The kids are back at school, hooray!!!

Working from home for 2 years now, it took me about 6 months to get used to being my own boss, and working when I wanted to work. But when it comes to schools holidays, all the rules change.

I have 3 beautiful children Sapna (13), Milan (11) & Suraj (6) as you see on the right.

When they are at school its great, I set them off in the morning, (well my wife does, same thing yeah!) and I then  fully focus on the task at hand.

Last week was half term and, well lets just say, it was different, no different to other holidays, just that I felt different. My wife works 4 days a week, so I took one day ‘off’ to be with the kids, the other daysI was working talkingsome time to be with them and the kids we either doing some homework, or playing on the Wii.

By Thursday there had been numerous occasions when I was either on the phone or working and they were either shouting, playing loudly or just generally being happy.

Now the sound of children playing and being happy is fantasitic, but when you are in that moment looking to focus it can be quite frustrating.

It all came to a head on Friday, they were having a difference of opinion about playing on the Wii, it was about 3ish and I came downstairs, to find out what was going on and then in a moment of complete lack of awareness I said the most stupid of statements.

“Don’t you know I work from home?”

The look on their faces, well I wish I had a camera, their expressions were one of, ‘and your point is’. It was in that moment that it was my issue to deal with that fact it was holidays, not there’s to be quiet and how to behave when I am working at home.

During the holidays it is up to me to adjust my week, not the children.  The reason I do what I do is for more choice and so my family get the best of me.

Do you adjust your day when its schools holidays? Do your children act differently.

Love to hear your stories

If you ever feel like giving up on something, think again. Its not about how many times you fail, but how many times you keep getting up…

Since the turn of the year, most of my thoughts about taking my business to the next level have focused around social media. Thinking about this objectively, this got me thinking, is this just a fad or is it here to stay?

Some facts…

1. Average person spent five and a half hours on social media sites in December 2009, up 82 percent from December 2008. AC NIELSEN

2. Marketers will also be spending more time and money on social media sites in 2010 – Alterian

5. Facebook is still by far the most popular social networking site worldwide, with 206.9 million unique visitors in December

6. 67% of global social media users visited the site during that month, spending an average of about 5.5 hours there per month, up from just three hours in December 2008.

7. Twitter received 18.1 million unique visitors in December 2009, up from 2.7 million in December 2008 (a remarkable 579 percent rate of growth).

8. Time spent on blogs and other social media sites increased 210 percent year-over-year, and the average time spent per person increased 143 percent.

9. Australia led the world in time spent on social media sites with 6 hours and 52 minutes per person, United States was second (6 hours and 9 minutes) with the United Kingdom close behind (6 hours and 7 minutes)

10. 20 million people are online on SKYPE at peak time, 445 million subscribers in Q1 2009, 30% usage for business purpose, 3.1 billion call to mobiles and landlines in Q3 2009, More than 190 certified hardware products.

11. Facebook available in more than 70 languages with 900+ employees. Facebook banned in Syria and 70% users live outside US. Features more than 350,000 application. Over 2.5 Billion photos uploaded monthly and faster growing demographic is women over 55. More that 300,000,000 users.

12. Approximately 150,000,000 videos on YouTube. 70% of the registered users are the American. Every minute 20 hours of video is uploaded. Localized versions for over 22 countries in 19 languages, total times of videos watched in 9300+ years. Estimated revenue of between $120 – $500 Million.

13. 54% of respondents said social media was ‘increasingly important’ to the overall marketing mix, with only 14% believing it to be ‘critical for success (Alterian Research Study)

14. Social Media has overtaken porn as the #1 activity on the Web

15. If you were paid a $1 for every time an article was posted on Wikipedia you would earn $156.23 per hour;

16. 25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.

17. Hitwise UK reports indicate as top three sites for the week ending 16/01/2010: Facebook (51.60%), YouTube (16.10%) and Bebo (2.26%) (social networking category).

18. 51% of journalists read blogs for story ideas.

19. 28% of top search engine results are Social Media sites.

20. Universal McCann reports that 77% of all active internet users often read blogs.

21. Delicious (bookmarking site), has more than five million users and over 160 million unique bookmarked URLs.

22. According to Compete, In Q4 2009 Digg saw a 91% increase in traffic, while Stumbleupon and FriendFeed recorded a huge increase of over 180% and 3100%, respectively, as compared to 2008.

23. Wikipedia currently has more than 13.5 million articles in more than 250 different languages. The site attracts over 60 million unique visitors a month and it’s often hotly debated that the information it contains is more reliable than any printed Encyclopaedia.

24. There are overall 234 million websites as of December 2009. 126 million blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse)..

Data compiled by Sorav Jain: Social Media & Digital Marketing Blog

It’s all about your attitude, that’s the difference between whether you will succeed or fail. So true. However how many of us listen to our body?

As part of the coaching and sales training I do,  I talk about the fives levels of listening, as penned by Steve Covey

5 Levels of Listening:

• Empathic Listening – Listening/responding with both the heart and mind to understand the speaker’s words intent and feelings. Listen for what is not being said
• Attentive Listening – Paying attention, focusing on the speaker’s words/comparing to your own experiences.
• Selective Listening – Hearing only what interests you.
• Pretend – Giving the appearance of listening
• Ignore – No effort to listen

This relates to when we listen to others. However how often do you use these levels when listening to your body? Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves ,use selective listening, i.e. when it suits us.

When we are hungry, we eat, we listen to our hunger pans, or sometimes not. When we are thirsty, we drink, or even when we are not. When you have an important decision to make, or coming up to an important meeting, do you listen to what your body is saying to you? Part of my work with the Enneagram, studies the link between listening to your body and the mind.

The easiest way to start to listen to you body, is learning to listen to your intuition. The video below by Judith Orloff explains how you can do this.

A simple exersise you can do that shows you how the body ‘knows’ is this.

Think of something that you can’t make up your mind about, or an important decision you have to make. Hold out your arm horizontal to the ground and think of each choice, (you need a partner for the next part). Think of choice A, imagine it, feel it, be it, now ask your partner to try and push your arm down.

Now think of choice B, imagine it, feel it , be it, again ask your partner to push your arm down. Which was easier? Which ever your body resisted the most, is the path you need to go down. Your body will naturally be strong with the choice that your truly want to go with. Your hesitation will be around some fear, confidence, or self-belief around the outcome.

By listing to our body more, we learn to trust our instincts and intuition and thus make decisions with greater confidence.

I love going to workshops and seminars, for several reasons. While I was in my 9-5 I went to many, both paid and free. However the reason I am in the fortunate position I am now, of running my own business, and being my own boss, is that I took MASSIVE ACTION (as I am sure many of you will be familiar!).

This last weekend I went to a workshop around attracting more clients, and I must say, I learnt a lot. However I made a commitment to myself that  I wouldn’t go to another until I followed up on my commitments I made and take MASSIVE ACTION around my goals.

This got me thinking,  what is the reason you go to workshops/seminars?

I see three reasons

1. Knowledge
2. Reinforcement
3. Networking/Joint Ventures

The title of the workshop and what it is going to give you is the obvious reason most people go to a workshop. We live in a society where we feel that we need more knowledge, “I am currently not getting what I want, so I must be lacking knowledge.”

Is this the case? Think of the last 5 workshops you have attended, did they give you ‘information’ that you already knew, but just not applied? I can certainly say this has been the case for me sometimes.

So what is it that makes us go back? Do we need constant reinforcement for what we already know, or is it more about developing our current knowledge? For me it is often the case of developing and fine tuning what I already know.

A few years ago I differentiated between whether I was consuming my time or investing my time, and I must say the percentage wasn’t in my favour. This for me was a light bulb moment, as soon as I consciously investmented my time, i.e. reading, networking, researching, communicating, listening, being a teacher, being a student, doing what I love, and not comsuming my time, i.e. TV, procrastinating, finding things to do to avoid what needs to be done; things started to change, I took MASSIVE ACTION.

What was a massive eye opener for me was the people you meet when you go to these workshops/seminars. By the very fact that they are there, their mindset would be very similar to yours, hence the opportunity to network with like-minded people is fantastic.

The opportunity to develop new connections for Joint Ventures is also great. Joint Venturing can take many forms, from joint marketing activity to promote complementary services, to looking for mentors who have already achieved what you are looking to develop.

These are some of my ideas. I would love to hear why you go to workshops and seminars.