The Optimist Creed: Promise Yourself

The Optimist Creed was authored in 1912 by Chistian D. Larson, appearing in his book Your Forces and How to Use Them. It was adopted as Optimist International’s creed in 1922. Many have found inspiration in The Optimist Creed. In hospitals, the creed has been used to help patients recover from illness. In locker rooms, coaches have used it to motivate their players.

Please print this page of The Optimist’s Creed to read daily. Use it as a powerful tool to become the most brilliant magnet for magnificence and joy in your life. Please share it with your friends.

Promise Yourself

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.

To talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet.

To make all your friends feel that there is something worthwhile in them.

To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.

To think only of the best, to work only for the best and to expect only the best.

To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.

To wear a cheerful expression at all times and give a smile to every living creature you meet.

To give so much time to improving yourself that you have no time to criticize others.

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

To think well of yourself and to proclaim this fact to the world, not in loud word, but in great deeds.

To live in the faith that the whole world is on your side, so long as you are true to the best that is in you.

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30 Habits that Will Change your Life

Developing good habits is the basic of personal development and growth. Everything we do is the result of a habit that was previously taught to us. Unfortunately, not all the habits that we have are good, that’s why we are constantly trying to improve.

The following is a list of 30 practical habits that can make a huge difference in your life.

You should treat this list as a reference, and implement just one habit per month. This way you will have the time to fully absorb each of them, while still seeing significant improvements each month.
Health habits

1. Exercise 30 minutes every day. Especially if you don’t do much movement while working, it’s essential that you get some daily exercise. 30 minutes every day are the minimum recommended for optimal health.

2. Eat breakfast every day. Breakfast is the more important meal of the day, yet so many people skip it. Personally, I like to eat a couple of toasts in the morning along with a fruit beverage.

3. Sleep 8 hours. Sleep deprivation is never a good idea. You may think that you are gaining time by sleeping less, when in reality you are only gaining stress and tiredness. 8 hours are a good number of hours for most people, along with an optional 20 minutes nap after lunch.

4. Avoid snacking between meals. Snacking between meals is the best way to gain weight. If you are hungry, eat something concrete. Otherwise don’t. Update: for clarification, I mean don’t eat junk food between meals, but eating real food it’s ok.

5. Eat five portions of fruits and vegetables every day. Our body and brain loves getting vegetables and fruit, so I highly recommend eating as much of them as possible. Five portions is the dose that’s usually recommended by many health associations.

6. Eat fish. Fish is rich of omega 3 and other healthy elements. At least one meal per week of fish should be enough for getting all these nutrients.

7. Drink one glass of water when you wake up. When you wake up, your body is dehydrated and needs liquid. Make the habit of drinking one glass of water after you wake up in the morning. Also, drink more during the day.

8. Avoid soda. Soda is often one of the most unhealthy beverage you can find. Limit your consumption of soda as much as possible and you’re body will be grateful for that.

9. Keep your body clean. I don’t advise spending your day in front of the mirror, but a minimum of personal care does never hurt.

10. If you smoke, stop it. There’s no reason to smoke anymore, and quitting is easy.

11. If you drink, stop it. Same as above. Don’t think that alcohol will solve your problems. It never does. The only exception is one glass of wine per day during meals.

12. Take the stairs. This is just a hack that forces you to do a minimum of exercise. Instead of taking the elevator, take the stairs.

Productivity habits

1. Use an inbox system. Make the habit of keeping track of all the ideas and things that comes to mind. You can use a notebook to do this, and then sync everything on your computer.

2. Prioritize. If you have a list of things to do, where do you start? One way is to prioritize your list. If you are in doubt, ask yourself: “If I could only accomplish one thing today, what would it be?”

3. Plan, but not too much. Planning is important, and you should decide in advance what you are going to do today or this week. However, planning for more than a few weeks is usually inefficient, so I would not worry too much about that.

4. Wake up early. Waking up early in the morning is a great way to gain extra time. I personally like to wake up at 5 am, so that by 9 am I have already accomplished what otherwise would have taken me many days..

5. Check your email only twice per day. Email can easily become an addiction, but it’s usually unnecessary to check it every 10 minutes. Make an effort and check your email only once or twice per day, see if the world will still rotate as before after you try this.

6. Eliminate unimportant tasks. Being busy all day does not mean you are doing important stuff. Eliminate every activity that’s not important, and focus on what really matters.

7. Clean off your desk and room. Having a clear room and desk is important to maintain focus and creativity.

8. Automate. There are a lot of tasks that you need to perform every day or every week. Try to automate them as much as possible.

9. Set strict deadlines. When you do something, decide in advance when you’re going to stop. There’s a rule that states that you will fulfill all the time you have available for completing a task, so make an habit of setting strict deadlines for maximizing your productivity.

10. Take one day off per week. Instead of working every day, take one day off per week (for example sunday) where you are not going to turn on your computer. Use that time for doing recreational activities like going for a walk.

Personal Development habits

1. Read 1 book per week. Reading is a good way to keep your brain active. With just 30 minutes per day you should be able to read one book per week, or more than 50 books per year.

2. Solve puzzles. Quizzes, word games, etc. are all good ways to exercise your brain.

3. Think positively. You are what you think, all the time.

4. Make fast decisions. Instead of thinking for one hour wherever you are going to do something, make your decisions as fast as possible (usually less than 1 minute).

5. Wait before buying. Waiting 48 hours before buying anything is a tremendous money saver, try it.

6. Meditate 30 minutes per day. A great way to gain clearness and peace is through meditation. 30 minutes are not a lot, but enough to get you started with meditation.

Career habits

1. Start a blog. Blogging is one of the best way to put your word out. It doesn’t have to be around a specific topic, even a personal blog will do.

2. Build a portfolio. If your job is creating stuff, building a portfolio is a great way to show what you are capable of. You can also contribute stuff for free if that applies to your work.

What do you think? What are the habits that changed your life?

How to Manage Multiple Business Locations

How to Manage Multiple Business Locations | Inc |By Darren Dahl | Mar 4, 2010

Thomas Friedman was onto something when he wrote his book, The World is Flat. Companies increasingly feel the need to expand their reach into new markets—both domestically and internationally—from a very early age.

One direct result of this expansion is that you may now be forced to manage multiple locations and oversee employees in distant offices—a fact that can cause quite a few challenges and headaches, says Eric Bloom, president of Manager Mechanics, a management-training firm based in Ashland, Massachusetts.

“No matter how widespread your organization becomes, you need to work hard to retain team cohesion and the philosophy that everyone is on the same team regardless of where they work,” he says.

Dig Deeper: Why You Should Expand

Managing Multiple Locations: 6 Challenges

1. Out-of-site-out-of-mind syndrome. When things get busy at your primary location, it can be hard to give your employees based at other locations the time they deserve.

2. Loss of spontaneous communications. Because you do not see your employees in the hallway or at meetings, there is very little natural or unplanned communication.

3. Attenuated logistics. Anything that cannot be sent electronically, must be mailed, which causes time delays and increased effort.

4. Complicated work assignments. It is harder to perform certain types of jobs or collaborate on them when employees are based in remote locations

5. Lack of team cohesiveness. Your team members will not know each other as well. This can easily lead to an “us-versus-them” mentality.

6. Concerns over general supervision. If you have a remote office that clients visit, it’s virtually impossible to see if your employees are arriving on time, working appropriate business hours or wearing proper business attire.

To tackle these and other challenges, then, organizational leaders need to focus on three key areas: systems, technology, and communication.

Managing Multiple Locations: Put Systems in Place

The old adage is that systems run businesses, and people run systems. “You must have systems in place to be able to standardize the quality of your communications, products and results,” says Bert Martinez, founder of Bert Martinez Communications, a business training and communications company with multiple locations. “Systems will allow you to duplicate offices and grow faster with reduce training times and supervision.”

The key is to establish clear responsibilities, boundaries, and authority, says Ann Latham, president of Uncommon Clarity, an organizational-behavior consulting firm in Easthampton, Massachusetts. “Vague responsibilities create the proverbial cracks into which everything drops,” she says. Muddy boundaries create disasters ranging from personnel problems to legal ones while insufficient authority can become a source of delay and demotivation. “An employee with everything needed to exercise good judgment except either the authority or sense of responsibility to do so is worth little,” says Lantham.

The point, then, is to make each employee’s responsibilities clear through an organizational structure combined with a system that measures each and every employee, and holds everyone accountable for delivering on their work responsibilities regardless of where they are based.

Dig Deeper: Building Systems to Manage Your Business

Managing Multiple Locations: Adopt New Technology

With the advent of the Internet, and the prolific surge in the number of collaborative tools that have spawned from it, technology has become an integral part of the backbone for any far-flung organization, says Bloom, particularly because it can help your organization cut down on business travel expenses.

While many organizations rely on custom-built software platforms and intranets as collaborative platforms, some of the most commonly-used tools by small businesses in particular are also either free, cheap or available as a software-as-a-service, which means you can access these tools over the web for a monthly fee. Some of the best and cost-effective options include:

• Google Documents, Gmail and Calendar for internal training and communication.
• Basecamp: An popular project management tool.
• Facebook : The now ubiquitous social networking tool is just as useful for business as it is for personal applications.
• Skype: The surge in VOIP technology and software means that you can communicate with remote employees cheaply and effectively.
• Salesforce.com: One of the most popular tools around, Salesforce.com allows remote sales team to collaborate in real-time on maintaining your company’s sales pipeline.

A new wrinkle in terms of technology is that many firms have begun to equip all of their employees with smart phones such as the iPhone as a way to enable them to access any web-based technology regardless of where they are, including many new applications.

Dig Deeper: The Latest Small Business Technology News

Managing Multiple Locations: Focus on Communication

Systems are a must, technology is important tool however, none of these will work with out real communication, says Martinez. “Communication is the key to collaboration with your offices, coworkers, and clients,” he says. If you neglect this aspect of running your business, you do so at your own risk, particularly in a business with multiple locations. That’s why Martinez also makes having his employees have time face-to-face a priority by having his offices take turns hosting each other once a year to enable communication between people on all levels.

Other tips for fostering communication between your employees based in the office and elsewhere include:

1. Establish full team weekly staff meetings via phone or webinar to get your whole group together.

2. If possible, have web cams so your team members can see each other.

3. Make each physical site responsible for a specific type of work, rather then assign random tasks associated with a central project.

4. When doable, have the CEO or management members personally visit each remote site on a scheduled basis, every month, for instance.

5. Establish weekly phone-based staff meetings individually with each remote group so that each physical location will get time with top management.

6. If possible, get your whole group together once or twice a year for staff meetings, brainstorming and team building.

Dig Deeper: How to Improve Your Communications Skills

Managing Multiple Locations: The Global Workforce

Managing multiple locations across the U.S. is hard enough. But when you add a new sales office or manufacturing plant overseas, says Bloom, you can actually run into a host of new challenges associated with cross-cultural communication that include:

1. Time zones. There is limited or no overlap in the standard workday.

2. Language. Even if everyone has a common language, English for example, differences in accents, language fluency, and the use of slang expressions can make communication extremely difficult, particularly on conference calls and speakerphones.

3. Social norms. Cultural differences from country to country can accidentally cause tension, embarrassment, and miscommunication.

3. Holiday schedules. Scheduled meetings, reporting deadlines, cash flows and standard business processes can be derailed or delayed based on local holiday schedules.

4. Technical connectivity. Not all countries have high-speed connectivity at all locations.

5. Labor laws. Laws regarding hiring, employee termination, hours worked, layoffs, sexual harassment differ from country to country.

6. Business-related laws, ethics, and practices. Business is conducted very differently from country to country.

7. Personal-privacy laws. In European Union member states, the laws regarding the personal use, storage, and transport of personal information are quite stringent compared with those in the U.S.

Dig Deeper: Building the Best Virtual Workforce

Managing Multiple Locations: Adapting to Different Cultures

Bloom suggests tackling these challenges by considering the following tips:

1. Find one key contact in each country that is very knowledgeable in local customs, business practices, and laws.

2. Learn to pronounce people’s names correctly.

3. Gain a basic understanding of country politics and current events.

4. Know the names of your managers and leaders in those countries and pronounce their names correctly.

5. Find ways to take advantage of the time zone differences.

6. Be respectful of the differences between people and cultures.

The bottom line in managing multiple locations, says Martinez, is to help make everyone in your company feel motivated and part of the team, regardless of where they do their work. “When your people feel good and that they matter, they will perform better,” he says.

Dig Deeper: How to Be a Lead Teams in Emerging Markets

Managing Multiple Locations: Additional Resources

Corporate Agility: A Revolutionary New Model for Competing in a Flat World, by Charles Grantham, James P. Ware and Cory Williamson (AMACOM, 2007.) This book will show you how to get your company to embrace new technology, understand the ever-changing workforce, and rethink the way you structure work environments to deal with the global economy.

Competing in a Flat World: Building Enterprises for a Borderless World, by Victor K. Fung, William K. Fung and Yoram (Jerry) Wind (Wharton School Publishing, 2007.) A book filled with solid tips to create a flexible organization capable of competing anywhere.

The Facility Management Handbook, by David G. Cotts Kathy O. Roper and Richard P. Payant (AMACOM, 2009.)
A great reference guide for understanding and implementing best practices for the modern workplace.

Time Management real or a hoax? Why Time Management doesn’t Work

Hey guys, Bert Martinez here. Time management tools are really useful, right? Or are they? They show you how to organize your things. The problem is, that these systems are only as good as you FEEL. I’ve always said how you feel is more important than what you. How you feel determines your follow through or follow up – your success.

Consider this. Have you been using time management techniques but still, you feel overwhelmed, unfocused, like you’re not accomplishing some major things? If so, your lack of emotional management may be the reason why your time management approaches may not have worked so well for you.

Stephen Covey, he summed it up best when he said time management is a misnomer. The real challenge is to manage ourselves. So take a pause for a moment. How well do you manage your self?

Let me give you three examples. Let’s say you have an exciting message and you really want to get it out to the media. So you schedule a block of time from 3:00 to 4:00 this afternoon. This is a typical time management technique. But here’s what might take place. Three o’clock rolls around, you sit down at your desk and you start thinking to your self, “What if I send this out and nobody responds? I’m really going to feel dumb,” or, “Oh worst, what if they think this is a stupid idea?” or, “Who am I to write about this subject. I should do some research before I send the message.” Four o’clock rolls around. What do you think is going to determine whether you send that email or not? Was it whether you scheduled it in your calendar or how you feel about you?

Example #2. Let’s say that you decided to lose weight. So you schedule yourself in the gym 3 times a week at 6 am. But what if on the first day it’s really cold and raining. Okay. What’s your reaction? Do you go back to bed? Your level of commitment (feelings) will now take over and decide your actions.

Example #3. Here’s another example. Let’s say that you had an interaction one morning with your spouse and it ended on a pretty tense note. Okay. So as you’re going throughout your day, you’re kind of thinking about it. It’s nawing at you in the back of your mind. Later that day you scheduled planning meeting. Again that’s an excellent time management technique, right? Making time for the things that are most important to you, being proactive. But during that meeting, what do you do? You obsess and you replay what happened that morning. What is that interaction going to mean for my our future?

You’ve scheduled your time for meeting. But were you really present? And also, did you schedule in the time you probably lost thinking about it? Real “time management” is a two-part process. It’s how you schedule your time on the outside but it’s also about how you manage your emotions, the self on the inside. And one without the other is not going to get you the results that you need.

So consider this, instead of focusing on managing your time, start by managing how you feel, developing emotional skills like determination and confidence. Emotional skills will serve your time and your life better.

To summed it up “How You Feel is more Important that What You Know.”

10.5 Biggest Mistakes to Avoid When Starting A Business

The following list is derived from my experience. Based on my actions and results I retired from corporate America at the age of 28. Filed bankruptcy at 30. I’ve been involved in several successful businesses and many unsuccessful ones too.

#1 – Never let your expenses exceed your sales. Yeah, I know that’s easy to say, because you say “Jeez, that makes perfect sense, if my expenses never exceed my sales then quite honestly I’m always going to have positive revenue. I’m always going to be in the profit. Wow. That’s fundamentally smart. But c’mon Bert, it doesn’t work that way in the world. Why? When we start out we don’t have any sales yet, and so our expenses have to exceed our sales on day one.” And you’re correct. That’s true, so I want you to have a concept, a goal or even a burning desire. That you will make those days the fewest number of days absolutely possible that your expenses are exceeding your sales.

#2 – Failing to collect the money or the receivables. Question – Should you really be extending credit to people? I don’t care what business your in retail, wholesale, hospitality, legal, or whatever. Selling is what you about not carrying receivables. Don’t extend credit, get paid now! Look fewer customers that have paid you 100% are way better than having more customers when some of them didn’t pay you at all. More cash, less stress – you don’t have to be real smart to do the math.

# 3 – Failing to take care of your employees. People have say that the customer is number 1 – right? Maybe not. Well who is taking care of your customers? Your employees handle quality and service and delivery? Well if you haven’t taken care of your employees, they’re probably not going to take care of your customers very well. It’s just that simple. It’s goes without saying that if you do take care of your employees, they will take care of your customers.

#4- Failing to take care of your customers. Real simple the easiest customer to get are existing customers. There is usually more profit in repeat customers than in new customers. A happy customer is a good customer a good customer refers more customers. Take care of your customers and they will take care of you.

#5 – Underestimating your competition. We can, no matter what business we’re in, we think of our competitor as dim-witted, we think of our competitor as incompetent. Remember this -our battle isn’t against them. It’s for the customer, not against our competitor. We don’t win by doing damage to the competitor. We’re not in a battle with him really. We’re in a battle for someone else. So quit thinking about the competitor and start thinking about your competitor’s customers.

#6 Inadequate capital – Now I’ve started business with no money because I had to but then you quickly come to realize that you do need money to operate. You do need capital to grow the company and get to the next level. And here are 2 rules you should remember about capital. And, just in case your not clear, capital is the money we need to fund the organization, to buy the inventory, to hire employees, to do all those things that we’re going to need to do. Well here’s are 2 rules you need to appreciate. Is that your expenses are going to be hirer than you anticipated and your revenue is going to be slower than you anticipated. Those two statements are true in 99.99% of every single business that has ever started. Well that’s what happens. It happens almost all the time. Because we are optimistic, if we weren’t optimist we wouldn’t have started a business. We over-projected what our revenues are. What I’m telling you as a practical, experienced businessman lower that number. Now if you beat, if you excel… wonderful! Find a place to spend it. But if you have shrunk it down, conservative in your projection then you might be safe.

#7 Underestimate the length of time to break even. The break even is a magic moment in the making of a business and if you don’t understand let me try to explain the concept to you. Break even is that magic point when you quit putting money into a company and the company is finally sufficient enough that it starts to pay for itself or is finally starts to pay you for having been there first.

# 8 Focusing on profits instead of on cash flow. Business people, when they first start out, they focus on profits instead of on cash flow. And I know this is going to sound like sacrilege to some people saying well,” aren’t we supposed to be all about profits? absolutely, and yes! And we want to get there as fast as we possibly can! But before we get there we have to make sure something else happens first, and that is that we always have positive cash flow. We always have enough money to pay the rent. We always have enough money to pay out employees. We always have enough money to buy more supplies, to do more marketing, that’s really crucial. That’s called cash flow. Profits will follow the cash flow I guarantee it. Now there’s a different in being profitable and having positive cash flow, you can be unprofitable where you’re actually losing a little bit of money but still have positive cash flow. I’m telling you when your first starting a business, if you have to pick between the two, now if you could have both of them, great go get both of them and that would be wonderful, but I also will tell you from experience getting both of them when your first starting out is really going to be complicated. You’re going to have to make a decision between the two. Pick cash flow when you’re first starting your business.

#9 Over estimating size of your market. Entrepreneurs are optimists and we tend to have this attitude that everyone is going to want to buy what we have – that just doesn’t sell. Get over it. Just come to understand that it’s not going to happen. So what you need to be able to do is think about Bottom Up Marketing. It isn’t how many potential, how many people are out there, it’s about what you can you really do. Bottom Up Marketing looks at your capacity. So if you’ve got 1 employee, 3 employees, 7 employees, that’s all you can handle. It doesn’t matter how many people might want your widget. You can’t handle it! So think coolly about the real size of your market and don’t ever estimate it because you can’t handle it right now. You only need enough market to handle the capacity you presently have, and if you can do that efficiently you will be profitable, and if your profitable you’ll be successful and if your successful you can grow the company again, and again, and again. Do a little research on “Bottom Up Marketing” and you have a better understanding of the concept

#10 No Advertising/Marketing plan. So how are you going to drive your sales through advertising or through sales people. You need to develop your marketing plan, you need to have enough capital to drive sales. I’ve seen to many times were entrepreneurs will invest all this money in equipment or to get the doors open only to discover they have no way to adequately drive sales.

#10.5 – Exit strategy. At one point, P.T. Barnum noticed that people were lingering too long at his exhibits. He posted signs indicating ” “This Way to the Egress”. Not knowing that “Egress” was another word for “Exit”, people followed the signs to what they assumed was a fascinating exhibit…and ended up outside. So what am I talking about? We should start a business that we can create and build something that we can sell, transfer, dispose of, or hand off to someone else. That should be a goal maybe the first goal as you begin to vision your successful business.

Remember . . . You Were Created to Succeed!