They meet on Wednesdays at 7am at the First Alliance Credit Union at 1011 Tomkins Drive NE in Byron.
New Byron, MN Chapter Forms
Congratulations to our newest chapter: A.M. net-WORKS in Byron, MN! President Gail Nelson is a banker at First Alliance Credit Union and brought Corey Kispert (Insurance Brokers of MN) and Gwen Maxson (Isagenix) onboard to help lead the new chapter.
Leadership: When It's All About You
By Brian Evje
INC.COM Unfortunately for leaders everywhere, “positive intent” is not enough. Simply wanting to do something the right way, or even a certain way, becomes harder and harder the higher up the ladder you go, as you perceive yourself as more “central” to the organization. For entrepreneurs, this often means it becomes harder to lead appropriately as your company grows.
The psychology is clear, and well-established. Starting in the 1940s, sociologist Ron Westrum studied the practices of pediatricians and noticed a pattern of behavior in doctors who failed to diagnose serious conditions, such as child abuse by parents. He found that well-intentioned doctors were hampered by their own sense of “expertise” and overlooked clear signals that something was wrong. They convinced themselves that if parents were abusing their children, the doctors (as experts) “would surely know the phenomenon if it actually were taking place.”
Westrum called this “the fallacy of centrality” – the assumption that because one is in a central position, one automatically knows everything necessary to exercise effective leadership.
In practice, that means CEOs often think, “If something serious is happening in my organization, I know about it, because my role is central to the organization.” And who is more central to an organization than its founder, especially at the early stages? The fallacy of centrality can also apply in the negative sense: “Because I don’t know about an event, it must not be going on.”
Robert Sutton, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, notes that this problem causes leaders to narrow their focus on their own needs and wants, to the exclusion of others and the organization. This is a fine insight into the all-too-common habit of leaders acting as if written and unwritten rules that others are expected to follow don’t apply to them.
So, how does a leader minimize the fallacy of centrality?
- Be aware of the dynamic. Once you acknowledge the nuances of “centrality,” you can ask all kinds of questions about your personal patterns. Awareness is the first action for change.
- Discuss with others. Many leaders fail to grow simply because they do not reflect on and talk about elemental issues of leadership. Reflection and discussion are essential steps for change.
- Decide how and what to refocus. Ask yourself: How will I pay more attention to others in the organization? How do I embrace situations and perspectives that differ from my own? What do I do daily to discover organizational “bad news”? And when I learn things in the organization that are not as I assumed, what will I do differently to address them?
Who is Talking About You?
The question is: who is talking about you to their friends?
Being a part of a Master Networks chapter means that you have all those professionals plugging you and your business each week. They are like your own sales force. Because they are taking the time to get to know you in the weekly meeting, it gives them an extra edge to promote you from a personal level, which speaks to people the loudest in this age where too many businesses are becoming large and faceless.
Ready for Relationship-based Business Growth? Consider joining one of our chapters, check the map to get in touch with a chapter president in your area today!
Relationships are Key for Growing Businesses
By Nell Merlino
OPENFORUM.COM Are you involved in your community outside of work? Are you the go-to person for your PTA, local farmer’s market or church? What kind of relationships have you built from those connections? I’ve built an organization from relationships I’ve developed through different circles that have been invaluable for my business and social life.
Professionally, people tend to confuse networking with relationships. Networking is the act of finding out who’s around. You go to a networking event to meet people with which to build relationships. And you build relationships by doing things with people. Talking on the phone does not constitute as a relationship if you never interact with that person face-to-face.
...Relationships are key. I can’t stress this enough. They are what organizations are built from. People tend to be unsure about how to expand their universe, but it’s something you will do for a lifetime.
OPENFORUM.COM Are you involved in your community outside of work? Are you the go-to person for your PTA, local farmer’s market or church? What kind of relationships have you built from those connections? I’ve built an organization from relationships I’ve developed through different circles that have been invaluable for my business and social life.
Professionally, people tend to confuse networking with relationships. Networking is the act of finding out who’s around. You go to a networking event to meet people with which to build relationships. And you build relationships by doing things with people. Talking on the phone does not constitute as a relationship if you never interact with that person face-to-face....Relationships are key. I can’t stress this enough. They are what organizations are built from. People tend to be unsure about how to expand their universe, but it’s something you will do for a lifetime.
The Dilemma of Coaching Yourself
Pretty much anyone can work hard and adapt their performance if they understand where they are going wrong. However, identifying what needs to be fixed can be difficult. This has little to do with intelligence or even talent, I would argue, and a lot more to do with being one person, in one body.
Or, as writer Atul Gawande puts it in an excellent piece on the habits of top performers, it can be difficult to be our own "outside eyes and ears":
Élite performers, researchers say, must engage in "deliberate practice" – sustained, mindful efforts to develop the full range of abilities that success requires. You have to work at what you're not good at. In theory, people can do this themselves. But most people do not know where to start or how to proceed. Expertise, as the formula goes, requires going from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence and finally to unconscious competence. The coach provides the outside eyes and ears, and makes you aware of where you're falling short. This is tricky. Human beings resist exposure and critique; our brains are well defended. So coaches use a variety of approaches – showing what other, respected colleagues do, for instance, or reviewing videos of the subject's performance. The most common, however, is just conversation.
Shining Through
Help your business stand out from the crowd.
, Tony Hartl offers a wealth of advice (75 tips to be exact) on how to build a strong, profitable business and at the same time maintain a culture that makes people want to be part of what you’ve created. Regardless of your product or service, using these simple yet powerful strategies will help you stand apart from the competition.Go the extra mile.
It’s not always convenient to meet your customers’ needs, especially when they call in with a special, last-minute request or show up at closing time. But when you go above and beyond and offer excellent service, you’ll develop a reputation as the go-to person in your market space.Create a relationship experience, not a transaction.
Take a personal interest in your customers’ lives. Simple things—kind compliments, addressing them by name, remembering their birthdays—show your customers that they’re not just a sale.Exceed expectations.
“We had the same equipment as the tanning salon down the road. The thing that made Planet Tan truly distinctive was the experience created by our team,” Hartl writes. “Any business or service professional can look for ways to go the extra mile and stay relevant to customers. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a plumber, a piano teacher or a lawyer; you can avoid being ‘commoditized’ if you’re willing to exceed expectations and deliver exceptional service.”
John C. Maxwell: Players vs. Pretenders
SUCCESS.COM In every organization there are those who would rather act the part than do their part. I’ve classified these people as pretenders. Pretenders can slow an organization down, steal momentum and damage relationships. They live for themselves. When an organization needs “we” people, the “I” people either change or get exposed.
In order for a pretender to become a player, major changes in personality and thought patterns must take place.
A good friend of mine, Bill Purvis, gave me the idea to do a lesson on this very topic. He once said, “I experienced much more success when I learned to tell the difference between the players and the pretenders.”
Pretenders look the part, talk the part and claim the part, but fall short of fulfilling the part. Let me give you five differences between players and pretenders.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PLAYERS AND PRETENDERS
1. Players have a servant’s mindset.
Pretenders have a selfish mindset.
Albert Einstein illustrated this point brilliantly:
Strange is our situation here upon Earth. Each of us comes for a short visit, not knowing why, yet sometimes seeming to divine a purpose.
From the standpoint of daily life, however, there is one thing we do know: that man is here for the sake of other men—above all for those upon whose smile and well-being our own happiness depends, and also for the countless unknown souls, with whose fate we are connected by a bond of sympathy. Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead, and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.
Einstein realized that he was a debtor to those who had previously gone before him and who had given of themselves to him.
QUESTION: “HOW CAN YOU TELL IF YOU HAVE A SERVANT ATTITUDE?”
Answer: “By the way you react when you are treated like one.”
2. Players are mission conscious.
Pretenders are position conscious.
Players will give up a position to achieve a mission, and pretenders will give up a mission to achieve a position. They are also worried about what their titles are and where they are on the promotion ladder. Players don’t promote themselves; pretenders, on the other hand, are quick to tell you how valuable they are to the organization and will go on and on about their accomplishments.
3. Players are job-happy—They love what they do and do it well.
Pretenders are job-hunters—They can’t do it where they are, but think they could do it better where they are going. Pretenders always think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.
PRETENDERS HAVE THREE THINGS IN THEIR LIVES:
► Destination Disease—They think success is always somewhere else.
► Someone’s Sickness—They think success is with someone else.
► Backslider Blues—They think success today is impossible because of yesterday.
4. Players can deliver the goods.
Pretenders promise the goods.
Author Thomas Sowell says, “We hear about the haves and the have-nots. Why don’t we hear about the doers and the do-nots?”
One of my favorite stories deals with this topic. It’s about an illiterate salesman by the name of Gooch who was sent out by a large company, and the following are some letters he wrote back to the boss:
“Dear boss: I seen this outfit which they ain’t never bought a dime’s worth of nothin from us and I sole them a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of guds. I am now in Chicago.”
The second letter read:
“I come here and sole them half a milyon.”
The president of the company posted these letters on the bulletin board with this note:
“We bin spending too much time here tryin to spel instead of tryin to sel. Let’s watch these sails. I want everybody should read these letters from Gooch who is doing a grate job for us, and you should go out and do like he done.”
Gooch is a player; he knows how to bring home the goods!
5. Players love to see others succeed.
Pretenders are only interested in their own success.
Rabbi Harold Kushner said it best:
The purpose of life is not to win. The purpose of life is to grow and to share. When you come to look back on all that you have done in life, you will get more satisfaction from the pleasure you have brought into other people’s lives than you will from the times that you outdid and defeated them.
When I graduated from college and started running my first church, I was very competitive. I would find out what other churches were doing and would compare what they were doing with what I was doing. But I evolved beyond being a competitor…
► To personal achiever
► To team player
► To team builder
I started out wanting to get an advantage on the other churches; now my greatest joy is raising up and developing leaders. Out of developing them, they have added value to my life and I added value to their lives. If you can get everything accomplished by yourself, your dream is too small. One is too small a number to produce greatness. It’s always been about teamwork.
PLAYERS ARE REAL
Leaders do not try to “perform” for the followers’ benefit. They are open and truthful. They have nothing to hide. Truth really does set you free. You aren’t constantly trying to cover up. Pretending to be real is a lot more exhausting than just being real.
Perfect Your Elevator Pitch
Taken from the article: Networking with New Media
Another Regional Director Joins Us
Sara Bunge has a passion for teaching and training others and has spent her entire adult life doing just that in some form or another. Currently she does on site career-based training on topics like communication, leadership, and time management. She represents Norwex and believes in the importance of preserving the wellbeing of our selves and our environment. Having grown up on a farm just north of Dexter, Minnesota, Sara loves to spend time with her extended family there whenever possible. She is married to Don with two children and baking is one of her favorite activities. Her dog is even known to enjoy his portion of her banana bread, whether it’s been offered to him or not!
“Sara is a great example of what our company culture is all about. Her experience in educating others makes her the perfect addition to our Master Networks Team of Regional Directors.”
-Chas Wilson, President and Co-Founder
6 Tips for Getting the Growth You Want
Feel like your company needs a boost? Here are a few strategies to jumpstart your company’s growth, increase revenues and reach new customers.
INC.COM Whether a company is an early stage start-up or a fully developed firm, the job of the CEO is to make sure that the company is sustaining a healthy amount of growth. But how do you get there?
"Most of us will never run an IBM or a GE, but millions of us around the world run mid-sized entrepreneurial companies, some of which have the potential to become significant, lasting, and difference-making organizations," writes Keith McFarland, author of The Breakthrough Company, which surveyed 7,000 companies to see what enabled 'little firms to become big.' "But which ones? What are the characteristics that will separate those that break through from those that don't? And what can we do as leaders to help our organizations maximize their potential for breakthrough?"
How to Assess Your Leadership Skills
INC.COM ...Expand your circle. Networking is critical to being an effective leader. It can come in the form of professional peer groups like industry associations or community involvement at, say, your local Parent Teacher Association. “Practicing leadership in a variety of settings and observing leaders in a variety of settings will enhance leadership skills,” says Ebner.
Don’t overlook peers as an important group with whom to network, either. “As you progress professionally, so do your peers,” points out Ebner. “By investing in these relationships and getting to know others at a similar level of responsibility and authority, you are building a community of colleagues who care about you and your success.”
Another networking tip: The aspirational—or “stretch” lunch. One of Ebner’s coaching clients regularly invites leaders she admires for a bite, and focuses on talking with them about their lives, careers, and goals. She even follows up with ideas, articles, or an intro to someone relevant she knows. But she holds off on asking for anything. Says Ebner: “Over time, the good will and relationships from these lunches has led to a powerful network of people who are more than happy to support, advise, and assist her when the time comes.”
You Can’t Do It Alone
“Each of us comes to a chasm in our business sooner or later that we can’t cross without someone’s help. Going it alone is like trying to speed walk on the moon. It’s hard to get traction. Conversely, tapping into your network is like walking on one of those people-movers at the airport. You just step on, and all of a sudden there’s a power underneath transporting you to your destination faster than you could get there by yourself. People are bridges you must cross to get where you want to go. They serve as catalysts. The value for business owners is that networking the right way can provide the power to help them achieve their goals a whole lot quicker than they could ever do it on their own."
Announcing...
...the new Regional Director of Minnesota
ROCHESTER, MINNESOTA Micki Spors is no stranger to hard work and high achievement. She has been with Mary Kay for 13 years and a sales director for 11, leading and training a team of what is now over 60 people. She identifies Mary Kay's company priorities as key to her success: faith first, family next, and career last. She has been married for 14 years and has four children ranging from 3 - 10 years of age. Micki grew up in Osseo, MN but has called Rochester home for the last 13 years. She is always up for enjoying a margarita and chips at the nearest Mexican restaurant and is excited to help Minnesota business professionals get plugged into a Master Networks chapter. "I am confident in the leadership Micki will provide to the Minnesota Region of Master Networks and am thrilled to have such a driven, talented person of integrity on our team."
--Chas Wilson, Master Networks President and Co-Founder
Master Networks is currently looking for Regional Directors across the country. Contact us if you are interested to find out more about this great opportunity.
Step One is Showing Up
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| flickr |
Finally, as it got later and later, I told him out of frustration that he said he wanted my advice, and, “Step one was to get to the gym before it closes!”
He laughed at my exasperation and we did go to the gym before it closed. Since then saying, “Step one!” has been an inside joke for whenever someone fails to put in the basic effort for a goal they supposedly care about.
It's All About Attitude
SUCCESS.COM We are what we think we are—not what we appear to be on the outside. An absolutely essential ingredient for success is a positive self-image. The world operates on the basis of the law of attraction: what you are and what you think will attract corresponding conditions. If you have a negative self-image, you attract negative results. If your self-image is positive, you attract positive results. This may appear simplistic, but it is absolutely true.
Your mental picture of yourself determines the measure of confidence you bring to using your potential and working toward your goals. Psychologists estimate we use less than a third of our actual potential. By increasing your potential even slightly, you can make a sizable improvement in your effectiveness.
What are your thoughts about how big of a piece attitude has in your overall wellness both personally and professionally?
8 Tips for Using Social Blogging to Grow Your Business
INC.COM Here are some tips to help you make the most of social blogging:
1. Position yourself as an expert. When people are looking for a product or service, oftentimes they will first look for information about the subject on the Internet. In general, blogging is about having conversations in a public space that position you as a subject matter expert. "The type of discussions you ideally should have ought to be answering questions that people out there on the Internet are searching for," says Adria Richards, Organic Technology Consultant and blogger. "For me, social blogging is a way to have conversations with potential customers and to draw traffic to your site." For instance, you can answer questions from consumers via Twitter, which is a popular thing to do.
The Six Traits of a Successful Small Business Owner
A new report attempts to identify a winning formula.
By Courtney RubinThere is no magic formula for small business success, but most owners who do well share the same six personality traits, according to a new report.
The Guardian Life Small Business Research Institute report hopes to explain why only 1 in 2 small businesses will survive more than five years, according to Small Business Administration figures. The study - called Six Dimensions That Characterize Success-Oriented Small Business Owners - is based on analysis of a survey of 1,100 small businesses with between 2 and 99 employees. (The Institute is run by the Guardian Life Insurance Company of America, and it conducts ongoing research on what it calls "the Index of What Matters Most" to small businesses.)
How to Get Creative: Stop Trying
Creativity can come out of nowhere. The trick is to sense it—and ride it to the end.
From the July/August 2011 issue of Inc. magazine
A few weeks ago, I was on fire. I was working on some designs for a prototype of a new software product, and the ideas were flowing as they hadn't in months. Every day, I felt as if I were accomplishing two or three days' worth of work. I was in the zone, and it felt fantastic.
From the July/August 2011 issue of Inc. magazine
A few weeks ago, I was on fire. I was working on some designs for a prototype of a new software product, and the ideas were flowing as they hadn't in months. Every day, I felt as if I were accomplishing two or three days' worth of work. I was in the zone, and it felt fantastic.It lasted about three weeks. And then I found myself back at my old pace. Instead of being superproductive, I was sort-of productive. Some days, I felt as if I barely accomplished anything.
So what was wrong? Nothing at all.
Discover Your Marketing Mindset
by Marla Tabaka
INC.COM Here are a few questions you can ask yourself to understand the value of what you offer, and to find the words to share your wonderful offerings with a larger audience.
- What is unique about my product or service?
- What is unique about ME and how does that enhance my product or service?
- How does it help others?
- How does it enhance the lives of my clients/customers?
- What are some of the things my clients have said about their experience with me or my company?
- Would my clients feel good about telling others about their experience?
- Is there something I can do to help those happy clients to easily spread the word of this experience?
- What can I do for my clients/customers to thank them for their business?
- Is there anything I can do to make my product of service more affordable for them on occasion?
- What are the most common words I hear others use to describe their experience of my product or service?
- How can I use those words to describe it to my future clients?
- If I don’t tell more people about my offerings what am I depriving them of?
New Chapter Launch in Rochester, MN
Are you slow moving in the morning and not quite thinking a clear thought until noon? The new Rochester chapter is for you! It meets in the Home Federal building on West Circle Drive from noon to 1:30pm on Wednesdays.
There has been a ton of interest in this group and some of the main occupation slots have already been filled so you will need to touch base with the president, Dan (507-990-1721), to see if there's still an opening for your profession.
Don't Be a Know It All
Microsoft's Jenni Flinders' focus on learning has contributed to career longevity.
By Emma Johnson
SUCCESS.COM Jenni Flinders believes in being a learner, not a knower.
“I’ve seen it so many times: People come into a meeting believing they know the answer,” says the 22-year IT veteran and vice president of Microsoft’s U.S. Partner Group. “But if you just listen to a group of people, the speaker is not shut down, and you’d be surprised at what you actually learn. Every idea has merit and deserves to be heard at least.”
Being a learner and not a knower is among Flinders’ top grounding principles that have guided a career noted as one of the longest and most successful for a woman in the male-dominated technology industry.
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