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Playing Hookey Can Help! A Surprising Secret To Small Business Success!
Would you like to increase your chances of business success by 350%? The good news is that you can! Before you start working harder or learning the latest business theories so you can work smarter, try something different. You can increase your chances of success by as much as 350% by being more innovative and uncovering dramatically different ways to look at your business and develop your product or service. (***footnote #1) This is good news. Even better news is that one highly effective way to increase your innovation ability is by playing hooky from your normal business activities and learning how to have a Visioning Day. A Visioning Day is a time you set aside to remove yourself from your normal work and home life and expand your personal experiences and your thinking. It is a time where you specifically do not try to answer the challenges you face in building a great business and instead focus solely on developing your ability to listen and engage. The best Visioning Days are those where you stretch yourself and do something entirely new and different. Taking the time to get new perspective and input, while giving up conscious focus on your business projects, allows your creative mind the input and uninterrupted time necessary to generate new and innovative solutions. Visioning days can help all business people at all stages of business. Sometimes they are even the impetus for starting a successful business. When Frank, a franchise product manager for a major food chain, was layed off, he did not know what his next step would be. His wife, a day spa buff, suggested he take a Visioning Day at a local spa. Although Frank liked the relaxing services at the spa, he was bothered by the lack of business organization and consistent service. The experience got him thinking and he discovered a need within the salon and day spa industry for the kind of pre-formulated manuals and systems he had specialized in creating when he worked in franchising. What Frank was able to create was dramatically different for that industry: a computer program and set of manuals that capitalized on the best franchising had to offer, while still allowing individual business owners to remain independent and unique in their vision. Although the content was not particularly different from the franchising manuals that exist in other industries, marketing it to an emerging industry that had little exposure to the ideas was different--different enough to make Frank a wealthy business man in a short period of time. Visioning Days work for small scale operations that are struggling as well as they work for new ventures. Sometimes the worse a situation looks, and the less time and energy you feel you have to spare for a Visioning Day, the more you need one. A few years ago, Edna, a dog breeder and owner of a successful local boarding kennel, found herself in a difficult position. Her love of people and of animals had long since been buried under a mountain of work and details to manage. Work that was once a joy had become tedious, a venture that originally provided a sense of freedom had turned into a burden and a trap. To make matters worse, business was no longer booming, and in fact, profits and opportunities were starting to decline. Serious financial hardship loomed on the horizon and everything Edna was doing to reenergize sales and save her business was failing. The harder she worked to solve the problem, the worse things seemed to get. What Edna didn't know at the time was that she didn't need to work harder. What she needed to do was play hooky. Edna had to overcome a great deal of resistance in order to take time away from her demanding business and start taking Visioning Days, but the results were remarkable. The second Visioning Day she tried led to a total re-invention of her business and a dramatic increase in both her profits and her personal freedom. For her Visioning Day, Edna chose to take a tour of homes a local interior designer was conducting in a nearby neighborhood. During the tour she was struck by how often her fellow tour participants would comment that while they loved what they were seeing, it would never work in their own homes. Curious, she began to ask why. What she discovered is that two or three of her fellow participants had dogs that were too destructive to be left alone in a newly redecorated home for long hours while their owners were at work. An entirely new question emerged for Edna. What if, instead of taking care of people's animals while they were away on vacation, she took care of them while people were at work? Edna realized that doggy daycare was a service attractive to busy professionals but entirely unavailable in her area. She also realized that by specializing in doggy daycare, she could reduce the feeding and energy costs associated with keeping animals overnight, and that she could arrange a doggy daycare business in a way that allowed her to take weekends and holidays off, which had been her busiest and most stressful times for years. This simple innovation allowed Edna to establish her business in a unique and profitable niche, recharge her personal batteries, and increase her profits. And it came from simply getting out of her business as she knew it and taking a fresh look at the world. As Edna put it, "I was so used to thinking about how to serve the customers I had, that I completely forgot to ask what kind of customers I wanted and how could I serve them instead." Take a Visioning Day-You'll Be Glad You Did As Edna discovered, Visioning Days can help entrepreneurs step back from concerns about operations and think like someone working on a business instead of working in one. Visioning Days help overworked and overstressed individuals stop overworking and obsessing, and instead help them synthesize what they already know and see the resources and solutions they may already have. Visioning Days stimulate new thinking with new senses and often allow innovators to create new product or service ideas by "borrowing" a concept or custom from one industry and applying it to another. Because of the focus on having new experiences and meeting new people, Visioning Days can help develop social courage and grace and increase one's overall sense of personal resiliency. Visioning Days can introduce entrepreneurs and business people to a new and possibly unexpected source of networking contacts Seven Steps To Creating Your Own Visioning Day Experience #1 Clear your calendar for a whole day. Effective visioning requires time to unwind and get into the experience, and time to integrate and let things settle after it. Plan on at least 12 hours without obligations or interruptions. #2 Plan one Visioning Day for yourself every quarter, whether you think you need one or not. #3 Spend the day on your own. Do not invite friends, colleagues, or family. They will require social attention and may unconsciously hold you to old ways of thinking. Be prepared to be alone and or meet entirely new people on your Visioning day. #4 Do something entirely new for you. A Visioning Day is not the same as simply taking time off to recharge your batteries. It is a time to challenge yourself and build innovation skills. Consider doing something you would "never normally do" or learning about something that you have had very little knowledge or interest in. The point is not to find a new career or a new hobby, the point is simply to be exposed to entirely new experiences. #5 Get involved. Try to learn something and seek out experiences that engage all of your senses. Instead of just reading about a new topic, go to a new place. Instead of watching a demonstration, try a hands-on experiment. #6 Don't expect too much at first. It may take four to five Visioning Days before you see a real impact on your resilience and innovation. You will see one, though, if you keep on doing it and make occasional visioning a way of life and a part of your ongoing business development. #7 Take the time to write down your observations. Ask yourself what assumptions the people you met were making, and what skills and processes they took for granted. You might discover thinking approaches, skills, and processes that can be transplanted into your business. Applying old ideas in a new way is the heart of innovation. So go ahead, PLAY HOOKEY it just might lead to more fun, more profits and greater innovation. Mari Geasair copywright 2003, Mari Geasair All Rights Reserved *** footnote: Based on a study by J. H. Davidson as reported in the Harvard Business Review (April-May 1976) and confirmed by research from Doug Hall as described in Jump Start Your Business Brain, copyright 2001 by Eureka! Institute (p. 131). Mari Geasair is a writer, trainer and coach specializing in helping Small Business Owners and Information Service Professionals make more profits with less stress. Visit her website at http://www.mycreativeprosperity.com for a varity of tools to help you make the journey to success easier and more fun. You will find self assesments and audio trainings and free resources on Small Business and Creative Prosperity.
Latest News:Site: Yahoo! News Search Results for news Myanmar's Suu Kyi to get family letters, news mags (Reuters via Yahoo! News) Detained Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has managed to wring small concessions from the ruling generals in the form of letters from her family and some international news magazines, her lawyer said on Friday. JCDecaux in talks for News Outdoor Group in Russia (AP via Yahoo! News) French outdoor advertising firm JCDecaux SA said Thursday it is negotiating to buy Russian rival News Outdoor Group from global media company News Corp. News Corp tightens grip on Premiere with new CEO (Reuters via Yahoo! News) Rupert Murdoch tightened his grip on German pay-TV broadcaster Premiere by appointing News Corp executive Mark Williams as CEO in a move to get the company back on track. SEC Looks Into UAL Stock Scare; Implications For Online News? (CBS News) A ton of digits have been devoted to this in other spots but the SEC's decision to investigate takes it to another level. The backstory: a six-year-old news story about UAL declaring bankruptcy made it into the Tribune-owned Sun-Sentinel 's current news flow, was picked up by a Google (NSDQ: GOOG) News bot and, via a reporter for a newsletter, made it onto Bloomberg News. After a lot of buck ... JCDecaux and News Corp. in talks to combine outdoor ad groups (International Herald Tribune) The News Corp. chief executive, Rupert Murdoch, has recently expressed nervousness about investments in Russia, where News Outdoor generated the bulk of its revenue last year. SEC Looks Into UAL Stock Scare; Implications For Online News? (paidContent.org via Yahoo! Finance) A ton of digits have been devoted to this in other spots but the SEC's decision to investigate takes it to another level. The backstory: a six-year-old news story about UAL declaring bankruptcy made it into the Tribune-owned Sun-Sentinel's current news flow, was picked up by a Google News bot and, via a reporter for a newsletter, made it onto Bloomberg News. JCDecaux in talks to buy News Corp. billboard unit (AP via Yahoo! Finance) In a deal that would create the world's largest outdoor advertising company, French conglomerate JCDecaux SA said Thursday that it is in talks to buy Russian rival News Outdoor Group from global media company News Corp. Phila. mayor to announce grim budget news (The Philadelphia Inquirer) The Nutter administration is expected to announce grim budget news today, which is all but certain to lead to significant spending cuts - perhaps as high as 10 percent - in some city departments, according to three sources familiar with the budget. News Corp says Mark Williams interim Premiere CEO (Reuters via Yahoo! News) News Corp. executive Mark Williams has taken over as chief executive of German pay-TV broadcaster Premiere in an interim capacity, News Corp. said after the move led to renewed takeover speculation. News Corp. says Mark Williams interim Premiere CEO (Reuters via Yahoo! News) Mark Williams, a News Corp. executive named late on Wednesday as chief executive of German pay-TV broadcaster Premiere, has taken over in an interim capacity, a News Corp. spokeswoman said on Thursday. Site: news - Google News New Voices in Congress Will Change the Tone of the Democratic Majority - New York Times
MORE RESOURCES: Site: Yahoo! News Search Results for entrepreneurialism Lone Star Library: Green Mountain founder shares entrepreneurial insights (Fort Worth Business Press) Rural Southerner Sam Wyly came by his self-made captain-of-industry status the hard way, developing a passion for business strategy by playing schoolboy football and observing his parents? natural gift for small-business operations and hard-bargain bartering. S.C.'s brightest complete Business Week (Columbia Star) Approximately 200 high school students from across S.C. have successfully graduated from South Carolina Business Week, presented by the South Carolina Cable Television Association, July 13- 18, at Presbyterian College in Clinton. Wellington West opens Montreal branch (CNW Group via Yahoo! Finance) Wellington West Holdings Inc., a privately held, employee-owned financial services firm, today announced the expansion of its national network with the opening of a Wellington West Capital Inc. full-service retail investment branch in Montreal, Quebec. Ctek Selects Kyocera 300 Module for Z4100 Wireless Router (Centre Daily Times) Kyocera Wireless Corp. (KWC), a leading global manufacturer of wireless handsets, devices and embedded machine-to-machine (M2M) modules, and Ctek, a leading manufacturer of specialized communications solutions for industrial and commercial applications, today announced the selection of the Kyocera 300 Module for Ctek's cost-effective Z4100 Router. The Kyocera 300 Module enables reliable, ... Memphis confident of growth campaign (Memphis Commercial Appeal) One year after the launch of a $64 million economic development campaign, city officials are increasingly optimistic about the impact of MemphisED on the Bluff City. Summer break project: JTCC student lives, learns nonprofit leadership with Pheonix Project (The Petersburg Progress-Index) CHESTER ? Jamie Poniatowski, a Class of 2008 human services major, spent her summer break in Petersburg, participating in the Phoenix Project?s 2008 Nonprofit Leadership and Social Entrepreneurship Program, which transforms committed undergraduate and graduate students into effective social entrepreneurs with the knowledge, skills and connections to succeed in Virginia?s nonprofit sector. Ctek Selects Kyocera 300 Module for Z4100 Wireless Router (Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance) SAN DIEGO & RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif.----Kyocera Wireless Corp. , a leading global manufacturer of wireless handsets, devices and embedded machine-to-machine modules, and Ctek, a leading manufacturer of specialized communications solutions for industrial and commercial applications, today announced the selection of the Kyocera 300 Module for Ctek?s cost-effective Z4100 Router. $1 Million Opus Prize Finalists Announced (PR Newswire via Yahoo! Finance) Seattle University and the Opus Prize Foundation today announced three finalists for the $1 million 2008 Opus Prize, one of the world's largest humanitarian service awards. Guided by faith and an entrepreneurial spirit, Marguerite "Maggy" Barankitse, Krishnammal Jagannathan and Michael Woodard are working throughout the world to give people the tools to transform their lives. Scotiabank Online Small Business Contest Last Call (CNW Group via Yahoo! Finance) The chance for Canadian small business owners to win $50,000 in cash prizes is coming to a close. As part of Scotiabank's 'Get Growing to a Million' Campaign, the online challenge has offered small business owners across Canada a chance to win one grand prize of $20,000 and six regional prizes of $5,000. In cinemas this weekend (Guardian Unlimited) RocknRolla | The Duchess | Bangkok Dangerous | Disaster Movie | Sweete Land | El Cantante | Never Apologise | Mera Pind My Home Site: entrepreneurialism - Google News Ohio House Speaker Budish touts regionalism in his first address - WKYC-TV
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