Well it’s been a big year, our economy is on the rebound and it seems that everyone I speak to says that they’ve never worked as hard as they have in 2009. For me, sleep became a privilege not a right and holidays seem to have forgotten about me… But I wouldn’t have had it any other way. Give me more than a day of free time and I start to go crazy – it’s probably something that’s built into my generationally high levels of impatience.

What keeps me enjoying life is constantly feeling like I’m going somewhere. There were a lot of new things that I got to do this year, both in business and life – What is extremely important to me however is that the energy that I am investing needs to be taking me where I want to go.

I am in control of my future and I would much prefer to live life to its fullest potential rather than float through it expecting things to happen to me.

The end of a year is a good time to reflect on what you have achieved throughout the year and whether you are still heading in the direction that you want to go. If you are, that’s great! If you are not, maybe you need to consider if you are happy doing what you are doing. It seems to be so easy to get stuck in the rat race and come out 20 years later saying ‘I wish I…’.

The moral of the story is live life in the now and year by year reflect and analyse that it is what you want and you are who you want to be – the only person in control of your life is you.

I won’t post next week as I will be too busy surfing what the Gold Coast has to offer.

I will however leave you with this very relevant quote from Thomas Jefferson.

“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”

Happy Christmas, Merry New Year! Have a great break, see you in 2010!

Most people who know me know that I am a guitarist/singer and perform ‘the circuit’ as a soloist and in a duo – this is something I have done for a long time now and playing in bars and clubs is something that I am completely familiar with. Last Friday night however it went up a few notches and I played a corporate function to about 300 people in a grand ball room of one of Brisbane’s most prestige hotels. We started at 9:30, finished at 12 and the aim was to keep everyone dancing. This was by far the biggest performance that I had ever done.

Because I burn the candle at both ends, this was an experience that seemingly approached quite quickly. It was different to what I was used to and took me far outside my comfort (or familiarity) zone.

The lead up to Friday night’s performance was pretty chaotic and I didn’t get the time that I needed to invest to be as I confident as I wanted to be. These weren’t regular pub folk out to see a band; they were at a staff Christmas party. Experiencing nerves of which I hadn’t felt for a long time (if ever) I got up and sung my heart out – before I went on I was visualizing it being over – as I was playing I wanted it to keep going.

The higher the risk, the greater the reward; and often before it all begins, you sit there thinking, ‘why am I doing this?!?’.

I’ve never had a ’run-away’ attitude; I’ve never called in sick because of a big night; I’ve never bailed on an uncomfortable situation due to fear. My motto in life has and always will be Persevere. As I expected on Saturday I woke up completely relaxed, like I had achieved something big the previous night and now I could get on with my life. So the moral of the story…

Achieving big things makes smaller things easier. As we attempt bigger challenges what was once big becomes smaller.

To relate this life philosophy to my corporate side, making a $10,000.00 sale can be stressful when you are used to selling $1,000.00. However when you make a $100,000.00 sale it makes the $10,000.00 (once scary) seem less difficult. Then you achieve a $500,000.00 and so on so forth down the line. Constantly striving for something more, makes your smaller challenges become easier. It also keeps life very interesting.

I am a self confessed challenge junkie and if I am not being challenged I am getting bored. This seems to a trait in Generation Y’s and it would appear that the best way to hold on to us in the workplace is to keep those challenges coming.

It’s a fact of life – You can’t reach new highs doing the same thing everyday – What have you done recently to challenge yourself? How did it make you feel and would doing it a second time seem easier?

Are you a glass half full person, or maybe half empty… Do you realize that all of your actions are constantly impacting other people? Do you yearn for happiness in life or just enough money to buy things that will make you happy?

I believe that positivity is the single most productive trait in the world. Positive people get promotions, Positive people top the sales figures, positive people get the girl, positive people start their own businesses. Positive people impact other people positively and create a better environment… So what are the negatives? Well that’s easy… there are none.

Positivity breeds positivity, just like negativity breeds negativity. To bring this into a work related context, people always talk about ‘culture’ at work. Culture is a broad topic and can cover many elements that I won’t go into now, but one of the most common references re: culture is ‘staff happiness’ and ‘morale’. These characteristics can be very heavily impacted by positive people. Company’s often speak about having the perfect culture – ‘we could have the Google culture…’ The truth is that culture starts with you. If you are a positive, energetic person, you will positively impact people who then may positively impact other people and so on so forth down the line – this is culture in action – people impacting other people. It’s not necessarily top down, its everyone impacting everyone.

If you are not content with the culture in your organization, here is your challenge for the week:
Start changing it!

• Say ‘hello’ to a few more people of a morning.
• Intentionally try to brighten someone’s day…
• Smile at people.
• Randomly high-five people you pass in the workplace (I call this the ‘high-five’ culture).
• Tell someone they are ridiculously good looking (I call this the ‘good looking’ culture).

As the culture begins to spread, you can then watch this boomerang return home and someone you work with might brighten your day. Positivity breeds positivity.

Please share your stories in the comments section below. I’d love to hear how you went. If I work with you, I expect some comments regarding my handsome looks on Wednesday. Why don’t you begin by forwarding this to anyone you think could do with a dose of positivity?

I’ll leave you with these two quotes.

‘Our environment, the world in which we live and work, is a mirror of our attitudes and expectations.’ – Earl Nightingale

Or in the words of my generation:

‘Cheer up Emo Kid’

People are busy. I don’t know anyone who is not currently busy in their own right. With this in mind, how do you effectively manage a business relationship with a busy person? First of all, let me clarify what it means to ‘manage these relationships’. I am not talking about constantly being in contact with people through mass media such as e-news, flyers, magazines, twitter, social media etc. I’m talking about creating and managing real business relationships.

Taking into consideration the fast pace of everyone’s lives, it is not hard to stand out if you do the right things. The title of this post sums it up; little things will make your business relationships more personal and warm as well as enjoyable – what’s the point of having relationships if you’re not into it anyway??? One of the best quotes to sum this up comes from one of my hero’s, Dale Carnegie – the line from his book ‘How to win friends and influence people‘ is:

‘Become genuinely interested in people.’

You can’t fake caring. In a fast paced society, taking a genuine interest in people and caring about them will ultimately create lasting relationships.

So let’s pause for a moment in our busy lives and remember some old-school tactics that show you care.

• A simple note– Caring is knowing a client has a function on a Thursday night and sending an SMS on Thursday morning wishing them good luck. It’ll take you all of 30 seconds to send the message, and I guarantee you that it will make their day and add to their excitement.
• Memory - Remembering your client’s kid’s names and asking how they are. Remembering that your client was going on a holiday last time you spoke to them, and asking them how it was. Memory deserves its own dedicated blog entry. If you have a rubbish memory… write it down! This is what a CRM system is for – if your company doesn’t have one, start your own.
• Be interested – Ask them how their business is. Become genuinely interested in their success – this will build a relationship that spans across multiple careers.
• Thoughtful surprises – Turn up to the meeting with a bottle of water for them – if they are stressed, bring them cake… Your care will build more rapport in five minutes than five thousand e-newsletters.

These are a very small snippet of ways you can better manage business relationships. Remember that you can’t fake it, but you can prepare yourself for it. If you are asking how things are and are clearly not interested it will come through in your body language and tone. If this is you I suggest you get out and start meeting people – learn how great and rewarding social interaction can be.

In short, busyness prevents the little things, the little things are caring and caring creates relationships. If you know anyone who could gain value from this please forward it on and watch yourself and your friends start to effectively Manage Business Relationships.