Intentionality

The next time you react to something a competitor, customer, or colleague says about your business, check it against your intentions for your business.

What are your intentions regarding the following:

• Relationships
• Revenue
• Responsibility

Are you holding the best intention for all parties involved in each area? Sometimes our intentions hold us back from realizing our true potential in what we do for our work. We shortchange ourselves when we deliver our service, or rely on assumptions and historical behavior when dealing with our customers and colleagues.

So check in on your intentionality with everything you do in business. You may be surprised when the outcomes start to shift as your intentions start to rise to the surface.

Intend the best. Get the best.

Creativity Rules

"Go with your gut," I tell my clients. I find that many of us, myself included, tend to listen too much to what others say about us and our businesses. When we do, we forget who we are, what we're about, and why we started doing it in the first place.

Now that doesn't mean that we should ignore feedback from those that have our interests at heart, or feedback from customers who no longer "get it." There should always be a listening for our constituency, and one that we hear purely.

Better3 went through this type of identity crisis in 2011. It took a rough year of performance for me to realize the following:

• I know what's best for Better3, for it's my company and everything is really up to me
• Keep things simple and pure to the core of what I do best: write and create great marketing design products for people
• My focus and attitude about what I do is the driver of my success and enjoyment of my work-life

Yeah. That's right. And these three things can really apply to any person running a company. It's not necessarily how the end-result is achieved, although that is important. It's really about the intention behind what you're doing, and the attitude with which you do it. That's where happiness lives.

That's what I've discovered. The journey has been interesting, educational and frustrating at times, but I love my current trajectory and where I am now, and where I am headed.

How to Use Your Network to Help Clients

You'll get no argument when discussing the power of your personal or professional network. But how many of us are helping clients by leveraging our personal network?

Here are some fast and easy tips to help you reach out and help your clients beyond what your product or service is already providing them:

1. Give them a call if you haven't in a while to get a read on how they are doing. The key is to be the solution to whatever problem they're having, even if it's not your area of expertise.
2. Use your network and reach out on the social web. Some of the connections will seem obvious, and some you'll need to enlist your network to make the introduction.
3. Make sure they are vetted--don't refer someone you're not sure about to your client. You want to become the one who has the connections that are reliable and trustworthy. Most people don't have time to vet, so if you can save them that step, they're more apt to use your referral.
4. Follow up to see if they've met and helped one another.

People helping people. That's the business that works.