Make It Happen!

Are you jealous of your employees?   If not, then you should take the time to evaluate your team and ask yourself why you aren’t jealous of them. Jealousy can be a force that ruins relationships, communities and businesses.   This emotion is defined many ways, but for the most part it is considered an emotion that evokes negative feelings and thoughts dealing with insecurity, fear and resentment.   When a person is jealous or envious of another person often the result is anger or anxiety.   In fact, the origin of the “green with envy” phrase is derived from the illness and buildup of “sickness” within a person when they are jealous. Your employees should bring quality and talent to the team.   When you build your organization, the employees or associates that you add should possess skills, attributes and talents that are unique and valuable.   As much as you will be able to teach them as their leader, you should be able to learn from them.   The t...

It’s a bird.  It’s a plane.  It’s your customer.  Business owners are often bogged down on a daily basis with all of the tasks, processes and logistics of running the business.  When you make your to-do list each day, rarely will you add:  get to know my customer better, try to bring value to my customers, tell my customers how great they are, or even thank my customers.  These are those things that are taken for granted by both the business owner and the customers.  We just assume that these practices are part of the daily routine.  But, what happens when they aren’t? You can have the most unique product or service.  The window of your retail store may be very cool and visually appealing.  You might have one of the most technologically advanced point-of-sale systems.  You may offer over 500 different types of widgets.  You may have some of the best industry training in your trade.  If you don’t have any customers, is an...

I am very excited to have my first guest blogger!!!   Cole Opbroek is one of my awesome students.   He is an entrepreneur and the co-founder of TruView Cameras – a new video and still camera that sends a live video stream and instant photos to any computer, smart phone or mobile device – anywhere.   This technology is making a big impact in the hunting and security industries.  Cole is very dynamic and has even competed in business competitions by sharing his business ideas!   In my class, he did a report and presentation on Warren Buffett – coincidentally the weekend before he delivered his presentation in class, he had the amazing experience you will read about below! ======================================================================= by:  Cole Opbroek Owner, TruView Cameras I took a swig of water and began laying out my day in my mind.   I was in Omaha for a tradeshow at the Qwest Center .   I was setting in the breakfast bar at t...

Imagine this scenario: You are a mid-level employee working for a manufacturing company.   Your “boss” walks in to the weekly department meeting and explains that the company has just lost the contract with one of its biggest retailers.   To overcome this financial detriment, the company is going to implement the following changes and additions to the employee policies; 1)       Each employee will no longer have a health savings account that is matched. 2)       The third-shift has now been eliminated due to the additional operations costs and those employees will have to be treaded into the first and second shift rotations. 3)       Based on change #2, each employee’s hours will be cut to 36 per week. 4)       There will no longer be any overtime available. 5)       Breaks must be taken on time and only for the allotted time without ...

On my business cards, I have a great quote by Charles Darwin: “ It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change.”   I agree whole-heartedly with this quote and feel that it also applies to the business world as much as it does to the ecological one.   However, please consider a key word in this quote…SURVIVE.   Sure, we can all survive, but what happens if we want to do more than that?   What do we need to do when we want to surpass the status quo and do something amazing? Instead of just responding to change, is it possible that we actually create the change?   How many of us really want to make a difference, but we aren’t sure how to do that with all of the barriers we face in our professional roles each day?   We have been taught and coached to conform to those workplace clichés like work well with others,   be a team player and to work toward a common goal in our jobs.   We wa...