October 2018 « Confidence Coach

The Practice of Gratitude

Something that most business people don’t think about, and it’s something that we do in every coaching session, is focus on the act and practice of gratitude. In our coaching process, at the end of each session, we ask our clients what things, both personally and professionally in their business they are grateful for. We have them speak these things out and then write them down. We do that in order to help them experience what gratitude does for people. Gratitude expands the things that we’re grateful and thankful for in our life. These things get bigger as we acknowledge them. I encourage you to make this a daily practice in your business and your personal life as well.

A lot of people practice gratitude at Thanksgiving or at a certain time of the year, but I would encourage you to make this a daily practice. Start by writing down two or three things at the end of each day that you’re grateful for both personally and professionally and share this with someone. What you’ll find is that there’s so much that is good in life that you have to be grateful and thankful for. Unfortunately, life just kind of goes by you and you don’t stop and acknowledge these things. We want to help our clients create a grateful attitude and see them experience and have gratitude in their life. This is why we do this on an ongoing and regular basis. We teach gratitude and make it really practical.

— What are you grateful for today in your personal life?

— What are you grateful for today in your work, your company or business?

— Write these things down. It can be just two or three things, but get into the habit of acknowledging and writing down what you are grateful for on a daily basis.

Over time, your mind starts to acknowledge and to identify all the things that you’re grateful for and/or that you can be thankful for. As you’re thankful and grateful for them, more of these types of things will show up in your life. You become aware that there’s so much you have to be grateful and thankful for. Gratitude and thanksgiving transform our mindset, our thinking and our whole approach to life. They create a wonderful culture and mindset.

And so that’s our thought for today — PRACTICE GRATITUDE.

My wife and I do it every day, and we also do it with our clients as we work with them. We’ve seen lives transformed — from being ungrateful and not really recognizing all that there is to be thankful and grateful for — to this person who has a mindset of gratitude. This is profound because it changes not only you, but the people you work with, your team around you and your customers.

Make it a great day! Practice gratitude and tell us how it makes you feel.

by Scott Ballard , October 28, 2018

It’s All About Your Confidence

Confidence

Today I want to talk to you about your confidence. Maybe your confidence is waning. Maybe you’re feeling like you’re not achieving the way you should be. Your company’s not where you’d like it to be. You’ve had a dry spell. You’ve been stuck. You can’t figure it out. And so, I just want to give you a couple of things to help bolster your confidence and ask you to take on this challenge and to see if this will help make a difference for you.

Commitment

The first thing that I would say to you is if you’re feeling like your confidence is waning, go ahead and look at your commitment level towards your goals, towards where you’re going to take your company and then re-up them significantly. For example, if you’ve committed to increasing revenue 10 percent this year, we’ve got three months left, recommit but recommit to increasing it 15 percent. Make this commitment with emotion and conviction, as well as making it known to some other people. Have some accountability.

One of the things we do with our coaching clients that they say helps them tremendously is we hold them accountable to the goals, dreams, hopes and aspirations that they have for their business and for themselves. So I would say revisit your commitment to to your goal, and if you don’t feel conviction and a passion about it, then you need to re-up that commitment.

Courage

Then the second step is after you’ve made this renewed commitment, I would like you take that step of courage. What that means is take a massive step of action towards this new commitment that you have. Think of something that would make a massive significance towards achieving that new commitment and making it a reality. And then do it!

Capabilities

After you do that, watch how quickly you come up with new capabilities in yourself, your team, the resources that you’re going to need in order to meet that commitment and to enhance that courage. You’ll have these capabilities that you didn’t realize you had that have been dormant for awhile — they will come back up and you’ll be able to say, “I can do this!” You start believing and at that point what you’ve just received is a whole new shot, a whole new boost of confidence.

What we need as business owners and CEOs is we need our confidence high all the time, and then, believe it or not, the first step is to make a commitment and then take a step of courage and then you’ll discover some new capabilities; then out of that you’ll have a new level of confidence to take you to the next step. We’d love to walk you through this. We’re at confidencecoach.org. Check us out on YouTube and we’re on social media. If you’d like to have a free consultation and talk about how to build your confidence just schedule it with us. Make it a great day.

by Scott Ballard , October 21, 2018

Looking Back and Learning

I want to talk to you a little bit about your business and the memory you have of why you started it in the first place. As you are looking back, how would you answer these questions:

What was the initial thought?
What was the initial dream?
What was the initial hope?
What did you envision your future to be, both personally and professionally, when you started your business?
Where did you see yourself being 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road with the business?
And, have you lost touch with those thoughts, those ideas that you had at the beginning?

Today I want to ask you to go back to that original thought or idea and revisit the enthusiasm, passion, and conviction that you had to start and build your business, to make a difference in the world, to provide a great solution or product for your customers or for the world at large.

Sit down and ask yourself these questions: What was I thinking at the beginning? Why did I start this company? What was my original purpose?

And then ask yourself, do we still have the same purpose or has that changed and evolved? If it has, have I changed and evolved with it? Is my business taking me to where I really want to go or are there some things that I need to change in order to get to where I want to go from where I started.

So it’s really about looking back and learning today. We do this with our clients all the time. We have them look back, learn and celebrate those things that they’ve done to get to where they’re at. There’s so much to be learned about beginning a venture or company and starting it from scratch, but sometimes the ingenuity and the thinking around that can be lost when we grow.

Go back into that mindset or that first thought, that first day, that first year in your company, and think about all of the creativity, energy and the passion you had. Now, relive that and put it back into your company today.

It’s all about your mindset, your thinking.

That creative thing that started what you built. Think about your first year, your first step, your first sale, your first transaction. You need to bring that back into focus today because that brings freshness not only to you, but now you have a team, you have customers and you have this business. It needs a shot of energy and you’re like, man, I can’t seem to get motivated, I can’t seem to get excited about what we’re doing. Well, go back and remember what excited you at the beginning. What was it that triggered the idea that you were going to be an entrepreneur, that you were going to have this great adventure, build a great company and make a difference in your life for you, your family and your friends. Go back and put that hat on again.

My challenge for you it to take 30 minutes and go back to Day One and remember what that was like and how it felt. Learn from what that has taught you and then reengage in the same enthusiasm and passion that you had for this company when you started it. Then, report back to us how this will change you from this point forward. How did this new thinking to go back to the beginning, to that passion, change the way you’re looking at your future now?

It should be a much bigger future! There’s a bigger future out there because there’s bigger problems and pain and things to be created for a much better result for your clients and your customers with this kind of thinking.

So first day, first thought, first action, first excitement — go back and relive those things. Share those with your team, with your leaders, with your employees. People love to hear the story of how you started.

I would love for you to send me a video or an email of how you started your company too. Where did the idea come from? Why did you do it? And what was that like at the beginning? We’d love to hear from you and learn your story. We’re at www.confidencecoach.org. We hope you share this with somebody that has started a business but maybe they’ve forgotten why they started it. Let’s celebrate today being entrepreneurs, business owners, and people that are risk takers that are going to make a difference in the world!! But let’s not forget that first day — that first thought. Make it a great day.

by Scott Ballard , October 14, 2018

How Does Your Company Win Big?

Here are three quick ideas for your today to help your company win big:

1. Ask how do we win

Ask yourself and your people this question — How does our company win big? I know you may think this sounds silly because, of course, you’re trying to win, but I want you to ask that question anyways. Get a group of your people together, ask the question, and then write down on a whiteboard all the things that they come up with it. Also, write down your own ideas as well on how you would win big in your business. What does that look like?

2. Start each day with winning

The second thing I would ask you to do is to start all meetings and the beginning of each work day with the idea of winning. Ask how are we going to win today? What’s are our wins going to be today?

3. Document your wins

The third step is at the end of the day, particularly with new people as you hire them and bring them on, have them document what their wins were for the day. Also have them document why it was important and what the next step will be for them in their winning process at work.

What you will find if you focus on winning — there will be more winning!! You’ll identify more wins and you’ll develop a culture of people that come to work every day expecting to win. When we expect to win, our mind actually finds a way for us to win, and we become this unstoppable, amazing company that’s all about winning. But in order to win we have to focus on what we are doing that’s creating the winning. How are we winning, what does that look like, and what do I need to do to win every day?

These are the three steps that we would give you to implement into your company. Try It, use it, and then report back to us and let us know how the winning is going there. Remember what you focus on, grows and multiplies. Focus on your winning. Then as you do that, your people will focus on it. And in turn, you’ll see more and more success. Subscribe to our YouTube channel or reach out to us on our website at www.confidencecoach.org. We’d love to hear from you. Make it a great day.

by Scott Ballard , October 7, 2018