Please check out my recent blog post on TELUS Talks Business Website, thanks, your comments are always welcome.

http://community.telustalksbusiness.com/blogs/talk_business/2011/06/14/hey-you-get-of-off-my-cloud

DaveOJ shared a quote with me today and I love it so much it prompted me to think about how having special powers can catapult us into the spotlight and success!

“A Unicorn is just a horse, with a better marketing department” Author Unknown”

What are special powers and who has them, I can hear you asking. Well let’s take a look at the Unicorn for now and use this fictional animal as an example. From Wikipedia: . A mythical animal typically represented as a horse with a single straight horn projecting from its forehead.

The Unicorn dates back as far as Julius Caesars time and because people believed this legendary animal had special powers they believed in the Unicorn. Believing in something means we have accepted that the something works and if we believe in it it will work for us too. Now, I personally know that the Unicorn is a mythical animal and does not really exist, but if I believed it did exist I would probably look to the Unicorn to help me in some way. Maybe I would offer the Unicorn golden oats every day for a month if I thought this would bring me wealth.

When I ask if you have special powers, the answer has to be a resounding YES! If you have no idea what those special powers are take a look at your business life, ask yourself some simple questions:

1. Did I have the power to change my life?
2. Did I have the power to change someone else’s life?
3. Have I built a successful business and gained clients?
4. How did I gain the clients?
5. Am I able to sell my products and services and market myself successfully?

The above questions may not be the ones you ask but this gives you an idea.

You might have the power to market yourself successfully and generate revenue, what is that power though?

1. Do you have a persuasive manner?
2. You may have influence.
3. Your marketing strategy has been proven to work, so you have a track record.

Again, you might think the above are special powers, but they are, and they exist for you to use and showcase that you are offering a business model that works.

In business we all have the opportunity to use our special powers, mine is storytelling, and through that I am able to influence and motivate my audience to change their lives for the better.

Once people believe in us it means we have demonstrated our special powers in some way and people tend to refer us to their connections. We are actually real and not make believe, unlike the Unicorn, but in many ways we are emulating that mythical creature without even knowing it.

Do you know all the difference ways we can connect with our target market today? Better still we can connect with people who are not our target market, but they could know someone who is. In fact, we can connect with the whole world if we really want to get our name out there.

But, and there is always a but, I am noticing more and more people deciding there is just one right way to connect, it’s either face to face or online, nothing in between, can’t do both, they know best. People you are losing out, big time! I call it the ” Little bit of this and a little bit of that” and by doing it my way you will find you get fantastic results. Then I came across a song that has the same idea as me, but obviously the song has been around for much longer than my idea:)

It takes a little bit of this

Hoah with a little bit of bad

A little bit of good

Yeah with a little bit of bad yeah

You know that life’s a contradiction

And you can’t escape the fact

You gotta take a little bit of this

With a little bit of that

I take the words in the song to mean – we will get some results that are good from face to face networking, but it is wise to do a little bit of that. We will get the same results from online networking, but again it’s really a good idea to do a little bit of that. As in all our life choices we never really know the outcome until we try out the idea, so give it a go.

Business networking has evolved over the years and different ways to connect with people will always be offered to us, don’t slot yourself into the bad habit of doing it one way, explore all the possibilities!

Have you ever purchased something and the assistant informs you if you check out the website on the bottom of the sales receipt you can enter to win $1,000? Even better, have you been given a coupon for a free meal from a restaurant? I know we can all say yes to receiving a gift card from someone. If you can relate to any of the three examples I have given you read on.

How many of us fail to check out the website on the bottom of the sales receipt? How many of us forget about the coupon for a free meal at a restaurant? How many of us receive gift cards,and some can have quite a high dollar value, and we forget to use them or even worse, lose them? If you can say yes to even just one of the three examples read on.

Opportunities do offer themselves to us all, in many different guises, three of which I have given examples above. You may not think it worth the time to check out a website even if you could win a large sum of money. Maybe the coupon you received from a restaurant is not valuable to you because you do not think the food or service is good enough. As for the gift card which could be of quite high value in dollars, I have no idea why people do not use them or lose them, maybe they have so much money they don’t care if they waste dollars, easy come easy go. My point is you will never know if you could win $1,000 because you failed to even try.

In the world of business every opportunity that presents itself is valuable,  and if you are not seeing the true value of the opportunities knocking at your door maybe that is why you are not as successful as you would like to be. I see countless opportunities offering themselves to me and they don’t have to knock on my door twice let me tell you!

We are sometimes blind to opportunities because we fail to see the true worth and can’t see past our preconceptions or, in some cases, we are just too darn lazy to make the effort to grab the opportunity and we are sure another one will pass by tomorrow.

In my early days of building my credibility which would help me build strong foundations for my small business I would seek out as many opportunities as possible and I was looking for freebies, some of these could be being able to post my business information on free web directories. This would enable more exposure for me, but I knew it would take time, and effort on my part to fill in the forms on line and then be patient until Google found my information.

If I was really lucky an opportunity would knock at my door without me looking for it, and this could be in the form of someone asking me to write an article for their newsletter or website. I never turned down this kind of opportunity, unless of course the website or newsletter content was something I felt strongly did not fit in with my principles and reputation.

Sometimes opportunities presented themselves to me that were attached to something I had decided to purchase, and one example of this could be membership to a business networking group. I would look carefully at the benefits offered by becoming a member of this particular organization and if I felt they fitted my needs I would pay my money. I would then make every use of the benefits offered to me, as these were opportunities and could lead me to the success I was working towards.

Not everyone is like me, and that is a good thing, on the other hand you can miss out on some great opportunities if you fail to recognize the advantages of looking a bit further than the end of your nose. Whether you feel you do not have time or motivation to check out the opportunities offered, or even look out for them when they come knocking, either way you are losing out big time.

As I became successful by growing two small businesses I realized I could  offer different opportunities to people I came into contact with. It was then I noticed, as with my three examples earlier, most people failed to grab the opportunities offered by me and blindly fumbled around, and around, going in circles looking for the reason they were not moving forward in their business. The dedicated and wise few who decided to take the opportunities offered soon realized it did take time and effort, even when an opportunity was offered on a plate, but decided to give it a go. These are the business owners who have moved forward, who are even more successful than they were before and they deserve their success. The removed their blinkers, they opened their eyes, they are forward thinkers, like me.

Opportunities abound, all around us, in many forms, whether you are looking for  a personal or business opportunity it will knock at your door so be ready to take it and work with it, what have you got to lose?

Comments welcome, please offer me your thoughts, thank you:)

When I moved to Canada from the UK 18 years ago I thought it was weird that you could not purchase alcohol in the local supermarket or corner shop, it seemed silly having to use the LCBO. How my opinion has changed since then! On a recent trip to the UK we took a few days to connect with family and decided to book our train tickets ahead of time and reserve seats. This in a small way saved us from the terrors of drunken football fans, or people attending Hen and Stag parties who were running up and down the train with bottles of beer and wine and falling all over innocent people sitting down minding their own business.

I was born in the UK and I was shocked, I dread to think what visitors from other countries thought of this behavior. Before you start thinking I do not like a glass of wine or beer and I am a prude and boring, you are so wrong. I just know there is a time and place and impacting innocent people with drunken antics is really making the trains in the UK look bad!

On our journey home from our visit we could not, and I have no idea why, book our seats in the quiet section, so we were subjected to people returning from their night on the town, very loud people, with lots of wine bottles again and beer bottles. Alcohol is served in the buffet area of the train and underage people were sending their friends to purchase their drinks. Once again I am not against anyone having a good time, but spilling their drinks all over a train and yelling very loudly at 1.30 in the morning when all I wanted was to close my eyes was quite rude.

It got better, I was subjected to two young girls lying to their parents on their cell phones, very loudly, about the train breaking down and for this reason they were not going to be home that night, but told their parents not to worry. One of the girls parents told her they would meet her at a certain destination on the trains journey so that scuppered her plans. But no, it got worse would you believe!

As if by magic our train which was due in Paddington Station, or so we hoped, within 20 minutes stopped dead on the train tracks and all we could see was dark nothing. The conductor made an announcement a body had been on the tracks and the train had run over it. My first thought was it a drunken person who had fallen off the train or gotten off earlier to walk? I will never know.

The loud girls opposite yelped with joy and proceeded to buy another glass of wine and phone the parents to tell them they would be stuck for 2 hours now! Fortunately for us a new driver was found after the police had arrived and we were only an hour late. I have never been so happy to escape anywhere in my life and I hoped that if I saw the girls parents waiting for her I would let them know they were OK, quite safe and sound, if a little drunk and quite the liar. Sorry but the truth is the truth and they had no compassion for other passengers or the poor dead person the train track! Unfortunately I did not see anyone waiting and we continued to pick up our hire car and head to our hotel.

Thank you Ontario, Canada for the liquor license laws, for the safe journeys on trains and buses and walking along the street, I am proud of where I live, now and hope that the UK follows suit soon before other tourists are turned away by this behavior.

If you want to know the answer please check out my new blog post on TELUS Talks Business

http://community.telustalksbusiness.com/blogs/talk_business/2011/05/18/forward-thinking-small-business-owner-signs-9000-year-lease

I welcome your comments, thank you!

I was recently lucky enough to be invited to speak to a group of small business owners in Ireland and, like a lot of countries today this beautiful place is going through the recession still and it is quite noticeable in some areas.

A couple of things discussed were how to change the way we think, and an example of this could be, you have always worked in retail and after losing your job you are struggling to replace that job with another one in the same sector, doing the same thing you have always done.

Changing the way we think is not an easy process, but critical if you are going to move on in life, whether you own your own business or work for someone else. How do we begin to change the way we think?

First and foremost you have to BELIEVE in yourself, you might benefit from a course on self-esteem and also working on getting to know yourself with a self-awareness course.
Know that change is a process and you have to WANT to change in order to be successful in creating those changes you want to make in your life.
Change can take TIME, and is a work in progress, but once set in motion you are able to move forward whilst still working on the changes you feel are beneficial to you.
Be OPEN to listening to others, knowing how other people worked on the changes in their lives, helps you realize you are not alone.

BELIEVE(ing)  in YOU

WANT(ing)    for YOU

TIME(ing)      for YOU

OPEN(ing)     a new chapter in YOUR life

4 important factors that can change your life forever, if you want to change your life.

When I realized I had to change my life, for me, for the better and for my future, I had a struggle working out what my skill-set was, in fact I believed I had no skill-set. This lack of belief could have held me back but I gave it a go and jumped in head first after deciding the time was right, NOW, not tomorrow, but now right at this minute!

I had been working in retail, hospitality, and customer service, sounds OK, selling shoes, cleaning in a hotel and selling vacuums, jobs anyone could do, or so I was told. Being honest when I look back now I KNOW that these jobs are jobs many people make a success of and ultimately can make you financially stable.

Where customer service is involved I am and have always been excellent, but I knew that selling shoes and working for a management that did not respect or care about employees was something I was unhappy about. Selling I have always found difficult and still did, until I realized whether you are selling vacuums or a service such as speaking at events, we are selling the person we are not the product or service. If we build relationships with our customers and get to know them, in time they will buy from us, they will become our customers.

We have to WANT to change the way we think.

Once my audience in Ireland came to terms with the fact they have to take ownership, they CAN change the way they think, they CAN build their own small business if they truly BELIEVE, the understood the process of CHANGE. I am a leader, and I lead by example, if I had not been through the process of CHANGE many times, and if I had not built two small successful businesses then maybe I would not be the right person to talk about this. But I have been through CHANGE so I can relate to my audience and they know if I did it they can too!

Change the way think and see where this takes you.

Please let me know your thoughts thanks:

http://community.telustalksbusiness.com/blogs/talk_business/2011/05/03/i-spy-wifi

Call me spoiled, I say I am just used to having the Internet at my beck and call, I live in Canada and that’s how I like it! I did realize when Dave and I set out on our business/vacation trip this time that there might be some challenges with the Internet, but not to the point where I felt cut off from mankind! This is our second trip to Geneva and we were booked to stay in a different hotel, but as it was close to Dave’s corporate offices, it made sense to us. Having the promise of WIFI in all of the rooms made us feel secure and safe in the knowledge we could carry on with our work regardless.

We arrived on a Sunday afternoon so when we worked out the WIFI was not working and informed the hotel we were OK about being told it could not be fixed until Monday, but when it was fixed and we still had no signal in our room, and the business centre was very small and crowded, we were very disappointed. Throughout the whole of our stay in Geneva we were cut off from the outside world, and more importantly Dave could not even access work through his VPN.

This may sound quite silly to people who are not quite so dependent on the Internet for work and keeping in touch with family around the world, but for me it was, quite literally like the end of the world! Not only did I have a presentation to finish off so that I could inspire my audience in Geneva, I had urgent emails that needed to be sent and I also wanted to know my family in Canada were aware we had arrived safe and sound.

Obviously we got through this challenge and flew to Dublin to check into yet another hotel, and yes our expectations this time were, let’s wait and see before we get excited about WIFI connections.

At least the customer service at this hotel was better, we were about 3 hours from Dublin in a small town called Letterkenny, and once we discovered the WIFI signal in our room was non-existent they handed over 3 keys to different rooms so we could find another room that did have a decent signal. Unfortunately this was not to be so we unpacked and the next morning were told that a room with a great signal would be available later that day, wonderful.

So now we are all set, I am back on track and just wonder what on earth to expect when we fly to London, UK in a week, fingers crossed the Internet there is great!