FIND YOUR PASSION AND YOU'LL FIND SUCCESS IN BUSINESS

Most successful entrepreneurs have a strong passion for their ideas or concepts. They know what they want and they know what they enjoy doing. Their work becomes their play. The secret to success in business is to find your passion. Know specifically what it is you want in life. I can't emphasize it enough. You need to be certain that what you are doing is something that you really and truly want. This is not something that you should want, or that someone else wants. It is something that YOU personally really want. But, there's one more thing. If you really, really, want it you must believe that it is possible to achieve it. Have belief that it is possible it might happen.

Now, here's vitally important next step. Go from believing that it is possible, to having conviction that it will happen. Not just something that you hope will happen. Not just something that you believe will happen. You need to have conviction that it WILL happen. This is something that is stronger than simply a belief. It's when you are convinced it CAN and WILL happen. The final step is making it happen. When you know precisely what you want - go after it. Action is something more important than just believing. My point is: don't just dream about it, don't just believe you can... go and make it happen. Develop a sense of urgency in your life to make it happen. These 12 questions will help if you are having difficulty finding your passion. I suggest you sit down by yourself, think carefully about each question and, for your own sake, answer each one honestly: 1. What would you stop doing that you are doing now? 2. What would you do if you knew you could not fail?

SETTING NON-NEGOTIABLE STAFF STANDARDS

When a person seeks employment with your company, he or she is basically saying, “I want to work for your company.” What this really means is “I will give up doing whatever I please, show up for work and behave way you want me to behave, so long as you pay me in exchange.” Now, that gives you employer, opportunity to set some standards of behavior that are non-negotiable. That doesn’t mean you are taking away any creativity from your employees. After all, it is important for staff members to have some flexibility and to project their own personality into their job. With that said; it is also a good idea for employer to be inflexible with some things. In other words set non-negotiable standards. This is no different from every day life. Society has rules. Imagine, for example, if there were no road signs or laws to guide us on how to behave. Imagine if there were no rules in sport… it would be a shambles, right? The truth is, most of us like to know our boundaries, because that way we know what we can and can’t do. If we break law we get fined or arrested. If we don’t play fairly in sport we get penalized in some way. We are use to non-negotiable standards. Why should it be any different when running a business? It shouldn’t! To run smoothly, every business needs rules and policy. Although staff members may not always agree with policy, they can and usually will comply. I will give you a couple of examples of what I mean - When I ran my retail stores I had a staff uniform designed. Staff members were required to wear uniform – that was non-negotiable. However, it wasn’t quite like being in military. There were various acceptable combinations, so staff could adjust uniform to suit their own personality. Here’s deal: It was a non-negotiable standard that staff members were required to wear uniform. Furthermore, it needed to be within agreed guidelines using any one of approved combinations. Anything else was unacceptable. Now, that's not unreasonable. Another example was handling of money. Banknotes were required to be put into cash registers in correct compartments and all facing in same direction. I had worked out that it took same amount of time,