Start The Year Right: Holi-moments vs. Holidays
January 2, 2011 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
With only a hanful of holidays a year, many who work in W-2 land only get a handful of days to recharge and spend quality time with whomever they please. Those of us in entrepreneur land get to choose whichever day we darn well please to spend quality time to do whatever we want. I like to create holi-moments on a daily or weekly basis. Some of the moments are fleeting like watching the sunset or breathing in the crisp air after it’s just snowed in the mountains on my morning jaunt or meeting with the pups along my route for a quick scritch and tail wag. Some holi-moments take more time such as a spa day, a pedicure or a great meal and live entertainment.
In order to become and remain energized and live a vital life, we need to pay attention to our moments and not just our holidays to lift our spirits and create joy in our lives. I vowed decades ago to not participate in the usually seasonal holiday mall madness, the stressful dashing about, the traffic around shopping areas and the obligations if it wasn’t enjoyable to me, which it isn’t. My declaration is to stay away from the mania in order to keep my sanity and polite, positive disposition. If it feels like an obligation and isn’t enjoyable or genuine from the heart with a sincere desire, then don’t do it.
Don’t fall prey to unfettered consumerism or the unjoyful acts of the season if it’s not energizing to you. I’ve streamlined holiday decorating to take 30 minutes and thoroughly enjoy it and the after effect. I don’t feel any stress whatsoever during this time of year and I’ve got a great system to sending out holiday cards and gifts from my home office while the fireplace crackles and holiday music plays on my stereo. I get to enjoy the good things and dispose of all the negative side effects by ascertaining what stresses me and make plans to avoid that list.
So whats on your list of stressors? What feels like an obligation to you? What can you cross off your holiday list of things to not do next year? How will you create holi-moments in your daily or weekly life so you don’t have to wait until the holidays to take time to revitalize your life and your work? When we’re personally revitalized, our work is revitalized. Everybody who comes into our life also feels the benefits of an un-stressed you. Make time for holi-moments and make a stand for making time for yourself and making your own rules on how to handle holidays and every day with grace and joy. And if you want my top secret technique for card sending and gift giving, send me an email and I’ll reveal my trade secret: Gail@GailHahn.com or visit BizBuilderCards.com.
Mentors, Tormentors, Self Promotion & Your Purposeful Work
October 11, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
I just returned from the SendOutCards convention and I’m fired up. I was inspired to share some of my insights into revitalizing your promotions, your people and your workplace. Here’s another round of articles to energize and inspire leaders and entrepreneurs. The following articles cover leadership and team motivation for Generation X and Y team members, how to be a shameless self promoter for your own business and how your purpose is a critical piece of your promotions.
Other articles cover the key component of mixing fun and effectiveness at work. We know that work made fun gets done and good times lead to good business. Creating a quality workplace not only boost performance, but it boosts purposeful work ethics and quality of life at work.
And then there’s the accountability thing. Having a mastermind group, a success team, a personal board of directors helps keep you on track and on purpose. Create your own circle of success and support to help leap-frog your business beyond what you could do on your own. Enjoy the articles and if you want to listen to them, check out my radio show on http://thewinonline.com/node/5978. One show per week is posted on the site. I’ve just recorded 19 shows, so your favorite article/show may not be aired for several weeks. All shows are archived, so they will be there when you’re ready. Enjoy!
Mentors vs. Tormentors: 50 Ways to Ditch Your X (and Y) Employees
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/5767834/mentors_vs_tormentors_50_ways_to_ditch.html?cat=55
Success Circles Teeming with Synergy
www.associatedcontent.com/article/5766870/sucess_circles_teeming_with_synergy.html
Fun*cilitation: Facilitating Fun and Effectiveness in the Workplace
www.associatedcontent.com/article/5766964/funcilitation_facilitating_fun_and.html
Put Energy into Your Efforts
www.associatedcontent.com/article/5766936/put_energy_into_your_efforts.html
Secrets to Self Promotions & Your Purpose
www.associatedcontent.com/article/5766974/insider_secrets_to_self_promotions.html
Do You Inspire Your Clients – Are You an Inspired Entrepreneur or Exec?
July 9, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Are you inspired by your work? Are you inspired by how you serve your clients? If not, why not? Inspiration is different than motivation. Both come from within with the energy and feeling of spirit inside. Inspiration spreads outward, so if your work isn’t inspiring to you, there’s no way others would pay to work with you or want to be around you. If you don’t give a hoot, then neither do your clients or colleagues. You’re just marking time and time is our life energy. So you’re just wasting your life if you’re not doing something that inspires you towards a greater good.
I hear from so many clients that they’re not liking their work, but don’t know what’s wrong. I would ask that you compartmentalize your work into segments dealing with who you’re serving, how you’re serving them, who you may be working for (your boss, organization, yourself), what you’re serving, what the big picture and outcome is of your product or service.
Sometimes pinpointing that you love your mission, but don’t like the distribution channel, or you love the actual work, but not the person you’re working for or the location, or the population you’re serving. If you can figure out how to take the good parts of what you do, the inspirational parts and separate them out from what is not inspiring; you’re on the right track.
When you’re feeling inspired, it will resonate with others. Those feelings set off vibrations in others that compel them to work with you or repel them from being around you. They may not know it, but it’s just an uneasy feeling.
Your clients feel inspired by you when you help them feel successful and fabulous about themselves, their work or their organization. You light them up. When they feel inspired, it activates possibilities and transformation in their lives. If they feel uninspired, they do nothing to uplevel their business or their lives.
Create your work to first inspire you, then it will inspire others. Power and passion resonate from inspirational people. Mediocrity and busy work resonate from uninspired workers. What are you doing to inspire yourself, inspire your team, inspire your clients?
Living the Work You Love
May 20, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Just finished a radio show with the amazing Margaret Salmond, owner of Bay Area VA, a Virtual Assistant firm located in the Oakland/San Francisco Bay area. Her show is Bay Area VA Chat: www.blogtalkradio.com/bayareava where she interviews guest experts on their business, their lives and how they find success in both. Check out our interview about Living the Work You Love and Why I Love My Work.
Thrilled to have the opportunity to share insights with Margaret’s listeners and you on living the work you love. In our 20-minute interview, we answered the questions of:
- How do you know you are in the right line of work?
- What is the tingle test?
- How do you incorporate fun and passion into your work and why is it important?
- How can you find work that you love and live it daily?
- How does it feel to live the work you love?
- How a life changing event, contract ending, boss from hell can really be a blessing in disguise – a tap on the shoulder from the Universe to nudge you into your own power
- How does listening to your heart lead you to work you love?
- Why DECIDING is a huge factor in creating work and a life you love.
- Why a values match with your organization or your boss is so important.
- One key step in jumping the corporate ship and breaking free of your golden handcuffs.
Call 866.Fun.at.Work or email me at Gail@GailHahn.com for more details on how to get expert guidance on finding the work you love, merging your life, your heart’s desire and your passions and turning them into profits by creating your right livlihood. Get mentored on how to be an Energized Entrepreneur and live the work you love.
We packed a ton of tips into 20 minutes! Cheers to Margaret for breaking out of the contractual, corporate world to start doing the work she loves and bringing it to us. I’m delighted to be a small part of it, at least for 20 minutes this morning!
What are you doing to break out of your golden handcuffs and live the work you love? Your life and your freedom to live and to earn what you’re worth is worth more than a dental plan or holiday pay.
Delays, Detours & Re-routings: Go with the Flow
April 24, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
In light of the recent Icelandic ash incident and all the news about stranded travelers; it reminds me that we have little control over what happens to us. It’s what we do about what happens to us that really makes the difference. The news was filled with irate travelers who were ‘stuck’ in Vegas for a few extra days. Hmmmm, millions dream of being here, yet some were outraged they had to spend some extra time here. Maybe they were out of money. It’s all about managing your expectations.
Being a seasoned traveler as a Professional Speaker and former Outdoor Adventure Director in Europe, I was on the road or in the air 3-8 times per month every single month for over 20 years. I’ve had my share of delays and detours. As an experienced entrepreneur for about 14 years, I’ve had my share of re-routings in that arena as well.
The best advice I can give comes from a couple friends. One said to me, if I was planning on traveling to Rome, had my heart set on it, packed for it, learned some Italian phrases and bought the guidebooks. And my flight was re-routed to Paris and I ended up spending the trip in France instead, what would I do.
Would I spend the entire time in Paris lamenting that I wasn’t in Rome, or would I re-group, assess the situation and remind myself I’m in a wonderful place on a wonderful adventure and then start enjoying Paris on the fly and be more spontaneous and figure it out as I went, asking for help, directions and recommendations as I went along.
It’s the same way with being an entrepreneur, we can’t have every single flight path planned out before we even start. We need to loosen our grip, go with the flow, enjoy Paris if that’s where our path leads us, even though we may have had our sites set on Rome. Enjoy the journey, make course corrections when we can, have a plan, but scrap it if it isn’t working. Delays and detours are bound to happen, we need to just be fluid to them and keep moving forward.
Another friend once said she saddles the horse in the direction it’s going. It’s much easier to work with what is moving in that direction, preferably forward. As a former horse owner, I also know it’s much easier to put the saddle on correctly and sit facing forward – the views are much better.
So the next time your path takes you off course, ask for directions, be spontaneous enough to figure it out and enjoy the views while you’re there. You just may discover something new and exciting that you were supposed to learn.
Beating the Tax System by Being Your Own Boss: Savvy Business Owner’s Secrets to Keep More of What You Make: 30 Tips in 33 Minutes
April 2, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
30 Tax Tips in 33 Minutes – you can’t beat that.
Looking for a better way to hold on to more of your money at tax time? If you’ve ever wondered how you can keep more of what you make or had to pay Uncle Sam at tax time, then this teleclass is for you. If you’re an experienced or emerging entrepreneur, or just pondering the jump into starting your own business, then this session is for you. If you’re not sure why you would take on having your own business, or how it would help you at tax time, this course is for you.
Frank Winn and Gail Hahn are both successful, savvy business owners for many, many years and have learned from some of the best tax professionals on how to keep more money in their pockets at tax time by knowing the rules and using them to their advantage. Nope, they’re not tax professionals themselves, just experiences entrepreneurs who have hired the experts and have learned the ropes over the years.
They will reveal 30 tax tips in 33 minutes so you can reap the benefits of knowing some of the ways you can take legal deductions for your legitimate business expenses. We don’t cross the line; we just snuggle up to it. Loopholes were made to jump through and we will reveal to you 30 strategies you can save more on your tax bill. Of course there are about 60,000 pages of tax code – we’re just divulging some of the biggies where you can benefit if you have a business of your own. We’re in it to win it with our own business and we want you to join the entrepreneurial revolution and beat the tax system.
So if you’re just thinking about starting your own business or have one and want to turbo-charge your tax savings, join us for this fast-paced teleclass on Thursday, 8 April at the numbers and times listed below. The call will be 33 minutes of tax tips and if you want to stay with us for another 10 minutes, we will share an easy way to start your own business and claim your piece of the pie as a business owner. Simple, safe, no worries, no pressure – just letting you know we’ve found what CNBC and the E! TV networks have called America’s Best Product. Come see what it’s all about and learn a little something to make your life better too.
The number for this call is 218-339-7777, pin 7668800. Please dial in a few minutes early so we can start on time. The call starts promptly at 6pm Pacific/7pm Mountain/8pm Central and 9pm Eastern on Thursday evening 8 April 2010 in the comfort of your own space.
This call will be recorded. The recording number to access the call after it is completed on 8 April is: 218-339-2487, pin 7668800#, they will ask for the recording number: 0408#
If you want to save 10% on more Tax Reduction Secrets and How to Save Money on Taxes Big Time resources, books, tapes and programs by a former IRS Trainer, CPA and Attorney, use the coupon code: gailhahn when you purchase something from The Tax Reduction Institute. Their products make your life less taxing.
Service & Self Care First, Clients Second
March 23, 2010 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully | By Gaia Hart
Comments Off on Service & Self Care First, Clients Second
I know the saying is usually the customer comes first. But I have to take issue with that. Just like the oxygen masks from the ceiling, put your mask on first before you can help others.
If we serve and take care of ourselves first, taking care of our health, wealth and vitality, then it will resonate with others who are feeling the same way. If we are feeling burned out, rusted out and about to give out; what kind of clients do you think will resonate with that? If we are starving and struggling, how can we be feeding and leading? We must serve ourselves first in order to be strong, healthy and vital before we can show others the way.
Do we want to attract the low vibrational folk? Maybe we do, if our service is to help them raise their vibration. But the deal is, it’s not just clients you attract when you’re at a certain vibration, it’s everybody and everything.
We may have learned early on that taking care of ourselves first is selfish. I shout from the rooftops that we need to take care of ourselves and guard our energy fiercely, or else we won’t have any to give away. You can’t give what you don’t have. So we must have our vitality and energy first, then give it away to others and help them find their own.
For instance, creating is like breathing for me – it’s so reflexive. If I can’t be creating something, anything (articles, sewing, cooking, decorating, art, programs), I get antsy. That is why it’s critical for me to guard my morning time as fiercely as I guard a meeting with a VIP, by the way, that’s ANYBODY.
I know if I don’t get ‘me time’ to create, I’m cranky and I can’t rebuild my energy stores. I know my body rhythms and I’m the most creative in the morning and brain dead
Becoming an Energized Entrepreneur/Executive
November 18, 2009 | Posted in Leading Hartfully, Living Hartfully, Wealthy Woman | By Gaia Hart
It’s time for some new mojo for 2010. I took a self-battical in the fall to re-energize and revitalize how I wanted to inspire, educate and encourage others to enable their dreams and potential. As a Certified Speaking Professional and Author, it’s easy for me to take the stage or take to the keyboards. Speaking to Fortune 500 Corporations, Associations, Private and Public Organizations for over 13 years with Fun*cilitators has given me many insights into the energy of an organization.
Organizations are made up of people and the organization cannot be revitalized if the people are not energized – from the executives to the employees. Entrepeneurs are the same. For many entrepreneurs, they ARE their business – they are the product or service, so how can any of us serve others if we don’t have it to give out.
If we don’t take care of ourselves and recharge our energy stores, then we can’t give what we don’t have. My years of coaching entrepreneurs in the network marketing industry has taught me over and over again that not only can we not motivate others, we cannot give them energy – both are inside jobs. But we can offer ways to create an energized and motivating environment. We can tap into their WHY, their style, their nature and how they naturally show up for life and then offer systems, tips, tactics, strategies and ways of being that will work with each individual’s preferences. Be it organizational, image, space, right/left brain integration, bio-rhythms and type of work, outcome and lifestyle they desire.
I’ve been creating a series of tele-classes to pin-point the different areas we can energize in our lives so we can revitalize our whole lives by finding the drains, plugging them and then plugging into something greater to lead us to our most fully expressed and energized selves. Energized entrepreneurs and executives effuse energy into their work and their organizations and that is precisely what this economy needs is creative leaders, movers, shakers and thought leaders who have the energy to take others with them. It’s all an upward spiral breeding success.
Announcing the Energized Entrepreneur/Energized Exec tele-class series. I am offering a series of tele-classes throughout the year on topics to energize your work, wealth and well-being. Some classes will be hosted by moi and others will have guest experts from different areas so all aspects of your life from your space, stuff, time, goals, wealth, relationships, health, image, shadow self, marketing,business, and organizational preferences.
Each series is 6 tele-classes over 3 weeks. Each series will cover a variety of the areas mentioned above depending on the guest speakers. Starting dates are in February, details to follow. I will be setting up an Energized Entrepreneur/Exec Facebook group as well.
I will be hosting Energy Escapes – small group revitalization retreats for 2.5 days at a resort in Vegas for a select group of women entrepreneurs and executives to take their lives to the next level and discovering and uncovering your true Energy Identity and how to move through the world with your Energy Elements to be successful and energized in all areas of your life. Limited to 12 members. Specific dates to follow.
I’m offering personal VIP programs (exclusive 2-day personal coaching at a resort in Vegas) for just you or you and a few friends who are serious about getting a total Energy Makeover to improve your work, wealth and well-being. All VIP programs are customized to your needs within the framework of the Energy Identity Program. VIP programs are for individuals or up to 3 of their friends to ensure the most customized attention.
Energized Entrepreneur/Exec Coaching Circle is a 90-day coaching program that includes the tele-class series as well as a monthly group coaching call plus a bonus call for group members. This coaching circle is limited to 8 members.
Call me at 866.Fun.at.Work or email me at Gail@GailHahn.com for more details on these new programs to revitalize lives. I am offering limited-time introductory rates and pay plans on all inaugural programs.
Looking forward to helping your make 2010 a 10!