Surviving Pain as a Teacher Several years ago, I attended the funeral of an infant daughter of a precious young couple who attended our church. At the graveside service, her young mother gave a brief speech. She said that when she attended college, a teacher pointed out four young coeds – she being one of the four – and said, “Statistically, two of you will suffer through a divorce, one of you will lose a child, and one of you will struggle with cancer.” (the teacher herself was dying of ovarian cancer at the time) And then the teacher warned, “You had better understand now that no one goes through life untouched by pain or tragedy. Prepare now so that you can be one of life’s survivors, not one of its victims“. Surviving life is the ultimate challenge for us. We have survived countless, painful tragedies. Many of you reading this have suffered a storm or two in life and have felt pains that were most uncomfortable. We have many goals for which we’re striving. But occasionally, we must be reminded that the journey of our lives is not merely the reaching of a goal, but the striving for it! We become the kind of person more worthy of our dreams while we strive to attain them. It’s not the reaching of a destination, but the journey itself that makes up this thing we call “life.” One of our greatest instructors on these journeys is also one of our most dreaded invaders: PAIN Pain is a gift. Without pain, we would not know any one of hundreds of dangerous and deadly actions that through pain or the dread of it we now have learned to avoid. Pain is a great teacher, however, it is not a kind teacher with a sweet and loving personality. And so, we fight pain, resisting the beautiful lessons that pain is trying to teach us. Pain is often the teacher screaming in my ears so loudly I just want the pain to go away. Pain doesn’t teach in beautiful words that please our ears. It screams and terrorizes us and we must fight just to listen to it. Pain cannot help that it is so unattractive and unwanted; it is only trying to preserve our lives by teaching us. But the pain was so sharp and piercing, that we quickly learned to greatly dislike pain. As we get older, the pain becomes greater. Yet, again, pain is trying to teach us, if we are willing to calm down and listen to what it is saying. If pain has entered your life, try to follow this advice: 1. Can I calm my breathing and my panic to begin thinking and not reacting? 2. Can I engage my brain as well as my heart to work as a team to help...
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How to Identify Bad Business Partners Our four-part series, “How Business Partnerships Fail and How You Can Succeed” continues with this week’s article. We discuss “How to Identify Bad Business Partners“. Last week, we opened this series by talking about the different reasons that business partnerships fail. Now that you’ve decided to consider bringing on a partner, it’s time to discuss how to identify whether you’re joining-up with a good partner or a bad one. When it comes to business partnerships, there are certain types of people and personalities that you want to look out for. These people need to be the type that will be an asset and a partner rather than a thorn in your side. There are two types of people in business partnerships. Those that are there to make the business succeed and those that are there to make themselves succeed. I’ve had several experiences in business partnering and I wish that I knew then what I know now. I was forced to learn the hard way. I want you to avoid that lesson! Below, I’m going to list several tell-tale signs that you should avoid: The Negative: 1. A potential business partner that demands a substantial salary: When small businesses are birthed, there typically is not sufficient capital to pay the partners a substantial salary. One of the more popular reasons for business partnering is the desire to grow the business. Additionally increasing the bottom line in order to have the ability to pay employees higher salaries. Yet, this potential partner demands a high salary while the other partner doesn’t get one. This obviously makes zero sense. We all have living expenses, but when you’re in the beginning stages of a new business, everyone is going to need to make sacrifices. So if you have a potential partner who’s intentions of greed become clear from the start, avoid them at all costs! 2. A potential business partner who refuses to invest any of their personal money into the company, yet they expect you to put up all of your own money: I had one who wanted a large portion of the company and profits, yet he was never willing to put one dime of his own money up to grow the company. The problem was that he wanted half the cake without including his own ingredients. These type of people are literally like leaches. They suck-out all of the positive and leave you only with the leftovers. 3. A potential business partner that wishes to hire their spouse, family or close friends right out of the gate: Look, I under stand that in small companies, it’s normal to hire employee’s spouses, family or friends. You typically trust these people and they can make good employees. When a potential business partner requests this right out of the gate, it can...
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When it comes to your business, one of the most important things that you deal with is your “brand“. This is also one of the most over-used words in the corporate work place today. It has become a catch phrase like the term “synergy“. Understanding how valuable your brand is ranks right up there with profit and loss statements at the end of your year. There are extreme studies that can help you determine your brand equity. What concerns me most of all is the flippant way small businesses use their brand. They carelessly make changes to their look, their materials, their logo, and various other visual representations of who they are. They wonder how these large brands have arrived at where they currently are without ever considering what it took to get there. Take Walt Disney for instance. One of the most recognizable brands in the world. Its logo is a scripted font without much contrast or color. It has remained the same for decades. Their brand has superseded a man’s name and as become what children wonder about and what parents are comfortable giving to their children without question of its content. It has become a magical place filled with enchantment and fun. How did all of that come out of a man’s name that was written in a lackluster font? Maybe it’s in this that we find that our emphasis should not always be on how we look, but who we truly are as an organization. This reminds me of how I used to pick movies or books off of a shelf. My wife would always rave about what she had seen or read while I was always disappointed with my choices. I have always been fooled by the glitz and glamor of the cover while my wife would always take the time to discern based on content. We are in an age where our content is available everywhere and our content is far more important that the look we give it. Consider looking at one of our brands that we use to set us apart in the markets that we invest in. Ann Lee Interiors, www.annleeinteriors.com. There are many advantages to developing and utilizing our own interior brand: 1. A brand makes one’s company look legitimate 2. A brand sets one apart from the competition 3. A brand allows one to avoid the appearance of a “rehabber” and rather appear as a custom home designer – which results in a higher purchase price 4. A brand gives one the feeling of being “custom.” People equate “custom” with expensive. We are able to provide the customer what THEY want on all price points So, get out there and start “branding!” To receive information or to register for our live “Marketing Academy” events, visit www.andrewcordle.com To register...
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In 2003, Laurence Gonzales wrote “Deep Survival”. This is perhaps the finest book on survival I’ve ever read, certainly the most compulsive and insightful. Gonzales wrote, “Those who can control the impulse to survive, live. Those who can’t, die. That’s the simplest way to explain survival”. In our first blog on this series, I wrote of pain as being a great teacher. Albeit a most unappealing one. When we humans find ourselves in deep trouble, we feel the icy fingers of fear and pain. Our natural impulse is to follow our panicked emotions. Nothing could be more dangerous to our survival! We have all felt the jolt in our heart at sudden fear. That jolt is caused by the chemical nor-epinephrine which is produced in our adrenal glands. The chemicals that pour suddenly into our system at an emergency moment increase our heart beat and respiration. They divert blood from the stomach and make it available for muscles to run or fight. Our vision becomes more tunnel-like and our senses are keenly focused often to the detriment of other important factors that could help us. Being able to engage the reasoning intelligent mind while being flooded with the adrenal cocktail is one of the essential factors in survival. We all know from history of the numerous wealthy bankers and businessmen who jumped out of tall buildings when the 1929 stock market crash wiped out their wealth. Their emotions shut down their impartial reasoning and all they felt was panic, humiliation, and shame. Others, who felt all of those same emotions and who lost just as much, recovered, started over, and rebuilt their fortunes. But telling people, “Don’t Panic!” is like trying to saddle an angry rhinoceros. One learns over the course of life how not to panic. In truth, you bring to every crisis the person you have been preparing throughout your lifetime. You won’t “not panic” if you have not been training for that moment via all the other “emergencies” of life. One person’s marriage ends with the terrible clash of words and emotional bombs. Anothers ends by a vacant house with a note taped to the refrigerator. However it ends, the loss can become crippling, causing one to seek refuge in self-pity, drugs, alcohol or worse. The other understands that marriages- even good ones- often have life spans, similar to giant trees in the forest – eventually all die and fall. The person feels all of the same emotions of loss, regret, humiliation, and rejection; yet, that person moves forward where life and living are, not trying to re-grow a fallen oak, but by planting a new one and reforesting his life again. Do you have the heart to survive? Is it in your heart to want to get back up when you’ve already been knocked down seventeen times? Remember,...
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