So often in life, what we know to be true can only take us so far.  Many times, if we are to go to that next level we are seeking, we have to start thinking differently.

The old saying that sums this up goes something like - What got you to where you are won’t get you to where you are looking to go.

I bring this up this week because over the past week, I’ve observed something interesting - I’ve noticed a huge strain on relationships - personal, professional, etc.  Over the past week I’ve listened to people tell their story of the ending of a marriage, several business partnerships, a strategic partnership, etc.

I know this much, ending a relationship can be difficult, regardless of whether it is personal or professional.  That’s because the people involved have invested time, energy, emotion, and effort into one another.

So often though, people stay in relationships that they have either outgrown or are worse, harmful to them.

My question to you this week is this - examine your relationships - both personal and professional.  What’s working and what’s not?  Which relationships need time and attention and which relationships need to be ended.  What’s your plan of action to move forward?

In business, look at your sales relationships, client relationships, relationships with people you network with, relationships with your co-workers/employees.

In your personal life, look at your relationships with all the people who make an impact on your life - family, spouse, children, parents, etc.  And all the people who you make an impact on - friends, etc.

Strong relationships are important not only because of what they bring, but also because of what they prevent.  Poor relationships cause many forms of stress.   How productive are you at work when you are dealing with a stressful relationship?  I’ll guess that the answer is not very productive.

Confront and resolve those stressful relationships as soon as possible.  In a difficult business environment you need all your focus on being productive, not fretting over a relationship.

- Like what you are reading?  Want more?  Be sure to sign up for my free weekly newsletter - Passport for Success. It is delivered to your e-mail box every Monday morning.  Sign-up at somdayisland.com

I want to pass along a nice resource for entrepreneurs that was passed on to me - http://www.vschools.org/.  Check it out and see what you like from the site.

Our oldest daughter, Emma, will be entering Kindergarten this year.  This past Friday, I took her over to school for bus orientation.  This is the time when all the new Kindergartners have an opportunity to practice getting on and off the bus, how to sit on the bus, learn about bus safety, etc.  The parents even had the opportunity to take a short bus ride with the new students.  In all, it’s a very nice program a few weeks before school starts.

Couple this with Kindergarten registration last month and a couple of other events and it makes the transition to school much smoother for the children so that by the time school is in full swing, they already have some level of comfort.

I tell you this because how often do we throw our coworkers, employees, our customers and clients, or even ourselves right into the mix of what’s going on.  You wouldn’t go out for a 10 mile run without warming up would you?  You wouldn’t just drop your children off at school the first day without even knowing their teacher’s name would you?  Yet how often do we skip the “warm up” for work?  Maybe it’s a project or something for a client.  If we don’t provide some kind of guidance for the people who will do the work, why should we expect that person to do what we want perfectly?  Guidance doesn’t mean micromanagement, it could be as simple as taking 5 minutes to show someone what you are really looking for, or assisting them for a few minutes until they get the hang of it, or even taking the time to lay out a standard operating procedure that someone can follow.

Take a moment and think about some of the recent projects in your business.  Did you do any “warm-ups” with the people who were doing the work?  What could you have done?  What would have made the project gone better?  How about for yourself - what warm-ups are you doing?  Are you planning out what exactly you will be doing, or are you flying by the seat of your pants?  Which way do you think you’ll get better results with?

- Like what you are reading?  Want more?  Be sure to sign up for my free weekly newsletter - Passport for Success. It is delivered to your e-mail box every Monday morning.  Sign-up at somdayisland.com

I recently read a story about the unemployment rate rising again reaching a four year high.  I’ve seen stories of businesses throwing in the towel and people struggling to pay for the increase in gas prices.  Politicians from both political parties will do what politicians do best - talk and poke around in areas they have no business being in.  Feeling depressed about the state of the economy and the prospects of your business future?

Maybe you need to look at the situation differently.  While the overall economy may be suffering, there are plenty of businesses out there that are thriving.  What are they doing that you aren’t?  One of the differences between a business that is thriving in hard economic times versus one that is struggling is this - the thriving company has made themselves recession-proof by focusing on value.

In other words, companies that see their product or service as just a commodity will continue to suffer.  Companies that see their product or service as adding value to their customers businesses and lives are thriving.  In a weak economy people are spending money on products and services that help them solve a problem, relieve a pain, or add value to their businesses or lives.

What value do you provide your clients and customers?  What does your business really do - make sprockets or make products that make people’s lives easier?  Making sprockets can always be done cheaper somewhere else.  Making someone’s life easier is a value that people will pay good money for, especially in a weak economy.

- Like what you are reading?  Want more?  Be sure to sign up for my free weekly newsletter - Passport for Success. It is delivered to your e-mail box every Monday morning.  Sign-up at somdayisland.com

If you’ve known me for awhile, you know that I am a marathon runner.  I’ve completed five marathons over the last five years.  I’ve learned a great deal from each marathon.

I’m in training for my sixth marathon in Hartford, CT this fall.  During the last week, we’ve had some significant heat and some cooling.  We’ve also had a short round of sick children in our home, which causes sleeping issues for my wife and me.

Regardless of the temperature and humidity and sick children, the training for the marathon must go on - without training, I just wouldn’t be able to do the marathon.

So what am I to do?  Adjust my training schedule.  Maybe after one night of being up with the children time after time I decide to skip my core exercises for the next day - I need sleep instead.  Doing the core exercises would actually be worse for me since my body would be worn down and there would be a greater risk for injury.

Or take the heat - last weekend when I had a 12 mile run, I adjusted the run.  I did all twelve miles, I just left earlier than normal and took the last couple of miles easier than normal.

Adjustments are vital to the achievement of your goal.  If you just stay the course, you may end up doing more harm than good - you aren’t taking into account changes that are happening around you.

What adjustments do you need to make to your goals?  Your activities?

- Like what you are reading?  Want more?  Be sure to sign up for my free weekly newsletter - Passport for Success. It is delivered to your e-mail box every Monday morning.  Sign-up at somdayisland.com

Everyday is an opportunity to learn something new.  During this past week, I learned how to better use the Internet, how to be more organized, how to adjust my schedule at the last minute, how to better network, and how to have better conversations.

And that’s just a small list of things I learned this past week.

So what did you learn today?  What will you do with this new knowledge?  How will you apply this knowledge to your business and life?

- Like what you are reading?  Want more?  Be sure to sign up for my free weekly newsletter - Passport for Success. It is delivered to your e-mail box every Monday morning.  Sign-up at somdayisland.com

This past week I had the opportunity to be on a teleseminar about being a well-paid speaker.  The speaker has done over 2200 speaking engagements, so he had a wealth of knowledge to share.

I took some notes from the call, but stared and underlined one particular note.  The speaker was talking about speaking technique.  Now, most people would probably expect him to talk about standing posture, tone, what to do with your hands, walking, etc.  Instead, he gave the best advice I’ve heard in a long time - don’t worry about all that stuff - just be yourself.

What a powerful message.  We get so caught up in small and ultimately unimportant matters that we lose focus on our message and what’s important.

If you are so busy worrying about how you are standing and what you are doing with your hands, how are you going to remember what you wanted to talk about?

That’s not to say details don’t matter - they can and often do.  The idea is this - stay focused on what’s important right now.  If what’s important are the details, then focus on them.  If what’s important is the big picture, focus on that.

In a speaking engagement, the message and your passion for that message and your story are what’s important.  What’s important for your business today?  How are you going to “be yourself” today?

- Like what you are reading?  Want more?  Be sure to sign up for my free weekly newsletter - Passport for Success. It is delivered to your e-mail box every Monday morning.  Sign-up at somdayisland.com

It’s been said that the difference between successful people and failures are that successful people do the things that failures are unwilling to do.

I think this is true is every area of life - business, sports, health, family, etc.

Take a look at the different areas of your life that you deem successful. I can guarantee that you’ve done some things in that area of your life that others are unwilling to do. If it’s business, maybe that means cold calling, or networking, or some other activity.

A personal example for me was this past Thursday. As you know, I started my training for the Hartford marathon three weeks ago. On Thursday, I was scheduled to run six 800 meter fast paced runs. During the course of these runs, it started to rain and then turn into a pouring rain. I was soaked. I could have easily called it quits since I was running down the street from our house, but I didn’t.

Just read today’s quote by Mark Victor Hanson, (“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”) it says it all - the conditions are rarely perfect. That’s not the point. I ran in the downpour because I made a commitment to run the marathon. If I quit on a training run because of the rain, how committed am I? Also, how would that affect my next run, which happened to a 10k race on Saturday? And what about when the marathon comes around - who knows what the weather will be like in October.

I am not the world’s fastest runner and never will be. That’s not my goal. Distance running is a successful part of my life though - being willing to run in the rain is a great example of being willing to do what others are not.

What are the things that you do that others are unwilling to do in the different parts of your life? Your business? Celebrate your excellence in these areas.

- Like what you are reading?  Want more?  Be sure to sign up for my free weekly newsletter - Passport for Success. It is delivered to you e-mail box every Monday morning.  Sign-up at somdayisland.com

This past week I facilitated a seminar entitled “Speaking of Success.” As you would guess, the content had to do with success.

We spent a great deal of time defining success - I shared my definition and each person created their own definition.

I can’t stress how important it is to actually define success. Without a clear definition of what success means to you, you’ll never know if you are successful.

In case you were wondering, the definition of success that I use is - the continuous achievement of predetermined goals, stabilized by balance, and purified by belief.

So what is your definition of success? What does success look like? What does it feel like?

One of the most important parts of any strategic plan is the implementation of that plan.  Without implementing what you’ve laid out, all you’ve really done is a nice exercise in philosophy.

A key to implementation is measuring results.  A common question I hear is “but what do I measure?”

The answer may sound simple, but it’s true - measure what’s important.  That could mean profit and loss, new clients, contacts made, revenue for the quarter, etc.

Determine what’s important based on your goals.  Your goals dictate what you need to measure.

Once you’ve determined what to measure, many business owners find that compiling those measurements in an up-to-date fashion, like a dashboard, is very effective in knowing whether the business is on track with it’s goals.

Exit questions - what are you strategic goals?  What do you need to measure?  How are you measuring results?  How about activities?  What measurements are important to know for your business?