Newsletter

Wake Up & Serve August 4, 2008

Have you ever been in a conversation, when something very simple, yet profound, was communicated to you? I love it when it happens - and it happened to me the other day. I have begun a new relationship with one of my favorite people, Steve Chandler, a world class business coach. We are doing some work together, and he mentioned something his coach, Steve Hardison had said during a coaching session.

Here it is...ready?

He said that if you want to gain new client relationships, you just need to do one thing. You need to "wake up and serve." Simple, right?

How often do we look at our day that way? Do we think about how and who we will serve? No matter what our work is, we are meant to serve someone with our product or service. It may be colleagues, or internal customers that we serve. It could be our customer. Or it may simply be that we serve our family by being a mother or father or daughter or son.

As a coach, my role is to help people discover ways to improve their life and their business. Waking up each day with anticipation for the difference I will make in people's lives is an amazing way to live.

In order to be our best self, we must continue to provide value to the world. To be successful in our work, we must focus on fulfilling the needs of our customer. We must not be motivated from our own need - we must focus on helping others by using the talents we possess.

Too often we get wrapped up into our own mission for success. We work diligently to build our business or advance our career, focusing only on what we achieve. By shifting our focus to a process of identifying others' needs and filling them, we'll get further faster.

Dale Carnegie once wrote "You'll have more fun and success by helping others achieve their goals than you will by focusing on your own."

Wake up and serve. It's a good plan.

On another topic, are you one of the bazillion people who've paid money to see the new Batman movie, The Dark Night? For my slightly unpopular take on the movie, visit my blog written the Monday after seeing the movie.

Want to read some of my published articles?

In my monthly feature in the August issue of Michiana Family Magazine I write about the bittersweet adventure of sending your children back to school. In the quarterly international publication called The Indicator I write a feature about having Great Expectations. In my quarterly feature in Michiana Business Focus I write about the characteristics of entrepreneurs. These are all great publications, and I'm proud to be a part of them each.

Make this a great month!

Coach Charrise