Imagine if your customers got as excited about your products or services as
this guy on magic mushrooms does about a simple rainbow.
What are you doing to get your clients to RAVE about you ?
Archives for July 2010
Is This Parrot More Creative Than You?
Are you using the right tools to grow your business ? Or are you still using the old ones you’ve always used ?
If this parrot is more creative than you are, then perhaps a coach or mentor can help you find new ways to build your company too. đ
Employeesâ Personal Dreams
A few years ago, I read a book called The Dream Manager by Matthew Kelly, and it blew me away.
The general premise that I took away from this four hour business-changing read is that if you care more about your employeesâ personal goals than the company work they are doing, theyâll go through brick walls for you to build your company.
Sounds odd, but focusing on employeesâ dreams will change them forever, and theyâll associate that positive feeling with your company.
How to Use Dreams
One easy, fun and impactful system you can put in place is called the â101 Dream Goals.â Give each employee thirty minutes and have them write as many things they can think of that:
¡ Theyâd like to buy
¡ Theyâd like to do
¡ They want to learn
¡ They want to try for the first time
¡ Personal goals they want to achieve
¡ Sights they want to see
¡ Places they want to go
I then coach and mentor CEO’s to start spending time every day or every week helping them to make their dreams happen, one by one. Many of them wonât involve any time or money either. Employees will begin to feel a huge connection with you as you help them to achieve their personal goals with nothing expected in return. When employees see the company really caring about them as people with dreams, some pretty awesome cultural stuff starts to happen. That’s why in my CEO coaching I talk about Employees personal dreams so often.
Three of my employees had student debt and they felt like they were being crushed by it. They had no family support showing them how to get out of it and it never would have come up had they not written âget out of debtâ on their list of goals. I asked the three of them if they were OK with me getting them all together to help them out. All expressed interest in meeting up. We set up a dinner club â I was buying â and for a few months we met to review budgets that included debt repayment, investing and spending plans Iâd put each of them on. Within six months, all were either out of debt or substantially on their way to getting out of debt. Two had started companies. All three were investing, and two were actually using my stockbroker as an adviser. All were thrilled.
Another one of my employees had on his list that he wanted to watch our national hockey league team, the Vancouver Canucks, have a pre-game practice and then sit behind the bench to watch the actual game. For him it seemed like an unattainable goal. I made one call to Mike Johnson, the Assistant Coach from the Vancouver Canucks, who not only made it all happen, but a few of the players took Geoff out for drinks after the game. And yeah, heâd go through brick walls for me now, too.
When you really care for your employees like the family you say that you are, that means caring for them personally and not just talking to them about what has to get done to build your company.
For information on this topic, check out:Â Leadership at 100MPH.
Force Your Staff to Rest!
One of my favorite lines at the office used to be, âgreat day—take the rest of it off.â I used to tease people with that and say it at 6pm. Iâd also say it to people at 10:30 am and blow them away.
Tell people to go home and relax once in a while.
We all know that as entrepreneurs we duck out of the office for our little stress breaks. Let your team take some once in a while, too.
And if you really like your employees as much as you say you do, let them take the same amount of vacations, as youâd want. Most employees feel that five weeksâ paid vacation (including their sick days) in addition to the statutory government holidays is about right.
Let them take it.
They wonât quit. They wonât come into work sick. And we all know the most productive time at the office is the day before vacation.
So give people time off.
To be sure they take this time off, force them to or they lose it. The idea is to recharge your batteries regularly and not stockpile the time and have a meltdown. As a business coach and mentor, I advise CEO’s to give their employees five weeks’ time, however, make them take all five weeks of time during the calendar year.
For more information on this topic, check out: Building a World Class Culture and Leadership at 100MPH.
