You are so excited to have your new coaching business. You love to interact with clients or customers, and to create, create, create!

Then you are hit with realization that paperwork, finances, marketing and all that business stuff is eating away at your time. And much of it you don’t even like to do. Your own business starts to become just another job– with more responsibility.

The answer is ‘systems’. You want to set up systems so your business practically runs itself. You can think of a system as a recipe for a part of your business.

Part of being your own boss is the flexibility of working when you choose and traveling when you want. When you are doing everything yourself and doing it the hard way, you lose this flexibility. You become tied to your job 24-7. Put systems in place so you don’t always have to be there.

An Example
As an illustration, say you had a chili making business in your backyard. Taking orders was wasting a lot of your time. So, you decide to systemize it. You create an order taking process- what you say, forms to use, how payment is taken, and so on. Once you have a good system in place you can hire a high school student to take orders for you, teaching him or her the system. It’s easy for them to remember because you wrote it all down and put it in your Systems Manual!

So which part of your business takes up a lot of your time? Write down the process for handling that area. Refine it. Improve it. Then put it in your Systems Manual, and find someone who can learn to do it well, at the lowest possible price.

Checklists
One way to systemize is to use checklists. When you create a system, remember it by writing it down or typing it up. You could have a checklist for proofing your web site, checking your newsletter or submitting articles.

Checklists are also great for routines. You can write down what you want to do every day, every week, each month and every year for your business.

Here is an example for a coaching business. Suppose you wrote a list of what you’ll do every week…

Weekly Coaching Checklist

Billing

Write follow-up letters

Write one article

Get completely caught up on e-mails

Contact 3 former clients

Have lunch with a colleague

Do a weekly review

Make sure calls are set up for clients

Set up 5 exploratory sessions

Contact one radio station to suggest an interview

Software
A lot of software exists now to help systemize your business, from accounting to promoting your web site to working your affiliate program (automatic sales force) to compiling your e-books. For example…

Out Source…
If a part of your business is difficult for you, too time consuming or you really don’t like doing it, hire it out. Find a virtual assistant to do customer service, go through your e-mail, research, or organize your travel plans. My assistant Carmel has eased up my workload tremendously. Your accountant can handle your finances. The kid next door can stuff envelopes, or even clean your house! Now you can concentrate on your business.

Note: Of course you may not be able to afford all this at once. That’s where profit comes in. You want to generate a small profit in the business. Then use some of that to invest in a system. Then grow the profit a little more, and use some of that to invest in another system.

Where can you systemize?

Here are some examples to get you thinking…

• Taking phone calls
• Billing
• Tracking your time
• Using autoresponders for e-mail you send frequently  (I use www.totalbusinesscart.com)
• Cleaning your office/house
• Paperwork and filing
• Online tracking system for your web site
• Marketing
• Book keeping
• Product delivery
• New client or customer welcome packs
• Client Follow-up
• Get started on creating systems for your business today!

with much warmth

Neil Asher

Neil Asher – A New Way to Handle Stress

Stressed out of your mind! Neil ASher

What is Stress?

Stress may arise from suddenly discovering that the wife that you have been married to for eight years, who has been posing as a flight attendant for American Airlines, is actually a CIA undercover agent working on a drug smuggling Columbian cartel case.

It may occur when you discover that your new husband is actually a former bank robber recently released from prison. Of course these more extreme examples are less likely to occur than having more month at the end of your money; wondering if your husband or wife is having an affair and about to leave you or possibly having your car breakdown on the way to an important meeting or presentation.

Many more common events in daily life can initiate varying degrees of stress. But in any case stress ultimately boils down to imbalanced muscular or physiological reactions resulting from neuro-hormonal responses arising from imbalanced sensory perceptions, ones generally accompanied by fear and guilt.

When we unwisely exaggerate and minimize the daily pains and pleasures of life we experience hormone related anxiety, guilt-ridden stress and feel our lives are momentarily spinning out of control with chaos.

Before we look at a revolutionary new approach that dissolves the unhealthy and chaotic feelings associated with stress, let me first define fear and guilt. Fear arises when you assume that in the near or far future you are going to experience more pains than pleasures, more losses than gains or more negatives than positives.

On the other hand, guilt arises when you assume that in the near or far past you caused more pains than pleasures, more losses than gains or more negatives than positives.

Since each event in life has both positive and negative components or repercussions anytime we misperceive such an imbalance we become stressed. Stress is where we are looking at only half of an emotional equation, not the loving and ordered whole. Drawbacks and benefits, negatives and positives, pains and pleasures, losses and gains all come in pairs.

Kipling called pain and pleasure the “two imposters”. Emerson claimed that every excess had its compensatory defect and every defect its excess; every sweet had its sour and every sour its sweet. The key to solving stress is returning our sensory misperceptions back into balance.

How do you realize you are stressed? Neil asher

You know you’re stressed any moment you’re mind is not present and certain and your heart is not grateful and loving. I call presence, certainty, gratitude and love the four cardinal pillars of a stress less and masterful life. Since fear involves a future imagined state of mind-body and guilt involves a past-remembered state of mind-body, stress occurs when you’re distracted from the present, wavering with uncertainty, ungrateful and closed hearted.

When you feel stressed your muscles become tensed, particularly those of the jaw, face, arms and hands and your breathing and speech becomes erratic. The result is a disordering of your thoughts and a polarizing of your mood.

In what areas of life does stress arise? Neil asher

Stress associated with fear and guilt arises primarily within the following seven areas of life:

Spiritual Stress: The fear of loss of communication or inspiration from your soul, or God

Mental Stress: The fear of loss of intelligence, imagination or memory

Job/Work Stress: The fear of loss of success, clients or business

Financial Stress: The fear of loss of money or possessions

Family Stress: The fear of loss of loved ones neil asher

Social Stress: The fear of loss of friends, or rejection and humiliation

Physical Stress: The fear of loss of wellness, or disfiguration, or death

How many levels of stress are there? neil asher

Stress associated with fear and guilt can occur in various degrees or arise from different ratios of perceived imbalance. These degrees of stress are socially revealed through various linguistic expressions. What follows is a scale of verbal expressions associated with varying ratios of loss verse gain perceptions.

Calm – Relaxed – Breakthrough

Balanced Loss 1 : 1 Gain neil asher

you will find yourself saying “I Love to”

Loss 2 : 1 Gain

you will find yourself saying “I Choose to”

Loss 3 : 1 Gain

you will find yourself saying “I Desire to”

Loss 4 : 1 Gain

you will find yourself saying “I Want to”

Loss 5 : 1 Gain

you will find yourself saying “I Need to”

Loss 6 : 1 Gain

you will find yourself saying “I Should, Ought to or Supposed to”

Imbalanced Loss 7 : 1 Gain

you will find yourself saying “I Got to or Have to”

Frantic – Stressful – Breakdown

What is The Demartini Method (The Quantum Collapse Process) and how does it help dissolve any kind of stress?

The Demartini Method , is a breakthrough discovery and cutting edge personal transformation methodology. Developed by Dr. John F. Demartini, it results in a new and refreshing paradigm in thinking and feeling. It provides a foolproof and effective means of transforming any form of conflict or stress into grateful states of love and vitality.

It is a systematic pre-determined series of questions and actions directed toward the objective of bringing to your conscious mind the states of presence and certainty and the feelings of gratitude and love to your heart. It is an enlightening procedure, which neutralizes your emotional charges and balances your mental and physical perceptions and reactions. It is a reproducible science enabling you to discover the underlying order governing your apparent daily chaos neil asher.

Whether you are momentarily experiencing extreme or mild degrees of stress, by balancing out your mental perceptions through the use of The Demartini Method you can dissolve the underlying source of your mental chaos and resulting emotional disorder. The stress solution that once took days, weeks, months or years can now be accomplished in a matter of minutes or hours.

Stress can now be considered only a periodic adventure along a road to self-fulfillment.

Neil Asher

Neil Asher Truth-Telling (Lies and With-Holds)

Do You Tell Little White Lies - Neil Asher

“Every with-hold you have from someone, is a brick in the wall between you.”

Do you tell the truth? What percentage of the time? 100%? Or 90%? And when you do tell the truth, do you tell 100% of it? Or 90%?

“You look great”. “I don’t mind”. “Yes, sex is good”. “Everything’s fine at home”. “I’m sorry”. “I didn’t mean to”. “Something came up”.

And what about the truths we don’t say – the “with- holds”? “I’m really upset that you canceled on me”. “I don’t feel respected by you”. “I lie to you so you’ll like me”. “I’m worried if I tell you the truth you’ll be angry”. “It’s important to me that you be on time”.

You’re either telling the truth, lying, or with-holding. Even most of us with the best intentions DO NOT tell 100% of the truth, 100% of the time.

Why?
We CAN’T tell the whole truth – about what we want, how we feel, what we love, what we hate. Because we need people to like us, to love us, to accept us, to want to hang around us. “If I told Jill she needs a wash, she’d be upset, or even freak out”. “If I told Bill I’m not enjoying sex, we’d both be embarrassed, and he might leave me”. So we get to protect, hide-out, manipulate, and control.

THE IRONY
If we don’t tell the truth, people CAN’T love us! The only way we can really be loved – really be accepted, is to show who we are. To be who we are. Only THEN, once you are truly seen, is it possible for someone to accept the real you. If we instead show a “front” (“No, no – it’s OK that you’re late”), they can only like, love, accept the “front”! Then we feel more alone than ever, and maybe even resentful.

And consider this: if you don’t show who you ~really~ are, how will the beautiful souls on the planet who are looking for ~you~, find you? They’ll see your “front”, and move on!

In “The Truth About Relationships”, Greg Baer says: “Only when I tell the truth can I be clearly seen by others. Only then can I feel ~accepted~ by them and feel that they genuinely care about my happiness (Real Love). I create the opportunity to be loved when I tell the truth about myself.”

So there it is. How do we be who we really are? How do we give people the chance to see us, to accept the “real me”? Risky, but simple: Tell the Truth.

When we Tell the Truth

I recently had the opportunity to dig deep, and reveal a very uncomfortable truth. I was developing a nice friendship with a very beautiful woman, and at a certain point, had a “flash”: one reason I was drawn to beautiful women in particular, was that love/affection/acceptance from ~this~ group of human beings, felt valid and important – I let it in. However, affection from people I didn’t find physically attractive, I tended to devalue. Let’s get right down to it – “I could be using her to feel important!!???”. While I wasn’t proud of this view, and am committed to moving past it, at that moment it was part of who I am, and I risked sharing it with her.

The result? It felt incredibly freeing, creating a very safe space of honesty, and brought us even closer together.

When you’re willing to dig deep, find the truth, and risk sharing it, you:

- Create a possibility for true acceptance, and real love. – Increase your self expression, which feels great! – Get led to who you really are, and to what you really love/hate. – Grow, and find more truth, and grow, and find more truth, and grow… – Have nothing to hide – how freeing is that!? – Attract those people ready for, and looking for, you! – Lose people who drain you (i.e. upgrade!) – Give others a gift – something ~real~ – as opposed to something false. – Create a safe space for them to tell ~their~ truth!

So How Do to “Up” your Level of Truth-Telling?

Dear risk-takers: There ARE risks associate with this practice. Particularly for those of us who like to stick to the comfort zone, please note that ~anything~ can happen – both negative, and wonderfully positive – if you do the following:

a) Write down the names of three people you would like to feel closer to – e.g. spouse, boss, employee, friend, you!

b) Next to each name, write down at least one thing that’s important to you, but you would feel uncomfortable or unsafe telling them. What have you been with-holding?

c) Tell them. Setting up the space: let them know this is NOT about them. It’s not about anything they have done wrong. It’s simply about you, how you feel, what works for you, and that you want to let them know where you are. (Tip: If it’s something you don’t need them to do anything about, let them know that!)

d) Now, give them exactly the same space! The room to share their with-holds with you. Ask them: “Is there anything you would feel uncomfortable telling me?” “Have I ever disappointed you?” (What a question!). Let them know they can say anything, and you’ll simply hear it, putting all your reactions aside. (Tip: If you’re not willing to put your stuff aside, don’t do this! If you can’t control it, leave the room).

Risk a little!

Neil ASher

Fear vs Courage - Neil Asher

Something important today

One that I believe is the difference of all differences.

I intend writing at much, much greater length about this sometime, somewhere, but here it is in nutshell; the difference of all differences: fear vs. courage.

Every business, financial or personal decision made from fear turns out badly. Usually, all the unintended, unexpected, unseen evolving consequences prove far worse than the thing that was feared in the first place. (I’m not talking about healthy and essential paranoia as a strategic planning device. I’m talking about fear. )

Of course, not every decision made from courage turns out well.

Were it that simple!

But the list of decisions from courage turning out well is a world longer than the list of decisions from fear turning out well. If you like playing the odds, you think and act courageously.

A lot of little things that add up, little hinges that swing big doors, open or closed.come from fear or courage. Price, for one. Terms, another. Cutting troublesome or nominally profitable accounts, customers or clients to make room for better business or keeping them in the way. Firing. Now, discretion can be the better part of valor, particularly in terms of timing.

No team ever won the F.A cup with a punt, but you can’t win going for it being defensive throughout the entire game either. Defense is important, not just offense. But there’s almost always a turning point, a gut-check, when a courageous call is needed. So it is in the game of business. You can’t be reckless, but you can’t be timid either.

There are legendary acts of courage in celebrated success stories. Stallone’s refusal to sell the first Rocky script when he was told he couldn’t play the lead role, even though he was dead broke and in desperate need of that cheque, that worked out well for him. There are also acts of courage born out of desperation Fred Smith keeping FedEx alive at the Las Vegas craps tables leaps to mind. As JFK said, I had to be a hero, my boat sank.

Many historians speculate the entire world would be a different place if Nixon had the courage to defy everyone, burn the tapes on the White House lawn as assertion of national security, defy impeachment (as later did Clinton). The Disney business has, at several points, prospered from courage: Walts defying the amusement park industry experts, Eisner defying his own Board immediately after 9-11.

I have personally seen very successful businesses destroyed by their owners making a sequence of fear driven decisions…. I have seen none destroyed by courage.

It is at least a great question: on what core basis am I making this decision, fear or courage?

Neil Asher