Happy 2020! With the holidays behind us, it’s time to turn our attention to the coming year. I hope you will take the time to plan for and make this year one of your best years ever!

Remember, your SUCCESS always starts with YOU. Brian Tracy calls this the Law of Correspondence: "Your outer world corresponds to your inner world." Zig Ziglar was famous for saying, "You must BE before you can DO and you must DO before you can HAVE." He also tells a story about people wanting heat from the "stove of life" before they put wood into the stove. Well, it just doesn't work that way. Just as we must first put wood (fuel) into the stove to burn and create heat, we must first have internal fuel that combusts into outward actions and results.

Read More >

If goal setting is so great, why don't more people set goals?

That's a great question! Some estimates say that fewer than 5% of people set goals. Even if that figure is off by another 15%, that's still 80% of people not setting goals. Why?

I think the #1 reason is a combination...most people don't understand the importance of setting goals and they don't know how to set their goals.

I don't know about you, but we never talked about writing things down and making a plan in my childhood. I was encouraged to do more and not to quit, but I never heard about goal setting until after college when a good friend introduced me to Zig Ziglar in the late 1980s. Yet, we find that in schools where goal-setting programs have been introduced, young people become excited about goal-setting…they have a more positive outlook toward school, take responsibility for their education, and have greater confidence about themselves and about their futures. Encourage your children to set worthwhile and realistic goals from an early age.

Read More >

So, like that great radio station, WIIFM, you're wondering "What's In It For Me?" with regards to GOAL SETTING.

Well, I'm convinced that written goals and goal setting will allow you to accomplish more of what you want to accomplish...FASTER...than not having and writing your goals. This is my experience and that of many of my executive coaching clients.

Further, goals create that internal, burning desire that incites you to get out of bed each morning. Goals are much more motivational than just paying the bills or getting up today because that's what you did yesterday!

Read More >

Zig Ziglar used to call it a "check-up from the neck up." And I was recently reminded of it while reading this Gallup article on the Psychology of Entrepreneurs.

Your most important opinion has little to do with sports, politics or religion. But as an "A Player," it has everything to do with your success. 

Your most important opinion is the one you have of yourself.

This opinion, known as your self esteem, is so important that almost everything you do is aimed at increasing your feelings of self esteem or protecting it from being damaged by other people and circumstances. In his book, Honoring The Self, Nathaniel Branden states, “The greatest barrier to achievement and success is not lack of talent or ability but, rather, the fact that achievement and success, above a certain level, are outside our self-concept, our image of who we are and what is appropriate to us.”

Read More >

I think most would agree on the importance of planning and strategy in the C-Suite. But, do you think it is equally important to your job hunting effort? Absolutely...yes! You are much more likely to land your next great job or career and in a shorter period of time by starting with a plan.

A few years ago, a financial services firm was airing commercials that had people walking around carrying their number…the amount they would need to save for a comfortable retirement. Remember? In one commercial, a fellow happens upon his neighbor who is on a ladder trimming his hedge. The neighbor asks him what he is carrying and he explains that it is his retirement number. On the hedge, the neighbor has a number too, $GAZILLION. When questioned about how he will achieve his number, the neighbor offers that his plan is to blindly throw money at it and “hope” something good happens. The point of the commercial is that most people don’t have a retirement plan. Instead, they have a guesstimate of what they might need for retirement and then randomly save when they think about it.

Read More >