Many business owners and founders often grapple with the question of where to focus their efforts for maximum impact. When you can hone in a few important areas, you’ll find that the pieces come together, you’re gaining traction and able to create sustainability in your company.

While it's not uncommon to feel pulled in multiple directions, the key to overcoming this lies in a strategic and intentional approach to where you direct your attention.

There are two areas that support yours and your business’ growth: personal and strategic initiatives.

Why a Sales Surge? Whether you're in Financial Services, Food Services, Home Security, Real Estate, or any industry with a sales focus, this guide is designed to help you and your team collectively hit your targets. It's not just about meeting deadlines; it's about creating a culture of continuous improvement, collaboration, and fun that elevates your team's performance.

I thought I would switch up what I normally share and turn the attention to cultivating prosperity.

Rather than sharing tactics, I’m sharing what I’ve learned and continue to practice in my life about the mindset of abundance.

First off…

Abundance: a very large quantity of something; plentifulness of the good things of life; prosperity.

Opportunity: a situation or condition favourable for attainment of a goal.

You give power to what you focus on.

What I’ve learned in my experiences about cultivating prosperity is that the nature of seeing abundance and opportunity is more about where I apply my attention and focus.

This is a collection of what I’ve learned and perspectives I practice daily to help me do that:

You started your business because, and I’m taking an educated guess here, you want to have flexibility, create a lifestyle uniquely yours and make a positive impact through your work. Is that right? or close?

If you’re aspiring to or on your way towards something bigger and you feel there’s more to go and not quite there yet, amidst the strategies and the tactics, I’m inviting you to consider another aspect that will help you increase your success rate to achieve big goals.

Your energy: the mental perspective you’re bringing to your goal achievement.

When I was younger I loved to dance. (Well I still do, but I actually took lessons and performed in my youth). What I admired about professional dancers was their athleticism, their grace and their superb amounts of skill. The way they could capture an audience and tell a story through movement.

What I learned was in order to get to be so skilled and master their craft, they practiced all the time and often practiced the basics. Like a musician mastering and warming up with scales. It’s the foundational steps and method that help them to hone their craft. It’s focussing on the foundations of their craft that built the muscle memory and capacity that they have today. The ballet dancers always came back to their pliés.

When I hear and speak to business owners and founders today who want to grow their companies, some of them have all sorts of plans and initiatives. I always love hearing about their plans and vision. It’s inspiring. Until I hear about their method…

There are common mis-steps that I’ve made and I see others making. I’m highlighting them here so we can support each other in our collective pursuit of our personal and professional goal achievement.

Three common areas where even high-achieving professionals can become derailed:

1. Allowing urgent items to take priority over our schedule, nudging goal efforts aside.

You may be thinking - of course…it’s urgent.

Well, is it urgent for you or someone else? Many times what’s urgent for someone else lands on your plate with a deadline attached, creating a sense of urgency for you. Particularly if you’re in a line of work where this is the norm rather than the exception, this can be a challenging environment to pursue those important but not urgent activities, which is the category that many goal efforts fall into. But, note I said challenging, not impossible.

Being able to recover from setbacks, challenges, and major difficulties not only applies to your personal life but also applies to your work and career as well.

A number of people leave jobs where they’ve experienced high stress, overwhelm, and even workplace trauma. 47% of working Canadians agree that their work is the most stressful part of their day. (Source: Workplace Strategies for Mental Health: Morneau Shepell. (2017). Media Room)

Finding your own ways to recover from setbacks and tough situations can help you move forward and cultivate resilience for future challenges.

And, as a leader, resilience can help you lead and expand into new opportunities. Having personal experience in cultivating your own resiliency can also help you support the people and teams you lead.

Here are some strategies to consider if you’re interested in continuing to build your own resilience:

You don’t need to get through your to-do list, focus on managing your priorities.

With changes happening regularly, sometimes hitting us daily, challenging our focus and shifting our plans, you can pretty much toss that to-do list out the window.

These days our weeks are anything but predictable, yet our work must continue.

So, how do we continue to adapt to our still-changing environment?

Beyond why you started your business, WHY did you start your business?

Let me explain…

Maybe your WHY was to build a business around a dream or passion, to achieve freedom and financial security, or to change lives through your product or service.

That’s great!

Now, that your business is a living breathing entity…what role will it play in your future?

Will it close when you’re ready to move on or will you try to sell it or pass it down?

Building a legacy or a company that will last beyond you is different than running a business for the purpose of providing an income now. Both are great goals, but the way you build and the focus for growth will be different.

If you’ve often wondered how you can get your team working towards goals with the same sense of urgency that you have — you are not alone.

As a leader, meeting deadlines and goals are important, and yet you can’t accomplish this unless you have the whole team on board.

So what do you do when everyone isn’t on board? Or, have the same sense of urgency that you do?

I had a conversation today where someone asked me if I provide ‘Life Coaching’.

It’s an interesting question, because in a way all coaching is life coaching because even though I work with Leaders and Business Owners, we’re not always talking about business and work.

We talk about all the things that might come up that impacts WHO we are and how we show up professionally.

“Where ever you go, there you are” — Jon Kabat-Zinn

We bring our whole selves to work. We typically aren’t one way at work and one way at home…and if we are and it’s a dramatic difference, that can cause a LOT of stress for you in the long-run. If this is you, we need to speak.

I digress.

The question I received today make me think again about how we show up and what we bring with us wherever we go.

I write this as I sit here in the sun - taking my work outside to write to you today - because…..why not?

We, in the northern part of our hemisphere, are starting to experience the lovely warmth of spring and anticipating the coming summer days.

Some of us may even be starting to experience a relaxing of some of the restrictions that we’ve been living with for the past 2 months.

As the weather warms and I think ahead to the summer months - approaching summer this year is unlike any other spring ever. Usually, I have things very planned out. I know which weeks will be vacation, I’ll have everything booked, kids’ camps/activities booked and it will usually be mostly all set by now.

This year, in a year where we’re unsure from one week to the next what will be open or what we will be able to do, the coming months may look very different AND my level of planning around it has shifted.

This is the next in a series of videos I’m sharing with you on the topic of ‘How to focus when it’s NOT business as usual’. And today’s specific topic is about UNLOCKING the energy to find FOCUS because it’s currently within you.

So for many of us, our professional roles may have changed significantly…and for some they’ve disappeared. And, we’ve taken on new roles like homeschooling and being an emotional support for anxious colleagues and employees.

It throws us into a strange situation of blending the personal and the professional.

When our circumstances are so uncertain and we miss and grieve for our old routines and structures it can be really easy to slip into the feeling of “letting things wait until this all over” OR ease into just “letting things go.”

We need a reason to get going each day professionally and we need that internal motivation to stay front-of-mind.

And if you’re struggling with that right now, of staying internally motivated, this video is for you.

This is the first in a set of videos that I’m going to be sharing with you on the topic of How to Focus When It’s NOT Business as Usual.

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to share an idea or strategy per week to support you in staying motivated, productive and as focussed as you can be in your business and work.

I have so much to share with you, yet I want to keep these videos short! (Today’s video is 7:22)

So, never before have we had to deal with so much going on in our lives as we move through this Global Health situation.

I love the phrase that’s going around now on social media, maybe you’ve seen it. It states:

“You are not working from home….you are at home, during a crisis, trying to work” (- Posted on the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association and Foundation's Facebook page)

Even if you normally run your business from your home office, you know this is different…

What makes someone successful in their career or business?

If you were to ask several people about their key to success, you'll get a lot of different answers (many of them about strategies and tactics), but what I've noticed is that a few consistent responses tend to surface.