Lessons from a Root Canal
Article Overview: Look at your business, sales, and marketing plans often, to avoid the pain that comes from the alternative. You are in business to make money, don’t ignore the signs that can really hurt you in the long run.
 |
Free Download - Are You Reaching Out? By Ali R. Rodriguez
|
Lessons from a Root Canal
What do a root-canal and your business have in common?
PAIN!
Thankfully, it's not every day, every month, not even every year we are confronted with having to have a root canal, like I just did last week. However, the visual and real pain associated with it, turns out to be something quite common when you own a business and it happens more often than a root-canal will.
You will find that there are certain areas that are quietly "bleeding" out from your business, causing much harm to your ability to make money, and bottom line success....and you won't know it until it becomes an abscess, or the pain is so excruciating that you can't believe what has happened.
Can it be prevented? Yes, Absolutely!
How? Just like a root-canal, get an x-ray of your business as a whole, then pick apart the areas where a small bleeding or abscess might have started to form.
Do this on a routine basis (every 3 to 6 months is recommended) and soon you will have a very clear picture of your own "Financial Overview". Enlist the help of your dream team or your board of directors, and if you don't have one, it's crucial that create one or both.
Talk to your Dream Team: Your Coach or Mentor, your C.P.A., your Financial Advisor. Sometimes even your Banker can be of help. The idea is to get your business on its way to wellness, balance and full financial health. Your Dream Team and/or your Personal Board of Directors will help you x-ray what could turn out to be a possible business abscess ending in root-canal.
Look at your business, sales, and marketing plans often, to avoid the pain that comes from the alternative. You are in business to make money, don't ignore the signs that can really hurt you in the long run.
Be litigious, be consistent, be curious, and by all means....give a damn.
Related Articles
The Facebook Revolution
The Truth about Seller Financing your small business when you sell it (Part 1 of a lot of parts!)
To Keep Your Clients, Appreciate Your Clients
Do Your Clients Think You're A Grudge?
Performance Appraisals: Critical Conversations
The Benefit of Safety Debriefing - Developing a Culture of Learning through Lessons Learned
Learn from Golf... Create More Revenue
Your company is struggling to create quality sales leads. What do you do?
Important "Lessons Learned” For Leaders, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
Stuck In A Rut? - The Best Way To Escape Your Problem Is To Solve It!
It Takes Teamwork to Make a Company Dream Work
Lessons to Learn From the First Dot Com Boom
Plush International Airport of Venice
Ten More Important “Lessons Learned” For Leaders, According To Your Strategic Thinking Business Coach
Remember Why You Do What You Do
The Five Why’s
Practice Makes Permanent
Location is Not Everything
Work Hard and Make It Happen
Solving Problems
Article Tags:
ali,
business,
entrepreneur,
marketing,
rodriguez,
sales,
success
About the Author: Ali R. Rodriguez
RSS for Ali's articles - Visit Ali's website
Ali R. Rodriguez is an independent, decisive, tenacious, enthusiastic, inspiring, and professional individual, with a great sense of humor and a realistic approach to what's truly important in life. Ali is a motivator, a mentor, a consultant, a coach, and a passionista expert all rolled-up into one.
Her coaching service, VISION FOR SUCCESS, is located in Ormond Beach, Florida and is tailored specifically to meet the needs of small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to enhance, grow and expand the quality of their businesses as well as the quality of their lives. Ali helps people utilize their passions as a business strategy so that they can create the lifestyle of their dreams. She is known for her no nonsense and passionate approach to creative problem solving and guiding clients into getting exactly what they want.
Ali is also the creator of Passion to the Fifth Power, a business building strategy and system of tapping into your most influential Five Core Powers, and is the co-author of "Mastering the Art of Success", with Les Brown and Jack Canfield.
Click here to visit Ali's website

More from Ali R. Rodriguez
BUSINESS SECRET WEAPON THAT ROCKS
Why Doing It All Hurts Your Business and What to Do About It
Are you SpringTraining
Going in Style
Lessons from a Root Canal
|
|
Related Forum Posts
300 rules!
- 300 was my favorite movie of 2007 and Kevin you did a great job in highlighting the Business Lessons from the Movie.
Napoleon on Project Management
- Why do I include this in a list of books aimed at female entrepreneurs? Well...in the expectation that there are as many female history buffs as male ones, and in the belief that anyone interested in history will find this book fascinating, while those interested in project management will learn a thing or two.
I think this was the first "gimmick" book - an author using a historical figure (usually a male, military figure, it must be admitted) to talk about modern day business management. I refuse to read any of the kind that advocates - even obliquely - the techniques of the Sopranos or the Mossad - but these military ones are pretty fun.
Anyway:
Only in the understanding of history, Napoleon might say, do we gain an understanding of strategy in the present. In the same spirit, Napoleon on Project Management offers the recipe for successfully managing your commitments using the strategies, tactics and priorities that propelled Napoleon himself to victory. [The book doesn't gloss over how Napolean eventually fell in defeat, of course, and there's lessons to be learned there as well.
TOC
Foreword by Douglas James Allan (Napoleanic Society of America)
1. The Rise to Power
-The Skills to Succeed
-A Compelling Vision
-Diplomacy and Networking
-Lessons from the Great Campaigns
2. Napoleon's 6 Winning Principles
-Introduction
-Exactitude
-Speed
-Flexibility
-Simplicity
-Character
-Moral Force
3. The Downfall
-What Went Wrong
-Lessons from the Russian Invasion and Waterloo
-The Four Critical Warning Signs
-Napoleon's Legacy
Re: Rumor Has It!
- Thanks been there since the late 70's when the market was IBM and Victor. Road the Victor while IBM went though 286's and 386's. Do a lot of cannibalization to keep my Victors going
A year ago lost my workstation's hard drive and more recently my operating system due to lightning strikes. Have bought a few computers and modems due to lightning. Take me about a week to recover a hard-drive
Lessons learned: regularly backup your programs and data
When I grow up I hope to get a what u call it "Power Interuptus Device"
Ebay actually drives prices up...
- I have an acquaintance who collects rare books. He went off on a rant about Ebay in his blog a couple of weeks ago. It used to be he could buy books for quite reasonable sums, but ever since Ebay debuted, people are putting their stuff up their with inflated reserve bids, and the uninformed public are buying those books at ridiculous prices...so now even book collectors that don't deal on Ebay are also inflating their prices, because if people are too stupid to know what is proper market value...
For myself, I fell victim once... not so much to a scam but to my own lack of knowledge of what I was buying...
Way back in the 70s Forrest J. Ackerman published 8 issues of a magazine called Spaceman, and I wanted them all. I also thought they were very rare and was willing to pay any price to get them.
So I bid $100 for a beat up old issue of Spacemen 1, and got it, and of course next week another issue was up there for $20. So I was not a happy camper.
Lessons are - know the market value of what you want to buy and realize that there are other places besides Ebay where you can get it.
Are You a Businessgirl or a Businesswoman?
- One thing that has irked me off and on for 30 years is the tendency of people - both men [i:2wryyhvf]and [/i:2wryyhvf]women, to refer to women, whatever their age, as 'girls' rather than women.
College basketball announcers, coachers and players do it, as do the fans. These are 'girls' who are between the ages of 18 - 21, that's women in my book.
Tennis players and announcers do it. John McEnroe called 'em girls and just when I was getting annoyed at him for being a bit of a male chauvanist, they interviewed player Lindsay Davenport - 30 years old, and she referred to 'em as girls as well.
The Bond "girls" were girls up until the 90s, I admit, doing nothing more than providing someone for Bond to bed and rescue, but in the last few installments the "girl" has been more of a power player...nevertheless she's still a 'girl'.
And of course there was the TV series The Golden Girls - which I liked by the way, but which featured mature women calling themselves girls
And now here it is in the 2000s, and we get this:
The Girl's Guide To Starting Your Own Business, by Caitlin Friedman and Kimberly Yorio. Their photos are on the cover - presumably the photo is of them and not models - and they are definitely women, not girls.
And what "girly" chapter titles do they give us? "The Scary Stuff" (financial matters) and a chapter on ACTING Like an Adult. (Caps mine).
So popular was this book, apparently, that they've now come out with a sequel:
The Girl's Guide to Being a Boss (Without Being A Bitch): Valuable Lessons, Smart Suggestions, and true stories for succeeding as the CHICK-IN-CHARGE. (My caps)
and once again I was tempted to take the book and throw it across the room. Let's indulge in [i:2wryyhvf]all [/i:2wryyhvf]the cliches, shall we?
So I'd like to hear from other businesswomen out there. Do you find yourself referred to as a girl? Do you mind it? Do you like the culture that still propagates that mindset?
Recommended Article for You
close
Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.
Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva.
Over
$50,000 raised and counting -
Please keep sharing! Learn more.