Lorna's Business Box

You will do it again this year.

You will spend all your money on Christmas items you will no longer want in the New Year. You will eat and drink food that will be distributed evenly across your butt and gut in unseemly proportions.

And on New Year’s Eve you will become contrite and remorseful and you will make New Year’s resolutions designed to ensure it does not happen next year!

The tradition of the New Year’s Resolutions goes all the way back to 153 B.C. when Janus, a mythical king of early Rome was placed at the head of the calendar. With his two faces, Janus could look back on past events and look forward to the future all at the same time.

New Year’s is the only holiday that celebrates the passage of time and as one year closes and another opens, people become introspective and often make lofty but well-meaning resolutions intended to bring about meaningful change in their lives.

However well-intended, research and reality shows that a high percentage of these resolutions are not kept. Don’t ask me why because I can only speculate!

Perhaps too many are made because you’re swept along on the holiday tide. Or maybe you do want to make some changes in your life and you believe that making profound declaration on how these will happen at the beginning of the calendar year will actually make them happen.

Whatever your reason, I’d like to increase your chances of keeping those resolutions. So I’m sharing the best way I know how for making resolutions and actually keeping them, including my SUPER “New Year” approach that guarantees me almost 100% success every time.

I will share with you:

1. The best way to make your resolutions so that you will keep them
2. What to do to increase your “keeping” success rate by at least 45%
3. Some of the personal attributes that will help you
4. Why you need to celebrate your successes
5. And my SUPER “New Year” approach that works every time!

So go on!  Discover how to make and keep New Year’s Resolutions!

Happy New Year to You! And I want you to start the New Year right!

Ever since I wrote my report “10 Rules for Success in Business” and gave it away for free (get your copy here) some people have been asking me: How can I be successful not only in business but also as a person?

In response, I was so tempted to point out that if you’re in the business of delivering a service especially if it’s in the information sector, then you and your business are one and the same. But not being one to miss an opportunity to add insight, I decided that if you and your business are so connected, personal success must equal business success.

So I asked myself what makes me successful as a person? Assuming that you’re just like me, I sharing my top 7 principles of success that I know help me to be the person and then the business person that I am, hoping that they will help you too. Are you ready? (more…)

Last time out, I shared five of ten HR functions that small business people should consider and I promise you that in the next post I will share the other five. So here’s to keeping my promise:

6. Coaching an employee who is having trouble with company policies, another co-worker or having performance issues. You want the best for your business, don’t you? Then you have to be able to coach your employees to give you just that. (more…)

There’s no disputing it.

Human Resources Management (HRM) is a delicate balancing act in allocating resources that you can’t continue to ignore and be successful. Don’t believe me?

 Try solving this equation that I came up with:

[Mhr = (Xcs + Ie/er)c ] =SROIf   

Give up? Would the key below help?

M = management

hr = human resource

X = Excellent

cs = customer service

I = improved

e/er = employee/employer relations

n = infinite

S = Superior

ROI = Return on Investments

f = forever

Did you come up with something like this? (more…)

In my country Barbados, fishing is big part of the economy. Not only for the fishermen to earn income but to feed the nation as well. So at the first sign of rough weather, the Meteorological Department will issue a warning for fishermen to haul their boats to safe harbor.

But vessels weren’t meant to remain in safe harbor. So, pretty soon, I will  watch in awe as another fishing boat loads up with bait and supplies and sail into the mighty ocean for the fishermen to ply their trade. To get the best catch, they have to lose sight of the shore and occasionally we hear of fishermen who go missing for sometimes more than 20 days and then turn up safe in another island.

 The true spirit of an entrepreneur is evident when you can live your life and grow your business using this “fisherman approach”. (more…)

It’s every small business owner, consultant and entrepreneur’s dream: Big contracts for their small businesses.

What am I talking about? You know, that large contract from a prestigious  client that sets you up for at least a year. It lets you pay off all the non-routine bills and buy a membership in the local “Holier-than-thou club.” Your colleagues regard you with awe and admiration and your competition coughs and sneezes from all the dust you kick in their faces.

So you’re fortunate and your dreams come true and now you’re asking: How did this gem of a contract morph into the worse nightmare of my life?

I know. In the excitement of bidding for the contract, you forgot to consider the cons and pros of delivering on the contract. Well, let me examine some of them for you. (more…)

Recently I was having dinner with my girlfriend and just when I was floating on the cloud that appeared right after the coconut cream pie which was accompanied by a fine wine, she declared “Don’t you just wish that your day had 27 hours so that you could get more done? Can you imagine what this would do for your productivity?”

Huh! I rolled off the cloud and landed right back on good old earth! What is the matter with this woman? Her sense of timing was like a sprained ankle when you’ve just bought a brand new pair of hot high-heeled shoes! Since she was paying, I knew I should answer sooner and that later could only be negotiated.

“Can I have 24 hours to think about this? I really will answer your questions in the morning when I’ve had time to un-wine!”  I offered as my opening gambit. “12 hours only! If you’re going to be productive, 24 hours is too long!” she shot back.

Knowing that there was no way out of this topic my mind went to work in the car on the way home and now I’m sharing with you and she will have to read this post or you can tell her that I responded to the world at large.  

 What is productivity? (more…)

 Hi Every Body! Here is the second part of you 10 rules for succeeding in business. I hope you’ve had a chance to reflect on 1 – 5 and you have thought of some you can share as well! So if you’re ready, here goes:

6. Truly Learn to increase productivity

Multi-tasking on big projects (or small) does not equal increased productivity. To me it suggests lack of focus. When you multi-task, each project that you are working on simultaneously with others, takes longer. The people I interviewed concentrated on completing each project fast so that they can collect their fees faster. (more…)

I would be the first to admit that success is individual to the individual.
But over the last three years, I deliberately (for my own purposes) set out to find out what distinguishes those who succeed and grow their businesses from those who merely exist at the same level, year in, year out.

I talked to product-based and service-based business owners. I talked to beach vendors, manufacturers, retailer, contractors, entrepreneurs below 50 years and above 50 years, some I knew and some I did not. I had conversations with men and with women. And then I reflected on my own experience of the businesses I started and the ones that were successful and the ones that were not.

All in all, when I boiled it down (as we say in my country) I came up with  10 rules that must exist in your business if you want to be successful. (more…)

You are too academic! This is the way my good friend and business associate described me recently. Unmoved by the comment but curious to see if the perception was widespread among my group, I asked my other friends and associates and even clients if they thought I was academic. The response was consistent: not you! You will see later why I was amused by this response.

I am a creative person! This is the manner in which this same friend and associate described herself. So I got to thinking: What is academic? What is creative? Is there a relationship between the two? So back to my “database” I went with these questions and the findings were interesting.

There seems to be a concept that creativity means non-academic, non-structure, non-systematic, in other words “free form” as was the term used when I asked my trusted fan base. In other words, footloose and fancy free. (more…)