The week in pictures

 We tried a new barbershop ...

 ...and Lexi got a new, easy 'do.

 Then we made homemade pizza for dinner, just the way we like it.

Frappuccino is as frisky as can be.

We spent some mom-daughter time at one of our favorite places.

We hope Barnes & Noble sticks around awhile longer.

Especially since these are now available to read on their Nook!

I had a quick business trip to Dallas, and stayed for the first (of many) time at the Crescent Court. There was amazing customer service, and dinner at Nobu was delectable.

My room was spacious and beautiful.

I even had a comfy chair to read a book on my iPad.

The toiletries were amazing, and the TP was wrapped with a real silk ribbon!

Not just yet. Indeed.

Joan & I turned the lobby into our "office of the day."

My Dallas "office." Not a bad view!

 I (sort of) got a hear Nolan Ryan speak at the Rotary Club of Dallas. Long story.

Back home, I set a new "over-40" PR on the treadmill.

After work, Lexi, Frap & I played Wii.

Then, Lexi's trunk from camp arrived,
and with it a special present for mom.

Our awesome speaker was Ian Williams,
and he talked about failure.

I visited the Westlake Rotary Club
so I could hang with Luma for a bit.

Lexi and I hung out with her dad while he did some work,
and we had some time to play.

All in all, it was a great week. Hope you had a great week, too!

Dress for Success

I know, it's a cliche. Yet I'm convinced there's an underlying truth, and making sure it's paid apt attention provides success insurance. What do I mean? The world forms its first and most lasting impressions of a person by the clothes he or she wears.

An appearance of prosperity attracts attention always, with no exceptions! Moreover, a look of prosperity attracts favorable attention, because the one dominating desire in every human heart is to be prosperous. What you wear doesn't need to be expensive, it needs to be neat, clean and a reflection of your aspirations ... in other words, dress for where you want to go, who you want to be. 

It's all too easy to slip into "business casual" or pull something together that really doesn't look put together. I say, you never know who you're going to run into! When you look your best, you are well on your way to feeling your best, presenting your best and attracting what's best.

I'm not an expert on fashion - far from it! But I know what I like, I know when I meet someone whether I'm impressed with how they show up or not. I know for sure if I show up at a client's office and I'm not dressed for success, they won't be my client for long. There are many books on style and how to dress. Do your career, your self-image and your bank account a favor and pick up a few to dive into.

The most important thought I believe I can share with you today is this: Don't dress for the impression it will make on other people, dress mostly for the impression it will have on you.

Honorée turns service providers into rainmakers, average producers into rock-stars, and dreams into reality. For more information on how she can specifically help you or your organization, click here.

Your Morning Power Hour

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***After you read this post, be sure to visit me at my new home here.***

Multiplier Time-Leveraging Strategy: One morning hour (your “Power Hour”) equals two evening hours. Get up and into the office one or even two hours earlier than you have up until now. You will find you will be able to accomplish twice as much in any given early morning hour as you will in one evening hour.

Chances are you’ll be less mentally alert in the evening, especially if you have worked a full day. If your most productive hours are late at night or you’re simply not a morning person, you can use late night hours as your “power hour” time. The key is to determine what time of day your mind is most clear, focused and energized, and to dedicate that time to working on your business. In coaching, I call this “your edge.”

This strategy is why the world’s top business owners can be found in their offices hours much earlier than those less successful. To join the ranks of other outrageously successful business people, you will want to be found in your office right along with them. If you’ve picked up this book, it’s probably because you’re not part of “the pack,” or at the very least you’re tired of being there!

You will use your power hour to handle the most important aspects of your day: strategic planning, scheduling, and systems. By doing this before anyone else even begins working, you’ve gained control of the flow of the rest of your day.

If you don’t (or you haven’t), you’ll find yourself reacting to the events of the day instead of being able to respond to them. This makes you “response-able.” Your power hour is when you should be focused only on actions that take you closer to your long-range goals.

This is not the time to catch up on e-mail, handle short-term actions or work on paperwork. Those tasks are all time traps, and if you succumb to them, you’ll never gain the exponential multiplication of quality, focused time you’re after! You’ll put those into your schedule, on purpose, in a time slot where you don’t need to be on your “A” game. Delegating these simple tasks to your assistant will also multiply your efficiency and effectiveness.

Here’s a simple example: imagine a five-year-old boy with a small chunk of Kryptonite sneaking up on Superman while he sleeps. If Superman doesn’t see him coming, he’s trapped. It doesn’t matter that Superman is a superior adversary. A little boy has gained control of Superman’s time and consequently he is now in control of Superman.

It’s the same thing with your average workday. If you start your workday when everyone else does, you’ll be trying to perform and produce in the most difficult of circumstances.

Even the most efficient businessperson will lose the upper hand to the “busy-ness” of the average workday. If you try to optimize the hours between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. beyond a certain point, you are fighting your daily battle to succeed while dealing with interruptions, urgencies and employee challenges. You already know how these can wreak havoc on your time.

Once you use your early morning power hour for long-term goal activities, your enemy (busy-ness) can never take them away.

Above is an excerpt from the book Tall Order! Seven Master Strategies to Organize Your Life and Double Your Success in Half the Time. You can purchase it here, here and here.

 

Honorée turns service providers into rainmakers, average producers into rock-stars, and dreams into reality. For more information on how she can specifically help you or your organization, click here.

Honorée Corder's Mini eBook of Goal Achievement

I created a mini eBook of goal achievement, and you can download and read it for free here.

Enjoy!

Honorée turns service providers into rainmakers, average producers into rock-stars, and dreams into reality. For more information on how she can specifically help you or your organization, click here.

Get Assistance for Business Growth

Most small business owners and service professionals are doing way too many things that they could be delegating to someone else. Are you in this category? Often the excuse used is that there are not enough financial resources to justify the expense, or they feel it's just faster to complete the tasks themselves. 

Usually you will find that when you invest in having an expert -- like a bookkeeper, graphic artist, or (virtual) assistant -- do what they are good at, they do it quicker and better and usually at an affordable rate. Or, you "spend" the time to train your assistant to execute simple but necessary tasks, the return on that time investment is well worth it. This allows you to focus on those aspects of your business that only you can do. If you've evaluated your marketing efforts and determined where you need to focus, the next logical step is to determine what you should not be doing, and who could be doing it. (If not, go here.)

Ask yourself these questions:

• What am I doing that it would be better for someone else to do?
• List 3 things I can delegate to others, or pay for others to do.
• What would be best for me to stop doing?
  

This effective evaluation should reveal to you many tasks that can and should be delegated to your team. No high level professional should send faxes, make copies and appointments, or run errands. They just shouldn't! Your time is better spent marketing, planning, meeting with potential clients, and executing sweet-spot, high-revenue activities.

Your assistant is there to assist you! I suggest to my clients that they make a list of items that need to be completed and then meet for a.m. and p.m. meetings to delegate those items, and then check in at the next meeting for the status.

Don't have a team? You can hire a virtual or personal assistant, get an intern, or hire professional specialists to take those necessary but tedious tasks off your hands. These valuable assets are worth every dime, because they allow you to focus on your core competencies and provide more of your high-dollar services. This will give you a feeling of balance, which in turn lowers your stress level. Then you're able to take on more of what you want!

Your team is critical to your future success. Invest in yourself by using your time and money to set yourself up for that future success.

Honorée turns service providers into rainmakers, average producers into rock-stars, and dreams into reality. For more information on how she can specifically help you or your organization, click here.

Make Next Week Your Most Productive Week Ever!*

“We all have the same 24-hours each day. The difference between your future success or failure
is up to you, your attitude and where you focus your time.” ~Honorée Corder 

Multiplier Time-Leveraging Strategy: One weekly planning hour equals 200%+ increased ability and success.

I advise my clients to spend at least one hour on Friday afternoon or over the weekend to create their Weekly Plan. This strategy allows you to block time for the people, things and events most important to you – ahead of time.

Perhaps you’ve seen the time management demonstration including large rocks, small pebbles, sand, and water – all meant to be put into a jar. Each element represents items on your to do list, in order of importance. When you put the water in first, try putting in sand and see what happens. The water comes out. Fill it up with sand, the pebbles and rocks don’t stand a chance.

The most effective way to put all four elements in is in this order: rocks (the most important things in your life and business), pebbles (the next most important items), sand (items with no urgency at all), and water (least important stuff to do, delegate or discard). Amazingly, these four elements will all fit into your “time jar” –when you start with the largest (most important) items first. If some of the smaller elements don’t fit or go by the wayside, it just doesn’t matter as much.

How does this translate to your life and business? Schedule in advance the most important things you want to accomplish, as they relate to your long-term goals. Block the time out and don’t let anything change your focus.

Anything, you say? Yes, anything!

I call it “brain surgery time.” Here’s the analogy: five minutes from now you fall to the floor, unconscious. After being rushed to the emergency room, doctors run tests and determine you need brain surgery.

Good news! The most respected and highly skilled brain surgeon in the world is available to work on you (and miraculously, he’s covered by your insurance). He’s available tomorrow from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. to complete the five hours of surgery necessary to save your life. Can you think of any reason you would miss the opportunity to have him do your surgery? Of course not!

When you schedule time to do what needs to be done, time working on your business, quality time with your family, your kids, and yourself, you must treat it like “brain surgery time.” Of course you can be flexible – and you can also learn to stay focused on what is truly important.

Schedule an hour each week to do your planning. Turn off the phones, pagers, cell phones, email and television. Block out time for what’s most important.

Ask yourself:

• Who needs to hear from you (customers, vendors, potential business, prospects, business partners, investors)? Remember your 100-Day Plan.
• Who needs to see you (family, friends, and perhaps you need a little time with yourself)?
• What needs to be done, organized, planned, and executed?

Using these two time-multiplier strategies will produce a huge difference right away. Your productivity will skyrocket to more than double what it’s been in the past. You’ll also be energized by all you’ve accomplished, including the non-business related items.

Don't let time slip away - take control today by creating next week, on your calendar, before you leave your office today. Next week's results will rock you!

*Until the week after next.

Honorée turns service providers into rainmakers, average producers into rock-stars, and dreams into reality. For more information on how she can specifically help you or your organization, click here.

Happiness

 

Happiness is:

• a choice - your choice.
• knowing who you love and who loves you (and making sure they know it!).
• making the world a better place by your thoughts, words, and actions.
• Doing good work and loving it (if you can).

Today, happiness is:

• hugging my daughter as she comes home from camp. Welcome home, Lexi!

 

I hope your day is full of happiness, too!