthening your EQ (Emotional Intelligence), MQ (Moral Intelligence), and BQ (Body Intelligence). These concepts may be elusive and difficult to measure, but their significance is far greater than IQ.

Emotional Intelligence

EQ is the most well-known of the three, and in brief, it is about: being aware of your own feelings and those of others, regulating these feelings in yourself and others, using emotions that are appropriate to the situation, self-motivation, and building relationships.

Top Tip for Improvement: First, become aware of your inner dialogue. It helps to keep a journal of what thoughts fill your mind during the day. Stress can be a huge killer of emotional intelligence, so you also need to develop healthy coping techniques that can effectively and quickly reduce stress in a volatile situation.

Moral Intelligence

MQ directly follows EQ as it deals with your integrity, responsibility, sympathy, and forgiveness. The way you treat yourself is the way other people will treat you. Keeping commitments, maintaining your integrity, and being honest are crucial to moral intelligence.

Top Tip for Improvement: Make fewer excuses and take responsibility for your actions. Avoid little white lies. Show sympathy and communicate respect to others. Practice acceptance and show tolerance of other people’s shortcomings. Forgiveness is not just about how we relate to others; it’s also how you relate to and feel about yourself.

Body Intelligence

Lastly, there is your BQ, or body intelligence, which reflects what you know about your body, how you feel about it, and take care of it. Your body is constantly telling you things; are you listening to the signals or ignoring them? Are you eating energy-giving or energy-draining foods on a daily basis? Are you getting enough rest? Do you exercise and take care of your body? It may seem like these matters are unrelated to business performance, but your body intelligence absolutely affects your work because it largely determines your feelings, thoughts, self-confidence, state of mind, and energy level.

Top Tip For Improvement: At least once a day, listen to the messages your body is sending you about your health. Actively monitor these signals instead of going on autopilot. Good nutrition, regular exercise, and adequate rest are all key aspects of having a high BQ. Monitoring your weight, practicing moderation with alcohol, and making sure you have down time can dramatically benefit the functioning of your brain and the way you perform at work.

What You Really Need To Succeed

It doesn’t matter if you did not receive the best academic training from a top university. A person with less education who has fully developed their EQ, MQ, and BQ can be far more successful than a person with an impressive education who falls short in these other categories.

Yes, it is certainly good to be an intelligent, rational thinker and have a high IQ; this is an important asset. But you must realize that it is not enough. Your IQ will help you personally, but EQ, MQ, and BQ will benefit everyone around you as well. If you can master the complexities of these unique and often under-rated forms of intelligence, research tells us you will achieve greater success and be regarded as more professionally competent and capable.

Keld Jensen
Forbes Magazine

Why Cooperation and Collaboration is Essential in Today’s Workforce

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There are many career fields now where men and women are integrated together. And, when you stop to think about it—even if there’s a career field where it’s predominantly one gender or the other, there is gender overlap either when buying products or services from vendors or serving customers. The way to reduce gender conflict is by focusing on strengths. By intentionally becoming aware of how to use both masculine and feminine communication skills you can give not only yourself, but your company as well, the advantage over your competition when it comes to productivity and creativity.  Rapport building is a great way to foster cooperation and collaboration within your company and to obtain repeat customers.

As an individual reading this article, you are becoming more cognizant of how masculine and feminine communication skills can be used interchangeably, by both sexes, for greater cooperation and collaboration. Becoming aware of the social skills involved, and then mindfully choosing to use both styles of communication, will help you be a better communicator at work (and at home!).

Today, we’re focusing on how to build rapport, a skill set women often acquire more naturally due to social conditioning and because they tend to communicate, commiserate, show compassion, and connect with others when under duress based on their physiology. In fact, physiologically, women produce their stress-reducing hormone, oxytocin, when they do just that—connect and nurture relationships with others.

When both men and women focus on beefing up their rapport with others, then the entire group (both employees and customers) benefits. Value is placed on what often makes or breaks a company—turning a product or service into profit. This is because the focus is on people enjoying the experience of working to sell or buy the product or service.

Building rapport is a skill that both men and women can benefit from in the workplace. By taking a moment every day to check in with one another, the workplace climate can change from friction and one-upmanship to one that’s more team-oriented. This is critical in a workforce that employs both men and women. Put it into context with a young child picking up a toy strewn room. If you’ve picked a room up with a child, you know it is more about picking the toys up together, rather than putting the toys away, that makes them feel accepted and like they did something well. When anyone feels like they matter, then typically their performance increases because peer pressure revolves around connection and positive reinforcement.

Women tend to ask others for their input when making decisions, because to them it is important to hear and value what others think and feel about the situation. Even in a quick-paced working environment where seconds count, eye contact, nods of the head can mean the difference between if someone has your back and whether everyone’s on the same page or not.

You build rapport by actively listening to others. Be genuinely interested in someone—whether it’s how potty training is going with their daughter, how they’re coping with a sick parent, or how the work deadline caused them to miss their anniversary—listen with interest. This does not mean a fifteen minute or even a five minute chat every day—it’s a quick check-in as easy as asking, “hey, how is your day?” Stop. Listen to the answer. Respond by rephrasing or repeating back what they said and using empathy. Then, get down to business.

You can also build rapport by observing and responding to nonverbal body cues. Quick check-ins with my Marines as a Marine Corps Officer was invaluable when time was critical. I knew my Marines body language, their moods, and how to motivate each one as individuals. Instead of forcing my will or decisions, I relied on my strength of listening with my ears and reading emotional moods to make decisions that were good not just for the end result, but the people involved as well.

As my yoga teacher challenges us each week with mindfulness homework, let me do the same with you. Your homework is a two-fold challenge. In the next week notice how building rapport benefits the quality of your productivity and creativity. Then challenge your company to do the same. Hire a Mars Venus Coach to go over gender strengths and do DISC profiling with your company for your professional development training, or if there isn’t a Mars Venus Coach in your local area have employees take the online course: Gender Intelligence Course. It’s not enough just to read about gender intelligence, you have to put the knowledge into actions by interacting in better ways with others.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations

In Business, It’s Never About You

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Recently, I had an interaction with another businessperson that left me deflated. I felt deflated, because the other person was acting irrationally based on fear, rather than seeing the opportunity for what it was—mutually beneficial. We could have helped one another out in promoting our businesses.

When I network, it is to get to know someone so I can link them with others. As I build the relationship based on genuine interactions of getting to know them, the majority of the time I find us wanting to help and recommend each other’s services, because we value and can speak for each other’s services. When you have a working knowledge of gender and emotional intelligence, you quickly realize it’s not the exchange of products or services that really matters; it’s the experience and connection that make buying and selling memorable. This is more of an organic way of doing business, but I have found it to create sustainability and long-term results.

A lot of times, what we do not realize is that even in buying and selling, our emotions are often the deciding factor in whether the experience is a positive or negative one. So here’s the secret—always choose for your interactions to be about the other person, never about you. So in this example, while his behavior was not desirable, I let him close the door on the business relationship. It initially made me feel deflated, because there were great opportunities and possibilities, but I respected his decision. When you can label and identify your emotions as they are happening, instead of reacting based on emotions, you can choose logic and the best course of action.

Putting the concept, it’s never about you; it’s always about the other person benefits your business in three ways. It works in networking, with colleagues, and with customers. When you remember that it’s about the other person, and not you, then you can quickly wade through whom to pursue relationships with as you network. When you use this concept with co-workers and employees, you keep the lines of communication open and honest. And, when you use this concept with customers, you create an environment where they feel good about themselves, and will want to return or recommend your product or service to others. In each of Dr. John Gray’s Mars Venus books, the Mars Venus Coaching Workshops, and working with Mars Venus Coaches, these principles are espoused. It is always about learning how to communicate with others in their language so they can hear and understand you. When you shut the door, you limit yourself to future opportunities.

So remember, when you are interacting with others, ask yourself how you can help them get what they need, not what’s in it for you. And, in doing so, people will seek out your business. And, when the other person is not of like mind, be genuine when you wish them well. You never know, they may come back!

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations

5 Signs It’s Time to Reprioritize

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During Lent, many people often give up or do without as they contemplate their spiritual beliefs and how Jesus Christ’s life and death personally affect how they live their lives on a daily basis. Regardless of whether you’re Christian or not, the Lenten season typically provides an opportunity for quiet self-reflection during observation of the Holy days. If it feels like you’re one step away from spending an entire day in bed or just vegetating, then read on to see if you’re in need of reprioritizing.

1. You consistently add more to your To-Do List than you cross off

Sometimes it helps to pause and see the long-term (a couple of months or more) and short-term (every week or daily) reasoning behind why you’re driving yourself so hard. If you’re able to sense that the upcoming week will be packed, then it behooves you to slow down the following week.

Solution: If one day is super busy, then plan to have more downtime the next day to recover or attend to what wasn’t finished the previous day. This only works if you have set busy/recovery times.

2. Forgetting important details

If you find that you cannot remember what you did an hour earlier, or are trying to remember if you had made an appointment for your personal health earlier in the year, then you may be overworked.

Solution: In this case, a planner comes in extremely handy. Use it to look things up and to keep track going forward. If you’re so busy, you’re unable to recall with your memory, then you may be doing too many things at once and will need to slow down and do less.

3. Work through breaks and lunch

Stop. Our bodies need nourishment and time off several times during the day. Being on “go” all day, with no moments to savor a cup of tea or chew our food thoroughly, enjoying the bursts of flavor, not only affects our waistlines and digestion, it also affects our resiliency to stress.

Solution: Put down your pen, back away from the computer, and turn off your phone. Spend the 15-, 30-, or hour-long break being in the present moment, being aware of what your senses are telling you, and enjoying the respite from work.

4. You commit to meetings and helping others, and your work performance suffers

If you find yourself saying yes when your plate is already too full, or you are being given too many tasks by your boss (or pressure from yourself) to be able to complete in a regular work day, and you’re unable to tie up your loose ends each week, then you may need to re-evaluate what’s important.

Solution: Sit down over the weekend with your planner. Pencil everything that must get done next week. Schedule the day and time when you’ll get these high priority items done. If you don’t know until the morning of each day, then estimate how long you can devote to the last minute high priority items, and block this amount of time out. Then, as you’re given more things to do, as you create your daily agenda, and there’s no time to add the new tasks, write them into your schedule for the next day. If you have to negotiate what to leave on and take off the agenda with someone, your written schedule provides a visual aid with which to make your point.

5. You feel resistance, lethargy, exhaustion, and anxiety whenever you think of what needs to be done

If you find yourself getting overwhelmed or anxious that your slate is never wiped clean, then you may need to take a break so you can gain a fresh perspective to improve your mood.

Solution: Take a half a day or an entire day off so you can get away to refresh your batteries. Do not think about what needs to be done, just give yourself permission to relax and spend time doing the things you love by yourself and with the people you love.

If you regularly experience three or more of these signs, then it may be time to take a hard look at your schedule so you don’t burn out. And, if you’re burnt out, then it will take longer than just a day to regain your equilibrium. Be gentle with yourself, and give yourself permission to slow down. If it’s a question of how to enforce your boundaries better with others so you don’t take on too much, then learn how to set boundaries and manage your time. It’s never too late to learn.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MeD
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations

What if your business partner wants to break up?

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Setting up a business partnership is a little like starting a romantic relationship, although admittedly, the benefits package and perks are a lot different.

In the beginning stages, it’s easy to only focus on the positives, but a solid partnership agreement also takes into account a number of scenarios, especially the potential for negative outcomes. If the worst does happen, your partnership agreement should protect both you and your partner.

Make sure your partnership agreement covers what will happen if:

One of you wants out. Exit clauses are standard in partnership agreements. For example, if you want out, your partner may be obligated to purchase your ownership share.

That’s the easy part. The tricky part is determining the value of the business when that happens. Business valuation is part science, part art, and different approaches often result in very different results. Whether you agree to use liquidation value, book value, or the income, asset, or market approaches, stipulate in your partnership agreement how the business will be valued and whether a third party will conduct the valuation. Then the breakup will be a lot cleaner and less emotional.

One of you passes away. Say your partner dies. Typically, his or her ownership stake passes to the spouse or children. You automatically get new partners — new partners you may not want. A buy-sell agreement can allow you to purchase your deceased partner’s share, but what if you don’t have the money or can’t get financing?

There’s an easy solution: Stipulate that each partner will carry life insurance sufficient to cover the purchase of the other partner’s share. Each partner designates the other partner as beneficiary. Then, if your partner passes away, you always have the funds to complete the buy-sell agreement. Just make sure you add additional coverage as the value of your business grows.

One of you wants to change the agreement. Paul Allen claimed Bill Gates asked him to change their ownership split of Microsoft several times. Perspectives change as a business evolves, and partnership agreements can be amended as often as you like — as long as all partners agree.

Sometimes one of you might not agree to proposed changes, so stipulate how fundamental disagreements will be resolved: Mediation, arbitration, triggering a buy-sell clause, etc. Knowing how a problem will eventually be resolved if you aren’t able to agree often makes it easier to work through differences.

You can no longer get along. No matter how well you work together now, misunderstandings, hurt feelings, and changing priorities can damage the best relationships. When that happens, falling back on the terms of your partnership agreement can help both of you stay objective.

For example, your partnership agreement may stipulate you are responsible for 60% of the work since your partner provided a greater share of initial capital. If he feels you aren’t doing your share, the more clearly you defined what “the work” means in your agreement, the easier it is to determine whether you are in fact pulling your weight. Whenever possible, use hours, numbers, dollars — quantifiable measurements.

Your business is already established. If the agreement you have is insufficient — or if you don’t have a written agreement — it’s not too late.

Take a step back and create a comprehensive partnership agreement. If your partner hesitates, explain you aren’t trying to change your current working conditions. All you’re trying to do is eliminate as many ways you might disagree in the future as possible.

Fortunately, talking about potential negatives with a potential business partner is a lot easier than having a similar discussion with a romantic partner. Setting up a prenuptial agreement may not be the greatest way to start a relationship, but setting up a comprehensive written partnership agreement is the perfect way to start a business partnership.

Jeff Haden

Making Daily Progress Towards Your Big Goals

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Often, we make New Year’s Resolutions because we are dissatisfied with something in our lives. When we make our resolutions, we want things to change as soon as possible. What we often forget is that long-term lifestyle changes take time, patience, and effort.

I believe you have to know what your long-term goals are so you can make small goals (i.e., daily tasks) that have direction and purpose. I only work with people who are 100% committed to change. But what does that mean? When you commit to changing something about yourself, then you have to ask yourself and know the answers to these two questions.

(1)    How much is it worth to me to achieve this goal? What am I willing to pay? What will I sacrifice now, so I can achieve this goal sooner, rather than later?

(2)    How will I know when I’m successful? What will make me satisfied, but encouraged to keep working harder?

I believe you have to remind yourself daily of your answers to the two questions above; otherwise, you may find yourself quickly coming up with lots of things to do on your to-do list that are not aligned with the daily action you must take to achieve the goals that are most important to you, your happiness, and success.

Psychologists Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer’s latest program of research, called The Progress Principle, encourages people to focus on small, immediate changes at work where they can see the progress they’ve made to increase their motivation, job satisfaction, and productivity. This is counter to what many people do when making resolutions and goals for themselves (whether it is at work or in their personal lives) that take a long time to achieve. Ronald Riggio, Ph.D., explains how these two psychologists stumbled upon what computer game programmers have known for years: that people become strongly motivated (sometimes even addicted)  to accomplish small tasks (i.e. get to the next level); he further explains how to use this knowledge to get ahead at work.

If you’ve been reading the latest articles on major news websites like Kathy Kristof’s on 7 Ways to Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions the last few weeks, you may have noticed two trends often mentioned: choose small bite-sized goals and celebrate every time you surpass or meet these small goals. For example, if you’d like to lose 30 pounds, then focus on losing 1 pound per week for 30 weeks. Each week you lose 1 pound, then celebrate with a reward such as a manicure or a bubble bath. If you’d like to run a marathon and you don’t run, then focus first on running 5 miles the first week, and increase your mileage by 10% each week, celebrating your breakthroughs each week. I completely agree; however, I know why you’ve committed to challenging yourself to do, or think, or feel each day differently.

Be Aware of the Big Picture

What this means is that even though we are focusing on small daily tasks, before we commit to what we’re going to do each day; we also need to be cognizant of what our BIG, long-term goals are so that somewhere in the busy-work of our days we’re doing the small tasks that will get us closer to our long-term goals. Knowing what the big picture is for why we work on daily and weekly goals will help us stay focused on the direction our lives are moving towards while providing daily structure.

Lyndsay Katauskas, MEd
Mars Venus Coaching
Corporate Media Relations

A Word about Coaching

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Because life coaching and business coaching are relatively new professions, and many people haven’t had any direct experience working with a coach, the question of “how does coaching work?” is something we frequently hear.

One of the biggest misconceptions is that coaching is about giving advice.

Coaching – whether you work with a life coach or a business coach – asserts that all of the answers we seek are inside of ourselves. A good coach will not tell you what to do. The reason to work with a coach is to empower yourself to listen to your own inner voice, and to investigate the full spectrum of possible solutions to the barriers holding you or your business back. Seeking outside help can help you gain the clarity and focus necessary to succeed.

Life and business coaching are about permanent and fundamental shifts in your view of yourself and your business.  Coaching is about helping an individual or organization see a way to achieve a goal, remove a roadblock to achieving a goal, or a combination of the two.

According to Einstein,“We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” A coach can help you shift your thinking into that new perspective.  A coach’s tools are great, probing, enlightening questions.  And a great coach has enough experience to ask the right, questions at the right time to help you make that shift quickly.

The International Coach Federation defines corporate or executive coaching as “a process for equipping individuals and teams with the tools, knowledge, and opportunities they need to be creatively productive and effective in their commitment to themselves, their organizations, and their work.” We proudly support this definition.

Mars Venus Coach Nadia Ansari

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Please take a look at our Mars Venus Coach in the United Kingdom; Nadia Ansari

Nadia AnsariHello, and welcome, glad you decided to stop by…

Whether you’re familiar with coaching or it’s a completely new concept to you, I’m pretty confident you will have heard of the book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus.

I first came across it in the form of Mars and Venus on a Date, when I started dating a particularly wonderful, but equally alien ‘Martian’ male… I’d often find myself pulling out my hair and despairing at the differences between us, at times thinking the relationship must surely be doomed! This was until a dear friend lent me her copy of the book… that was almost two years ago, and I’m pleased to say that nowadays the relationship is a much happier and calmer, ever-growing and blossoming one.

So that’s where my enthusiasm for the Mars Venus work came from – because I experienced first-hand how much it worked. I’ve always been fascinated by human interactions despite being originally trained as a Business Analyst after following what others recommended as a ‘sensible degree’ in Information Systems Analysis. Even though I gained a First Class Honours in this, after some time trying to do the sensible thing, I still felt more drawn to humans over computers.

Thus, as you might imagine, when the opportunity arose for me to be the first person in the UK to be trained by Dr. John Gray, said author of the now world-renowned Mars & Venus name, I was pretty excited. I am proud to be the first Mars Venus coach in the UK and part of the international and ever-growing Mars Venus team – in fact, I’m so committed to the idea of coaching that I have a coach too.

The reason for this is I believe continued education is essential for personal growth, and as such we could all use a coach to help us achieve our best – it is after all the reason that so many musicians and athletes already use coaches… not because they are at the bottom of the well and not sure how to get out, but because they want to continuously improve in order to achieve their best. It is personal development and learning that leads us to the wonderful feelings of empowerment and a ‘can-do’ attitude. This renewed sense of understanding and achievement can have a fantastic impact on your personal and business life, as one naturally compounds the other.

OK, so that’s all very nice, but where does my drive to help you set your goals and achieve them come from? Well, just over three years ago I was diagnosed with an auto-immune condition that not only was making me very unwell, but also, as I was repeatedly informed, was ‘barely treatable and certainly incurable’. I went through a period of time feeling very sorry for myself and thinking ‘why me’ – but eventually found that far too depressing not to mention limiting – and so sought out other ways to resolve it. And I did.

Which is really what coaching is about: recognizing you’re in a situation that you’d like to change, then looking at all the various options that could enable you to make that change – then possibly trying a few that don’t work before finding one that does – following it through… and bingo, before you know it, you’re there.

It’s for that reason I’m passionate in helping people actualise and realise their full potential, both at home and at work. To help you to achieve these results, I hold seminars and one-to-one coaching sessions based on the Mars Venus Coaching principles. The focus is primarily on your personal and/or business goals; as well as helping men and women understand, respect, and appreciate their differences in both personal and professional relationships. Whether you have a general feeling that you’re not completely satisfied with life, love, work or play – or you have a very specific idea of exactly what is lacking in your life but are not quite sure how to change it, I can help you figure it out and get the changes rolling in.
So review my introduction from Dr. Gray at the top of the page, take a look at the feedback from a client below… and think about it – why not coaching? Then contact me through the email or telephone numbers listed…. and I’ll look forward to working with you in achieving your goals!

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement. – Brian Tracy, Eat that Frog

Client Testimonial:

“I found Nadia’s life coaching extremely useful. Nadia’s methods are far more proactive and specific than business mentoring I have had in the past. Nadia understands her clients’ businesses and relationships. She provides expertise in a way that is easy to understand and put into action. She is professional and approachable, and I would highly recommend her for mentoring and seminars. Working environments can only benefit from seeking her advice.”
M. Davies
One-to-one client

 

Provide constant celebrations of your client’s successes

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Welcome to secret number 5!  You have learned how to be in the right frame of mind to create a 7-figure business and a free life filled with bliss; how to have prospects compelled to call you and meet you; how to easily, without selling, share your unique service offering; how to WOW your customers and now you are ready to provide constant celebrations of your customers’ success.

Many people wonder what I mean by a customer’s success.  Let me address this right away.  When a customer hires your company or buys your products or services, that in itself is cause for a celebration of them making a great decision.  I instantly celebrate their success with a letter, note, brownies, and other items.  I write personal note cards as well.

When else could a customer have success?  Here are some examples in my own personal life of my success as a customer of other people, where I wasn’t acknowledged and could have been.  I had an expert redo my social media look.  When this was done, a celebration was in order.  I had my attorney file my papers for my foundation, and no celebration occurred.  And I reached a major medical change for the better, and my doctor missed the celebration opportunity.

How many of these opportunities do you miss?  Each time you miss one, you show the customer they aren’t really special, you don’t really care deeply about them, and you certainly aren’t exceeding their expectations.

Today I want you to think about all the celebrations you could be having.  Create a big list.  Include holidays, birthdays, purchases, milestones, and anything else you can think of. Be a bit wild and crazy and include as much as you can.

Then pick at least one item and implement that with every customer.  In a week or so, create a list of 12-24 ways you will celebrate each of your customers regularly.  The sky is the limit, so have great fun coming up with these items.  When you see how much your customers appreciate you caring about them and again wowing them, you will be excited to do more and more celebrating.

I celebrate all my customers because they are my customers.  They are my extended family, and I acknowledge and honor, and celebrate them regularly.

Stan Mann
Success Coach
stan@stanmann.com