Business Management

let’s Reduce the Stress Levels

Any business person aiming high is going to be stressed at times. But many owners/managers have learned positive ways to reduce stress. Here are a few ideas that may help keep stress under control.





1. Remind yourself of the positives
Usually people are stressed about just one or two areas of their business. If they only took a moment to look at the big picture, they would see that the vast majority of their business is going well. Make a list and refer to it frequently.

2. Clarify and prioritize objectives
Clarity enhances serenity. If you’re stressed by how much you have to do, get precise about exactly what tasks must be done. Once you’ve created your list put a circle around the truly crucial tasks. Most of the time stressed executives have exaggerated just how much they have to do.

3. Breathe deeply and relax
Take a deep breath. Then as you exhale imagine all your problems and stress leaving you. Do this just 3 times and your feeling of being stressed will dissipate significantly.

4. Focus on helping others
One of the most effective techniques for reducing your stress is to take the focus off yourself. When you start devoting time to helping others around you inevitably spend less time thinking about your own problems. It may seem strange to connect the two, but the truth is many people who are stressed in the corporate world are so partly because they are incessantly thinking about their own issues and situation, rather than others. We need to balance the two.

I hope some of these techniques help. By proactively acting to improve circumstances we regain a feeling of control and possibility. If we continue acting we soon get a change in our situation and the situation improves.
Please let me know your thoughts. gerry@polarisgroupmc.com

entrepreneurship

Essential Entrepreneur Skills to Succeed

What does it take to be successful starting your own small business?

Here are some skills every successful entrepreneur has in common:








1. Resiliency. The ability to weather the ups and downs of any business since it never goes exactly the way the business plan described it. This skill enables the entrepreneur to keep going when the outlook is bleak.
2. Focus. After setting a long term vision, knowing how to “laser focus” on the very next step to get closer to the ultimate goal. There are so many distracting forces when trying to build a business that this skill is not easy to master.
3. Invest for the long-term. Most entrepreneurs are not patient and focus only on what comes next, rather than where the company needs to go. Overnight success may take 7 to 10 years. Entrepreneurs need to stop, pause and plan on a quarterly basis.
4. Find and manage people. Only by learning to leverage employees, vendors and other resources will an entrepreneur build a scalable company. They need to learn to network to meet the right people. Entrepreneurs strive to guarantee they will get honest and timely feedback from all these sources.
5. Learn. Successful entrepreneurs realize they don’t know everything and the market is constantly changing. They stay up to date on new systems, technology, and industry trends.

I hope these thoughts help you plan for a successful venture. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone.