Our Blog

I’ve been in business as a coach for 24 years this month. I’ve written more newsletters than I can remember … hundreds. A bunch about turning over the New Year.

I’ve talked about how resolutions don’t work and how we should change our mindset to setting intentions instead. I wrote that in Jan. 2005.

I’ve talked about the START … STOP … CONTINUE … CHANGE Model.

It’s a very useful exercise to do at this time of year.

More about that model in a bit …

My dear readers –

I want to wish you a blessed holiday season with family and friends. Whatever you celebrate, enjoy the time off and have a little fun.

When I think of Christmas … children’s faces and family celebrations, one word comes to mind …

“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.”

Most of you are probably familiar with this quote from Mark Twain.

Smart guy, and yet, like the rest of us, he worried … needlessly.

A short essay this month, because we’re in the Bahamas.  Grand Bahama to be exact.  It’s absolutely great here, by the way … the people, the beaches, the food, the weather.

Here we are in paradise, but we were worried.

I wasn’t an early adopter of AI, even when I heard other coaches and business owners raving about its value.  I think it was because I saw people so obviously using it to write their newsletters, blogs, and even performance goals.

You can always tell when AI has written something.  And sometimes, the person is passing it off as their own creation!  I’ve written my own newsletters twice a month for over 20 years, so yeah, I was a little judgmental.

I’ve been writing 2 newsletters a month since 2003 when I started as a Life Coach.  That’s a lot of newsletters!  So, I have a place where I put newsletter ideas when they come to me. 

His stories are wonderful. Enjoy!

The idea I jotted down for this edition was … Write it off and keep on going!

It was born from one of those days where everything seems to go wrong.  Not major life-altering things, but smaller disappointments and screw-ups … stacking up.

I noticed that I’m more able to let go of the things that just “aren’t right” than my husband is.  I think it’s because I make more of an effort to deliberately let them go and move on.  It’s not worth being upset.

So, I thought I’d expand on that theme here and give you some wisdom on how you actually do that.  And, lo and behold, a newsletter that I read all the time popped into my box. It’s written by Joerg Kuehn, who was my student at Coach U many years ago.  He’s German living in the UK now.  I met him when he was living in Singapore. 

His stories are wonderful.  Enjoy!

When you work as a business coach as long as I have, you tend to see the common behaviors that entrepreneurs struggle with.  Time and priority management is a big one.

The ability to plan my work and work my plan is something I’ve been blessed with.  I never would have survived as the Festival Coordinator in charge of the largest, free outdoor festival in the Southeast if I hadn’t!

So, I want to share three project management skills that are essential to our success as business owners.  The third one might come as a bit of a surprise to you.

…or unlucky

Can we be honest here?

There are a lot of things we don’t … and never will … understand.

A few examples:

• Why do bad things happen to good people?
• A tiny, nearly weightless snowflake falls on a mountainside after billions have fallen before it, yet it’s the one that triggers the avalanche.  Why?
• According to quantum physics, “an electron can occupy a superposition of different orbital states simultaneously, meaning it can be in multiple states at once until measured.”  Huh?  Talk about not understanding!

This apparent randomness in the world can make us uneasy, so we look for quick and easy explanations for why things happen.

Today, I want to talk to you about the things business owners do that impact their results and sabotage their success.  As you can imagine, after 20+ years as a business coach, I’ve seen it all.  All the things that work … and the things that don’t.

Let me illustrate the latter with a story.

We sold our former home last week.  Closed … signed, sealed, and delivered.   And as relieved as we are to no longer have two homes to keep up, I’ve been feeling rather contemplative and sentimental.

Buying that house was a huge beginning for me many years ago when I moved to Asheville to take the position as the Festivals Coordinator for the City.

I was single.  Barely over the grief of my husband’s death.  Buying my first house all on my own.  Taking on a BIG job in a city where I didn’t know a soul.  Moving to the mountains of Western North Carolina … a place I loved and often escaped to when the grief and sadness were too great.

It was in that house that I let go of my former life and started to build a new one.   That house is where I proved to myself that “I could do it.”

I can’t help myself.  As a business coach, I’m always observing other businesses … their operations, marketing, and especially their customer service … even if they’re in industries other than those I typically serve.

As many of you know, we’ve recently moved, and our former home has been on the market.  We’re currently in the due diligence period with a buyer where they get an appraisal and inspections done.

And during that process, they discover that the radon readings exceed safe levels.  Ugh!