With that being said, I found this clip from a recent Microsoft presentation that you might find interesting! Here comes the future! 

Life plans are like blueprints for our lives. With out one you are still going to build, but how and what are you building? And are you going to have to come back later to tear out what you built in order to build what you really need? Life plans can be written in many different ways, but essentially it is just taking the different areas of your life and writing down what your goals are. Areas you might write about are:

• Spiritual
• Family
• Fitness
Work/Professional
• Education
• Financial

Some people break down these points into further points, but you get the idea. If you consider your own experience, the goals that you accomplish in life are the ones that you write down and track your progress in some way. Why would your life be any different? Another point about goals is that if we don't set a time period or a date that we want to have things accomplished by, we wind up have a "rolling" goal. A goal that we want to accomplish this year and somehow "this year" turns into next which turns in next and so on. We just "roll" our goal along because we haven't ever anchored it into a time and then tracked ourselves.

Another thing that our life plan should accomplish - it should very clearly state our motivations, values, and principles for why we are doing a certain thing. Don't just state that you are going to do a certain thing. Back it up with a why. Keep asking yourself "why" over and over again until you get down to the real root of why. If you don't, then you will not really be motivated to accomplish that goal, because you haven't uncovered your real motivator. Here is an excerpt from my own life plan in the area of fitness.

My ultimate goal is to be healthy for my entire life. I want to feel good. I want to remain at a healthy weight and look good into my old age. I believe that if I don't start the habits now of taking care of my body and eating right that I will not achieve these goals and the harder it will be to change my habits as I get older. I DO NOT want to be old and fat when my kids are grown. I want to be able to wear nice clothes and bear a proper testimony in the matter of my personal fitness. I want to be able to exert myself during sports and recreational activities and not be huffing and puffing and needing to sit down. I want to be able to work hard and be able to help friends and family. I also believe my health is important to God, because He is limited in his use of me if I am not healthy.

• I will exercise 5 -7 times throughout a week:
  • At least 3 times in the morning if not every morning.
  • 2 time a week in the evening
  • Engage in some health activity on the weekend

• I will eat healthy:
  • Stay away from soft drinks throughout the week as much is possible
  • Stay away from caffeine as much as possible
  • Eat healthy portions and stop eating when I am full
  • Eat snacks throughout the day in order to keep up my metabolism and not be ravenously hungry when mealtime comes around.

You'll notice that after I stated what my motivations were, I then stated some practical life practices or goals. This is the practical part of your life plan. Try to start with something simple. Don't set the bar so high the first time that there isn't a way to achieve success. 

This week in the our sales meeting we were doing a review of some elements that we consider to be the foundation of our sales philosophy at Diverse CTI. One of those elements was a life plan. Once again I was struck with the importance of not just having a life plan, but reviewing it. Review your life plan often. If you are part of a family, encourage other members to create a life plan as well. Read each others life plans and encourage one other in your goals. Some families even create a separate life plan for the family as a whole!

Finally, update your life plan. You need to update your life plan as your life changes. The whole point of a life plan is to achieve goals. Your life plan needs to be updated as things change. Life is dynamic so what once was a goal may change over time. Don't stop working your plan when your goals change.

I encourage you to read your life plan often. Especially the motivations and values parts. Reading your plan keeps those values and principles motivating you. We are humans! We forget! Anchor yourself and your goals by creating a life plan!

Thoughts or comments? Post them below! Let me know what you think!

In my previous blog "Keeping Up Is Intimidating Sometimes" I talked about how intimidating it is to keep up with business. Since then I have been doing a TON of research and surfing to educate myself further and I have found some great tools to use. I thought it might be helpful to some of you if I listed some of them.As with all of the information that you read or watch you need to filter it. Don't just take it all at face value. The "experts" that you are reading or watching may have different values than you do or may just believe something as truth that may not be. Glean what works for you. Open your mind and let some of these ideas spark something in you!

yoursaleschannel.com
Check this out with you can. You do have to sign up, but its free and when you do it gives you access to tons of videos from todays leading business experts. The topics are extremely varied and very insightful. It's a british websight and so many of the experts are british. That makes it all the more intreresting for me, but remember the point - glean and learn, pick and choose what works for you.

Addict-o-matic.com
This is what is called a mash-up search engine. This will go out and search the web for the latest news about whatever you search for. If you want to educate yourself on something this is great place to start looking for relavent data.

Google Alerts
This is an awesome tool! Type in something that you want to keep up on, from people to subjects, to companies, and anytime any new information becomes available Google Alerts will email it to you. Talk about easy!

That's all I have time for at the moment, but I am sure I will add more soon!

Because it is always changing, morphing, and progressing, it is constantly challenging us to progress with it. Technology is constantly changing the way we interact and accomplish the day to day human things we do. And that is why I LOVE MY JOB!!!

I really enjoy getting to apply the changes and updates in technology to the way businesses communicate and interact. Being able to take new technology and discover how it can affect the way we do business is certainly a rewarding experience, but just implementing technology isn't the goal. It needs to improve what we do in an impactful way. Do you see the woman in the picture? She understands the technology, but doesn't know how to apply it!

For that reason it is important, when you are applying a technology to a business, to understand that business and the way it works extremely well. Not just what they sell or how many employees it has, but what the business processes they use are. How do they interact with their customers? Where do the majority of their sales come from? What is the demographic of their customer base?

All of these questions and more are what create a good plan of implementation for apply new technology. If you don't take into consideration these important factors you can wind up hurting the way a business operates instead of enhancing it.

A good way to form a sharpening question is to base it on a value or principle. One of my favorites is - You don't know, what you don't know. This inevitably leads me to the question of - What do I not know?

This is a great question! But it lacks its sharpening power if it isn't asked in the right context. Asking a question like this in a general way doesn't give you direction. Your sharpening questions are best applied in a way or in a situation that will give you some direction. I always ask myself this question when I am up against an impossible situation. Or maybe when I need to grow my business. Or when I need to find a way to do something in a better, more efficient way.

When I ask myself a sharpening question in the proper way I can't help but commit to finding the answer. Finding the answer can many times be a painful process. Most of the time the pain is simply the time and effort it will take to find my answer.

The nice thing about the process of sharpening your mind is that although your mind can dull over time, the process of sharpening yields experience. Experience is invaluable. You can't lose it. And that makes it one of the best investments in world.

The more sharpening questions you ask yourself the easier the process of finding answers becomes. You will develope resources and methods that are priceless. Get into this habit. And fight the fear and apathy that will inevitably follow a good sharpening question!

One of the important parts of the principle of sharpening the saw or in other words always educating yourself, is putting into practice what you learn. Listen, if you don't put into practice what you learn, at worst you will lose it altogether and at best you will only know about it. But when you take what you learn and begin to put it into practise you begin to truly possess that knowledge.

For instance, let's say you go out and buy some land. You could drive by it, have pictures of it, and have the surveys of it. But until you get out and go walk the land, looking at its trees and dirt and plants and hills, you only know about it. When you go walk the land and experience it, only then can can you truly use it. You know how to apply the land. You know what parts are fertile for farming, what parts are suitable for building on, what would be good land for grazing, what needs to be cleared for timber and so on.

How many times have you met someone that really has only learned the head knowledge and has never put it into practice. Doctors follow the method of - See One, Do One, Teach One. What a great method! This really makes the knowledge practical. Whatever you are involved in, whatever you are doing, whatever profession you have chosen, NEVER STOP LEARNING!!! And then, never stop applying that knowledge! Sharpen the saw and then start cutting!

Following my last blog someone asked me what some of the blogs that I followed were and I thought it cool to share some of my favorite sites and blogs. I also thought I would talk about some of the key things I look for in a good blog or what makes a credible source of information.

First I will start with some of my favorite blogs and sites. Here they are in no particular order.

Well let me stop there for now. I will give you more as I can. Let just take a second and talk about how to identify an expert.

Time and time again, especially since I am in the technology sector, I have felt the feelings of being swept away in the deluge of the new developments out there. Whether in technology or in business practices themselves I have experienced the overwhelming and daunting feelings of staying competitive in the marketplace. In no group of people is this more true than with entrepreneurs and SMB owners. We are constantly striving to improve and better ourselves and our businesses and maintain the competitive edges that we have developed.

All of us have our natural areas of expertise and training, the area's of business that we are naturally good at. Just as true, we also have the areas that we are not as good at or simply aren't educated in. In those area's especially it can be quite frustrating knowing where to start and how to proceed. All the while we know that someone, somewhere out there is doing the same thing we are, trying to do it faster, better, cheaper. Sometimes it can be a lot of pressure.

However, recently as I have been blogging and writing more than I ever have before, I stopped to realize how much the internet has become a resource for me. Researching and reading other people's blogs and articles has begun to take up a much larger part of my daily routine than it has before. Reading and learning should be something that we are doing everyday. But part of what we are reading can be live, relevant, and up to the minute by simply subscribing to blogs and articles that we are interested in.

A great way to start is to spend a little time every day following up on authors of books or articles that you like or have impressed you. How about industry websites or associations that you belong to? Many times they may have an expert that is writing articles and blogging with information that is relevant to your business. This can be a great resource in educating yourself about trends in your business or new technology that could help your business. I encourage you to take some time to do some research. Many times you will discover that thing that has been worrying you so much... isn't all that difficult to accomplish!

Two weeks ago I spent the weekend planting some grass seed in some bare spots in my lawn. The bare spots were a result of my successful anti-weed campaign last year, so this being spring time I spent the time to plant some grass seed in those bare spots. I faithfully read the directions and followed them exactly, preparing the soil, and planting the seed. After that my only job was to water my seed. However not an hour after completing all of the work, my neighbor came over and said things like, "I think you are supposed to do it this way." His suggestions and input immediatly cast doubt on everything I had done and I began to worry about whether or not I had done the planting properly. I had to go back and re-read the directions and arrive at all my conclusions all over again. I even got onto the internet and read up on some of the lawn care sites to reassure myself I had done things properly.

Days went by and nothing happened. I faithfully watered the seed every day, but each day I struggled with the doubt and anxiety of whether or not I had done it properly. After a week I thought for sure all my work had been in vain and I needed to start over. I was tempted to go out several times and rake the soil and replant. Day seven brought a few sparse, incredibly small sprouts. "That's it," I thought. "That's all I am going to get." I was sure I had done it wrong. Too much water, not enough water, or I planted it incorrectly. However, I resolved yet again to wait and see and to continue watering.

Day nine brought hundreds of sprouts. Glorious sprouts. Bright and healthy green, they were pushing up through the soil. There was much rejoicing throughout the land (my front porch). Later as I was contemplating my experience, I realized that people can be this way while they are prospecting for new business. At Diverse CTI, our process of prospecting is all about growing relationships. We do not "hunt" for customers. We are farmers. We have learned to grow relationships with people until they are ready to buy on their own time.

For new "farmers" this can be very frustrating at times because it is easy to lose patience with the process. Doubt and worry begin to creep in and make us think that it isn't working. Our false instinct can cause us to revert back to "hunting". Although this can be successful, in the end it only leads to win-lose relationship. You have beaten the customer into buying and have "won" the deal, but you have lost the trust and long term relationship that would have grown over time yielding far more than one deal.

 For you sales people out there I encourage you to become farmers! What a reward it is to grow partnerships with people rather than hunt them. Learn to be good waterer's, do not grow weary or lose heart. The results certainly take longer and far more patience is required, but the results are lasting and yield many times over.

 - Take time to sharpen the saw by honing your relationship building skills. Read books that strengthen your "empathy bone" so to speak.

 - Make sure that you are feeling what your customer is going through and respond in a real way, avoiding the scripted responses to objections and concerns.

 - Finally, do things every so often that remind them of you without constantly asking them if they are ready to buy. Form broad relationships with people, instead of narrow constricting ones that only allow you to talk about whether or not they are going to buy something or not.

Recently I have been reading the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. One of the principles that he puts forth in his book is that leaders waste a lot of time getting the company pointed in the right direction while not paying enough attention to who is on the bus. I have really been struck with the importance of this and how it somehow seems off. But checking with my experience I realize how right it is. Many times throughout our company history we have been so wrapped up in where the company is going that we have lost track of the fact that we have some people on the 'bus' that don't belong. Jim goes on to say that if you stop the bus and take some time getting the right people on you don't have to worry so much about where to go. When you have the right people on the bus they spontaneously help direct it where it needs to go. A great leader knows how to rely on his team to help lead the company in the right direction. Sometimes it's good to pull over and check with everyone on board and get clear about the destination.