This is an amazing time to be in business for oneself! As more women are opening up to the possibilities available by bringing their own unique gifts to the world, more is available to the rest of us. We hire coaches, attend motivational seminars and embrace our own growth, knowing that our business won’t grow farther than we do. We work grueling hours, calling people, blogging, posting on social media, networking and doing follow up.

What about health? Many of us are driven to bring our service to the world and push through fatigue, hunger, headaches or other maladies. The saying “The greatest wealth is health” (Virgil, 50 BC) describes how important health really is. We certainly don’t want to sacrifice health to be successful.

How can you tell if the status of your health is getting in the way of your business?

1. You have to start every day with a big, strong cup of coffee. This clears the cobwebs out and gives you the energy that you need to get moving. Did you know that caffeine essentially overrides the adrenal glands so that they get tired and aren’t able to support you when encountering stress in your life? A wake-up call to the strength of this addiction is the necessity of foregoing coffee when scheduled for a fasting blood test. Yikes!
2. You experience brain fog. This happens to women at menopause, but also happens as a result of eating foods that don’t agree with us. I used to notice this primarily as an inability to find the words that I wanted in conversations and I ended up sounding inarticulate and unprepared. Others may just have trouble thinking things through. Giving up a few different foods and adding them back to the diet one at a time (elimination diet) can help identify what is causing this.
3. You often wake up in the middle of the night. 2 AM is the perfect time to start rehashing all the items on the to-do list and consider options, dreams or even fears. Whatever the reason, losing sleep has a big impact on energy and performance the next day. It is almost impossible to “catch up on sleep”! Try avoiding any technology for at least one hour before you head to bed to see if that helps.
4. You get drowsy in the middle of the afternoon. You run to the coffee-maker or grab something starchy or sugary to keep you going. Or maybe you just want to take a nap. You get lots done in the morning, but your energy flags in the afternoon. This is rampant today and can be caused by sleep deprivation, food sensitivities or metabolic imbalances.
5. You feel bloated after eating, or maybe a few hours later. You may actually just feel like you put on a bunch of weight suddenly. When feeling this way, it is impossible to ignore the sensation and you can’t really put your attention fully on what project you are working on. Dairy or gluten intolerances are two very common sensitivities that can wreak havoc with the digestive system.

You are probably reading this, thinking, “This is all normal, isn’t it? Of course I am sluggish in the afternoon, isn’t everyone? Isn’t it normal to feel bloated after eating?” Well, no, they aren’t normal. These are all signs that your health is going awry. If your health isn’t what it can be, you can’t truly focus and create the best in your business life. And the good news is that it won’t take a Herculean effort to take control of the state of your health.

If you want to know more about how to use food as medicine, contact me at coco@cleanlivingcoach.com or come visit my booth at the SUCCESS Summit on May 18th in Dallas. When you stop by my booth, you will get the opportunity to take my “Feast on This, Not That” quiz. I promise you, the answers will shock you!

Guest Writer – Coco O’Donnell

Coco O’Donnell has worked as a coach, pharmacist and in the pharmaceutical industry for the bulk of her professional career. She now teaches women how to pump up their health in easy-to-implement ways, without relying on fads or trendy recommendations. Her clients are amazed and motivated to make easy changes that reap huge health rewards and renewed vitality.

This is an amazing time to be in business for oneself! As more women are opening up to the possibilities available by bringing their own unique gifts to the world, more is available to the rest of us. We hire coaches, attend motivational seminars and embrace our own growth, knowing that our business won’t grow farther than we do. We work grueling hours, calling people, blogging, posting on social media, networking and doing follow up.

What about health? Many of us are driven to bring our service to the world and push through fatigue, hunger, headaches or other maladies. The saying “The greatest wealth is health” (Virgil, 50 BC) describes how important health really is. We certainly don’t want to sacrifice health to be successful.

How can you tell if the status of your health is getting in the way of your business?

1. You have to start every day with a big, strong cup of coffee. This clears the cobwebs out and gives you the energy that you need to get moving. Did you know that caffeine essentially overrides the adrenal glands so that they get tired and aren’t able to support you when encountering stress in your life? A wake-up call to the strength of this addiction is the necessity of foregoing coffee when scheduled for a fasting blood test. Yikes!
2. You experience brain fog. This happens to women at menopause, but also happens as a result of eating foods that don’t agree with us. I used to notice this primarily as an inability to find the words that I wanted in conversations and I ended up sounding inarticulate and unprepared. Others may just have trouble thinking things through. Giving up a few different foods and adding them back to the diet one at a time (elimination diet) can help identify what is causing this.
3. You often wake up in the middle of the night. 2 AM is the perfect time to start rehashing all the items on the to-do list and consider options, dreams or even fears. Whatever the reason, losing sleep has a big impact on energy and performance the next day. It is almost impossible to “catch up on sleep”! Try avoiding any technology for at least one hour before you head to bed to see if that helps.
4. You get drowsy in the middle of the afternoon. You run to the coffee-maker or grab something starchy or sugary to keep you going. Or maybe you just want to take a nap. You get lots done in the morning, but your energy flags in the afternoon. This is rampant today and can be caused by sleep deprivation, food sensitivities or metabolic imbalances.
5. You feel bloated after eating, or maybe a few hours later. You may actually just feel like you put on a bunch of weight suddenly. When feeling this way, it is impossible to ignore the sensation and you can’t really put your attention fully on what project you are working on. Dairy or gluten intolerances are two very common sensitivities that can wreak havoc with the digestive system.

You are probably reading this, thinking, “This is all normal, isn’t it? Of course I am sluggish in the afternoon, isn’t everyone? Isn’t it normal to feel bloated after eating?” Well, no, they aren’t normal. These are all signs that your health is going awry. If your health isn’t what it can be, you can’t truly focus and create the best in your business life. And the good news is that it won’t take a Herculean effort to take control of the state of your health.

If you want to know more about how to use food as medicine, contact me at coco@cleanlivingcoach.com or come visit my booth at the SUCCESS Summit on May 18th in Dallas. When you stop by my booth, you will get the opportunity to take my “Feast on This, Not That” quiz. I promise you, the answers will shock you!

Guest Writer – Coco O’Donnell

Coco O’Donnell has worked as a coach, pharmacist and in the pharmaceutical industry for the bulk of her professional career. She now teaches women how to pump up their health in easy-to-implement ways, without relying on fads or trendy recommendations. Her clients are amazed and motivated to make easy changes that reap huge health rewards and renewed vitality.

When social media came around, did you get excited thinking “Yeah, finally, an easier, free way to market”?

And since that time, do you think differently?

I ask because most small business owners I know are NOT getting clients and prospects from their online social media marketing efforts. If they are getting them, it’s very few and far between.

The reason for that, I believe, is that what people are being told to do online from so-called social media experts (on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter primarily) is NOT what’s going to generate the quality leads that you’re looking for in your small business.

I believe that using the key networking strategies that are effective at in-person events in your online efforts is what needs to happen.

Think about it this way; when you go to an in-person networking event in your local town or out of town, what do you do when you walk up to a new person you haven’t met yet?

You greet them and ask them their name, what they do and possibly ask them other questions too as they come up. Hopefully you do not just talk about yourself.

But what you most likely do not do is throw your business card or a flyer in their face and walk away from them right? That would be rude and really awkward.

So, think about what you’re doing on social media sites now. You’re throwing flyers in the faces of your friends and followers, many of whom you really have no idea who they are. You’re posting updates about your upcoming events, program, services, special offers and you’re linking to pages on your website designed to sell them or get them to opt in. Yet you have no idea who these people are most of the time, nor are you acting like you care.

Now posting stuff like this is important, don’t get me wrong. However what’s more important, especially when you first get to know someone, follow them or add them as a friend is that you find out who they are, what they do or if or how you can serve them or vice versa right? Wouldn’t that make sense to do first?

Yet doing that, especially one by one, takes too much time you’re probably thinking. You’re right, it can. However, if it is the one main way you’re going to find and convert ideal prospects on social media then wouldn’t it make sense that you spend a good amount of time doing this? It’s still free.

For an example, if you need new clients ASAP, you can pretty quickly find an in-person networking meeting or event to attend within the week where you can go to seek them out and build the relationship faster. You can do the same thing on Facebook and LinkedIn and a few other sites and forums too. But you’re not doing the right things to build relationships online; you’re blasting in their faces instead of having conversations.

I recommend you think about having more quality conversations while on your social media sites so you can maximize your time. Doing this is going to require that you strategize a little more with what you’re doing instead of just hap-hazzardly throw stuff out there and hope it works.

You may also need a plan on what to do, how many people to connect with, how to connect with them and also what to say to them when you do connect. And if you’re not that marketing or networking savvy in the first place then this could all be foreign to you and possibly a bit overwhelming. The key is to have a clear system on what to do then you can even delegate some of this so you know it will get done and not by you if you want.

Social Media by itself does not build relationships with your target market.  Social media is merely a calling card that invites people to your “home” where you share “content” (valuable information) with your clients.

While social media is a great way of reaching out to clients – it is also a demanding mistress – constantly needing to be fed with new content.  This is where people often get discouraged because they quickly run out of things to say.

Presenting your message in different formats is a great way to keep feeding the content monster while at the same time making sure that they audience really ‘gets’ what you have to say.

The average person has to hear a message 9 to 11 times before it will sink in.  Also, presenting your information in audio, video, and written format appeals to different learning styles so that you can reach more people.

Here is a how to take on piece of content and use it many different ways on your blog or website.

1. Start with a webinar.  There are people who say that webinars are dead.  Still, I routinely have over 200 people sign up for my more popular topics.  One way to make the webinar more interesting is to interview other people – or have them interview you.  When you do the webinar – make sure that you record the video.  Most teleseminar services like Go to Meeting or Instant Teleseminar have video recording capabilities.   Also, make sure that you either work from very good notes or get the video transcribed.
2. Post the video.  The next thing to do is to edit the video (if you can’t edit, that’s OK – you can use the whole thing).  I find it effective to create small snippets (less than 5 minutes) that I post separately to You Tube and other video sites.  Create a .tv domain to house all of your videos.   When you post your videos – make sure to use keywords in your description and your URL in the video title.
3. Create an infographic  If the information you are presenting is factual – go ahead and create an infographic.  Infographics tend to be widely shared on Facebook and Pinterest.
   
4. Create a free report – Use the transcript from the video to create a free report.  You can use the report as an opt-in bribe – or just save it until you need a bonus or just something special to give to your readers.  Publish parts of the report as posts on your blog.
5. Use the article in your newsletter  Use some of the articles you create in your e-newsletter.
6. Pull the audio from the video (or use your teleseminar audio) and submit it to iTunes as a podcast.
7. Q&A  Use the content from your webinar to answer questions on Quora and Linked In.   You can also create a series of FAQ documents based on the information you share in the webinar and post them to your website and to Scribd.

The question I usually get at this point is, will people get tired of seeing the same content over and over again – the answer to this is no.  Once this system gets going, you can stagger different types of content so that people aren’t seeing the same thing days in a row.  Also, we are consuming so much information that repetition actually leads to retention rather than boredom.

How are you recycling your content?

Is there anyone on the planet who hasn’t heard that public speaking is the number one fear in America? Many business people are so genuinely freaked out by what they are going to say that they give too little thought to HOW they will say it. Not to make a challenging situation worse, but today I want to point out that how you speak can be even more important than the content you’re sharing, and certain vocal patterns can rob you of authority before you’re even out of the gate.

You’re probably familiar with uptalking, although you may not have been aware of that term. Uptalking is a trend that cropped up in the 1980s and is best known as Valley Girl speak. It’s when the speaker pitches their voice up at the end of each statement as if they are asking a question. Not only is this speech pattern annoying for listeners, it generally makes the speaker appear immature, and not very bright. Any authority he or she would have had is instantly sucked away.

For this reason, I counsel clients to practice breaking this pattern if they strive to be taken seriously in a business setting and especially if they are going to appear on TV or radio. Interestingly, this vocal habit started with teen and twenty-something girls but in the last couple of decades has broken gender and age barriers. And I have to tell you, it’s more than a bit disconcerting when a middle-aged dude in a business setting, okay in ANY setting, sounds like Moon Zappa in the 1980s song Valley Girl. Tragic!

In a recent New York Times article, several linguists tried to shed a more positive light on this peculiar pattern, concluding that it’s a way for young women to bond and to assert their authority. I follow on the bonding point but authority? Like, no way! Kidding aside, I maintain my anti-uptalk stance as it’s rare to meet someone who talks this way that engenders respect. In my 20 years in PR and broadcasting I have yet to meet one.

So how do you know if you are uptalking and what can you do about it? First, if you are actually a teenage girl living in the Valley, rock on. You’re like, totally, just fitting in.

But even if you are a teen, if you aspire to great heights professionally, you need to drop the uptalking like the bad habit it is. I’m a petite woman and when I was a newbie I realized that I needed to use what I could to be taken seriously because small and young is not such a winning combo in business. The number one tool I learned to use was my voice and I made a conscious decision not to uptalk. Well, maybe with my girlfriends. Everyone has to cut loose once in a while. I mean, right?

So, what if you suspect that you are an uptalker? I’d advise you in the same way that I counsel my clients – record yourself talking, in a variety of situations. It’s very helpful if you can get a friend to record you when you are not aware, to really assess your speech habits. If you’re like most of us, you’ll notice some things that you need to work on, such as uptalk.

While I’m discussing speech patterns that rob you of authority, there is another relatively new one that I notice quite a bit in younger women and it’s the habit of lazily dragging out the end of a sentence and making the voice a bit raspy, almost croaky. Think Kardashian, or better yet, the hilarious Saturday Night Live spoof of the Kardashians. The technical term is vocal frying and this is another one to eliminate from your speech as it gives the effect that you are disinterested or annoyed.

Again, reviewing yourself on tape or video is the best way to ferret out and correct these vocal habits that detract from your professionalism and message.

Do you know any uptalkers? What do you think when you hear someone uptalking or using vocal fry in a business setting? Leave a comment here–we’d love to hear about it!

This is an interesting year. We are facing an election year, the economy is trying to recover, and jobs are not where everyone would like them to be. Corporations are watching what they spend, from gas to office supplies to corporate events. Not only is everything under scrutiny, employees and contractors alike are being asked to pitch in a little more even if they have a little less. And oh by the way, they are being guided to be more creative in their solutions.

This will is a 3-part series exploring various workplace trends that will shape the future of Corporate America and local, state, and Federal governments. These trends can support your growth if you know how to best use them to your benefit.

The first 5 trends are explained below and will be followed by 5 more trends and the cost of implementing trends that companies are using to managing their employees differently. The growth from these trends can be attained for the individual professional as well as for the overall culture.

1. Workforce Reductions. With various reductions in workforce happening across every industry, whether it is a furlough day, company realignment, reassignment, or layoffs, there is a shift in staff in just about every large industry. Managers have to think about how to build the next generation of leaders. Every challenge brings opportunity and now more than ever innovation is paramount in working with less and retaining as well as increasing profits.
2. Telepresence and Telework Options. Telepresence and telework has gained some really serious momentum and visibility for its cross-collaboration and cost-savings as well. The challenge for those that have not built and incorporated that option into their environment can be looking at a lofty price, simply because corporations are looking to decrease their costs. Telepresence supports so many development skills like presentation, communication, video presence, and effective written skills.
3. Revitalize your leadership development training: Whether your company is bringing someone in or you are identifying the resource, coaching or training to enhance your skills and gain better understanding of the best ways to support the profit goals are a primary focus to careers today. There are a few hot areas including developing leadership skills, creating sustainability, motivating and promoting a collaborative work environment have become important.
4. Recognize the value of emotional intelligence: Emotional intelligence has become more important than being intelligent. Reading people and using authentic, humanistic management intuition strengthens employee relations and reading others actions to make better decisions on future moves that affect the organization. Interacting, sharing, and including staff’s perspectives is invaluable.
5. Have a transitional exit plan. You don’t have to be a senior manager or executive to have a transitional exit plan (or succession plan) to prepare the next person for your position, as well as, have a smooth exit and progress to our next opportunity. Whether you are retiring or your company is going through some changes, you need to identify key team members that can be trained as leaders and be cross-trained. The exit plan is just as important as the growth plan.

Guest Writer – L Denise Jackson

L Denise Jackson is a published author, speaker to global women and management trainer to audiences such as Women for Hire, daughter of a Negro League baseball player, and successful serial entrepreneur through her consulting firm LDJ Solutions, LLC, where published and produced over $20 billion dollars of winning proposals and has set an unprecedented level of quality for winning in the Federal sector. She is an ideation and intrapreneur consultant, creating million dollar strategy plans and helps mid-level managers manage like they own their organizations. As a Certified Green Consultant, Sustainability Officer, and LEED Green Associate, she works to leave a legacy and give back to her community through sustainability. L. Denise has been educated through University of Maryland UC and American University and is a member of several professional and civic associations.