“Either you will make your life work, or your life will not work.” – Nathanial Branden

I get contacted by people whose business are not working. Their lives are not working.  They want coaching. They are looking for the answers, for wisdom.

I ask them what they see as the problem and they say the economy is bad, people are unreliable, and that the problem is not them it’s about something, someone or somehow.

But they don’t get it, they don’t see the problem.

Right away I know what is not working in their business and life. It’s keeping up the status quo. It’s always trying to meet the expectation of others, not wanting to be mocked or ridiculed and seeking the approval of others. This can only lead to a life unfulfilled with many disappointments.

As a coach I help people break down barriers that are stopping them, I help the make breakthroughs and get unstuck.

In the Bible it says “Fools despise wisdom and instruction” and “a wise man will hear and increase in learning and acquire wise counsel”. We were not meant to go through life alone, we cannot see our own blind spots. It take someone that is looking for what’s working, what’s not working, what’s missing (blind spot) and what are the possibilities of what is to come.

Success never starts with the external factors, it always starts with you. That is a blessing. Once you figure this out you can make changes on your beliefs, confidence and actions to get greater results.

My job as your coach is to help you see the possibilities and act on them.

Question: What’s Stopping You From Achieving Your Success?

Just by the fact that you are reading this blog shows me that you are ready to improve on your time management. This article is transcribe from a podcast I did to help give people some new techniques on time management.

Time management goes hand in hand with Priority Management which is about managing priorities, not about simply managing time. Priority Management is somewhat like a blueprint for your business & life. Your time blocking becomes details of how you live out your life every month, week and day.

While creating your ‘perfect week’s time block’ you will be filtering each activity in your Time Block through your Life Vision, Business Vision, and Goals Map. Through Priority Management, I will help you be certain that how you say you intend to spend your time matches up with your heart values, your passions and your core purpose.

Through coaching you will learn about assessing your activities as high, medium and no-payoff activities.

Do you fall into the following category?: You have complete life balance. You have more than enough money. You’re in great health, and you’re an absolute animal when it comes to working out. Based off my experience that is what most people want but don’t have.

I’d like to address the subject of time management. I think you will all agree that this is a subject that touches all of us every day. The reason that none of us has the balance I just alluded to is that we are all in desperate need of the commodity of time. Time is that one thing we cannot create more of. We can only choose to restructure our day to allocate more time to activities we consider to be more important.

There are only 24 hours in a day, whether we like it our not. Given this, we need to focus on how we budget this time. If we can master the art of time management, some very special things can happen in all aspects of our life. I’ve been fortunate enough to experience this through the guidance of people who have had a great impact on my time-management skills.

I’d like to share with you some specific strategies on how to create more time for yourself. You can do this by managing time at a very high level. Please take note of this sentence. “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.” How many times do we do this every day?

We want changes to occur. We want to improve. We want to be more successful. Yet, we fail to try new things. We keep trying the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. How silly is that? With this very important definition in mind, I want you to know that in order to master your time, you must be open-minded about trying new concepts. You need to be open-minded about trying new things. You need to overcome that fear of the unknown.

We’ve been taught to fear the unknown. In reality, we should fear the known. The known is prison. The known is limiting. The known stunts our growth and stifles our development. The unknown is what we should embrace. The more we try new things, the more we grow, develop, and achieve higher levels of success. This is why children grow so rapidly. Children live in the unknown. When you were a kid you tried new things all the time. When you grow older, you often become very protective of what you have.

The key to successful time management is being willing to step into the unknown and try new things.

Here is a simple and effective drill. Starting tomorrow, I want you to take out an 8.5 x 11 note pad. Place it on your desk. For the next three days, make short notes on what you did every half-hour.

As an example: If you arrive at work at 9am, at 9:30am I want you to write down what you did for the last half-hour. At 10am, log what happened between 9:30am and 10am, etc. You need to do this for three days. Don’t cheat. If you cheat, the results won’t be the same. What I mean by cheating is this: Don’t come in at 9am and try to write your first set of notes at 12 noon.

The beauty of this system lies in the little things. The more you capture the little things you do each day, the more effective this drill will be. I have used this drill many times in my work, and it’s amazing how it hones in on the high payoff activities for me.

The next step in this drill is to decide how much money we want to earn in your profession. For argument’s sake, let’s say you want to earn $200,000 next year. How many hours do you want to work? Let’s say 40 hours week. Wouldn’t it be nice to actually work a 40-hour work week? In order to determine the hourly rate that you are seeking, we simply take $200,000 and divide it by 2000. That’s 40 hours over 50 weeks, assuming you take two off for vacation. The result is an hourly rate of pay of $100 per hour. This becomes your benchmark by which all decisions must be made.

Let’s get back to your time log. After the three days are over, I’d like to see you schedule a bit of time by yourself. Leave the office and go to a quiet place for approximately 90 minutes. You’ll need to bring your time sheet and a couple of highlighters (red and green). You will more than likely have ten to twelve sheets of paper filled with your activities over the last three days.

Now is the time to be honest with yourself. Your assignment is to go over these half-hour time blocks one by one. In each case, evaluate the task you performed, and ask yourself this very important question: Would I pay someone $100 an hour to do this task. You’ve just established this as the rate you’d like to earn, so the next question is which one of these tasks warrants that dollar figure. If it doesn’t, you need to ask yourself why are you doing it. If you want to make $100 per hour, and you are doing tasks that you wouldn’t pay someone $100 an hour to do, you are effectively lowering your hourly rate of pay, and moving away from your goals.

Here is where the red and green highlighters come in to play. As you come across items on your list that you would not pay someone $100 per hour to do, highlight them in red. Red indicates that you should stop doing this activity. Every time you come across something you think is a high-payoff activity that you would pay someone $100 per hour to do, highlight it in green. This would likely include prospecting for new business, going to network meetings to build relationships, going to lunch with a potential business partner who could make a significant number of referrals to you, or conducting a charity event for past client to generate referrals. By highlighting these items in green, you associate them with the color of money.

Now your job is to get rid of all the red items, which will probably be about 75% of the list. Your goal should be to replace all of the red activities with green activities. The result will be phenomenal. By eliminating all of these activities that lower your hourly rate of pay and replacing them with activities that improve it, you significantly increase your earning potential. (A good book to read is the 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss) teaches you to delegate & 80/20 rule

In fact, you’ll quickly move beyond the $100 per hour figure to $200 or $300 if you discipline yourself to stop doing all of these red activities. The key, of course, is to find someone to do them for you. Before you do that, the first set of questions you must ask yourself about these red activities is: Do they need to be done at all?

The reality is that there are many things we do on a daily basis that are completely unnecessary. The first thing to do is eliminate the ones that don’t contribute to your business. Removing these items will leave you with things that need to be done but that you shouldn’t be doing. You need to hire an assistant to take care of those things for you. I know what you’re thinking: “But I can’t afford a personal assistant!” The reality is that you can’t afford not to have one. The simple fact is by saving the money you would spend to hire an assistant, you’re actually costing yourself ten times that amount in lost productivity. Your time management schedule is thrown completely out of whack. You can hire a personal assistant for around $10 per hour, they can do your scheduling, social media, accounting, whatever is a low payoff activity for you. You can find these people on craigslist, facebook or even twitter.

I’d like to give you a few additional time management tips:

Tip #1: To eliminate reactivity in your day, become more proactive in what you do.

Think about this for a minute: There are things we react to all day long that cause us to lose momentum. I like to call them “stop-starts.” You get your momentum going, you’re concentration kicks in, you’re dialing for dollars, you’re calling on prospects, you really get your pitch and your presentation down, then all of a sudden you start answering phone calls.

You start answering emails. Your cell phone rings. You get a Twitter message. These interruptions break the continuity of your work. This is a “stop-start.” They prohibit you from reaching your full work potential. As an example, let’s say that a client or team member calls you with questions that you hear all the time. So every day you get at least one call from your clients or someone on your team. You know these questions are coming, so why not answer all of the typical questions you receive at once, before they can be asked of you. Create a clean FAQ page, and send it along with in a email or letter.

This way, when they get going in the process, they also get a list of questions and answers compiled by you. You can even sit behind a microphone record for 10 to 15 minutes a CD or video of some frequently asked questions about the processes. Give it to your client or team when they first start to work with you in which you forge a better business relationship. This is being proactive to avoid reactivity. There will be at least one less phone call, 1 less email, 1 less text for you to return from each person wanting your valuable time. Do this for everything you react to. Whenever you react to something, I want you to stop and think about how you can be more proactive to eliminate the reactivity in your day. The more you do this, the more you’ll achieve during the day, and the more time you’ll have to spend with your family.

Tip #2: Cut the umbilical cord on your cell phone, on your computer. All day, every day, it rings, messages pop up. You are there each and every time to react to it. This kills your time-management ventures, and you are a slave to it.

We assume that one of our clients desperately needs us this minute, and if we aren’t available they are going to blow us off and work with our competitor. This is simply wrong. I’ve found that the most important thing to a client is that they know when they are going to hear back from you. You see, if they get your voice mail and they don’t have a clue as to when you will get back to them, they will determine for you what an acceptable turn-around time is. This is the problem. If you change your voice mail every day, and lay out your calendar on the voice mail, including a time that you’ll be returning messages, your client will know when they are going to hear back from you.

I find that all they really want to know is that they are going to hear back from you, and that it will be in one of a few time blocks. Here’s an example of what your outbound phone message might sound like: “Hi, you’ve reached the desk of Mickey O’Brien. Today is Wednesday, the 19^th of August, and I’ll be in and out of meetings all day today. Between the hours of nine and eleven I’ll be in a meeting, but I’ll be returning phone calls between eleven and twelve. I’ll then be in another meeting until two, but I’ll be returning calls between two to four, and then again between five-thirty and six. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to you at a time that is convenient for you. Please leave a message as to when you’d like me to return your call during these various time frames.”You can do the same thing for your emails. Thanks for sending your email. “We are proudly the premiere Business & Entrepreneur Coaching Company in the world and are EXCITED to be your Business Coaching Resource.”

If you are interested in getting a free 1 on 1 coaching session with a Certified Business Coach, please contact me directly. Please note: I check my emails once a day in the late afternoon. If you have an urgent need, please call my office and ask for Jennifer (916) 241-9506.

Thanks again,

Coach Mickey

Mickey O’Brien, President

MickeyOBrien.com

It’s that simple. People will then be very respectful of your time. They will understand that you need to manage your time every bit as much as they do. This is an excellent way to conduct your business. You are being proactive by disseminating information about what your day looks like to eliminate having to constantly react to everybody else’s demands on your time. If you find yourself questioning this exercise, ask yourself how the heck people did business ten years ago, before we had cell phones? People waited for you to return their call. They will wait today as well.

The final suggestion for today is this: Set proper expectations for your clients and team. Don’t let them define your service platform for you. This is a critical mistake, so start avoiding it immediately.

I hope you have enjoyed my presentation today, and have found my suggestions to be of value. My goal as your coach is to bring value to any relationship I have with business owners & entrepreneurs.

~ If you’d like to schedule an FREE coaching session with me to discuss any of these items in further detail, or discuss strategies that will help you produce greater results in your business -

Feel free to contact me by email at mickey@mickeyobrien.com, subject “Hungry For Coaching” or call my cell phone at 916-224-5626, but don’t be surprised if it’s turned off! For your free coaching session email mickey@mickeyobrien.com or call (916)224-5626

Here is a link to the AUDIO RECORDING: http://www.box.net/shared/cpv92at9ip

( If Christ Were a Businessman Would He Do It All Alone? )

Business owners and entrepreneurs have great pride in their individualism. In and of itself, being an individual is not a bad thing at all; it is something to be celebrated. When you start to think that you don’t need anybody else you are limited by only what you know and can do alone.

In business you are selling a product or service to a consumer, interacting with colleagues, and dealing with people on a daily basis. To go a step further, business is not just working with people but building relationships with other people. Like a relationship with a friend, a business connection should be a relationship where giving is just as good as receiving. A good business connection has to go both ways.

But don’t think that you won’t be getting anything out of it! Not only are you benefitting from the leads or support they give you but you can feel the satisfaction when both your business and theirs advances.

How to start building business relationships:

1. Use pre-existing connections.
Have you ever heard of the six degrees of separation? Chance is that through friends, family members, and old business associates, you can find a relationship that will be mutually beneficial.

2. Put yourself out into the community.
No one ever met anyone by staying at home or behind a desk. Get out there and go places where there are people in your same line of business. Go to a conference, join a club, enroll in a class.

3. Don’t be afraid to talk to people you don’t know.
It’s tempting to stick with people we know. Sometimes we are too embarrassed or too worried about rejection to talk to someone we don’t know about our businesses. But it is important to remember that if you don’t approach people, then you won’t be successful.

4. Have the other person’s best interests at heart.
We’ve learned over the years that nothing is for free anymore; so don’t come into networking empty-handed. So when you make your offer, make sure that it is sincere and that you can follow through.

5. Sincerity goes a long way with people.
Be who you are and don’t try to hide your passion for your business from people. People are more willing to trust when they see someone is being real. Be personal. A mass e-mail doesn’t shout genuine. There has never been a better time to reach out and connect then now. Don’t wait!

Ultimately the best way to build strong relationships in business and in life is to give to others, as Christ said: Therefore encourage one another, and build up one another, just as you are also doing. I Thes. 5:11 In other words – don’t just say you’re a follower of Jesus, live it out through your everyday choices, encouraging and building up others and yes this includes helping them in their business as well as personal life. Christianity is an action, it’s not just what you think or believe, it’s how you live and work.

God tells us that “Faith without works is dead” James 2:26. You can apply that to business if you believe that God wants you to love others and love is an action, then you must act in all areas of life and business which include mentoring, holding each other accountable, being authentic, being available and keeping a level of trust and confidence.

Invest in others, strengthen your relationships! You’ll be glad you did.

If you are looking for happiness, satisfaction and fulfillment in business & life there are 5 key secrets that all have to do with how you feel about yourself.

The 1st secret is self esteem. Self respect will keep a man from being hopeless or weak when he is the in the midst of a storm. If a man feels good about himself, he won’t run from difficulties, problems, fear or frustrations. And, it will allow him to feel that he might have hope when the whole world is against him.

It’s interesting that how one feels on the inside for the most part produces what they are able to accomplish on the outside. The truest measure of a man’s success or a woman’s success is hidden to his/her clients. It’s all about the inside beliefs and feelings, which is that self-respect, that self-image.

A person can only grow as much as his vision and dreams allow. You must always believe that you are a champion. That’s really the gift of that sustaining mindset of a healthy outlook on the future.

The 2nd secret is a clear purpose on why success is important. Thomas Carlisle says that of all the paths a man can strike into, there is, at any given moment, a best path. A thing which, here and now, it were of all things wisest of all things to do. To find this path and to walk in it, this is the one thing needful for him.

When we look at entrepreneurs, business owners and sales people that continually become record setters, it is because they continually realize the purposefulness in why they do what they do. Coaching session after coaching session I have clients tell me that everything started to happen as soon as they became clear on their vision, purpose and passion. A friend of mine, Gary Zelesky “Z-man” says “Your passion for life will determine your position in life”. When it’s all said and done you need a why, why am I doing it all, once you find your “why”, the rest will fall into place. Washington Irving said “great minds have purposes, others have wishes”. Now, would rather be known as a great mind or a wishful mind?

The 3rd secret is a vision for the future. Bob Call said “Guido the plumber and Michael Angelo obtained their marble from the same quarry; but what each saw in the marble made the difference between a noble man’s sink and a brilliant sculpture”. So, one guy is building a sink and one’s making a sculpture with the same marble. Just look at life and you look at business and everybody pretty much has the same resources. But, it is this limitless thinking, it’s a belief and it’s a confidence about what you do with those resources that creates the final toil. You are only limited by how big you can dream.

My fear and my frustration for so many businesses and people is that they don’t know what’s around the corner. They are just winging it and trying to get there with sheer work, no plan, no vision. Where is it that you and your business are going? What’s your vision?

If you operate your business by just winging it you will get whatever level of results that the environment allows.

But yet, we have all been given the ability of thinking. All we have to do is ask our brain, our subconscious mind – where is it that I want to be? Where is it that I want to take this purpose, this passion and what I’m good at?

The 4th secret is demanding goals. Once you get clear on your vision the next step is to set a road map to it- this is your demanding goals. I say demanding because going to get your car oil changed is not a goal it’s a task. A goal is something that is otherwise difficult to do. I think too often times goals are just set without a sense of reason, without a sense purpose, without a sense of why, clearly without a sense of vision. Many people set goals on January first just to have those goals abandoned by the end of January. In act, I heard a statistic that the average number of days that a New Years Resolution stays in place is 17. Now is that a real demanding goal?

There are a lot of people that won’t sign up for goal setting. I will tell you that there is no such thing as success without setting demanding goals unless you want to go to Vegas.

The 5th secret is commitment to seeking wisdom. Henry Adams said – “they know enough who know how to learn. Becoming successful does not happen without knowledge.”

The idea that we know it all is a false idea. The idea that we are learning is a correct analysis. In order to take your business and your life to a new level, you have to learn. This is probably one of the most important things that we can get a grasp on.

A great question to ask yourself is: Do I have a plan for learning? What is my personal growth program? What am I doing to proactively increase the areas of my business and life that I know I don’t know. And there is even the area that you don’t even know you don’t know- this is where you need an outside mentor, coach or advisor to help you discover your blind spots.

You avoid mistakes by intentional learning. You learn from mistakes if you don’t have intentional learning. So, we all need and should desire to get a hold of that concept.

King Solomon said – wisdom is the principal thing, therefore… Get wisdom!

Wisdom is a verb, it requires action. We’ve got to go out and we’ve got to seek it. Seeking it is something that is very important. So, let’s go get it!

On a scale from 1 to 10, what level are you playing at?

- What level are you playing at in your business?

- What level are you playing at in your life?

- What level are you playing at in your commitments?

- What level are you playing at in honoring your word?

- What level are you playing at in being accountable?

I look forward to hearing your answers in the comment section below.

Remember, there is no right or wrong answers. Just what’s working, what’s not working and what’s next.

Live Your Passion! Claim Your Success!

As a friend and mentor once told me…”You must chase your mentors”. Those words rung in my ears, I recognized that if I wanted success in business and life I needed to surround myself with people I could trust and that would bring me to a whole new level of accomplishment and accountability I never had before, and that was stopping me from reaching my ultimate potential.

I needed to attract relationships that would help me refine, deepen and expand my goals. To attract these relationships I had to add value to them, people they knew and develop the method of “The Chase”.

These are the 9 Strategies to what I call “The Chase”

Strategy one: Determine who you want on your team. Write down a list of people that you respect and trust in business, personal life, family, health and financially. Make sure to write down your criteria for this relationship and evaluate the potential for their success in the role you are wanting them to fulfill. (i.e. mentor, advisor, colleague, etc.)

Strategy two: Have a clear vision. When approaching a relationship you may only have one chance to impress upon them why you are someone they would like to get to know. This person will not have time to waste and will want to know your goals and that you are focused and already taking action toward that direction.

Your mentor will be someone that has accomplished something you want to achieve, whether it be a successful business person, someone that has a great relationship with their spouse, their family, spiritually or intellectually. Let this person know your passions and why you respect what they have accomplished.

Strategy three: Create the environment. Meaning, create opportunities to build this relationship that will turn them into trusted advisors and hopefully lifelong friendships. The best way to do this is to selflessly give to your relationships. You may also want to become a client, student or be in an apprentice relationship.

Strategy four: Have a map of your goals. Identify your ultimate vision and create a path to get there through mapping out your goals and objectives which will include the new skills and knowledge you will need to get to your vision.

Strategy five: Develop the Big Picture. This includes creating an overall picture of your future vision that includes all the pieces of your life puzzle. Create a complete strategy to have a balanced fulfilling life.

Strategy six: Learn to have fierce conversations. A fierce conversation is one where you are not afraid to voice your opinions as well as give up your pride and listen to wisdom of those that have gone before you. This will make known new truths and bring into being new value for all involved.

Strategy seven: Identify your weaknesses. This is not an easy task since we can only see things from our story and perspective. Make sure you evaluate what you know to be your weaknesses and then ask your trusted advisers and friends what they perceive to be your weaknesses are.

Strategy eight: Commit to taking action. The only way to having these relationships last is to stay in integrity and honoring your word, what you say you are going to do, as it is the most valuable thing you have.

Strategy nine: Believe you can and do it. Never use the words “I’ll try”, those are self prophesying that you will fail. Instead believe and have faith that you can. Set goals, be consistent, take the right actions and never quit.

Using these nine steps to build your dream team will take determination, perseverance and a passion for something greater then you could achieve on your own. Give first and have a hunger for coaching. Remember that feedback is the breakfast of champion and participation equals value.

Do you already have your dream team in place? Do you have a clear vision of where you are going?

I would say if you do not have your dream team in place or are not clear on the next steps to take that you should consider doing a Free Half Hour Coaching Session with Mickey O’Brien to see how he can help you to generate what may now be an impossible future and create new goals and habits that will make the impossible possible. Email the words “Hungry for Coaching” to Mickey to get your free session.

You can continue to do the things you have always done and get what you have always gotten, but if you are willing to create new beliefs of what is possible and to take new actions, then with a solid vision and goals your chances for success will dramatically improve.

It’s time to get current with where the marketplace is going. Social networking is like Facebook is having a huge impact on how people are connecting personally and in business. Would you normally think to interact with people from all over the world to discuss the latest marketing tactics and strategies? Well, it’s happening, the world has shrunk and businesses and entrepreneurs from all over the world are sharing tips, ideas and tools to help one another grow their business.

Facebook recently crossed the 100 MILLION member mark. That’s not a small number atall. And millions more will join this incredible new stage in the coming months and years. And the huge majority will be seeking to use Facebook for the most part for business purposes.

To get you started, here’s a list of seven reasons you need to be active on Facebook!

1. Meet your peers.
Develop relationships with others in your industry. Start to connect at a deeper level with your current and potential clients.

2. Find business contacts.
There are more than 100 million active users, and predicted to be 500 million by 2011, so start reaching out to your prospects, your customers, your JV partners… and, of course, your competitors. You can now connect with people that you may have never before been able to get past the gatekeeper.

3. Build relationships, don’t sell.
Social networking is about being social, not anti-social or annoying. Make sure you put relationship first and not be an annoying salesperson or one who just jabber jabbers. Once you establish a personal relationship where you show you care then the business relationship will come natural.

4. Raise visibility.
Be consistently at showing up, posting relevant information, and being a leader of new though and value added ideas, you can increase visibility and credibility as the expert in your area.

5. Develop your personal brand.
Be unique, stand out from the rest. If everyone is going one way go the opposite. Make sure you have a niche when everyone else looks the same.

6. Get rapid top Google placement.
By creating a fan page for your business and sharing information with you others you will get higher placement in Google and more visibility for your business.

7. No cost marketing.
Facebook and other social networking sites like linkedIn and Twitter are totally free to use and with regular use you’ll end up with more traffic, more subscribers, and more paying clients.

Contact me if you would like the name of some great social media strategists!!