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habits

May 17
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Changing Your Team Culture for the Better

By challenges, Blogpost, Food for thought, habits, Leadership, management, opportunities, purpose

No company is perfect. Not even yours. There is always something to improve on. And that is a good thing. Those flaws keep you on your toes and if you have the right mindset for it and you love a good challenge every now and then, you can consider it as the fun part of running a business.

One aspect of the company that you can improve is the team culture. As I have mentioned in one of my previous articles, Building a Winning Team Culture, team culture is the sum of the beliefs, values and attitudes shared by the team members. Since a team is composed of different individuals with different personalities and attitudes, there is a tendency that bad habits will form overtime. It can start with one or two members and would then rub off onto their teammates thus becoming part of the team culture. If left unchecked, it can negatively affect the team and in turn your company. As the business owner, the challenge is to look out for these bad habits and change them. It is not easy to change a deeply ingrained habit in the team but it is never too late to change it.

Choosing What to Add or Change

Changing or adding a value in the existing team culture is a long process. It can take months or years depending on how deeply ingrained the value is. Since it can take a lot of time and effort, let’s make sure that those resources are not wasted. Carefully consider which value is worth adding or changing. Think how big of an impact it can make in the team. Ask yourself if adding or changing a value can come into conflict with some of the existing values in the team culture. Careful consideration and forward thinking are essential when making this decision.

Keep on Repeating

If you want a value to sink in to the team, you need to keep on repeating it. A team meeting is not the only way to remind the team, you can use different mediums to get the point across. You can use e-mail to talk about it or tell stories that are related to that value or habit. You can even build a company event around it. Be creative and fun when going about it. You may sound like a broken record, but you will achieve the results that you are aiming for.

Lead by Example

You are the leader and the team culture is not something that is posted on the wall or a fancy presentation. It’s your team’s core values and attitudes on how you face challenges. If you want the team to adopt a new value or remove an existing one, then you as the team leader should lead by example. Show them how you live by those values and how to apply them.

Apr 23
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Keep Focused: Ways To Shy Away From Distractions

By Attitude, Blogpost, challenges, Food for thought, Goals, habits, mindset

Having focus to achieve what you want is not as easy as it sounds, not with all the distractions that we are facing in our daily lives. Having said that, how do we keep the main thing – the main thing? We are already in the second quarter of the year – do you have a concrete plan on how to spend the next 90 days? Here are some questions I need you to ask yourself and let’s see how these can help us achieve our goals this quarter and on the next.

  • How do you limit distractions?
  • How do you keep the noise out?
  • How do you keep focus?
  • How do you keep the main thing, the main thing?

Typically, this coming quarter we got so many distractions. If you choose to give in to these distractions, we need to consider some things. We’ve got a lot of holidays coming up that the team members can take, clients can take. So,

  • How do you keep focus?
  • How do you ensure that stuff still gets done?
  • How do you ensure that you stay on track?
  • How do you minimize the noise?

How do you keep focused?

There are a couple of things that we do with our clients to help them keep their focus on different tasks or things that they need to do:

  • Phones off unless you’re making phone calls;
  • Emails off unless you’re on email time; and
  • One of the most important things is – who you need to be here right now?

We have over 555 different characteristics. We need to tune in to that person that we need to be for that specific task, for that specific focus on that we need to be focused in.

If it’s making calls, fantastic! Who does that need to be? Who do you need to drop on more of that?

If it’s putting to your proposal, fantastic! Who do you need to be more of that?

So, it’s tapping into that “beingness of you,” it’s all inside of you to ensure you maintain that focus, maintain those characteristics in order to achieve that result.

What happens so often is that people bounce. They bounce from emails to phone calls, to team – like a lucky pinball machine. And what happens when we bounce? Our energy goes up and down. We get overwhelmed so much easily and quicker, and we get frustrated because we feel that we’re not going forward.

Who do you need to be right now?

Now, let’s focus on how do you need to be? This is where an ideal week comes in a place, but more importantly with the ideal week is – who do you need to be in those chunks of time?

That’s the goal thing! That’s the missing link so often I see with people when they’re creating an ideal week, is who do you need to be in that time frame? Not that task associated but who do you need to be in order to do that task on that focused time.

So, there we go! Let’s keep the main thing – the main thing.

Let’s keep the focus.

Let’s keep the drive.

Let’s minimize the distraction.

Let’s achieve some great results today.

Feb 15
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The Power of Review

By Blogpost, Goals, habits, management, mindset

Hi guys! Welcome to another great opportunity to stop and reflect. I just did a quick little podcast around this topic. And it’s around reviewing. The power of REVIEW.

You know I’m going in the car, right!? We’ve got this big wind screen out the front – and then we got a little review mirror at the back. And the reason why we had this review mirror, is so we can actually keep on looking at the rear view.

In our reflection we should ask ourselves, “Am I on the right track? Is there someone coming up the side? And if I make that turn, am I gonna get knocked over?”

And so, this is where we constantly – we need to review.

Again, I’d like to go to four (4) debriefing questions or four (4) reviewing questions when we go through this process. And the questions are:

  1. What’s worked for you? What’s some of the wins? What’s been some of the success for you over the previous year?
  2. What’s been some of the setbacks? What hasn’t worked? What’s been some of the challenges over previous year?
  3. What are some of the key lessons? What are some of the Aha moments that you’ve experienced previous year?
  4. What do you need to be doing different this year?

Now, I try this question all the time. What’s the most important question out of those four? And people go, “Oh, what didn’t work?” and other goes, “Oh, what do I need to be doing differently next time?”

What Did I Learn?

The most important question is, WHAT DID I LEARN?

What was my Aha moment? What were some of the key lessons? Because we run patterns. Everything we do in life, we run patterns.

And when we can look at the good patterns that we run, and the bad patterns that we run – we can go, “you know what? I want to do more good patterns,” right? How do we amplify that?

But then we also need to see our bad patterns – what are those patterns that are holding us back? What change do we need to make, to go from bad to good?

So, the third question is – what are my key lessons, is the most powerful question.

What Do We Review?

Obviously, we go through – and I’ve got a number of area I’m going to suggest you review:

  1. We review health, super important.
  2. Relationships.
  3. Your finances, your investments.
  4. The places that you’ve visited or the experiences that you had.
  5. Also look at new learning throughout the year that you’ve done and achieved.

Are there any other areas, you know?

And obviously, you have on your work front. Looking at, you know, your key lead generation strategies. Your conversion strategies. Client fulfillment strategies. Your business structure – so your legals, your account, your systems, your processes, your planning.

When we go through this, and we do this every quarter with our clients. When we go through this review process, it gets the Aha moments to start to pop. Because now, they’ve reviewed all those four key areas of what’s worked? What hasn’t worked? Key lessons? And what do I need to be doing differently?

And then, boom – when they start to plan for the next quarter, enables them to really go to another level.

So, I’ve got the full outline of that on our upcoming podcast. So jumped on to our website, jamesshort.com.au. Go to podcast. Subscribe. And I’m looking forward to share all or some of the secret sauces with you on other podcasts.

So, there we go! Monday Magic Moments, great way to get started for the week. Let’s get into your review process this week.

Looking forward to speaking with you soon.

Feb 05
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Breathe, Visualize and Move

By Blogpost, Attitude, Food for thought, habits, mindset

Was there ever a time that you felt overwhelmed by so many things that are going on around you? Tasks that you need to finish, work that are piling up by the minute? How did you cope?

I want to share with you today the importance of B.V.M.: B for Breathe, V for Visualize, and M for Move. It’s a cool exercise that we do with a lot of our clients.

This is also an opportunity to really give you a tool that’s going to help you to get through the next couple of weeks at least.

So often, we have so many plates that are spinning around and around at the same time. What I notice is that people go from one plate, starts spinning, and go to another plate – and start spinning, and so on and so forth.

And what it does, it actually results to headache. People get overwhelmed with too much going on at the same time. People get frustrated.

So B.V.M actually allows you to transition those plate spinning. Transition those different tasks, activities or deliverable that you need to be working on throughout that day.

And this process really gets you centered, and it allows you to get clear on who you need to become and what you need to step into.

Breathe

Obviously breathing is a huge component. We all breathe, but how deep and how often do we actually really breathe? So, what happens is that when emotion is high – when you got so many stuff happening, your emotion’s through the roof – logic is usually low.

What happens is that, when we become quite emotive, we start to breathe from the neck part up. And we start to take short breaths, and we start to get more emotional.

And so, by breathing – it has to be some nice deep belly breaths. It enables you to decrease that high stake emotional component and start to get into more of a logistical kind of way of thinking.

Then, it starts to ground you. It starts to decrease that frustration and decrease that feeling of being overwhelmed. And when we do just a couple of, say 3 nice deep breaths, it starts to center us and it starts to ground us on where we are at right now.

If you are feeling overwhelmed then you can try this step right now. Clear your mind and take three deep belly breaths. How did that make you feel? It’s not time to move to the next step –

Visualize

Second component is Visualize. V for Visualize. Visualizing then moving into that next task. Moving into who I need to become or what am I about to do. You, seeing that task. You, visualizing that task in your mind.

Because what happens is that, when we play up our video screens in our internal mind – it starts to shift our behavior. It starts to shift our physiology. It starts to shift that internal reaction, those reactive models inside of us.

When it starts to shift our responses, then our physiology changes. Our behavior changes. Then our activity changes. Therefore, our results also change. So, V is to Visualize what’s coming up in your mind.

Visualizing the task is you preparing your mind and body to do the task. It may be a task that you do not particularly enjoy. It could be something tedious. Instead of putting it off, visualize yourself doing the task. Get a clear picture in your mind of yourself doing it.

Move

The last component is M for Move. And what I love to do, and I love to suggest to clients is, when we’re going through this B.V.M – we’re energetic beings. So, the more you move, energy creates energy. When people go out and don’t have enough energy on time – it’s like, nope, wrong.

Movement helps you do more, it creates more energy. And so, you know, if it’s a lap around the block – if it’s a lap around the office, if it’s a lap around your chair – by shifting your energy, by utilizing that movement, it starts to release those endorphins. Release those hormones that you can start to then find the energy to do the activity that you need to move in to.

So B.V.M: Breathe, Visualize and Move – this really helps you to transition from task to task. Really helps you transition from going to one conversation, then to a different conversation. And starts to help you get through the day and get through the activities, and obviously help you to achieve the goals that you want to achieve.

Jan 25
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The Importance of Investing

By Blogpost, Goals, habits, management

Today is a perfect day to evaluate the week, what has been some of your wins? What has been some of your lessons throughout the week? It’s a great opportunity to stop, reflect and just to think of – what are you grateful for? What’s some of the successes? What are you most proud of for this week? It is also a good time to talk about the the importance of investing.

This is a great opportunity just to stop and reflect, and just to take note of – you know? What are you doing really well? What did you learn to maybe do better next week?

So, I was remembering when I was down at lovely Manly beach. We stayed there for the a couple of days. Wow! What an experience! And I learned something very important, which I want to share with you.

I want to share with you about the importance of investing.

What is INVESTING?

There are three (3) key elements when it comes to investing:

  1. Investing in yourself
  2. Investing in people
  3. Investing in money

So, those are three things: TIME, MONEY and PEOPLE.

What are you doing in relations to those three things? And the reason why I sort of segway into that is obviously, we spent three days investing on ourselves and also investing in the team.

Looking at – you know, taking myself out of the business how do we then, picture yourself above the business and looking down. What are you doing for that each week? What are you doing for that each month? How are you investing in your time – in the things you need to invest in?

And it’s really good to just stop and take note of what you’re actually doing. Then obviously, investing in your people. So, what are you doing to do that? What are you doing to invest in your people? To really give back to them. To really allow them to grow – allow them to shine and really step into their own geniuses and role.

The third thing is how you’re investing your money. And, you know, there’s so many great people out there to share and take you on that journey as well.

Who Is On Your Team?

So, looking at those three key areas – we just stop and look at, you know, who’ve you got in your team that enables you to support that?

So, while I was at Manly Beach I was working with my personal coach – the legend and the man himself, Taki Moore, on working on both myself, the business, and our people.

And then I worked with one of our other coaches and mentors, Michael Griffiths, on really working with the team and also working with the money.

So, who’s on your team to really support and guide you in those three key areas.

There we go! It’s a great way to stop, reflect – what’s some of your wins? What’s been some of your lessons?

Love to hear what they are for you for the week. Looking forward to speaking with you soon.

Jan 22
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The Magic of Saying Thank You

By Attitude, habits, mindset

Today is a good opportunity to stop and review the week that you’ve just had, and to just talk about some of the key lessons and those Aha! moments that you’ve taken for the week.

So, what about you? What’s been some of your wins over this last week that you can share down below? What are you most proud of? What are some achievements that you’ve done? Things that you want to highlight – and what about some of the lessons that you’ve learned this week as well?

I’m just heading out from the office today and I would like to share with you what I learned this week. What I want to share with you is about the power of actually saying one word, or maybe two words – THANK YOU.

It’s really a powerful thing, because of the energy that is associated with the words “Thank You” is quite profound and quite powerful.

So often we take so many things for granted, when things are expected and we receive them, we sometimes take them without any acknowledgement. But when we stop and actually just go, “you know what? Thank you for that. I really appreciate, I really acknowledge you for doing that.” No matter how big or how small it was, it goes a long way.

What you can actually see when you say those two key words or one key word is, it opens up their whole paradigm. It opens up their smiles and it opens up their whole energy. It only takes a second to say it, no effort on your part, really. Not only is it polite to say thank you, but saying it transforms the entire experience.

How many of you have experienced this? When someone – a coworker or family recognizes your efforts, no matter how small and gives you a sincere thank you, doesn’t the encounter leave you feeling positive? Wouldn’t you want to leave that same feeling to the person that you’re communicating with?

I hope the realization allows you to incorporate these two words when dealing with people. It enhances the experience for both the giver and the receiver.

So, who’ve we said thank you to over this last week? And who can you say thank you over the weekend, or over this coming week?

Make someone’s day! Really acknowledge someone, really light someone up. So – WINS, LESSONS and THANK YOU.

Thank you and have a good day.

Jan 11
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Engagement and Influence

By Attitude, Blogpost, habits, mindset

Lesson for the week: Engagement and Influence

I love presenting and talking and coaching – is one of my geniuses that I love doing it. I can do it daily. But, it’s all well and good doing it – but how do you engage?

When you are having conversations, how do you engage? How do you engage with your teams, and how do you engage with your clients?

Obviously you cannot use a “one size fits all” approach. You have to get really personal. You have to really listen in order to connect. You need to communicate on a personal level.

Engagement is not limited to face-to-face meetings. Be active in Social Media. Facebook and Instagram are no longer simply avenues for selfies and vacation pics. You can use them to share information, and discuss your genius.

Podcasts and blogs are also good avenues for customer engagement.  If you have a blog, take note that good content equals great engagement. People will read, listen and they will respond to your inputs as long as you provide quality content.

That’s one of the big lessons that we’ve learned throughout this week – it’s engagement.

Another lesson that we learned this week is influence

Having the ability to affect someone’s ideas, character or choices. This is not an easy thing to achieve.

Even this morning as I was running a training session for a client, we talked about influence.

We talked about how are you influencing those people around you? How are you influencing prospective clients, particularly in this market? How are you influencing your current clients?

So, looking at all those different components for us is around engagement and influence.

Now I want you to ask yourselves again:

How do you engage? How do you influence the people around you? Share your thoughts and leave a comment below.

Dec 14
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Review: Wins and Lessons for the Week

By Attitude, Blogpost, habits

Can you believe it is another week?

Where did the weeks go? They just go so quick. They fly through.

So, what are you up to for this amazing weekend?

Once again, it is time to stop and recall what have you done for the week. What are some of the wins that you’ve achieved? What’s some of the lessons, some of the aha! moments that you have achieved throughout this week?

We’ve just launched a new segment in our Tribe called “Ask Shorty.”

So, what is it exactly about? “Ask Shorty ” is an opportunity where clients get to just throw questions in. It’s an opportunity where clients can just, you know, ask questions within our closed Facebook group. If some things come up and you’re not sure what to do or you just want to discuss or ask about something, all you’ve got to do is just put a question out there.

What we did today is to just recap all the conversations that I’ve had with clients over this week. And just a recap of some of the amazing wins and important lessons that we’ve had within the Tribe.

And it’s so good, just to review each of those conversations. Just a review of what were some of the wins that we’ve had with clients over the week.

Even when you think you’ve had a pretty uneventful week, you’ll be amazed when you go back and list all the wins and lessons you’ve learned throughout the week.

We literally wrote a four page of all the wins that some of our amazing clients have had over the week. I truly acknowledge their hard work, their dedication and their commitment. So, go Tribe!

So, what are your wins? What are your lessons for this week?

It’s a good time to reflect, good time to take note and go – “Hmm… what have you achieved this week? The things that you are most proud of? What are the wins? Are there instances wherein you can just stop and celebrate and be grateful for?”

Because, when we can stop and celebrate – stop and smell those roses – it’s nice to acknowledge the hard work, the dedication, the commitment that you’ve done this week.

So, I’d love to hear. Make a comment below of some of your wins, some of your lessons throughout this week. And have a wonderful, safe weekend.

Dec 11
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How Engaged Are You?

By Attitude, Blogpost, challenges, Food for thought, habits, mindset

It is another week! And we are on our way again to face new challenges, learn from them and share whatever it is that we know will help us in the future.

So, today I want to share with you about ENGAGEMENT.

How engaged are you? How engaged are you in what you do and what you learn?

Engage with People with the same Goal

Little story to segway this into this quick little topic today. A number of years ago, I was fortunate enough to help out the Rich Dad Crew, Robert Kiyosaki.

I was up in a live event up in the Gold Coast. Gosh! This was close to 15, 16 years ago – and, I looked around and these people are coming in time and time again to learn and to grow.

And I start to question these people – so, what have you done between these courses? What have you done between then and now? And you could see, you could hear the blankness.

So what we did, what I actually did is I formed a relationship with nine other people who are actually from Sydney, but they are up at Gold Coast for this event. And we formed a “Master Mind” group.

From that Master Mind group, we met for – I think it was close to three years every single fortnight – and we implemented our learnings. We implemented what we’re taught, what we learnt from previous courses, from books, from what we discovered throughout the fortnight.

And being held accountable to a group was so powerful. Knowing that you had to report in what you were going to do over the last fortnight, which is huge. So much different from, I guess, going one on one.

The whole group environment where you had ten people around looking at you going – “hey, dude! You’re committed to this? What happened? What worked?” This somehow led me to fast forward to today.

What’s next?

“How engaged are you?” That question has kept me thinking what my next step would be and how I can make it meaningful. So, we read books, we attend courses, we were taking programs. But what do you do? What’s your strategy to maintain your own engagement? How do you maintain your own engagement?

What do you do once you read a book? Do you just go – “Ah, that was nice!”, then put it back in the shelf and away you go? Or do you actually take notes and do you highlight, and you go write this next month I’m going to implement X?

What do you do about your courses? What do you do about podcasts? How do you implement the material? Because, knowledge is great. Knowledge is fantastic. But unless you have the implementation of that knowledge, it’s just knowledge.

And so, I’m going to ask you guys today. How are you maintaining your engagement? How do you ensure that you are engaged in what you do? And how do you ensure that you take that engagement, and you take action?

So, there we go! How engaged are you in what you do and what you learned?

I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’d love to hear your comments. Comment below on how you keep engaged and looking forward to speaking to you soon.

Dec 07
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The Power of Asking the Right Questions

By challenges, Food for thought, habits, mindset

Well, another week has done and dusted.

How’s your week been? What’s been some of the highlights? What’s been some of the things you’ve achieved through-out the week?

Let’s just check in and review what key lessons and key wins we want to share with everyone.

This week, it’s all about the different flavors and theme of QUESTIONS.

Now, I’m a strong believer of the quality of questions is equals the quality of your results and therefore the quality of your life. So, what questions are you asking on a daily basis? Not just to your clients, your customers, your team, but to yourself.

If you are not the type to ask yourself questions, start now. Make it a habit to ask questions – in your personal life, at work, and especially in business – keep asking questions.

When you start asking questions, you will find out if the current situation or status can be improved. You can see the areas that still need some work. And you will see opportunities in places that you have not noticed before.

Now that you know what asking questions can do to improve your situation, you know that there’s no limit to the questions that you can ask yourself. But in order to see results – you need to be asking the right questions. So how do you know if you are asking the RIGHT questions?

There’s a series of 12 questions that we go through each and every time when we review and set some accountability, ownership over responsibility with the team. Here are some of them to help you reflect on the current state of your business:

  • Do you have the right resources?
  • Do you have the right ‘why’?
  • Do you have the right commitment?
  • What has worked?
  • What hasn’t worked?
  • What are some of the key lessons?
  • What are some of the things we need to be doing differently next week?

After going through all these, ask yourself – what questions do you ask yourself on a regular basis? Now, we can go many different ways and many different avenues from this – the whole “why,” right?

“Why are we doing this? Why are we doing that?”

I’d like to know – what are some of the most powerful questions that you’ve asked on yourself and you’ve asked of others in the past?

So, what are some of your wins and lessons throughout the week, and what are some of your questions.