Are you a Creature of Good Habit or Bad Habit?
August 10th, 2010
Do you have bad habits that get in the way of your success? Do your employees want to grow with you? And most important, are you willing to do the work to break your bad habits and turn them into successful ones?
The most successful people are disciplined machines and creatures of successful habits. If you are trying to become more successful or raise the bar for your employees, you may want to consider changing the habits you have for more successful ones.
In order to put disciplines in place around a successful habit you must do two things first. One, you must identify the bad habit(s) you have. If you are not brutally honest with yourself about your bad habits then this exercise will not work for you. If you need help with discovering your bad habits ask some trusted friends or colleagues.
Some bad habits may be: not following through on tasks to completion, procrastinating, watching too much TV, not paying bills on time, being late for meetings or everything, not going to the gym, avoiding social interaction, and the list can go on.
Guess what? You’re perfect! You are the man or woman you’ve always wanted to be. You may just need some help seeing that and building the foundation of being a creature of more successful habit. Okay do you have your list of Bad Habits?
The second step is to write a good habit next to your bad habit. The good habit should off set the bad one. For example: If one of your bad habits is not returning phone calls, then your new good habit could be to return all phone calls within 24 hours. Simple right? Wrong! This is going to take conscientious work on your part to be able to stay focused and pay attention.
The third part in this process is to create a list of 3-4 steps that will help you put disciplines in place to correct the bad behavior and achieve the desired good habit behavior. In addition to writing down these steps you will want to write down a date you plan to start this third step. This will help hold you accountable to getting moving in the direction of success.
This is a great exercise to start generating successful behaviors in you quickly. When implementing a discipline it usually takes about 60 days for that discipline to become habit. Once it becomes habit it is then part of your lifestyle and success patterns.
Good luck and please let us know the results of your success!
YMCA Happy Members come from Your Welcome Center
June 10th, 2010
“The single most important thing to remember about any enterprise is that there are no results inside its walls. The result of a business is a satisfied customer.” -Peter Drucker
The employees that deal with your YMCA members the most frequent are the ones that get paid minimum wage, have high turnover, are younger in age, or are not always fully trained. YOUR WELCOME CENTER. They “have to” know everything going on in the organization because that is where all members are going to go for information. That is where all questions are going from inbound phone calls.
Think about the complexity of your program structure and the constantly changing dynamics: Schedules, cancelled classes, pool closings, emergency announcements, and the list goes on. All of this, the welcome center staff needs to be able to handle. If the staff can not handle it, it will lead to member confusion, frustration, anger and eventually dissatisfaction with the organizations service. Then your members leave the YMCA and join another provider.
If the welcome center staff does not know the details of the daily happenings at the YMCA then chaos and mutiny will pursue. A communication system needs to be built and it must be able to communicate with your members and amongst your employees.
Too many times we have seen frustration and arguments with members and a staff person that “should have known about…” Fill in the blank. It is very difficult for staff to be the all-knowing wizards of the YMCA. However, we can arm the staff with as much information, organized in a method that levels the playing field of communication.
Contact us for our communication and operating method for your YMCA Welcome Center: info@theoctopussolution.com
Timing is Everything
May 10th, 2010
When marketing a business many owners must realize that results take time. When starting a marketing project the results do not always come over night. Most of the time the benefits of marketing campaigns are not realized until 9-18 months out.
If a business is looking to increase their top line immediately you may not be looking to use marketing to solve the crisis. Marketing would help over a year or two time period, but a better approach would be to look a sales campaign.
Sales would potentially return faster results however would not have the same results as marketing. For example, if you are a retail store selling men’s clothing and you were 2-3 months away from going out of business, then a marketing project would be good to do, but would not deliver results as quick as a sales campaign. Both sales and marketing are important to do consistently, but you must balance your decision making about which one has priority given your time needs.
Doing both sales and marketing consistently each year is the best choice to make to ensure you are maintaining balance. Email us if you need help…info@theoctopussolution.com
New Ideas for TV Interaction
March 10th, 2010
I was speaking with a double secret friend of mind last night who works in the media content business and he was describing to me the new technologies coming in the next several years. The most impress one was a new way for companies to market their products.
Picture this: you are watching a TV show or movie at home and you see a character wearing an impressive clothing outfit that you would like to buy, you will be able to click on the piece of clothing and get the description. You will also be able to get info on the location where the show is being shot. Info on the types of cars being driven. Info on the watch Mr. Smith is wearing and where to buy it.
This takes product placement to a new level. You will be able to see everything and anything you want relating to the physical content of a show or movie and be able to interact with it. Think about how this will change advertising? Company’s are already doing product placement on TV and in Movies. You think all the cars in the movie Transformers just happen to be GM? But this new technology with allow you to connect your initial interest into a possible buying decision while you are captivated on the scene.
Pay attention to all the products and company names mentioned next time you watch TV or a movie and then image being able to interact with all those items instantaneously. Truly an On Demand world.