Clear Simple Business

Oh Adulting…… why are you so joyless? Is that how you feel? Does adulting suck the life out of you?  It often does to me.  But why do we allow it to?  Why is it so acceptable to become joyless pits once we reach a certain age?  Can we reverse this trend?   Heather thinks so, in her book An Overachiever's Guide To Breaking The Rules: How To Let Go Of Perfect and Live Your Truth she explains how. First, it’s understanding that joy is a level above happiness. It happens in the present moment when we are fully present, when we have let go of our distractions. To me joy means belly laughing. You know that laugh that babies and kids do? That laugh that comes from deep down inside of you. That is full of pure joy and happiness. That is what joy means to me. And I have recently realized that I rarely do it. I rarely belly laugh, truly laugh. I may giggle at something. But I rarely allow myself to so deeply let go of the responsibilities around me to TRULY and deep...

Ok, I listened to my smart marketing people and first wrote some educational blogs about how many hours a week American's work on average and the effects, now I get to share my opinion and tell you my story! Why? Why? I think it's because many of us define our work success in the number of hours we work. We're really important at work if we have to work more than 40 hours a week.  We know that with each promotion, we need to add on a few extra hours a week. Why do we know this? Because this is what is presented to us when we first enter the workforce. We are constantly seeing the person at the level above us working longer than we are. It's what's to be expected.  My take on this: we're all very busy, but busy does not equal productive. Stigmatism that if you're not working 40 hours a week, that means you're lazy. But what if it's not lazy, what if it's working smarter, not harder ?  Let me use my career in corporate American as an example. I was...

I love the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKoewn.  According to Greg, Essentialism is a systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that is not, so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter. It is about doing less, but better, in every area of our lives. Essentialism is a movement whose time has come. I agree, the time has come.  But more on that later!  Let's jump back to Greg and what practicing essentialism means. Based on how you work, Greg would either consider you an essentialist or a non-essentialist. The best way to explain the difference between the two is with the figure below:                                          The same amount of energy is being exerted in both images; however, one is way more productive!  The image on the...

As I am being immersed more and more in the entrepreneurial world, I am coming across one topic over and over again. It’s not “How to leverage social media” or “Quick ways to make a million dollars.” This topic is “the power of your thoughts.” You can’t seem to take an entrepreneurial course or seminar without coming across teachings, phrases or quotes associated with the power of your thoughts. Some of my favorite examples are below:  “If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.” - Peace Pilgrim “What we think & how we think plays a major role in creating the life we live. If you want to change your life, change the way you look at things around.” - Taranpreet Singh “The closer you come to knowing that you alone create the world of your experience, the more vital it becomes for you to discover just who is doing the creating.” - Eric Micha'el Leventhal “The moment you think you can do something that you previously thought you couldn...

The other day I was in line at Chipotle ordering my dinner. Watching the process behind the counter got me thinking. The way a restaurant plans and prepares each day for their rushes is a really great example of how companies should think about setting up their processes.  Every restaurant has crazy busy periods and then very slow periods throughout the day. For Chipotle they’re dealing with lunch and dinner hour rushes. So what do they do in-between when it’s slow?  They aren’t sitting around waiting for the rush of customers to come in. They’re cooking large quantities of meat, cooking and mixing up the rice, preparing the salsa, double checking that they have enough cheese, etc.   Every restaurant does this and it makes sense! Of course they take the time to prepare the food ahead of their rushes. They do this for you, their customer! If they didn’t, you would have to wait in line for way too long, have poor service, and you would probably end up leaving. This wou...

  What Hockey can Teach You About Supporting Your Business What are you doing when you are not actively working in your business? Are you actively working to support your business and anticipating the next move needed? The sport of hockey is a great example of how you can learn to be successful when you are not in direct possession of your business (i.e. not working in your business but rather on it).  I love hockey! I played the game in college and watch it regularly. (Go MN Wild!) As a hockey player, I know that most of the time you are playing the game you are playing without possession of the puck.  According to a USA Hockey study, which was done at the Salt Lake Olympics and at USA Hockey National Championships, “[it] showed that players touch the puck for a little more than one minute during a 60-minute game. That means how well you play away from the puck will make a big difference in winning or losing a hockey game.” ( USA Hockey Magazine ) It amazes me how little...

Email is a wonderful tool. It provides small business owners and large corporations alike the ability to communicate quickly and easily, allowing for easy collaboration between teams and external contacts. We manage our day-to-day tasks as well as our marketing campaigns with this tool. Most of us wouldn’t know what to do without email! The days of picking up the phone to solicit our next sale, delegate a task to our team or ask a question are long gone.  But...email has a lot of power over us. According to  research   released in 2012 by the McKinsey Global Institute, workers spend over a quarter of their day reading, answering and managing email. This survey also found that email is the second-most time-consuming activity for workers. With so much time and energy spent with your email software, I ask you: Are you the King (or Queen) of your inbox? Or is your Inbox ruling you? For most people, email is the King! According to research done by PANDO, there's an 80 ...

For those of you who know me, you know I LOVE to travel. I’ve lived in Europe 3 times, in Asia once and am currently planning a 2nd European trip for 40 friends and family (yes, I know, I’m slightly crazy!) Obviously, planning a trip for a large number of people is not easy. However, I do it because I’ve heard time and time again “Sarah, if you weren’t planning this trip, I would never go.” With travel, there are so many moving parts and people can get confused, overwhelmed, and never start. What a shame! In my opinion everyone should experience the joys of traveling and everyone has the ability to plan a trip.  Thinking through this predicament, I started mapping out the process I go through each time I plan a trip either for myself, for a few friends, or for 40 friends. I realized that you can break the process down into 2 simple steps: 1) find a place to sleep and 2) figure out how to get there.  I’m serious! All you really need to do when planning a trip is to find a place...