Growing up, all I could think about was what the future held and where I was going next; the fact that I was ‘young’ never really entered my mind! These days, I’m doing my best to appreciate the strength I still have, plus finally having the freedom to do what I’ve always wanted. Certainly, getting older means accepting that gravity is working against me now. But, it doesn’t mean I have to feel or act like the best years of my life have already passed me by. Here are a few ways that have helped me look and feel vital, even as I grow older.

1. Surround yourself with fun, lively and interesting people. The flipside of that is to avoid spending time with people who complain about how old they feel; often they will just pull you right down with them and make you feel old too. Instead, surround yourself with people who feel and act young, both inside and out.

2. Work your brain. A study published in Journal of the American Medical Association shows that brain exercises can prevent mental decline, and the benefits can last for years. Do puzzles like Sudoku, word games, play Scrabble, and make sure to read, read, read. In addition to keeping your brain healthy, you might learn something!

3. Seeing the world and discovering how other people live can add years to your life. Plus, taking the time to plan wonderful things for the future gives you something to look forward to. If your physical or financial circumstances prevent getting on an airplane, train or traveling by car, watch travel documentaries or read books about faraway destinations and their histories and people.

4. Eat healthy. Healthy foods, especially those with Omega-3 fatty acids like salmon, walnuts, and seeds, help improve your mood, maintain bone strength, and help prevent visible signs of aging. Omega-3s also keep your skin radiant, a sure sign of health.

5. Exercise every day. Remember, even if you’re achy or tired, you don’t have to run a marathon every day. Just get moving! Soon you’ll forget about how tired you are, and you’ll have more energy to do all of the fun things you truly want to do. And not only does regular exercise help you lose weight, build strong bones and tone muscles, it boosts your mood, relieves stress and improves mental functioning.

6. After all that healthy eating and exercise, take time with your appearance. Get your hair done (including coloring to hide the grey if that’s what you want). Wear clothes that you feel good in and flatter your coloring and body. Get a mani/pedi and show off those hands and feet. Freshly painted nails make me feel gorgeous every time! And if taking time with your appearance means getting help in the way of medical treatments like Botox or wrinkle fillers, don’t be afraid to just do it!

7. Be spontaneous. When you do something out of the ordinary and on barely a moment’s notice, this can make you feel alive and young. As a grandmother, I now pay attention to children because they know how to be happy, young, and carefree.

8. Most of all, give yourself a break! Stressing about getting older is worthless –it happens to us all. And stress, as we all know, makes us feel and act old! I help relieve stress by exercising, being with friends and family, and taking time for myself. Even 10 minutes of alone time to meditate can help prevent age-related changes in the brain.

We’re all getting older, but that doesn’t mean we have to feel or act like we are ready to be put out to pasture. Because with age comes wisdom, and I’m wise enough to know that you’re only as old as you feel. Just sayin’. 

Published: New Mexico Apartment News Magazine – July/August issue 2016

We’ve all heard the saying, “People do business with those they like, know, and trust.” It’s true! Business and personal success is all about the right connections. These connections – colleagues, employees, customers, friends, and partners – and more importantly, the people that THEY know, lead to new opportunities. But how do these connections actually form?

Many of us instinctively recognize when someone is only in it for themselves. These are the wrong connections, right? Right! Here are some ways to find and cultivate the right connections, where everyone involved believes in the principal of win-win relationships.

1. Ask questions first. Before you launch into a hard sell with a prospect or a bragging session with a potential new friend, take time to ask them about themselves or their business. When you ask questions, you help your customer (and potential new friend) explain what they’re looking for and recognize your interest in them as genuine. Questions are fundamental to relationship building, and the more skilled you are at asking them, the stronger the relationship you’ll create.

2. Really listen. There’s nothing worse than feeling ignored, or like you’re the distraction when it’s obvious that someone isn’t focusing on the conversation. Really focus on what the other person is saying before you respond. Nobody likes a person that seems to only be waiting for their turn to talk.

3. Remember things. Do you remember when you would walk into a local store and everyone knew your name? Or asked about your dog or cat? Or mentioned they liked your new haircut? When you remember one or two details about someone – a customer, a vendor, or a friend – you show you value that person. Everyone likes to feel important, and showing you took the time and interest to listen to someone enough to remember these details is one way to do that.

4. Be honest. Be honest about yourself, your own business and your capabilities. By creating an open culture, especially about your own shortcomings, you encourage people to be honest with you. I’ve found this is one of the biggest things that helps build trust.

5. Talk about yourself. Once you’ve done all of the above, you can make it personal by revealing something about yourself. Just be sure it’s something genuine your potential connect can relate to and isn’t too personal. It’s important that the connection be real.

6. Connect Face-to-Face. While it’s often much quicker and less stressful to email a connection, face-to-face meetings create far more meaningful connections – both for personal and business relationships. If your potential connection is far away, consider using Skype or FaceTime to put a real face to the conversation.

7. Be patient. Like most important things, it takes time to develop lasting relationships in your personal life and in business. So don’t rush the process. We’re all busy, but expecting an instant connection with anyone is unrealistic.

8. Make time. The flip side of being patient is making time to connect. Schedule lunch or coffee dates with friends and potential business connections to strengthen the relationships. Attend networking events yourself regularly without expecting an instant increase in sales. Ask your employees and colleagues to leave the office periodically to attend networking events organizations. The fresh ideas you all will learn and new people you will meet will inspire you all further.

Our real goal in making connections should be to learn from, and build real relationships with people who challenge us to stretch our thinking. Of course, friends, relatives and people who are just like us are important, but to be truly successful and reach our full potential, we should create important and meaningful connections with a broad sweep of people. When we’re open to the universe putting the right people in our path, we’re sure to find connections everywhere. Just sayin’.

Published: New Mexico Apartment News Magazine – May/June issue 2016

Spending some quality time by yourself can make a world of difference in your thinking and in your body. But making yourself a priority, even once in a while, is really hard for many of us – especially those of us with family responsibilities. However, spending time alone can recharge your spirit in ways that being with people, even ones we love, cannot. Here are some reasons to be alone, and ways to make solitude easier (because it’s hard in our ever more constantly connected world) and productive.

1. Dump the guilt and realize that being alone doesn’t mean lonely, sad or antisocial. Our culture tends to turn a desire for solitude into a bad thing. But seeking alone time can be healthy, with plenty of psychological and physical benefits. Some people, particularly women, feel guilty about taking time for themselves. As caregivers, we should be taking care of everyone else, right? But taking care of yourself not only models healthy behavior for others, it keeps you happy, healthy, and strong.

2. Schedule time alone and disconnect. Set aside some time each day to unplug from everything and everyone. You can wake up early, get to the office early or stay late, stay up later than everyone, or even use your lunch hour as a break for yourself. Turn off all your devices. Meditate. Write in a journal. Walk. Sit in the sun outside. Go to a park and eat lunch. Enjoy the time you have alone. Once a week or month, schedule a whole day when you get away from everyone – go to the movies by yourself, eat a meal alone, go for a solo hike, bike ride or drive.

3. Alone time allows you to relax and actually give your brain a chance to rest. Being “on” all the time means your brain is also “on.” It needs a chance to catch up, rest and recharge. Being by yourself means you can clear your mind, focus, and think more clearly.

4. Solitude helps boost concentration and productivity. By removing distractions and interruptions, your concentration will increase tremendously! You’ll be able to get much more done in a shorter period of time.

5. Quality time alone allows you to discover yourself. Being part of a group is wonderful, but it’s tempting to always go along with the group’s decisions and opinions. That may not always be the action or thinking you would follow if you were on your own. The clearer you are on your own thinking, decision making and needs, the more you can contribute to the group.

6. Solitude can mean time to think. I don’t know about you, but my to-do list is endless! The temptation to add to it all the time often means putting off thinking other, equally important, thoughts. This can stifle creativity and actually make you less productive as a whole. Distractions are everywhere – your television, computer or any other electronic device; even the people we love the most can often be a distraction. It’s hard to think of a solution any problem, big or small, when these distractions are disrupting your focus.

7. Alone time can enhance your relationships with others. By spending time with yourself and getting a better handle on who you are and what you want, you’ll have more clarity about who you want to your spend time with and why. You’ll appreciate your relationships even more! 

8. Don’t be afraid to close your door. Or if you don’t have a door, put a sign on your wall that asks people to come back later. If your space can’t be closed off from distractions, try wearing noise-cancelling headphones to block the world out. Once you begin making time for yourself, you may run into resistance from others – they want your attention like always! But don’t let that stop you. Let them know that you’re still there for them, but you need your designated alone time. They’ll quickly realize that you taking time for yourself means you’ll be back to them refreshed.

The demands of life and business can mean finding time for ourselves is a challenge. But the effort is worth it – both for your body and your spirit. Now, there’s no “one-size-fits-all” formula for solitude. Try different activities for 15 minutes at a time and see which work best for you. Or take an hour, or a day. Sometimes all it takes is a bit of fine tuning. A refreshed, enlightened and confident person is better than being stressed out, distracted and grumpy, right? Just sayin’.

Published: New Mexico Apartment News Magazine – March/April issue 2016

It’s the New Year and what better way to start off the year than by getting happy and improving your life. For years, practiced ways to improve my life and direct it on a simpler path. When the going gets tough, I get going with these trusty practices that always help me refocus on my ultimate goals – being a happier, healthier person.

Here are a few simple but powerful actions you can take that have certainly helped me over the years.

Exercise more. This has totally changed my life and as a bonus, I look and feel better. You probably already know that exercise is better than tranquilizers for relieving anxiety and stress. Not only does exercise provide its own stress reduction and feelings of well-being, but the sense of well-being actually lasts well beyond the exercise itself.

Sleep more. We have become a nation of sleep-deprived citizens. I find myself less sensitive to negative emotions when I’ve had enough rest. Rest equals recharging your creativity and energy. Getting into bed at 8 p.m. with a great book and turning the light out an hour later, or even just taking a quality nap in the afternoon, can do more for your mood than any number of bubble baths or massages.

Go outside. Whenever I get a chance and the weather is nice I like to eat outside as well as walk. When you’re layered properly, you can enjoy the outdoors in all of its beautiful seasons. There are some fun and healthy outdoor activities available during the rainy or cold months, too. These days, we have even less interaction with nature, but it may be when we need it the most!

Help others. A popular New Year’s resolution is to volunteer, something that can take many forms. Whether you choose to spend time helping out at your local library, mentoring a child, or as big a project as building a house, there are always nonprofit organizations that want and could really use your help. If your time is in short supply, why not just clean out your clutter? Donate your old furniture, clothing, and other household items you no longer need, rather than leaving them in basements and attics to collect dust, or out by the curb to fill up our landfills.

Practice smiling. Fake it until you make it! Life is always going to have its low points, but being able to laugh them off and not take things too seriously always helps lighten the mood.

Move closer to work. Even though I live in the mountains, I’m only 17 minutes away from my office. Knowing at the end of a hard day that I have only a short distance to go is comforting. Plus I save the stress of being in traffic, wear and tear on my vehicle, and have more time to do the things I enjoy – like ride my horse, or take a walk in nature.

Spend time with family and friends – don’t regret it on your deathbed. Getting the family together can sometimes be hectic but after it’s all said and done, it’s all worth getting together. I still have friends from my childhood as well as high school, these good friends are hard to find. Pick up the phone for a simple conversation or say, “I’m in town, let’s have lunch.” This gets you out of yourself and into someone else’s world.

Practice gratitude. When was the last time you said “thank you” with all your heart? Sometimes I forget that I have so much to be grateful for. A true attitude of gratitude is a key to success in any part of our lives. Listing daily all that I’m grateful for keeps me in a positive state of gratitude.

Meditation. My last step to improve happiness in my life is meditation – or clearing your mind and calming yourself down. For 30 minutes each day, I slow down to think, plan, and visualize. I have become aware of my biggest opportunities, smartest activities, and greatest tactics for growth. With this amount of insight and clarity, I can take actions that will drive excellent results. Really commit to making it your breakthrough year and know you’ll have to slow down for a bit each day to accomplish this. Then you’ll be perfectly prepared to speed up and win.

These practices have improved both my personal and professional lives, and help me become happier and healthier every day – even on the bad days. Let them do the same for you. Just sayin’.

Published: New Mexico Apartment News Magazine – Jan/Feb issue 2016

When you run a business, the holidays are both a time of joy and a time of stress. Instead of much-needed time to turn off work and enjoy our families, we owners, managers and supervisors feel guilty or stressed for not getting anything done. If we do keep working, we feel guilty for not spending more time with family.
For me, the holidays are time to slow down, keep it simple, and enjoy family and friends. That includes our work family – our coworkers, suppliers, vendors and accounts. We use the time between Thanksgiving and the New Year to visit the people and other businesses that have helped us have a great year – to show them how grateful we are for their patronage. And we throw our own parties, both in the office and with friends and family.

Here are some ways I’ve discovered to make the holidays less stressful, but still feel like we’ve accomplished our business goals.

Organize. Since you know that you won’t be “working” the way you would during a normal work week or month, plan your tasks and projects accordingly. Make to-do lists: one for the important things that you need to get done before the break and another for what you need to work on after the break.

Communicate your schedule and expectations. Talk with your family and coworkers before the holiday and find out how much time you and they would like to take off. Work your way towards a compromise that you are both happy with. This puts a plan in place for everyone, and more importantly, everyone has helped create the plan. That means less guilt for everyone, too.

Schedule work and play. Getting some work done is great, but do make time to step away. Schedule a time for socializing, both in the office and out. For us, this means taking entire days out of the office and visiting accounts with a small token of our appreciation for the past year’s patronage. Scheduling these activities means you can spend time working or with your family without feeling stressed-out, since you know that this was planned.

Don’t overbook yourself. Make sure you end up with work and social activities that are manageable and that you can deliver on. The last thing you want is disappointment. This includes allowing enough time to account for other people being on vacation, and for your own for sleep, exercise, and relaxation.

Known the consequences of NOT taking time off. For many of us, taking time away feels like a luxury. Some 25 percent of US workers don’t take any vacation at all. But working too much makes us stupider, according to the American Journal of Epidemiology, depressed, a study in the UK, and actually hurts our chances for a promotion or better job. That’s according to a study by Ernst & Young that found a positive relationship between fewer hours overall and performance. For each additional ten hours away from the office employees took, their performance reviews were eight percent higher the following year!

Try these tips to give yourself permission to enjoy the holidays this year. Rather than feeling like you got off track because you were enjoying the good cheer of the season, you simply continue the momentum you had already begun. And as a result you’ll have fun without guilt, because you’ve set it up so your business is flowing right along. And you can show your clients appreciation – a great opportunity!

So rethink “work” this holiday season, because it is a great time to re-prioritize, remembering that family and friends are life’s true gifts. After all, on their deathbeds, no one ever said say “I wish I had spent more time at work.” Just sayin’.

Published: New Mexico Apartment News Magazine – Nov/Dec issue 2015

For many of us, especially those with children, the fall can be the true start of the year. With cooler weather and less pressure than at the beginning of the year, it can be easier to feel energized and invigorated than in January. That’s why I often review and revise my calendar year goals, as well as set a few new ones in the fall. I’ve found it really helps when you have some momentum going into the coming New Year. That way you aren’t starting out the New Year in the same spot and with the same ambitions as last year.

The fall also tends to be a little calmer than when things start to go crazy for the holidays. Here are some ideas to help you get a firm base set and get things in order for the rest of the year so you don’t feel overwhelmed when the craziness of the end of the year hits.

Figure out what drives you. If you want the biggest leg up in your career and life, the best thing you can do is figure out what drives you. Are you a people person but stuck in a job that requires lots of alone time? Maybe that’s why your work goals seem so daunting and like such a big undertaking. Figuring out what drives you means knowing what really matters to you, what motivates you, and what makes you exceptional. Set goals that allow you to use this internal motivation and you’ll be amazed at how much you can get done.

Uncover your strengths & skills. These are your talents, skills, and abilities – the things that people praise you and seek your guidance for. Knowing what you are best at allows you to take advantage of opportunities; most of the time these strengths and skills are the things we love to do or just what we are naturally good at. If your goals aren’t aligned with your strengths and skills, think about slowly shifting them towards what you really thrive at. This will make it much easier to achieve them.

Define your values & principles. Your strengths address the question of “what?” Your values and principles answer the questions “how?” These underlying beliefs steer everything you do and help define who you are or want to be. Living your life in harmony with your values and principles makes reaching goals much easier. If you don’t value money, then reaching a sales goal probably won’t be easy. But if helping people is an underlying belief, then a goal of having 100% customer satisfaction could really get you moving.

Review the year so far. You can’t know where you want to go without looking at where you’ve been. As you think back on the year so far and the goals you set in January, what were your big victories? What slowed you down? What would you have done differently if you had to do it over again? Is there anything you left unresolved or unfinished? Taking the time to review these simple questions can make a huge difference in setting the tone for the rest of your year.

Set 3 top work-related goals. What are my top three work-related goals for the remainder of the year? Why are those goals important to me? What habits and processes do I need to adopt to support those goals? Being happy with your work life can lead to happiness outside it, too.

Set 3 top personal goals. What are my top three personal goals for the remainder of the year? Why are those goals important to me? Who can I share those goals with to help hold me accountable? No matter how great your work life is, you can never be truly happy if you’re not satisfied with your personal life. Make sure that the goals of both of these parts of your life complement one another; conflicting goals often lead to little or no progress at all.

The fall is a great time for reflection on how the year has gone so far. It’s also a great time to make preliminary goals for the coming year and address your course for the rest of the year to help put you in a good place to reach those goals. Are you making forward progress on all the great things you set out to accomplish? How will you make the most of the rest of this year? I’ll be sitting down with my 2015 goals this month, reflecting and revising based on how the year has gone, and making plans for 2016. Set yourself up to have a great start in the coming year and you’ll be much more likely to keep moving forward toward all your goals. Just sayin’. 

Published: New Mexico Apartment News Magazine – Sept/Oct issue 2015

Finding and hiring the right people is easier said than done, but it’s an important part of owning a small business. Training and processing new employees is expensive, so managing turnover and improving employee retention is an excellent way to keep tabs on your bottom line. That starts with getting the right people in the right positions in the first place.

Here are some ideas for finding and hiring the right people the first time.

Write better job descriptions. Less is better: try to describe on the core essence of your open position – job duties, qualifications and requirements. Focus on the biggest priority tasks for a position and save the details for the interview. Remove the obvious, focus on the unique – everyone wants salespeople with killer instincts, but focus on the unique skills you want them to demonstrate.

Hire for your culture. When hiring new employees, you need to find individuals that fit your culture and will be passionate about building a loyal client base. Culture’s all that invisible stuff that glues organizations together. It includes things like everyone agreeing on the purpose, values, and approach to serving the customer. This is hard to explain, hard to measure, and hard to manage.

Ask for employee referrals. One of the best ways to find people who fit your culture is to ask your current staff for referrals. If you already have a few high performers on staff, they might have friends or acquaintances that would be a good fit for your company. This has worked out the best for us.

Get input from your team and take your time with the interview process. When you do identify a candidate who looks promising, have them meet a lot of people within your company. To hire somebody on one interview is crazy. Vet people and gauge their interest by bringing them in to meet several staff – and not just the people they’ll be working with and for. You’ll get different opinions to help you make the best decision.

Go with your intuition. This might sound like a no-brainer but when you’re faced with the opportunity to hire some a person with a great resume and experience, it can be easy to dismiss the little voice inside your head that says you just don’t like him. You’ll be spending a lot of time with the people on your team. If something about their personality drives you crazy, think twice about hiring them.

Look for flexible applicants. Hiring an employee that’s committed to working hard doesn’t just mean finding someone that will stay late, come early or send emails on the weekend just to impress you. It means finding someone that is able to focus on the building blocks, getting simple but often boring fundamentals of business right. And someone who will pitch in no matter the situation – even when it’s not technically in their job description.

Will they learn? Paying more attention to candidates’ ability to learn than previous experience demonstrates more than their resume. Can a potential employee tell you how they dealt with difficult customers at their waitressing job? What about the one who grew from laborer to foreman because he paid attention to what the customer wanted and delivered? When a candidate can tell you what she got out of the job rather than just listing her responsibilities, she’s more qualified that someone who has done the job before.

Finding the best employees for your company takes some time. To build the team that you want, take a step back from resumes and candidates’ pre-determined interview responses to look for individuals that will fit your company culture and are eager to learn new tasks. Just sayin.

Fashion. The times. The weather. All things that change. What about your ideas? What about your business? How long has it been since something changed in your life or company? Because if your life or business becomes stale, without fresh ideas and thoughts, or a new outlook on customer service, employee satisfaction and retention, you get stuck in a rut that prevents you from making progress. And if your business won’t be around for long without the ability to embrace change and implement new ideas.

Many people are resistant to change. But not because they don’t like new ideas. Maybe they don’t completely understand how it works or how it will help. Why do we need a new website when the old one is “fine?” Why do our cars need a new image wrapped on them when everyone likes the old ones?

Just like our clothes, sometimes our branding simply wears out. The logo looks dated. The messaging starts to wear thin. So like our clothing, we change our marketing – both tactics and branding so that we don’t become stale.

The same thing applies to your life. That’s why people take vacations – to get out of their ordinary routine and see new things. With luck, those new things, experiences and ideas will translate into their non-vacation existence.

Here are some ideas for keeping your ideas fresh, both in life and business:

1. Embrace new technology. Learning to use a new technology is a great way to refresh your own thinking. If you remember when putting together a flyer for business involved scissors and glue, I certainly hope you’ve discovered how easy computers and programs like Photoshop make creating new materials. If you don’t, you’re probably already using the latest, greatest apps!

2. Ask your customers. Ever ask your customers what they think of you? What you could do better? What they’d like next? Asking a customer’s opinion is one of the easiest and most rewarding ways to get new ideas and refresh your old ways of thinking.

3. Ask your employees. The people who talk with your customers every day probably have some thoughts. Why not take advantage of their ideas and concerns. After all, they are on the front lines of your company’s efforts every day. Use them!

4. Reward people. If your customer or employee has a new, innovative and interesting idea, reward them. Everyone likes to feel valued, and a gift card or catered lunch goes a long way to keeping employees and customers engaged.

5. Don’t complain (for a day, week, month). Want to see someone else’s point of view? Don’t complain about anything. In fact, consciously try to see the positive in everything. Even if you’re a highly positive person, it’s difficult not to utter one negative sentence for even 24 hours. This one is also great practice for becoming conscious of your thoughts.

6. Take a different route to work or climb the stairs. This is a great challenge to keep alert, discover new places, get a better understanding of your city and to have more fun while doing one of the mundane daily tasks of life.

7. Learn something new. If you want to learn how to cook you need to practice, practice, practice. Forcing yourself to try a new recipe each day is a great way to learn of more techniques and ingredients. Always wanted to know everything about customer service? Being an entrepreneur? How tennis balls are made? Educate yourself without school! Pick a topic, visit your library, or call an expert and ask!

Change can be hard, but often, it is rewarding. Even fun. That’s why people come back from vacation with new energy. In business, change can be even harder, as we’re often reluctant to mix up the status quo. Why change something if the old thing has been working? But is it really? Or have you become complacent and self-satisfied with how things are. Who knows, maybe that new idea could catapult your business to whole other level! Just sayin’. 

Published: New Mexico Apartment News Magazine – May/June issue 2015

The beginning of the year is a time to look to the past and decide what one wants in the future. Many business people do that in January, but I prefer to do it in the spring, when a feeling of renewal after the long winter brings excitement for the future. So I ask myself, what am I willing to do, and how am I going to reach my goals?

Measuring and monitoring are critical, necessary tools you need in order to reach your goals. Any planning we’ve done previously won’t have a chance of succeeding if we can’t judge know how far we’ve come, or how far we have to go. If we don’t know where our ideal end point is, we can’t know which road will take us there. On the other hand, when we do know where to go, we can set up milestones and monitor our progress along the path. Here’s a different way to think about it:

We measure, we achieve. A simple system that is actually implemented is better than a complex one that is unused, right? So don’t think you need some complex computer based contact management software to track appointments, numbers of leads called or proposals sent. Use whatever tools get the job done. There are very successful business people who get great results using an Excel spreadsheet, or even plain index cards.

Pick measurable items. What all should you be measuring and monitoring? Some examples from the sales world include numbers of sales meetings you have; the kinds of meetings they were (first time, follow up visits, etc.); the number of leads and /or prospects in your sales pipeline; the number of proposals you send/estimates you write; number of proposals/estimates that turn into paying clients; the value of the clients; as well as the locations and kinds of clients they are.

If customer service improvement is your goal, you could measure and monitor the length of customer calls, ask your customer what they think about your service via an electronic survey or by contacting them via letter or on the telephone, set up a customer service training program for front line employees – those who have immediate contact with customers.

The point is to measure and monitor the data that is most meaningful to your business. For some businesses, it’s the number of widgets made. For others it’s the dollar amount of each sale. For still others, it’s how long a customer stays with you.

Make it a point to actually review your data. You’ve got some data, but are you hitting your targets? When you look at a month, quarter or year, what does it tell you compared to prior time periods? Are there areas you’ve neglected? Or has one of your target items exploded such that you’re barely keeping up? That’s a good problem to have.

Adjust your targets accordingly. Now that you know how well you’re doing compared to your goals, you can adjust your methods to reach them, or adjust your goals if you’re finding they weren’t the most reasonable to begin with.

So ask yourself if and what you’re measuring and monitoring. Are you doing these things now? If not, why not? Is it fear of knowing the answers? Of needing to change the way you do things? Of needing to make hard decisions for the success of your business?

If you are doing well, how could you improve your process to do even better? What would it take to get the discipline you need to really be successful?

Either way, you won’t know if you’ve arrived unless you know where you’re going. Just sayin’.

Published: New Mexico Apartment News Magazine – March/April issue 2015

What are you going to do to make sure that you have the best year ever? What one thing will mean the difference in actually achieving your goals, rather than chalking them up to yet another year’s unfulfilled resolutions? Think about it!

Here are a few helpful tips that will help give you a “leg up” for this coming year. 

Clean out your closet and donate unwanted clothes to charity. This is one of my favorite New Year activities, and it’s the first thing I do each January to get myself moving in the right direction. Uncover, discover and discard unwanted clutter in your closet so that you can find clarity in your life. Studies have shown that there is a link between physical clutter and psychological clutter; cleaning out your closets, drawers and storage areas actually frees up mental space for new, exciting activities and creative thoughts. Plus, you get the added bonus of giving back to someone who could really benefit from the things you don’t need anymore.

Build values everyday. People do business with people they trust and who make them feel valued. Thus, our values of customer service and providing exceptional products should guide every decision we make and every conversation and interaction we have. This includes our own team members as well as our customers. If we can’t link what we do to one of our values, we should ask ourselves why we’re doing it. It’s that simple. 

Expand your thinking with new experiences. Commit to trying something new that you have always considered doing, but haven’t ever had the little extra push to go for it. You could take a class, hike a new trail, volunteer for a cause that you find meaningful, read a book on a subject you’re unfamiliar with, or even research and plan a vacation (you don’t actually have to take the vacation to get the benefit of expanding your thoughts and getting motivated). After you accomplish or even just try something new, take the time to notice how the experience affects your life. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.”  Make it a point to leave your comfort zone and experience something new!

Slow down to speed up. It’s easy to stay busy and constantly be moving as fast as you possibly can. But, what’s the point of spending your days climbing a random mountain, only to realize at the end of the year you’ve climbed one that didn’t help you reach your goal? At the beginning and end of each day, try to slow down, think, visualize where you want to go and write it down.  You’d be amazed at how much of an impact this small task can make on your overall sense of well-being. 

Get a whole new hairstyle or haircut. Can making a small change, such as cutting your hair, really have an impact on your life? Absolutely! Small changes are wonderful ways to get into action and feel good about ourselves. A haircut is one small thing that gives you something to focus on and celebrate – something that will help drastically in keeping you moving forward. A haircut is something you can do right away that demonstrates you have control over your life and what happens to you. 

Make a commitment to fitness – physical and mental. Join a class at your fitness club, an exercise group, a sports team, or, if you can afford it, hire a trainer. Not only will you get in shape and lose a little weight, you develop both mental and physical strength. A healthy mind and active body work in unison to make you a more interesting and happier person.

Help create a more meaningful and magical year for yourself with these few simple steps. Pick the one baby-step you think will be easiest, and then add another when you succeed. Getting a leg up on the New Year doesn’t have to be hard. New Year’s resolutions should be things that make you feel better no matter what, even if you don’t follow through. You just have to stay positive and keep trying. With enough effort and patience, everything will work out. Just sayin’…