Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

The Theme for a New Year

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create-2017

It is time to start thinking about where you will take your business over the next year. For several years, I have chosen a theme word to keep me focused on what I am trying to achieve. For example, one year the word was “Product,” when I was focused on creating lots of new products. That single word keeps me on the right track, and working toward my goals.

Your theme should be one or two words that relate to your most important goals for the year. Examples of themes might be Organization, Focus, Influence, Visibility, Service, Revenue, Involvement, Delegate, etc. Here is how you can choose your theme and use it to help you achieve more in the new year. [Read more…]

What Are You Doing for the Next 30 Days?

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How could you look at that face and tell him you are not taking him for a walk?
How could you look at that face and tell him you are not taking him for a walk?
We are now into February and, if you are like most people, at least some of the resolutions you made for this year have already fallen by the wayside. Don’t take that to mean that you are a failure. Actually, it is more of a flaw in the whole idea of New Year’s resolutions.

Here is what you need to do now to make real changes in your life.

First, stop thinking that all change has to happen at the beginning of something: the year, the month, the week. You can start something new any time you want. It seems cleaner to start on the first of the year, the first of the month or a Monday, but it doesn’t have to be that way. When you decide to make a change, start when you are ready. That can mean any day, including today. (You don’t even have to wait until tomorrow, for the beginning of a new day. Really. It’s okay.)
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One Resolution? Or Many?

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counting-on-fingersWith the start of the new year it seems that everyone is making New Year’s resolutions. While it’s extremely common to set a resolution, it’s unfortunately far less common to actually see it through. One reason is that people tend to take on too many goals at once. But how many is too many?

How Much Time Will Your Resolution Require?

Different resolutions take up different amounts of time. Some may even save you time. For example, if you resolve to limit your time on Facebook to less time than you currently spend there, you will have more time available to pursue other goals. On the other hand, if you resolve that this is the year you will finally write and publish your book, that will require that you devote some time, even if you choose to work on it just an hour or so a day.
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Increase Fivefold

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This week’s Monday Morning Message from Wm. H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina: What is the Monday Morning Message?

“Increase Fivefold? Say, it will take a life time to do that.” All right, let it take a life time, but begin at once— this very week.

Here’s a little example for you. Suppose you had twenty-eight years to accomplish some definite ideal that would live after you and make the world a better place than you found it. Which of the following would you rather do?

1. Be a preacher and build a church from nothing to 10,000 members.
2. Found and direct a college.
3. Establish and operate an orphanage, and also a home for widows.
4. Edit a monthly magazine of far-reaching influence.
5. Write and publish forty books.

Wouldn’t any one of these five be a life achievement for a really great man? But listen to this: — All five of these lasting works were packed into a short twenty-eight years by one man — the great Charles H. Spurgeon.

Now don’t with just a passing word say, “Spurgeon was a genius,” and then turn to your immediate tasks. He may have been a genius, but remember Carlisle said, ” Genius is an infinite capacity for hard work.”

“Capacity!” Why is it that a man like Spurgeon can live five successful careers when others make a botch of one? It’s because he worked to full capacity.

In the Ford plant an endless belt keeps pushing work at each man to his capacity. Oh, for a push—an endless belt, or, far better still, the inner drive of a great vision such as Spurgeon’s to urge us on to our full capacity this week. To live, to love, to learn, to act at five times last week’s speed! Impossible—not to Purina men and women who scorn little challenges. Gear that life-machine of yours to full capacity and I’ll guarantee at the end of the week you will find your enjoyment in life has increased fivefold. What particular half- filled vessel of your life will you strive to fill to capacity this week?

Set high expectations for yourself and challenge yourself to get the most out of everyday.

Instead of drifting through each day, work with purpose. Keep your goals in mind at all times and continue working to achieve them.

Those Grand Resolutions

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This week’s Monday Morning Message from Wm. H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina:
What is the Monday Morning Message?

Along with the rest of the world, on New Year’s Day I made a lot of new resolutions. I felt good after making them—kind of satisfied with myself. But here it is the last of January and some of these grand resolutions are beginning to crack, and I’m looking for the reason. I think I have found it. You can’t create habits simply by resolving. Only indomitable persistence, trying and failing, and trying again and failing not so soon, will make those resolutions a reality.

I have a task to accomplish. I will eat moderately, play moderately, save moderately, but more than these, I will have a passion to overcome every influence that keeps me from being my best. I won’t be a flower that blooms only from January 1st January 15th. Not for a few days but all through the year I’ll make my life count.

Get out your resolutions, your aims, your quota, or whatever has been your goal. Then say, “I’ll make the flame of my resolve just as hot today, and in February, and throughout the year as on January 1st; and, by the Eternal, I’ll do it!”

Resolutions can fail us because, although we start with enthusiasm, that enthusiasm dims with the day-to-day reality of sticking with our resolutions.

One way to rekindle the excitement and commitment you felt when you made your resolutions is to look for ways to experience successes with them. Set intermediate goals that you can celebrate as you reach them. For example, instead of only focusing on your goal of losing 20 pounds, set an intermediate goal of losing five pounds. When you reach that, aim for the next five pounds.

Another is to have a goal partner. Your partner does not have to be working toward the same goals as you. By sharing your goals, holding each other accountable and enjoying your successes together, you will be inspired to continue working toward bigger and better goals.