fbpx

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.

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.

Outsourcing: Stories and Lessons Learned

By outsourcing, management, opportunities, Success, Time Management, Work Life Balance

You’ve probably heard your colleagues and friends talk about outsourcing. So what is it? And what is the power of outsourcing.

Challenges in Outsourcing

I’ve been outsourcing now for close to 10 years now, and it’s pretty powerful. I personally have a team of 10 and our other business, Support Zebra Australia, has a staff of close to 300. Outsourcing has also really helped out our own personal clients leverage their time.

I want to share with you some of the stories.

It never used to be that way, never used to be with all these team members behind us. We’ve got the scars, we’ve had the opportunity where we’ve taken on staff before – overseas – and then just the overseas staff just went missing in action.

We’ve gone through the journey of, you know, of trying to recruit, trying to train, trying to maintain and the wheels have fallen off.

But, why do we outsource? What’s the power of outsource?

How do you Outsource?

Basically if you want to increase your productivity, if you want to increase your own time – personal time off – if you want to save money or you want to make more money, outsourcing is an amazing way to do it.

Now, what happens is that, if you’re wondering where do I start? Where do I go?

Well, you know the good thing is that I’ve put together these amazing webinars to help you answer these questions. You can check out my website or chat with me directly – and yeah, let’s talk and discover how to solve these challenges together.

You can also register to my 7 STEPS TO OUTSOURCING and learn how to scale, profit and leverage your team through outsourcing.

The benefit of outsourcing is really – if you’ve got things that are ongoing, mundane recurring tasks that you go – you know what? Someone else should really be doing this.

If you’ve got tasks that, if you’re looking at your hourly rate, and you know – you know what, someone else should be doing this. Or if you need to be focusing elsewhere in your business, and you know that this part of the business needs to get done by someone else – this is a perfect opportunity to learn how to outsource.

How to really get the most out of your team? How to really drive that productivity so you can really be focusing on what you do best?

Benefits of Outsourcing

I’ve got a number of clients that go through this process and what they’ve realized is that they’ve got back to client-facing activity, rather than getting stuck into the mundane of emails, admin and that kind of stuff.

These clients actually gone back to meeting with their clients. They’ve gone back with meeting new prospects and opportunities. They now have gone back into face-to-face, telephone work, so they can build those relationships and have someone do behind the scenes.

So if you want to come along, check out this upcoming webinar. Just type in outsource below and I will give you the details. Love for you to come along.

Learn something, learn what we’re up to, learn on how we can assist you to outsource so we can help you really grow your business.

The Value of Teamwork

By Blogpost, excellence, Goals, inspirations, management, opportunities, Success

How has your 2018 been? And what has been some of your wins and some of your lessons throughout the first week of the 2019? I’d love to hear from you. What have been some of your wins? What have been some of your lessons?

This is a great opportunity as we welcome another year – having a review of the week, the month, the quarter, the year of what’s been some of your wins and some of your lessons.

I was in the Philippines last December where I spent four, five days with the whole team over there, just to really start to map out the year. It was an honor and a privilege. I also took my daughter and introduced her to the team. And I think, I found my succession plan.

She had the opportunity to present in front of our team and really embracing it. Also, the shopping – she loves the shopping over there. Oh my goodness! Next level.

But it was a good opportunity to spend some quality time with her, just a daddy-daughter time. And really honored – it’s a privileged to have that opportunity.

The Power of Team

One of the things, and biggest lessons that we learned was the power of team – and power of enrolling the team.

We arrived – the team have already started their strategy session on a Saturday, we arrived Saturday night. And we got into the team meeting on a Sunday. And I walked into the room and they said, “Just to let you know, we’ve already mapped out the next six months for you.”

I was like, “Alright!? Cool.” And what the most amazing thing was, when we reviewed what they had gone through the day before – I had done some previous planning up until, for this time together. It was exactly the same as I had mapped out – they didn’t know this that I had mapped out previously on what they had mapped out the day before.

And so, that was the biggest lesson for me is – Wow! We’ve got an amazing team. So aligned and so on the same page where they’ve been working on the sideline and I’ve been, you know, getting some planning down – coming together and we’re all on the same page.

Once again huge win and huge lesson. So, what are some of your wins? What are some of your lessons?

Hopefully you got to take some time out over the holidays and just had fun, spent quality time with love ones, spent some time with friends and family – and reflected on 2018. And now, start thinking about what 2019 looks like.

So, there we go! Let’s all make 2019 bigger, better and brighter.

Creating a Genius Method vs. Job Description

By management, excellence, Goals, mindset

I attended the referral marketing course with the legend himself, Michael Griffiths, a few weeks ago and I’d like to share some of the key lessons and learnings that I picked up after the course.

In our businesses, in our organisation, we have created positions, and job description. And while it tells what each of us should be doing, what it does is it boxes and categorizes everyone. It’s called job description.

Job description tells us what we should do, but it does not explain why we should be doing these things. It does not clearly show where and how important our contributions are to the team and to keep the business running.

When we are categorized and boxed in, the job description becomes the goal and the measure of our performance. What happens is – we fail to spot other opportunities, other avenues where we could contribute to the business.

There are times when our skills and abilities make us capable of handling more than what is on our job description, but because we are placed in a category where the job description becomes our end goal and our unit of measure, we lose the opportunity to contribute more.

We’ve just shot an awesome little video in our group called the Real Estate Tribe, and it’s all about creating your genius within your team. I say, throw away your job descriptions. Throw away those boring job descriptions that you have within your companies. Because, you know what? Really, they don’t work.

It’s about creating the genius method within those roles to ensure that there’s accountability, to ensure that you’ve actually got the right team members onboard first, and ensuring that everyone’s clearly knows what’s happening and why’s it happening – and they’re accountable to what’s happening.

So, I’d love to share that video to you. If you want a copy of the video, just simply type in “TRIBE” below and I’ll send you an invite to the Real Estate Tribe so you can watch the full version of that video.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to hear your thoughts. I’d love to hear what’s been happening. What are your key lessons and what are your key wins that you want to share for this week? Have you had a good week? Or are you still trying to swim through the rest of the week?

So, there we go! Comment below, share your thought and let’s see how we can help each other.

The Power of Outsourcing

By Blogpost, excellence, Goals, management

Today I want to share about the power of outsourcing.

What is outsourcing?

By definition, outsourcing is the practice of having certain job functions done outside a company instead of having an in-house department or employee handle them; functions can be outsourced to either a company or an individual.

We’ve been outsourcing now for a number of years and we’ve got an amazing team. We’ve got about ten on our team that we outsource and work closely with.

Just this morning we had our team meeting which is pretty cool, when you got people around the world jumping on and finding out the wins of week – what’s working and how we can improve the business.

So, it’s a powerful opportunity – OUTSOURCING.

What I find is that, people obviously want to outsource and they want to increase their profitability, increase their cash flow. And also, just get rid of all that stuff.

So, we know that there’s a need. And we know that outsourcing needs are just going through the roof. The scales and numbers of the infiltration of outsourcing – the power of outsourcing is quite phenomenal.

But how do you do it? What are the steps? What’s the process?

How do we go in and not be burned and how do we actually really get great work done?

Outsourcing as a Powerful Opportunity

So here’s a little thing. I’ve got a little webinar and it’s a training webinar to take you through the seven (7) steps of outsourcing to really show you how to scale, profit and really leverage your team through outsourcing.

So if you want to jump on, all you really need to do is just type in below “I’M IN.” And I’ll send you the link to register for the training webinar.

Because the reason being is, if I could show you the ways to really work on your own genius and outsource the rest – the profitability is huge. You will learn to focus on the things that you love, so therefore you can start to generate more things. And you can start to dish off and delegate everything else.

And I know that we’re working with our clients when I actually get to do this – the revenue goes up. The profitability goes up. They save more.

The team actually enjoys more because they are not bugged down into the day to day stuff.

So I’m going to take you through the seven (7) steps to outsourcing. Simply comment below “I’M IN,” and I will send you through the details.

There you go! The power of outsourcing to really help you scale, become more profitable and leverage your team.

Plan vs. Review – or Both

By habits, Blogpost, Food for thought, management, purpose

Welcome to another opportunity to shed some light and learn some tips and techniques, strategies and some insights for the week ahead.

So, what do we do? Do we go planning or reviewing – is the question for today.

What do you do? Do you plan, or do you review?

Coming up to our next intensive where we bring all our clients together to go through a couple of these different strategies. And obviously, I’ve been working with a lot of clients over the last week.

So the questions comes, do we plan or do we review?

And the answer is both! Alright!?

Because what happens is, we can’t plan unless we review. We can’t review unless we plan. It sounds like a funny concept, and it reminds me of the question about which comes first – the chicken or the egg? But it’s so true. Let me explain.

How do you know where to go, if you don’t review where you’ve come from? Are you familiar with the saying about hindsight being 20/20?

The review isn’t so much about beating ourselves up on what we did wrong, or the things that we could have done better. That’s not the point in doing all of this.

While it’s true that we should not ignore our wrong decisions in the past so we would not repeat them, let’s not spend so much time on that during the review process. It’s getting the key wins, it’s getting the key lessons, getting the key aha! moments.

Once we get the review underway we can take a look at the different patterns and the different things that we need to change. We take that into consideration and start planning ahead. Armed with the knowledge of what works, and what doesn’t, we look at our vision and plan what steps to take to make that vision into a reality.

So, again – planning or reviewing? Do both!

The four core questions that we need to go through during a review:

  • What’s working?
  • What hasn’t been working?
  • What are the key lessons?
  • What do we need to be doing differently?

When we’re planning, we’re obviously seeing the big picture ahead. And then, we start to reverse engineer back to the key KPIs that we need to be achieving and also the three key projects that we will be working on.

Hope you learned something today. Love to hear your thoughts by commenting below.

How to Attract a Winning Team

By excellence, Goals, management, Success

There are three (3) points I want to share with you today on how to attract a winning team.

I’ve just started a 15-point checklist recently on how to attract the winning a team – and these are the three (3) points from that checklist.

However, what I’ve noticed before we get into those three (3) points is, so often we have a clear marketing plan or growth plan to attract new clients.

But what’s your plan to attract that winning team? What’s your plan to attract the right type of people into your organization or into your business?

It takes time, it takes focus and it takes a proper plan to really create that process to make you an attraction-based business.

When we get these stuff right, what happens is that you’ll have people inquire: do you have any roles? Do you have any job openings?

And this process take the pressure out of, you know, if someone decides to leave, or you’re growing and you need someone quickly. It takes that pressure of actually trying to find someone.

Recognize Your Team’s Efforts Publicly

The first one is to publicly recognize your team. This could be a personal achievement they’ve had, a win at work, whatever it is.

Recognize your team members, your current team members, for the amazing work but also recognize them on a public forum: if it’s social media, if it’s an announcement to your database, whatever it is.

That works on two (2) fronts: one, it’s a social proof that you recognize your team members and it’s actually getting the message out there to the wider audience.

But more importantly, is to recognize your current team members of their hard work, dedication and their results.

Share Team Events

Point number two is that, actually share your team events. Now, team events is a great way to build and have a great bond within your organization, within your company.

It’s great to really solidify the relationships and really harness the relationships that have already happening within your organization.

But when you share that with the wider world, what that enables you to do is to make a statement to the world – “This is how we recognize the team. This is how we give back to the team. Look at the fun we are having within our organization.

And what that enables you to do is to share your message out there to the wider audience.

Conduct Business Awards

Lastly, business awards.

Now, sometimes people go – “Ah, you know, it’s this and that” – but you know what, business awards work. Based on the marketing side of attraction of new clients but also for the attraction of new team members.

Because there’s usually components in those business awards that you have to talk about your team, your success, your journey, your vision. And that, you can then communicate that to the world.

People like to be part of something that means something. Therefore, if you become a finalist, or if you win business awards – people like to be attracted to that as well.

So there are three (3) key points for today are:

  1. Recognize your current publicly.
  2. Share your team events to the wider world.
  3. Get in, and apply for your business awards.

So there you go! Post your comments and looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Chunking: Bringing Structure into Your Business

By Attitude, Blogpost, challenges, habits, management

Welcome to another opportunity where we share some insights to help you get ready to rock-and-roll and tackle the week ahead.

I want to start by sharing with you a little story about something that we’re going to be talking about today which is called CHUNKING. Sounds like a meat pie, doesn’t it?

What is Chunking?

So often I hear and see when working with people is that they’ve got so much to do. They are busy all the time and it seems that they have so much on their plate.

But when we actually look at it, there’s usually a number of key areas that if we can compile all these things into these certain areas. It will make the “overwhelm” and the frustration disappear.

When we go through this process called chunking, what it enables you to do is to really look at things a little bit differently. Because what usually holds us back is the overwhelm and the over frustration of where do we go? What do we do first? and so forth.

Chunking is a really good process to bring all that craziness into some structure.

If you look at three key areas within your business or within your life, there’s always different chunks that go into different bite-size pieces, which goes into those key areas.

It could be team, it could be prospecting, or it could be admin.

What is the Importance of Chunking?

The first step in chunking is identify those big rocks.

Those big areas within your life or within your business. And then, all your to-do-lists and all your daily activities will be into that.

And if you look at what is the key outcome – what’s the key outcome to that overall task, that overall big rock – a lot of those things underneath will actually end up become less important or that’ll disappear.

Because what happens is, we get so caught up in the stuff.

We get so caught up in the “doing this,” when we need to step up and have a look at what’s the key outcome to this big rock and the reason why.

When we come from that key space of what’s the key outcome and what’s the “why,” all those little things will become less important. It will eventually become irrelevant that we don’t need to do anymore.

So there’s the importance of chunking.

Let’s really make sure we smash out this week with your chunking.

I’d love to hear if you have any questions or any comments – just comment below and let’s have a chat about chunking.

People Plan: Setting Values and Achieving Goals

By Human resources, excellence, Goals, management

I want to go through a couple of different tips and strategies to really help you grow your business particularly coming through your people.

We talk about PEOPLE PLAN.

So often, I see businesses have set their marketing plans, they set their growth strategies; but usually they don’t have a people plan to support that.

We are off and well-focused on actually attracting and trying to get more clients and more customers, but what do we have in relation to a people plan?

Read More