The 3 Obstacles between You and Success – Faith, Family, and Friends

Every month I teach a "Starting a Small Business" workshop here at Volunteer State Community College.  I usually get a dozen or so wide eyed optimists wanting to pursue their dream of entrepreneurship.  They tell me they want to start a business so they can immediately call their own shots, spend more time with family, come and go as they please, and do what they want, when they want.

Their priorities are faith, family, and friends and no amount of success will change that!

Then I chuckle a little.  Not out loud.  That would be rude.

We then spend the next couple of hours discussing what it takes to start a business successfully.

I also see the same for businesses that have plateaued or never really taken off. They want to do the same things that the startups are aspiring to, without doing the hard part first.

Of course their priorities should be faith, family, and friends.  Most successful people have those priorities.  But they can’t be your excuse to not building your business, i.e. my business won't take off, because I won't sacrifice my faith, family, and friends.   The truth is, YOU can have both!  

It’s more about what you are willing to do, to truly make those priority matter.

You may have to do some things you don’t want to do, in order to get the things you want.

Doing the following in your business will help you in making your faith, family, and friends your real priority.

• Don’t wait on the economy to take off.  I think we are there.
• Create your goals.  Then create steps to reach those goals.  Then create the team and time to reach those goals.
• Turn off the TV
• Back off golf or “insert-hobby-you-have-justified-here”.
• Exercise
• Read books
• Turn off email, text, and Facebook alerts
• Step outside of your comfort zone, knowing that making an omelet involves breaking a few eggs, i.e. put yourself out there to make sales.

And once your business has a strong foundation, you will then be able to call your own shots, spend more time with family, come and go as you please, and do what you want, when you want, without sacrificing, faith, family, and friends.

Why it’s Time to Incorporate Mobile Printing

With a new reliance on mobile devices to accomplish work tasks comes a necessity to print on-the-go. Bringing a flash drive to a meeting and asking to use a colleague’s printer—or worse, emailing documents to a client and asking them to print them for you—seems antiquated and can challenge the credibility of your company in the eyes of your partners and competitors. 

Consider a few ways mobile printing can change the way you work: 

•  Print documents directly from your mobile device to any networked printer (like at a hotel or airport business center)

•  Get a jumpstart on tomorrow’s seminar by printing fifteen copies of your 50-page handout during off-hours, so they are ready to go in the morning

•  Print receipts directly to your office during business trips for easy reimbursement 

•  Print a recently updated proposal minutes before you’re due to present it

The practical uses for mobile printing are boundless. But, it is important to view mobile printing not as a luxury, but as a necessity. As mobile computing surpasses traditional PC computing, your need to print on-the-go will become increasingly crucial to stay viable in today’s competitive market.

For more information, contact us at info@momnet.com.

Learn how to win construction bids

For construction contractors, learning how to win bids and deal effectively with general contractors is the key to success. A good place to learn these and other business management skills is the Construction Contractors' College, a program of The Entrepreneurs' Learning Center at The Kingdom Builders' Center.

The third year of the program launches on May 3, 2016, with a curriculum shaped by representatives from certifying agencies, experienced contractors and successful small businesses. The program's major sponsor is Capital One Bank, and it's free to participants. Qualified graduates have access to more than $750,000 in funding to assist in expanding their businesses.

The overall goal of The Construction Contractors' College is to help small and minority business owners in construction and construction services prepare to bid on contracts in the public and private sectors.

The comprehensive curriculum was designed to provide relevant and useful information that can be practiced immediately. The curriculum has been developed and will be taught by experienced business leaders to achieve the following objectives:

1. Develop sound business practices.
2. Improve the credit-worthiness of the individual owner and the business.
3. Position businesses for bidding opportunities.
4. Take the owner's business to its next level, particularly in the area of economic development, enabling these businesses to become employers increasing the financial stability for themselves and their employees.
5. Give business owners face-to-face time with general contractors.

Course topics include credit awareness, specialized business plan development, certification, bidding, project management and access to capital.

Participants will learn to develop a business structure around their skill or trade, improve their likelihood of securing financing, have direct access to the Metropolitan Transit Authority's express certification process and receive coaching and counseling from experienced professionals, including SCORE and other seasoned consultants.

Results to date have included increases in credit scores, certifications with the City of Houston and other major certifying bodies, and contract bids. Some graduates have bid on and won large contracts with a mid-tier contractor, in the medical industry and with the federal government since completing the classes.

The seven-month program is for small construction contractors who have been in business at least a year and have filed tax returns in their business names. Classes will meet on Tuesdays at The Kingdom Builders' Center, 6011 W. Orem Drive. Application for the next term closes on April 4. Only 20 slots are available to the best-qualified candidates. Learn more and apply online at  www.thekbc.com or call 713-726-2519. ____________________________________________________________________________ SCORE is a nonprofit association whose volunteers help start and improve small businesses. Send questions or volunteer inquiries to scorehouston@gmail.com.

The Grammar Of Life

When I was in school, one of the things that was relentlessly drilled into me was grammar – the structural rules of communication. As such, everything I wrote was assessed - at least in part – for grammar. Anyone who has experienced this, no doubt remembers getting their ‘masterpiece’ returned with a myriad of red tick marks, identifying grammatical errors.

One of the grammar killers was the run on sentence - a sentence in which two or more independent clauses (i.e., complete sentences) are joined without an appropriate punctuation or conjunction. Evidently this was okay for famous authors experiencing ‘stream of consciousness, but not for English students!

Anyway, I want to use this point to explore what many people experience in real life today. A busy life can often seem like a run on sentence. People can move through a series of activities – often not even related – in a seamless manner. This can lead to the feeling of being busy – maybe even too busy – but is not necessarily productive. Nor is it necessarily fulfilling!

How often have you been through a hectic period and not even remembered exactly what you did? This is the life version of the run on sentence!

What might help is adding a little punctuation to your life – a few dashes, commas or periods. Renowned teacher Pema Chodren suggests noticing the run on nature of what is happening and taking three conscious breaths – a simple pause and focus on three in and out breaths. In that short interval, you will be amazed at how quickly your brain actually responds.

Try it. As your coach would suggest “what’s the worst thing that can happen”?

Create a Social Media Policy for Your Small Business

Social media use by employees—posting on their personal accounts during work hours and mentioning your company on social media outside of work hours—presents opportunities and challenges for small business owners.

Creating a social media policy for your employees can give your staff clarity on what is or is not acceptable. While social media policies must meet legal requirements, they should also provide opportunities for employees to support your company’s social media efforts.

Here are some general tips to consider as you develop a social media policy for your business.

Realize that in protecting your company from lost time and reputation damage, you need to heed the rights of your employees as well. Research how federal and state laws will affect your company’s social media policy. The National Labor Relations Act's rules protect employees’ freedom of speech and the Federal Trade Commission has rules on what’s required in the way of disclosures for endorsements, promotion, reviews, and other circumstances where there are incentives for social mentions.

Explain expected behaviors and uses of social media. This includes addressing use of social media during work hours. Also, educate employees about when they need to disclose their association with your business when they personally post, share, or comment about your company’s products, services, events, etc.

Craft a “general” policy for the majority of employees and one specifically for employees who manage your business’s social media accounts. Team members who have the responsibilities of posting to and monitoring your accounts will require some flexibility and additional direction in the way of an internal strategy and a style guide.

Encourage employees to ask questions to help you identify if any elements of your policy may need clarification. It’s critical to keep everyone on the same page, so communicate additional details with all team members.

As with any other policy that might have a legal impact on your small business, it’s wise to consult with an attorney and/or human resource professional when crafting and implementing your policy.

Also consider getting free guidance from a mentor at the Houston chapter of SCORE. SCORE mentors have a broad range of small business expertise and can provide valuable input and feedback.

To learn more attend the SCORE class “Facebook for Business: Use Social Media to Promote Business & Increase Sales” at The Woodlands Chamber of Commerce, Wednesday March 23 from 9:30 - 11:30 AM. To register go to houston.score.org / Local Workshops.

____________________________________________________________________________ SCORE is a nonprofit association whose volunteers help start and improve small businesses. Send questions or volunteer inquiries to scorehouston@gmail.com.

Text from your computer !

Text From Any Device

Send & receive SMS and MMS from your computer or tablet, using your current Android phone number. Messages stay in sync with your phone's SMS inbox.

Phone Notifications on your Computer

Never miss notifications from apps like WhatsApp, Snapchat, and Instagram.

MightyText's Web app is slick, and it lets you choose between a "classic view" and a "power view." The classic view uses a layout similar to Microsoft Outlook, where you see information about the sender in the first column and then message details in the next column. The power view, meanwhile, displays phone-sized fields on your computer screen that display recent text messages in conversation form. The power view lets you see more messages at once (it fit eight on my screen), while the classic view gives you more space for viewing message details. Switching between them is easy.

To send a message, you click the new message button, and a small window for composing it pops up in the lower right corner of the screen, reminiscent of how Google's Gmail works. And, much like Gmail, MightyText also puts a message composition window at the bottom of the conversations you view, making it easy to send a reply message.

MightyText lets you mark favorite messages, browse through contacts, and easily adjust the settings (which include whether pressing enter should or should not send your messages and whether you want to get pop ups to notify you of new messages and calls). It also displays your phone's battery life and notifies you of incoming and missed calls via pop-ups.

Awesome photo & video syncing

Instantly & securely store photos & videos taken from your phone to your computer or tablet.

Dead simple, 1-click photo sharing. Apply Instagram-like filters and effects too.

Call Notifications

Get notified on your computer or tablet when someone calls your Android phone.

Schedule Messages

Schedule messages to be sent out in the future.

Phone Battery Alerts

Wherever your phone is, know exactly how much battery life it has left from your Web App or tablet app.

Send Web Pages, Maps, and Photos To Your Phone

Instantly push web pages, files, maps, photos and more from your computer to phone.

Text Directly From Gmail

SMS directly from Gmail on your computer. Just like a Google chat/hangout window.

PowerView

Built for the text-obsessed. Carry on multiple conversations simultaneously.

Themes

Beautify MightyText with 17 themes.

SMS Email Sync

Manage your text messages from your email.

Edit Photos With Filters

Edit photos directly from the web app by adding Instagram-like filters, frames, stickers, doodle & more.

Templates

Sending the same message content over and over? Use templates to save time.

What Do You Expect?

Expectations are happiness killers.

In anticipation of specific outcomes and the feelings related to the outcomes, we invariably set an expectation that relates to the result. When the actual result does not align with what was 'expected', the feelings we expected emerge as disappointment, frustration, confusion, or just plain unhappiness.

Expectation can be defined as: a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future; a belief that someone will or should achieve something.

Two potential problems that leap off the page: ‘in the future’ and ‘should’. Accurately predicting the future is virtually impossible and should is right up there with ‘assume’ as an ineffective thinking habit.

Typically, expectations are based on past experience – something that will in all likelihood never be repeated. Yet we persist. One of the most common venues for expectations is the ‘holiday’. When we have a memorable experience at a particular spot or time of the year, we plan a repeat visit ‘expecting’ to once again have a memorable ‘positive’ experience. By all means, plan repeat experiences. Just don’t build them up with expectations.

Some might say “you need goals to get anything done!”.

I totally agree. Goals, however, are not expectations! Set goals and plan your execution but don’t fall into the trap of setting an expectation around what reaching your goal will be like. Weight loss or physical fitness are great personal improvement initiatives. Without a goal setting and execution process, most people never reach goals like these. The trap, of course, is to expect that reaching your goal will make you feel a specific way.

If you reach your goal but miss the expectation, I guarantee you will be disappointed and will invest time and energy beating yourself up. Not necessary!

If you find yourself investing in expectations and suffering because of it, perhaps your coach can help you break the cycle.