Month: October 2017

The things you do day in and day out not only determine how you spend your time, but they can also determine your likelihood for long-term success. Many habits develop over time, but as an entrepreneur, business owner or someone with specific career-related goals in mind, you should be very intentional about the habits you keep. What you do on a daily basis has long-term significance, even though it may not necessarily feel like it. Your vision and enthusiasm will only carry you so far….it’s your habits that propel you toward success.

One of the habits that can further you on your path to success is the practice of learning and applying wisdom rather than complaining or making excuses. Whether your setback was the result of your own actions or circumstances beyond your control, you should have habits in place that allow you to deal with these challenges effectively. Never let a lesson go to waste — own it, learn from it and move on from it.

Another habit of highly successful entrepreneurs is the habit of pursuing solutions to various problems. This means thinking ahead and preparing well for challenges that could arise in the future. Make preparation and planning a habit, not just something you do when after a problem has already cropped up.

Finally, it’s useful to make a habit of self-care. Put protections for yourself in place by ensuring that you are taking appropriate care to nourish your emotional and mental well-being. Small, daily habits, such as a designated lunch break or exercise time, can help you keep your motivation and keep pushing toward your next goals.

Habits may seem like small things, but in reality, they can make a significant difference in your success. Evaluate your habits, get rid of the ones that may be holding you back and put the right ones in their place. What to do every single day matters, so make it count.

By Meagan Kerlin for Vertu Marketing LLC

Whether you are pursuing a specific goal in your career, starting a business or simply trying to work on personal development, your mental toughness will have a direct impact on your success. The road to whatever achievement you are pursuing will be fraught with challenges, and you need to be sure that you have the mental and emotional conditioning to meet them head on and deal with these unexpected situation appropriately. Mental toughness does not come easily to everyone, and it may not be something you think you have, but it is something that you can improve and develop over time.

Success is never something that comes easy, no matter how attainable the goal or easy the plan may seem in the beginning. There will be setbacks, frustrations and variables that you never saw coming. Like people who train for marathons, you don’t just wake up one morning and decide to be mentally tough; it takes times and training. If one of your ways to prepare for what lies ahead is to build mental toughness, how do you go about reaching this particular self-improvement goal? The following practices can help you in your endeavor to build your mental strength:

• Express gratitude
• Build accountability for your actions
• Work on effective communication
• Challenge yourself
• Read and educate yourself whenever possible
• Work on other areas of self-improvement
• Make plans and be prepared

The mentally tough are the ones who don’t balk at unexpected challenges. They are those who meet challenges head-on, deal with these things in an effective way and move on. Many times, actually putting mental toughness into practice is easier than said or done. In fact, it can be quite a painful process. Like training for a marathon, you can only get there one mile at at a time — one challenge at a time.

By Meagan Kerlin for Vertu Marketing LLC

For many, fear is one of the great hindrances of life. Whether it’s in your personal life or your professional life, fear can hold you back and keep you anchored to the status quo, specifically fear of rejection. Rejection is really never fun. It can be hurtful and disheartening, and even the thought of rejection may keep you from ever taking the next step, no matter what it is. While the thought of failure is frightening, you may be encouraged to note that some of the most successful ideas ever presented to the world were first met with rejection.

Authors, inventors, innovators, visionaries and entrepreneurs — almost all of the ones you know by name and who have achieved success experienced at least one crushing rejection in their journeys. No one is immune to it; chances are you will experience it at some point. What will set you apart from everyone else is what you choose to do next.

Sometimes, big ideas take awhile to catch on. If you choose entrepreneurship, your path to success will be lined with setbacks, frustrations and failures. You have to decide if the fear of experiencing these things is enough to keep you from moving forward and pursuing your dreams anyway. Despite rejection, you may feel certain that your idea is destined to succeed at some point — don’t let go of that belief, even if you hear “no” once, twice or multiple times before you get there.

One of the most valuable things to learn as an entrepreneur is channeling both the fear of and rejection itself into something positive. Use these things to help you evaluate, improve and become even more certain of your idea. You can’t let fear govern your business decisions or how you pursue your goals. You have to harness it and let propel you onward and upward.

By Meagan Kerlin for Vertu Marketing LLC

Perhaps you’ve already started a business. Perhaps it’s going well. You are creating new leads, seeing growth in multiple areas, and hopefully, you’re even turning a profit. To get to this point, you likely invested hundreds of hours dreaming, planning, working and sweating the details of making your business work. Now that you are seeing that you do have a workable business plan, what’s next? Chances are, you are still very much involved in the day-to-day operations of your business. Whether you are afraid to step away for even a few hours or the thought hasn’t yet occurred to you, you may need to consider the concept of self-sufficiency for your business and how that would work in your life.

While there are many benefits to owning and operating your own business, there are sacrifices that come with that decision as well. In a sense, you may be married to your business, but there comes a point where self-sufficiency may not only be good for you — it could be good for your business. Having a self-sustaining business means a few things for you personally….a chance to take a day off, or even take a full vacation for crying out loud. It means your business is healthy enough to survive without you for a few hours, which is great news in case you ever get sick, have a family emergency or need a mental health day. It also speaks volumes about the benefit to hiring, properly training and retaining quality employees.

You may need to consider how you can establish some semblance of self-sufficiency if any of the following apply to your current situation:

• You feel compelled to make every single decision for your business, even the minor ones.
• You feel stress and anxiety at the thought of taking even just one day off.
• You are unsure of the capability of your employees to manage unexpected situations in your absence.
• Your business has had a negative impact on the quality of your personal life.

When your business is self-sufficient to some degree, it doesn’t mean that you are “coasting” or can fall into a state of complacency; it simply means that you have worked hard and have successfully established your business to the point where it will not fall to pieces in your absence. Not many people talk about the importance of self-sufficiency, but if you are an entrepreneur, you would be wise to consider adding that to your list of goals for the future.

By Meagan Kerlin for Vertu Marketing LLC