Guest post by Marlene Chism.

Drama keeps you from success. It’s as simple as that.  Yet, it’s easy to miss the “signs” that indicate trouble is on the horizon.  Picture an island and you in a rowboat rowing toward the island. The island is your business dream. You are equipped with oars (and perhaps a team) to get you to your island.  Now that you have the picture let me share with you four “Drama Signs” that can keep you from reaching your destination. 

Drama Sign #1 Low ROI
You are working hard but not making any money. You are cranky and irritable instead of motivated and happy. Let me guess. You don’t get enough sleep. You eat fast food at your desk and you have given up on physical exercise and your mantra is “I don’t have time.”  

Work without adequate recovery is like rowing harder while the leak in your boat gets bigger. You can row harder and faster, but you end up exhausted with a boat full of water. Even if you do get to the island you are too tired to celebrate your success.  

New research suggests it’s about managing energy not time. Stephen Covey calls it sharpening the saw and Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz calls it “energy management.” The solution is to take regular breaks to keep your energy high. Your body requires rest and recovery every 60 -90 minutes. 

Drama Sign #2 No Teamwork
“It’s not my fault.” 
“It’s not my job.”
“Who is the idiot who messed up this time?”

Instead of your team “rowing together” they hit each other over the head with their oars trying to prove who is right and who is wrong. If there is drama with the team it may be because you need to brush up on your communication and leadership skills.

The solution is to have regular team meetings with clear objectives, an agenda, a task list and a system for accountability. Recognize that your team members are motivated by success not by confusion. 

Drama Sign #3 Excuses
There is a saying, “You can either have lots of money or lots of excuses.” Drama is justifying your lackluster performance. You didn’t reach your sales goals but instead of getting feedback or working smarter, you spend time explaining your situation. You blame the boat maker for making a shoddy boat. You remind others that you only used two oars while everyone else had a motor. The justifying doesn’t help your sales goals the next month either and now you’ve wasted time explaining versus selling. 

Drama Sign # 4 Negativity 
The number one productivity problem is workplace negativity and this boils down to awareness and relationship building skills.

The number one reason an employee leaves a company is because he doesn’t get along with his boss. Anytime there is turnover in a department look at the boss and assess that boss’s people skills. 

Other signs of negativity include constant bickering and complaining. Think about how much time is spent talking about who did what wrong rather than immediately looking for the solution.  

Negativity is a habit that makes the success journey miserable, not only for you but for everyone on the team. You are in the boat, but you aren’t enjoying the journey. It’s too hot, too cold, the seat is uncomfortable or you are tired. 

Now that you know four types of drama, identify one of the four and ask yourself this question: Where would you be without your drama? Rich? Successful? Happy?

If you like Marlene’s perspective and want to learn more, help her become an Amazon #1 best seller by purchasing your copy of her book Success Is A Given on December 10th. For your convenience, we have provided this link for you - Get The Book.

Marlene Chism is a communications strategist and founder of www.stopyourdrama.com.

She is the author of Success is a Given: Reading the Signs While Reinventing Your Life.

To learn more about the book go to www.successisagiven.com

Losing focus. It happens to the best of us. We start a business with a vigor. We have a set of ideals that we adhere to. We pour our soul into our companies and collaborate on a Mission. The team gathers and momentum builds. The company begins to earn revenue. We think clearly, strategically, and intelligently. The company grows in revenue and expenses are kept at acceptable levels. Things are going well and you decide to let up. You have worked hard and deserve some down time right? Yes and no.

Yes you deserve to relax. No you shouldn’t do it daily. You worked hard. Take a vacation. Depending upon the intensity and frequency of your work, you should vacation up to 4 times a year. You may even vacation 4 times a year and cut your work hours. But, do not take it easy or slack of at work. And, whatever you do, do not lose sight of your mission.

Many small business owners do not even have a mission statement or they do not see the value in one. They believe it is some corporate motivational thing and a waste of time. I am speaking from experience because I was one such person. My perspective was skewed. From the sole proprietor to the multi-national corporation, all businesses should have a mission statement.

A mission statement is the reason you are in business. From Rich Dad coaching and the Rich Dad Poor Dad series of books, I learned that a mission state should embody your professional and your spiritual reasons for operating that entity. Your professional reason being the one that generates your revenue and the spiritual one being the one that defines how you help others in the process.

When things start going into disarray at your company, chances are you are not following your mission statement. Your mission statement is your war cry, your guiding light, your reason that is bigger than yourself (as it pertains to your company). When your cash reserves are built and you are considering expansion in area, product, or service, ask yourself “Is this within the parameters of my mission?” If it is not, do not do it. When presented with, what appears to be a great deal, ask yourself “Is this in accordance with my mission statement?” If it is not, do not do it. You have developed a formula that works by concentrating on your mission statement. Keep your company profitable and your team members happy and continue to concentrate on your mission while improving upon your processes.

I am not implying that you should throw away opportunity. On the contrary, I never pass up an opportunity that fits my personality and style of business. However, if it does not fit the mission statement of one of my current entities, I form a new entity around that mission statement. If the expansion for one of my companies is outside the scope of the mission statement, I create another entity to continue in that direction or find another entrepreneur that I can form a symbiotic relationship to accomplish the same goal.

I have found that when you lose focus, your company suffers. When you become distracted from the basics of what made your company great, your company will inform you through loss of revenue. But this can be avoided when you create a mission statement from the beginning. Create the mission statement and make sure that every person you add to your team reads it, agrees with it, and can perform in accordance with it prior to hiring them on. Build systems that support the mission statement and train team members to focus on it. This way, when you want to take a vacation or decide to slack a little, your company will continue to cruise on and revenue will follow its habit of increasing your cash reserves.

Remember, if you don’t already have one, create that mission statement. Do it now. The only person that you are hurting by not creating one is yourself and your company.

Attention everyone! I am proud to say that the Logic Wear, LLC website is live and fully functional.

Please visit, peruse, shop, and give me your feedback.

The motivational phrases and edgy designs are sure to please everyone.

I was sent this video by one of my team members at NorthStar Global. Upon watching it, there were many interesting facts. Although the video is clearly slated for a US audience, many of the points can be examined by all nations and nationalities. One thing that came to the forefront of my mind was education.

Entrepreneurs need to continuously learn and stay informed. This is not optional. It is a mandatory pre-requisite. For if you are not learning, you are not growing. If you are not growing, you are stagnant or regressing. Stagnation and regression both equal death in this Information Age world.

Education, as I am using the term in this post, does not refer to conventional schooling. Although some colleges have entrepreneurial classes, I do not believe they have as much value as real world data and experience. Why? Because. much like creative, musical, physical, etc dispositions, I believe we are born with and have an innate ability to be entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurialism is not something to acquire. It is something you already have. Have you ever seen someone who tried to start a business, did all the right things, and still struggled no matter how much money or knowledge they had? That is because they lacked one key ingredient - entrepreneurial spirit. These same people would be excellent at buying a business and managing it quite well. But therein lies the difference between a business person and an entrepreneur.

To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to nurture and feed that ability. The entrepreneur inside is constantly thirsting for more knowledge, to learn how to do things faster, better, smarter, more efficient, with less effort, help more people, etc. Simply stated, the entrepreneur wants to know how to be more. In order to be more, you have to know more. I am not referring to quantity of information, but rather quality of information. An oversimplified example: Two men want to drive 20 nails into a piece of wood. One uses a rock and the other uses a hammer. Which one knows more? They will both get the job done. But the one with the hammer will get it done faster and with less effort allowing him to produce more and make more. So, when I say, “you have to know more,” I am inferring that you need to increase the quality of your information.

So, where do you start? I can’t tell you. Huh? That’s right. I can’t tell you where to start. But I can ask you a question and you will determine your own starting point rather quickly. What do you want in life? I know this is a broad question. If you have multiple answers to it, write them down and be specific. For example: I want to spend everyday with my family and live in Costa Rica with a 10,000 square foot house and $50 million USD in liquid assets. In the example you can see that I laid out specific times frames, places, and quantities.

Now that you have determined what you want in life, research and seek out people that have achieved these same goals. You do not have to know these people personally, although this would be an added bonus. Research for people that spend every day with their family, people who moved to Costa Rica and have 10,000 square foot houses, and people who have $50 million in liquid assets. Now ask yourself, what do they know that I do not? For, if you are not as successful as you want to be, there is something that you do not know.

Put your items in priority and work on the one that means the most to you, and then the second, and so on. Read about these people, talk to them if you can, mentor with them if it is possible. If they teach, attend their class or seminar. If they wrote books or created audios, read the texts and listen to the audios. Robert Kiyosaki has many, but not all, of the traits that I desire. I have read and listened to just about everything that he has written or created. Tony Robbins, Donald Trump, Harv Eker, and many more possess pieces of my knowledge puzzle. Little by little I am learning what they know that I do not and little by little I am growing closer to my goal. For the record, the example above is just an example. What I want in life is much bigger and helps many more people.

Additionally, you need to self educate in the entrepreneurial world and your own industry. I subscribe to Entrepreneur, Inc, and Fast Company magazines to stay up to date in the entrepreneurial world at large. I also subscribe to MaximumPC to stay abreast of the latest technological advances (one of my industries is the tech sector). In addition, I subscribe to various blogs that assist in more specific areas of my day to day knowledge building:

• The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur - how to achieve more with less
• Networking Effectively - how to reach out and communicate more accurately and effectively
• The Rich Sage - financial web education
• John Chow - how to better monetize your blog
• The Dirty Onion - no holds barred point of view on current events
• Positivity Blog - learn and re-emphasize ideals that get lost in my day to day grind
• More Than A Housewife - Family related information and updates
• And many more.

In summary, ask yourself the questions: What do I want in life? What do the people that have what I want know that I don’t? Do not forget to prioritize your wants and remember, there are many forms of education (seminars, mentoring, apprenticing, books, videos, audios, games, magazines, blogs, and hands on experience) so do not limit yourself to the classroom mentality. Keep in mind, it is the quality of the information not the quantity. Cramming your mind with facts will not make you successful. Neither will learning useful information and falling short of practical application. So get out there, learn something and put it to use. I wish you happiness and success in your journey.

As and aside, to learn more about the various books I have read and recommend, visit our educational section. If you need recommendations on anything else, please contact me and I will be happy to point you in the right direction.

Logic Wear was a business concept developed during the Christmas season of 2007. A team was assembled in the first quarter of 2008. The distributed office model was developed, refined, and implemented in Q2 and Q3 of 2008. And on Saturday November 1st, 2008, Logic Wear, LLC will launch it’s fully functional website - www.logicwearclothing.com.

Please come by, visit, and look around. Logic Wear designs apparel for entrepreneurs who want to express their business ideas and beliefs in a creative way. Logic Wear, LLC was founded for entrepreneurs by entrepreneurs with the goal of Empowering Entrepreneurial Expression.