Cohen Consulting Group

Being Grateful

November 21, 2018 by Mandy Leave a Comment

With holidays approaching, this is the perfect time of year to take a moment and reflect on all of the things we are grateful for. Being grateful may sound a bit trite, but it’s also the number one, hands down, fastest way to bring more positivity and less negativity into your work and life.

Acts of gratitude are selfless and done unconditionally. You can use gratitude as a private exercise of reflection or you can express your gratefulness to show people that they are appreciated.

You don’t have to wait to feel gratitude; you can invoke it proactively.

If you don’t have a gratitude practice, consider starting one. Science has gotten involved in studying gratitude, especially in the field of positive psychology, and the benefits to health and well-being are enormous. It can benefit your business, too, when you show appreciation for business partners, employees, customers, and vendors.

Here are five easy ways to bring more gratitude into your work and life:

Think of five clients you can send thank you notes to. You can write them by hand or send a greeting card with a thank you message.
On your customer service email templates, add a line before the closing that says, “We appreciate your business.” It does make a difference.
Quick, right now, think of five things you are grateful for and list them off the top of your head. After you’re done, you should feel a little bit happier than you did a few minutes ago. Use this tool after you feel a negative emotion to move you back into positivity faster.
Find part of your day that you don’t love, such as your commute to work. Change it to your gratitude commute, finding things along the way to be grateful for. You might be surprised how great you feel when you arrive at work.
Let one of your employees know that you’re grateful for the work they do for you. You can do this verbally, with a note, or with a gift.

When you practice gratitude, you can’t help but feel happy for the things you have in your life. Try these five things on a regular basis to bring more gratitude and positivity into your work and life.

Filed Under: Inspiration

Your Perfect Work Day

October 25, 2018 by Mandy Leave a Comment

How well do you love the way you spend your typical workday? What would a typical workday look like if you had absolutely no constraints? Here’s a fun exercise to get you thinking about your future and how you can make small changes in your current day to move it toward your ideal day.

Get comfortable and begin jotting out what your ideal day looks like. Start with what you do before you get to work. How do you start your day? With a workout or breakfast or something else? What does breakfast consist of? Where are you eating? What do your surroundings look like?

How do you get to work? What is your commute like? List the sights, sounds, smells. Once you get to work, what do you do first? Will you spend time on the phone? With whom? At the computer? Do you go somewhere?

Do you get a nice break for lunch? Write it all down in detail, and continue until your post-workday routine. Who are you with? Where are you? What do you do?

Here’s a partial sample:

“Lunch with my two friends at our favorite Mexican restaurant on the beach. We laugh a lot, share stories, and part with hugs and handshakes. After lunch, I work on my favorite work project, which challenges me to think about how to help my employees gain new skills. While I work, I listen to my favorite music CD. In a few hours, I am ready for a stretch break and walk outside to water the plants. After break, I return calls, talking with my clients and catching up on how to best serve them. …”

OK, now it’s your turn. Here are some questions to consider while you do this exercise:

What’s important to you to spend time on?
What’s enjoyable that you would really like to have as part of your daily routine?
What activities will give you a nice balance of accomplishment, relaxation, and socialization, even during work?
What do you need to include in your ideal day to get your needs met?

Change One Thing

Getting to your ideal day can take time. Don’t try to change your whole routine all at once. What one or two things can you pull out of your ideal work day description that you could bring into your current work day to brighten it with happiness? In the description above, this person might block out time to find employee training, go out for lunch instead of eating at her desk, make a new playlist, delegate tasks that are not part of her ideal day, or take more time when returning client calls.

Make gradual changes in your current day to improve it. With each change, you’ll be moving toward the realization of your ideal day. And if your ideal day doesn’t include bookkeeping but your current day still does, we’re here for you.

Filed Under: Inspiration

Five Ways to Ring in 2018

January 4, 2018 by Mandy Leave a Comment

Happy new year! January is the month of new beginnings and a perfect time to strategize about projects that will boost your business prosperity. Here are five ideas to get you thinking about new beginnings for your business in 2018.

1. Learn new technology.

Every year, tens of thousands of new online software applications are invented that will save us time and money. Learning at least one new app will keep us sharp and hopefully improve our business. There are many to choose from, and one way to narrow it down is to find one that will help you do your job better.

Look for an app that supports your administrative work, such as a new phone system, video conferencing, scheduling, cloud storage, shipping, document management, or data entry automation. Or you might have a need for apps in marketing and sales, such as social media, customer relationship managers, email list management, or web applications. If you’re not sure where to look, ask your friends what has saved them the most time.

2. Upgrade your accounting system.

If your accounting system is not updated to the current version, it may be time to perform the upgrade. Check with us for advice on the current version and any new features that you can benefit from.

3. Develop your 2018 prosperity plan.

The word “budget” has somewhat of a negative connotation, but a prosperity plan sounds like fun. They are the same, of course, and the idea is to determine what goals you want to reach so that you have a clear path to making your desired prosperity a reality.

4. Create a theme or mantra.

Want to stay more focused in 2018? A theme or mantra can remind you to stay on track with a particular project or goal. Brainstorm a phrase that will guide you in 2018. Here are some examples:

Customer service excellence
More me-time
Enthusiastic, engaged employees
Expanding digital presence
Going green
A prosperous new product line

5. Delegate something that isn’t getting done.

One way to feel amazingly rejuvenated and re-energized about your business is to give someone an item that’s been on your to-do list for far too long. It magically gets done right before your eyes!

We’re wishing you a most prosperous and happy new year.

Filed Under: Blog, Inspiration

Thank you, Chet Holmes

August 15, 2012 by Mandy Leave a Comment

The passing of Chet Holmes this week saddened me greatly. I am an ardent fan of this author of the bestseller The Ultimate Sales Machine, which I have read or listened to dozens of times. Intensely disciplined and fiercely competitive, Chet reengineered the sales process into a finely tuned piece of machinery resulting in his extraordinary success. He has inspired thousands of people seeking business acuity and excellence. I can only speculate at the hundreds whose lives have been profoundly influenced by this brilliant man. I know mine has been. May he rest in peace.

Filed Under: Blog, Inspiration

Life Beyond the Profit & Loss Statement – Do You Know Your Lifestyle Ratios?

June 19, 2012 by Mandy Leave a Comment

Each month, you may anxiously await the reports that provide the numbers that help you manage your business. Revenue, net income, total expenses, and payroll costs are just a few of the items that you may be monitoring on your profit and loss statement. Those numbers will help you meet and improve your business goals, but the question is, what numbers are you using to determine if you are meeting your life goals?

It might be fun to come up with a few lifestyle ratios to help you measure and move toward your personal goals. Here are a few for your consideration:

Passive vs. Active Income

If you’d like to work less as time goes by, then you’ll want to create your passive vs. active income ratio. Make a list of all of your sources of income (not just business) in a spreadsheet. You might have interest income, rental income, and investment income along with your business income or salary.

Then write down how many hours you spend working to earn each type of income. For interest income, it is likely to be very little. Investment income will only include the time you take selecting your investments and managing your portfolio. If you are active in your business, this will be the lion’s share.

Income is passive if you spend almost no time earning it. Income is active if you spend time earning it. (These definitions correlate to your time spent, not the IRS definitions.) Put the income in the appropriate column, passive or active. You can allocate if necessary.

In the example below, this person is well on their way to retiring. They also might question why they are spending so many hours working so hard for a fraction of their monthly income!

	Income	Monthly Hours	Passive	Active
Interest Income	$5,000	0	$5,000
Rental Income	$6,000	2	$6,000
Investment Income	$20,000	1	$20,000
Business Income	$10,000	167		$10,000
Totals	$41,000	170	$31,000	$10,000
Passive/Active ratio			76%	24%

The “aha” comes when you see the numbers. The numbers often drive people to action. You might decide to be more intentional about moving your income to passive sources so you can do the things you want to do.

Leveraged vs. Unleveraged Revenue

Leveraging your business revenue is a way to work less while making more money.

Measuring leverage is business-specific. Examples of revenue that are not leveraged include seeing clients one at a time and selling hours-for-dollars services without a staff. Revenues that are partially leveraged include group programs such as classes and events like webinars and conferences as well as hourly consulting that your staff performs with your limited oversight. And revenue that is fully leveraged includes product sales. Once the product is developed, it takes little incremental time to sell (unless you’re in retail).

Here’s an example, assuming this business owner has a staff of five people. Both hourly consulting and training classes are partially leveraged because the business owner spends time teaching, consulting, and supervising.

	Revenue	Leveraged	Unleveraged
Book sales	$500,000	$500,000
Hourly consulting	$3,000,000	$2,500,000	$500,000
Training classes	$2,500,000	$1,500,000	$1,000,000
Total	$6,000,000	$4,500,000	$1,500,000
Ratio		75%	25%

If your revenue streams are flexible, you can work on moving more of your business income over to the leveraged side. To create more leverage in the example business, the owner could sell or develop more products, hire another teacher, hire an additional consultant, and/or hire someone to review the consulting work of the employees.

Days Off vs. Days Worked

This ratio measures how much time we are able to spend away from the office. It’s simple to compute, and you can estimate it if you don’t track your time.

Assuming a 5-day work week, there are about 250 working days in a year, not including about 10 holidays. Estimate the numbers of days you were off, and divide by 250. For example, if you took 5 1-week vacations from work last year, that would be 25 days, resulting in 10%. This assumes you worked the rest of the year.

Your Lifestyle Goals

What’s on your “bucket list?” (This is a list of things you want to do in your lifetime before you die.) Figure out the metric that will get you thinking about doing your dreams sooner rather than later.

You can have fun with metrics and ratios in and out of your business. Here are some more ideas to think about:

The number of customers you have that really fit your ideal client and how many more you need to go.
How many countries (or states) you want to visit each year vs. how many you’ve already visited.
How many volunteer hours or dollars you spend vs. how much more you like to.

When you put your goals into numbers and on paper, they seem more real and achievable. You can get an “aha” just by computing these ratios. Hopefully, life beyond the profit and loss statement will get you closer to your dream life.

Filed Under: Business Development, Inspiration, Personal growth

The Power of Permission

June 5, 2012 by Mandy Leave a Comment

What have you been wanting to do in your business for a really long time? Perhaps you’ve been wanting to raise your prices. Maybe you want to hire an assistant or another team member but haven’t gotten around to it. Or maybe you want to work less and focus on personal time, but you haven’t taken action for one reason or another.

Ask yourself what project you’ve been thinking about forever but haven’t taken action on. We all have a wish list. The question is, why are we waiting?

What causes us to put these important, yet inconvenient or uncomfortable items on the back burner? In many cases, there’s a really simple answer. Here are three questions you can ask yourself if you would like to get unstuck and move forward with your list of items.

What’s it costing me to delay this decision? In six months, will I be better off or worse off having done nothing? This helps you bring a sense of urgency to an item.
Do I simply need to give myself permission? It’s surprising how this simple revelation can create the shift you need to gain momentum. Going deeper, this can be a deservability issue, i.e., do I deserve to charge a higher fee? If that’s the case, working on your confidence is something that will help you get unstuck.
Am I getting stuck because I don’t feel like I have the skills, or is it possibly a mindset issue? Making the distinction between the need to build skills and the need to work on your mindset can help you determine the next logical step to take. Often, however, it can be both, and in that case, start by parsing out the skills you feel like you need. When you do that, often the mindset will take care of itself.

By habit, we wait for other people’s approvals since we’ve done this all our lives. We’re used to getting the approvals of teachers, parents, professors, bosses, spouses, and relatives, but when we’re in business for ourselves, we don’t need to ask anyone!

Is there something you’ve been delaying that you need to give yourself permission for?

Giving your business or yourself a long-wanted gift?
Starting a long-awaited project?
Hiring someone or making a staffing change?
Launching a new product?
Raising prices?
Making a purchase?
Working less?
Taking your business to the next level?

If there is, ask yourself what you’re waiting for. The power of permission might just set you free.

Filed Under: Inspiration, Personal growth

Are You Fully Supported in Your Business?

May 8, 2012 by Mandy Leave a Comment

Click above to see enlarged image

Whether we run a large company with dozens of employees or run our own solo business, we rely on a support team of vendors, customers, employees, contractors, and other associates that help us carry out our business goals. Here’s a fun exercise to discover the strengths and weaknesses of your business support team and how you can increase and strengthen the support you have.

Take out a blank sheet of paper, and draw a small circle in the middle. Write your name in the circle. This represents you.

Draw a little larger circle next to your circle. Write your employees’ names and major functions in this circle. Draw a similar circle for contractors’ names and functions. If you have partners and/or affiliates, include them in a big circle.

Draw a small circle for your five largest clients, and write their names in the circles. Draw another small circle for your five largest vendors, and write their names in the circles.

Draw one more circle for your business mentors and coaches, and write their names inside the circle. If you have any more major groups related to your business, draw them now.

These circles represent your business and all of the people you rely on to get your job done.

Now, think about what groups you belong to that relate indirectly to your business. It could be a professional association, a licensing agency, or a networking group. Make large circles for each of the groups you feel connected to, and write some of the key names you know that are part of each of the groups.

Add a few more circles in the same way if you have more business associates to list or other groups that you didn’t add above. If you want to, you can also include your personal support team: the nanny, cook, gardener, esthetician, wardrobe consultant, makeup artist, nail artist, hair stylist, nutritionist, personal workout trainer, butler, chauffeur, masseuse, travel agent, and water boy. Okay, maybe listing the water boy is getting a little carried away.

The sheet should now represent all of the important people in your business that support you in one way or another. It’s a lot, isn’t it?

Now is where the aha’s come in:

Take a look at your to do list and see if there are holes in your team that you need to fill. Are there job openings or are you ready to bring in more support? Mark the openings or potential openings with a yellow highlighter.
With a green highlighter, mark the people who are most positive and supportive to you. You may want to let them know how much you appreciate them if it’s been a while.
With a red highlighter, mark anyone who is costing you more than supporting you. It may be time for a change in team members.
With a purple highlighter, list the five people you most look up to and can count on for great advice. These people should either have expert advice or be ahead of you in business.

We’ll stop here, but you can continue selecting colors to evaluate the relationship of the people in your circles.

When you take a look at your social circles, what do you notice?

Where are you fully supported?
Where could you use more help?
Where do you need to make some replacements?
What else do you notice about your business network?

Make a list of action items you can do to strengthen your business support network.

This is a great exercise to allow you to consciously evaluate and improve the ever-important support system in your business. When you have a great team, you can accomplish so much!

Filed Under: Blog, Business Development, Inspiration, overwhelm

5 Extraordinary Personal Development Leaders

August 8, 2011 by Mandy Leave a Comment

Mandy Cohan believes personal growth contributes to the success of your business and recommends these personal development leaders. Many of my clients that had been to my old office are aware of the extensive library of personal, professional and spiritual books, tapes, CDs and videos that I have accumulated over the last 20 years. The audio programs tend to be the most useful for me since they are so easy to listen to while I’m driving, cooking or cleaning. Okay, it’s true. Watching The Secret with other enthusiasts and a big bowl of popcorn would be my idea of a great evening, but I’m a little passionate. Since I was recently asked the question, I thought I would share with you five of my favorite leaders in the personal development realm. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Inspiration, Personal growth

Chet Holmes has Leukemia

April 5, 2011 by Mandy Leave a Comment

Chet Holmes is one of my favorite mentors. He wrote the book The Ultimate Sales Machine, which I highly recommend to anyone in business. I received an email yesterday from Mitch Russo, President of Business Breakthroughs International saying that Chet was just recently diagnosed with Leukemia. His white blood count was at 178,000 (normal is 4,000 to 11,000). The doctors, of course, want to start him on Chemo as soon as possible. Chet, known for his pig-headed determination, decided to use his mind and spirit and the collective power of the universe to turn this around. Using the Internet to take his message viral, he got thousands of people praying for him. That was on Sunday. By Monday, his blood count was normal. Is that not awesome?

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Favorites, Inspiration