Mary Cravets

Turn it on its Head

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The other day, I was driving to Sedona and realized that the last 10 miles had gone unnoticed. I was in my head, figuring things out, imagining sharing with friends and clients… needless to say, I was not “in the moment”.

I started in on the lovely self-talk, “What’s wrong with you? You really have to work on getting present. Experience the moment. Maybe I should meditate. I’ll talk to Susan about meditating. But what if she’s busy? I’ve been meaning to tell her about this class I took… ”

Woops! Slid off into mental la-la land again. But suddenly it struck me how natural my internal dialog felt. It just felt like ME. I started to wonder if perhaps this was not a fault, but rather a gift.

How we manage our so-called “faults” is incredibly important. Some people work to improve them, while others ignore them. I encourage the third option that I stumbled upon the other day – leverage them.

For instance, I’m inherently lazy. It’s true. I never want to spend more time on a project than absolutely necessary. So over the years how did I leverage laziness? I translated my laziness (working as little as possible) into efficiency (working smarter, not harder). Same motivation, but when laziness is turned on its head, it becomes the gift of efficiency. I eventually (though quite unintentionally) moved past feeling bad about it, and leveraged my natural tendency towards sloth to serve me better.

But back to my original dilemma of not being present. How could I possibly learn to leverage this “gift” of drifting off in my mind, thinking about how I’ll tell others what I’m experiencing? Then it hit me – I already learned how to leverage it… I became a storyteller.


Overwhelm, Chapter 427

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I recently went to lunch with a good friend who also happens to be a great business woman. She just got back from a huge business seminar with hundreds of people, tons of information – like drinking from a fire hose. You’ve been there.

She shared with me how overwhelmed she felt, and how she just knows that she’s missed the boat because there are so many things she hasn’t done yet, and how everyone else will pass her up.

She’s lucky she’s got me as a friend, because I very nicely told her to stop being an idiot.

Ok, no, I of course didn’t say that. But I really wanted her to know that everyone gets overwhelmed when bombarded with lots of information all at once. Not to be cynical, but the goal of many of these programs is to overwhelm you – so that you need their next product or service. Now, I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just saying that’s how some of them are. But (as usual), I digress…

News flash: Thinking that you’re the only one who gets overwhelmed is pure self-sabotage.

Everyone gets overwhelmed – even really smart, hardworking, motivated people. When you tell yourself the lie that everyone else has it figured out, and you’re just the loser oddball – you are just shooting yourself in the foot and stopping your forward momentum.

Now why would we do this to ourselves? Because moving forward means moving into the unknown. It means possibly looking like we’re getting too big for our britches. It means opening ourselves up for criticism. Seriously scary stuff.

Best bet? Focus on the upside. The opportunities for movement, growth, profit, connection, feeling great, reaching higher, inspiring others, helping more people, and rising above the fray. In other words – getting bigger britches!

Keep your attention on the good things ahead, and sabotage and overwhelm don’t stand a chance.

I NEVER Want to Exercise

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I was frantic. I wanted to go to the gym in the afternoon. You must understand – I NEVER want to exercise, so I seriously needed to take advantage of this sudden burst of motivation.

The problem was, I was mired in important but tedious tasks that I did not want to do. Simple things, things that I could give to a 6th grader to complete. All day I avoided doing them, but kept up a steady stream of mental chatter, “What’s wrong with you? Just do it. It’s no big deal. Get off your duff and just do it. What’s wrong with you?”…ad nauseum.

Not only was I avoiding those piddly tasks, but I also didn’t feel comfortable moving on to the more important tasks pertaining to business development and marketing.

So here’s the rundown:

  • I was spinning in circles
  • I was talking to myself in a not very nice way
  • I wasn’t getting the tedious done
  • I wasn’t getting the important things done
  • I wasn’t going to get to the gym

Then…MAGIC happened. I picked up the phone and asked my Virtual Assistant for help.

I realized that I had to delegate the really tiny tasks. The ones that I tell myself will only take 5 minutes, so what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that those tiny tasks drain us if we do them, make us feel guilt-ridden if we don’t, and either way prevent us from working on the critical tasks of business building and development.

I strongly recommend that everyone who thinks they can’t afford administrative support, think again. If you want to grow, you have to get assistance. And it doesn’t need to be a huge investment!

Many business owners find they get all of the administrative support they need for around $300 per month. In a fraction of the time, Virtual Assistants complete the tedious tasks that drag the life out of you. Trust me, it’s worth it!

Glinda, the GOOD Control Freak

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One of the top reasons people give me for not delegating to a Virtual Assistant is that they are Control Freaks. I’ve worked with several clients to curb this issue, and have had some success. But then I got to thinking… is being a control freak such a bad thing? Is it possible to become a really GOOD control freak? Like Glinda the good witch…

So I turned it around with the notion that most people would like a little more control and consistency in their businesses. No one likes the feeling of being battered by external forces that can’t be controlled.

To start the process of becoming a good Control Freak (remember – think Glinda!), I came up with this list of things that are 100% controllable.

1.      Attitude and Mindset
2.      Goal Setting
3.      Time Management
4.      Follow-up
5.      “One Thing”*

Strangely, I’m starting to believe that in order to delegate effectively, you have to become a proficient Control Freak first. I’m starting a certification course, in fact!

If you’d like to argue with me, go ahead, but I’m convinced that if you make a decision to be 100% responsible for these 5 things, your life will completely change. You’ll be managing the things you have authority over, rather than struggling to change the things over which you don’t.

And these aren’t airy fairy concepts (no offense to Glinda). These are get-up-in-the-morning and put-them-to-work strategies. All you have to do is decide to own them, and then systemize the process.

I’ll keep you posted on the Control Freak certification program!

 

* Wondering about #5? Remember Curly’s “One Thing”  from City Slickers? Just like in life, I believe in business there is one critical activity that all progress radiates out from. It’s one of the key strategies I work on with my clients.

It’s in the Details: Formatting Tips for Cleaner Copy

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Here are just three of my favorite formatting tips to help with putting together sharp and professional-looking written materials.

  1. Clean your text. How many times have your written up some material in, say, Microsoft Word, then copied and pasted it into an online format only to have your formatting go completely awry? The reason behind this is because many editors you use online for creating newsletters and emails are actually html editors. When you copy and paste from formats like MS Word, extra commands stow away in the text and confound the html editor. The solution? Before you paste your content into an online format, first paste into Note Pad (Windows) or Text Edit (Mac). Then copy and paste into your online program. This step strips all the extra commands and leaves you with squeaky clean text.
  2. Don’t be a “two-spacer”. I have my sister to thank for this one, which I just learned recently. The accepted format for spacing after the end of a sentence is now one space, not two as I was taught not so long ago in high school. It may seem petty, but little details form impressions. The history? “It is generally accepted that the practice of putting two spaces at the end of a sentence is a carryover from the days of typewriters with monospaced typefaces. Two spaces, it was believed, made it easier to see where one sentence ended and the next began. Most typeset text, both before and after the typewriter, used a single space.” (source article)
  3. Underline with care. While underlining was very commonly used to emphasize words in the past, times have changed. Notice above, the words “source article”? Why are they underlined? Because they are linked to another web site, of course, everyone knows that! I recently visited a web site and text was emphasized by underlining. I was frustrated, because I now automatically go to underlined text to link to other locations, and there were no links available. How to emphasize? Using bold, italics or CAPITALIZATION works to draw the eye…without frustrating the reader!

How to Get $1.7 Million in Business

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Let me warn you up front – you are NOT going to like the answer here. I don’t even like it. It’s too illogical for my Vulcan tendencies. But I’m going to tell you anyway, because it is the truth, and I get to tell a story. I love telling stories.

My husband is a real estate agent, and he just got a $1.7 million listing for a horse ranch in Flagstaff. Here’s how it happened…

Many years ago, Adam met Jim and Cindy Candle at a networking function. He kept in touch. Three years later, they asked him to sell their property. So Adam took on the listing and sold the property. He kept in touch. The Candles referred him to the Halseys to sell their high-end home. Adam listed their property and kept in touch. The Halseys were so happy with his work, the referred him to the Blartnicks (yes, these are all fictitious names). Adam sold the Blartnicks home and, working his tail off, found them their next home. The Blartnicks were so happy with Adam that they referred him to the Jellywigs (now I’m just having fun). The Jellywigs wanted to sell their home, so Adam went to tour the property. As he was touring, a former client of Adam’s came up in conversation as a mutual acquaintance. The Jellywigs knew this client (let’s call him Bob), and said they’d tell Bob that they met Adam. Within a week, Adam was contacted by Bob to list his $1.7 million horse property.

Now, in a million years, could Adam have orchestrated this precise sequence of events? Unlikely. But I’m sure you see the patterns that made this outcome possible. Here’s what I saw:

1.    He asked people he met if they would give him referrals.
2.    He kept in touch.
3.    He did a superb job for his clients.
4.    He kept in touch.
5.    He took the attitude that the universe is plotting to do him good. (aka “reverse paranoia”)
6.    He kept in touch.
7.    He worked consistently and diligently.
8.    He kept in touch.

The moral of the story is, obviously, to stay in touch with the people you meet, because you never know where it will lead you!