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Showing posts with the label Successful Business

11 Ways Successful People Deal With People They Don't Like

Everyone has to interact with someone they don't get along with every once in a while, so be prepared the next time it happens to you. It’s inevitable that you’ll encounter people with whom you disagree. There are some people you instantly  click with  and others you can take or leave. And then, there are the select few you  just can’t stand ! How can you get along with someone you find difficult, distasteful or downright obnoxious? Well, it helps to remember that you aren’t perfect either. Remember that whatever you might feel about a person, someone else might feel the same about you. We’re all human, after all. We all  have our faults . It’s usually possible just to avoid people you don’t get along with. However, at some point you may have to work with someone you dislike. That may seem tough, but you can work with (almost) anyone if you just keep a few things in mind. In fact, by using these tips, you might find that a challenging person can still offer useful ins

Your Comfort Zone Is Killing Your Success

Applying for jobs just out of college or grad school, comfort may have seemed like the ultimate goal: to find the perfect job that was a natural fit and have a long, fulfilling career there. Forget all of that: comfort is the enemy. If things are easy, it's time to shake up your career. Remember when you were young, and you first attempted to write a bicycle? Were you scared at first? Absolutely. Was the end result worth it? I'm betting it was.  Hopping into a new job or career path is indeed a lot like that first ride on a bike: a heart-pumping, adrenaline-inducing risk-- and the payoffs can be as meaningful as the life-changing freedom of mastering two wheels.  Getting out of your comfort zone is a must if you want to achieve extraordinary success. I like to think of it as a shift into your "strength zone": identify, highlight and hone in on what makes you unique and lean into it so you stand out. The hardest part of shaking things up is taking

Here's Why You Need to Step Outside Your Comfort Zone

I absolutely love my job. I almost feel like life isn’t real. That’s how much I love it. I have fun, flexibility and I’m working in the industry of my dreams.  Yet I just accepted a new job. Let me elaborate. A few weeks ago, I was invited to interview for a new position. Several days later, I was offered the job. This unleashed a world of struggle inside me because I love my current job.  I’ve been at this company for a little over a year now, and it’s been an amazing experience. I have learned a lot and grown as a person. I’ve been fortunate enough to have a mentor who has guided me and propelled me along. And I’ve had flexibility: I can, for the most part, work the schedule I set for myself. There’s something invaluable about that. So when I was faced with the decision of accepting a new job, I had to take a really hard look at my options. I kept thinking, Well, I have fun at work. I have a flexible schedule. I like the people I work with. There are certain perks I’d b

The Only Report You Need to Run a Successful Business

I’ve been working with clients for over 20 years and, without question, the most successful of them rely on data to help them run their businesses. But you may be surprised with where the data comes from. It’s not from a financial statement. For a small-business owner, financial statements are generally useless. They’re prepared months after the fact. They show a snapshot from a historical period that is usually long past. And they’ve been jiggered and reconfigured by accountants to reflect accounting standards that usually don’t have much connection to the real world for most of us. Banks and investors may look to financial statements as part of their documentation to approve financing. But smart business owners don’t. Instead they rely on another report. A daily report called The Flash. The Flash Report is also a snapshot. Except it’s a daily snapshot. Its one page contains on it the most critical information that a business owner needs to run his or her company. What kind of i

The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase … What Exactly?

You might disagree with Milton Friedman’s famous claim that the sole social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. But you can’t deny that it sounds simple and straightforward. Here’s the full Friedman, as originally expressed in his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom , then exposed to a larger audience in a 1970 New York Times Magazine article : There is one and only one social responsibility of business — to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud. Elegant, no? Same goes for the theories of corporate governance that it inspired. Any other theory of how business ought to behave is going to sound muddled and inconsistent in comparison. Even if it’s closer to being right. That thought kept coming back to me as I read John Taft’s new book Stewardship: Lessons Learned from the Lost Cult