High-Achieving Women's Blogazine

Standing out in a productive, positive way requires deliberate and conscious efforts to get attention, get noticed and achieve desired results.

All of us stand out in some way; but the question is whether we are standing out in the ways that help us realize our desired results.

If I asked you: “How do you stand out right now?” What would be your answer? Is the answer that came to mind helping you achieve your short- and long-term goals or is it keeping you from getting noticed?

Here are 2 tips for standing out in the crowd and ahead of the competition:

1. Stand out by doing different things

You can stand out by doing something that no one else in your marketplace is doing.  So it’s about getting creative. You can stand out by inventing, developing or initiating something new or unique that meets the needs for your target market. Think about what products or services you currently offer and how you can re-purpose them so they stand out in a crowded marketplace.

2. Stand out by doing things differently

You can stand out by doing common things in an uncommon way.  Think about Southwest Airlines.  By adding your own creative spin you can make the ordinary, extraordinary, and exciting.  So what can you do to spice up your products and services?

What are some of the different ways you can present or deliver products and services to your clients so you stand out from the crowd and ahead of the competition?

I hope you have enjoyed this blog post.  Watch for the next post where I will conclude with the final 2 tips on how to stand out from the crowd and ahead of the competition.

I must share this with you: “I always tell people that one of the greatest compliments you can give me is to tell me that I am different.  When people are different, they make a difference”.  I said this to say… its okay to be different.  If everyone else is going right – then you go left.

Mark your calendar for the June 8^th teleclass entitled: “IS YOUR ‘FEAR BEAST’ OUT OF CONTROL OR HAS IT BECOME A PERMANENT WARDROBE ACCESSORY?” This teleclass will cover how to handle the fears associated with career change and career transition; the 7 tips for keeping your fear under control while taking your career and business up a notch in challenging times; the 7 tips for managing stress when fear prevails and how to break free of your fears and start reaching your dreams.

It is also the preview call for the launch of the Global Association of High-Achieving Women. This first-ever membership association is designed for high-achieving female career professionals and women business owners who want to ignite their careers and businesses through the use of the association’s innovative professional development tools, masterminding, platinum-style coaching, and leading-edge business growth and career success strategies. Be sure to register for this teleseminar at: http://tiny.cc/nf7q5 I will be giving away some powerful career and business growth materials valued at $500+.

Love, Success and Greatness

© 2010 Dr. Laureen

“We use 10% of our abilities. Tap into the other 90%”

Everyone knows that many businesses and people are experiencing hard times right now. But I have to tell you, I also see some amazing things happening with many of my clients. It’s not that they are not experiencing the pinch of the economy. They are. Yet, what I love about my clients is that they are remarkable people who refuse to focus on the fall of the economy and so remain focused on the rebuilding! For those focused on the possibilities and potentials, forward movement is occurring in spite of the economy.

Below are seven steps that you have control over that will allow you to reach your business goals.  These steps will assist you in making goal-centered, knowledgeable decisions on a daily basis. 

1. Define Your “Visioning Great” Vision

Define your vision first and then make sure that you write it in one or two sentences. If you don’t know where you’re going, how can you ever plan to get there?  When you write down your plan, it will bring clarity and will serve to solidify your thoughts for business.

2. Create a Dynamic Mission Statement

This is where you define the core business you’re in. Write it and refine it until it becomes one or two sentences that are your true mission. The mission can become your tag line or your selling proposition.

3. Identify Forward-Thinking Goals

Start with annual goals, and then break them down into quarterly and monthly goals. Think through the sequence of events that will lead you toward your annual goals and objectives.  Be sure to celebrate every milestone along the way.

4. Develop an Out-of-the-Box Strategy

Use your review of last year’s operating budget and information along with your goals for the coming year to help you define the results you want. How can you best use your resources? What else do you need? What else should you do?

If you are planning a new business, your strategy will be to identify and define your target market, to strategize on how to identify your niche and to determine on how you will be better than your competition. 

5. Define Your Accelerated Plan of Action

Create an action plan with a corresponding timeframe. It may take a little time, but it is well worth the time.   Be sure to allow some initial planning time. Get help if you need it – there is nothing wrong with asking for help.

For those who are new to the business arena, your plan will be an action plan that defines how you will get your business up and running.  You will also need to determine what steps are needed to bring your business to fruition.

6. Implementation for Success

This is one of the most important steps in the process. Break down your yearly plan into monthly plans, then into a weekly plan and add the specific action steps to your weekly calendar. Make sure you schedule time to do what’s necessary. When planning the next week, bring forward anything that didn’t get done from the previous week. The bottom line is that it is all about “implementing.”

7. Assessment is Mandatory

Review your operating procedures monthly. Check out industry trends and pertinent economic indicators. Use the data and make adjustments to your strategy and plan. At least annually, perform a total review of your vision and mission. Summarize and document results, define what worked and what didn’t. Most importantly, ditch what doesn’t work.

7.5 Repetition is a Must

Repeat the process annually and reap the rewards daily. Success is not a one-time act. You need to repeat one success with a second; and the second with a third … life moves forward and you need the next success to move forward with it.

Decide to proceed. Do not waver. Do not pay attention to what you see outwardly. Focus on the resources that will create the new, the improved, the expanded and as yet unmanifested ideas. Be the one to bring in the New. Be the one that goes the extra mile. Play. Be creative. Connect to new people. Form alliances. Go with your instincts. Trust! Imagine. Dream…and do it!

I have found that if your career and business plan includes success, you must step up and play a bigger game. If you need someone to assist you in up-leveling your career or you’re your business, visit: www.masterpiecesolutions.biz.

, Career Success and Business Growth Expert

In order to tell you what habits help me to be successful, I’ll have to share with you my idea of success. Success means living a purposeful life, where I experience radiant health, abundant prosperity and meaningful relationships.  Here are a few habits that I’m cultivating as I move from success to significance.

1. Meditation
2. Exercise
3. Journaling
4. Waking up between 5 am and 6 am
5. Keeping the important list to 3 items
6. Having a “fantastic” day
7. Reading daily
8. Less television time

8.5        Personal development at all times

It’s this simple – when your energy is high you can bring your best to every task you take on. When your energy is low, you can’t.  You must focus on raising and maintaining your own energy, keeping yourself strong and well, so that you can be focused and effective and brilliant while taking on the next steps for success.

What daily habits do you have that help you to be successful? Why not share them in the comment section of this Blog.

You can take action now and attend the upcoming Visioning Great to Successing Great™ Virtual Retreat of March 20, 2010. It’s your time to sparkle. ™ http://highachievingwomen.biz/?page_id=185

The only way to fail is to quit” – Chris Widener.  Why not take this partial list of habits that drive business success and start to put each one into practice. By learning and instilling new habits in your daily business life, it will have a dramatic effect on your level of success.

1. Cultivate Inner Networks: Take the time to identify and build relationships with key peers, mentors, and advisors.
2. Practice Centerness: Focus away from business and profits toward what you can do to improve the life of your customers.
3. Be Humble and Honesty: Be open and honest about yourself and your business creates growth as an individual and as a company.
4. Embrace Adaptability: Be flexible allows us to respond to changes without being paralyzed with fear and uncertainty.
5. Be Opportunity Focused: Look at both sides of the coin. Every problem has an opportunity.
6. Find A Better Way: Productivity is the cornerstone of business success. Start by embracing technology, automation, outsourcing, and improving business systems and processes.
7. Maintained a Balanced Lifestyle: Business success requires the habit of balancing all aspects of your life; free time is a habit that will make your business and life more enjoyable.

     7.5. Love What You Do and Who You Are: Everything else follows.

Here my suggestion, review each of the 7 habits and choose one habit to focus on for a month or until you achieve mastery; then gradually incorporate each of the 7 habits of business success into your life and watch yourself attain your business dreams. Adopting these 7 habits will help you create a business or career that will give you not only success but also joy and fulfillment in your life. 

I would love to help you develop and expand your portfolio of success through discovering your purpose, unleashing your passion, helping you achieve next-level results and enjoying the realization of your result-oriented dreams.  You can take action now and attend the upcoming Visioning Great to Successing Great™ Virtual Retreat of March 20, 2010. It’s your time to sparkle. ™ http://bit.ly/9AA92z

One of my favorite books is Good to Great by Jim Collins. This book along with my 12 years entrepreneur experience got me to thinking a lot about greatness and what that really means. I have identified what I call the essential elements that must exist within a company to achieving lasting greatness.  They are Quality, Service, Leadership and Accountability.

Below is a list of business success rules from my Visioning Great to Successing Great™ Virtual Retreat. 

1. Be On Target: Decide on your niche–narrow your focus and broaden your appeal.
2. Be Different: If your competitors are doing it, then you don’t.
3. Be Diligent About Building a Team: Employ a person to be part of a team to build your business; you are not hiring an employee to fill a position.
4. Be Fast: Time is the most precious commodity.
5. Be Thankful: Tell your customers and employees how much you appreciate them; the old fashioned way work great… pen to paper and write them a note.
6. Be Consistent: Make sure your business has a consistent look and feel and the same flavor from everyone within your organization.
7. Be Smiles: Get rid of the notion that people buy from you because of price, product quality or your warranty. They buy because they like you and your product.
8. Be Optimism: Attitude will always win out in the end and infect all of those around you.
9. Be Soft: Don’t ever hard sell. Solve problems. Satisfy wants. Always do what is best for the customer.
10. Be Comfort Zone: Never accept the idea that this is the way you’ve always done it. Never accept that a new idea or technology could never work for you.

10.5.   Be the Best and Beyond™

Let’s face it, if you already had all the tools and information necessary to create all the success you want; you would already have created it, right?  The keys to lasting greatness are the missing link to help you get out of your own way and connect to that power and passion and consistent action that create success.

“Greatness is as greatness does” I would love to help you develop and expand your portfolio of success through discovering your purpose, unleashing your passion, helping you achieve next-level results and enjoying the realization of your result-oriented dreams.  You can take action now and attend the upcoming Visioning Great to Successing Great™ Virtual Retreat of March 20, 2010. It’s your time to sparkle. http://bit.ly/9AA92z

“If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived?  Find your passion, whatever it may be.  Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen for you, to you and because of you”. – T. Alan Armstrong

Here are my 5.5 tips for greatness:

1. Develop a Vision Plan for Greatness: Once you decide to commit, then create an action plan and take action.
2. Think Less, Do More:  Day dreaming has it place, but it is not the goal.  You must take proactive, powerful action to achieve your goals.
3. Small Steps: Plan tasks out in small manageable steps.
4. Surround Yourself with Mentors:  When you have someone you can look up to and model, you’re bringing yourself one step closer to greatness.
5. Survive Setbacks: When you hit a snag in the road, you need to pick yourself up, change course and forge on.

5.5.   3E Success Circle™:  This is part of my full-circle success wheel designed for greatness.  The E’s are: Engagement, Empowerment, and Expectation.

• Engagement: consistently seeking the right career relationships and business opportunities.
• Empowerment: constantly acquiring and applying knowledge and maintaining an impeccable presence and brand.   
• Expectation: confidently setting career plans and business goals to manifest even when the manifestation cannot be seen.

Consider this point:  Your life right now is perfectly structured to create what you already have, and is not structured to create that amazing vision of yours.  If it were, you would already have it!  After all, it doesn’t matter how hard you are working and how fast you are going if you are headed in the wrong direction with no vision!

You can take action now and attend the upcoming Visioning Great to Successing Great™ Virtual Retreat of March 20, 2010. It’s your time to sparkle. ™ For more, visit: http://bit.ly/9AA92z.

When you envision what you want to achieve, it will help you clear away clutter, negativity and the people and time-wasters so that your natural brilliance can emerge.  Here are 10.5 mindsets for success through visioning:

1. Be Passionate
2. Be a Risk Taker
3. Be Creative
4. Be a Learner
5. Be Focused
6. Be Proactive
7. Be a Server to Others
8. Be a Value of Freedom
9. Be a Builder of a Team
10. Be Evolving

10.5.   Be a Person Who Will: ‘Thinks Big, Act Big to Win Big – It’s Your Time to Sparkle™” 

Once you learn my visioning technique, it will be a tool you’ll use for the rest of your life, in your own business and with your clients. It is an invaluable tool that every business owner and career professional must know.  Remember, visioning your future brings clarity, which causes a shift toward greater, faster growth—it’s like a magnet that pulls you toward success.

I would love to help you develop and expand your portfolio of success through discovering your purpose, unleashing your passion, helping you achieve next-level results, and enjoying the realization of your result-oriented dreams. Don’t sabotage your chances for success.   This virtual retreat is an affordable investment that no savvy business owner can afford to miss!

Take action now and attend the upcoming Visioning Great to Successing Great™ Virtual Retreat of March 20, 2010. It’s your time to sparkle. ™ http://tiny.cc/ndBZT