Looking to Business

Sorry for my absence and Merry Christmas

Daniel M. Wood — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:34:24 +0000

The last month I haven’t posted much on LookingtoBusiness.com, I apologize for this.

The reason is that me and my wife chose to move home to Sweden from Norway. I have changed jobs and had a lot to do with the move.

Sadly this has left little time over for studying psychology or sharing what I have learned about personal development.

I will be taking a break for christmas but as the new year enters I will be back 100% working on new techniques and sharing tips on how to improve your efficiency and become more successful!

Merry Christmas!
In the mean time I just want to wish you a merry christmas and a happy new year. Make the best of it and take some time off with family and friends.

Hope to see you all soon again here on LTB after new years.

//Daniel

Get your bonus copy of my book "10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going"

Choosing Your Business Idea – Market Research and Your Business Plan

Daniel M. Wood — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 08:55:32 +0000

Almost everyone I speak to has an idea of a great business they could start.
There was a period of my life when I was being fed ideas from all around, people working in companies seeing the company missing target markets, producing the wrong products or just people with plans to create completely new products and opportunities.

I am sure that if you think about it, you could come up with at least 5 good business ideas.

The question is, which one is right?

Market Research
Before you start it is important to learn what the size of your potential market so that you know if your company can support itself in the future.

Is there an interest among your potential clientele?
Is this something they need?
Is this something they want?

If you can find a product where people answer yes to all three of these questions, you have a potentially good business, if the market is large enough.

How to do market research
Start by identifying your target market, who are you selling to?
Make a demographic picture of your customer, age, gender, geographic location, income, family situation and so on.

Then explain them in the terms of their wants and needs, why would they want your product?
Why do they need it?

Survey your guesses
Now that you know who your customers are, ask them if they would be interested in the product you are thinking of creating.

You could start by using focus groups; gathering a group of people from your target market and have them discuss the potential product, its pros, cons, why they might want it, why not, pricing and so on.

Next I suggest you create a survey as a result of your focus groups discussion to see if what the focus group discussed and felt is what the larger market thinks.
If you can try to survey at least 100 people, you can do this by asking around town, by creating an internet survey or by finding a place where these people gather like a sports organization, a book club or a business association and ask if they could survey their members for you.

Your business plan
As a result from all this market research you will know a lot about your customers wants a needs, now is time to write your business plan.

This should be both done as a financial statement showing how much you will have to initially invest, what expenses you will have over time and how much you need to sell at what price to be profitable.

It should also include a marketing plan on how you expect to sell your product, how to become profitable, what your key selling points will be, how much you plan on working, and a timeline for when different parts of your plans will be implemented.

Get started
Once you have created your business plan all you need to do is get to work.
Keep your plan close, it will need to be updated many times as your business grows and how the reality of the world proves that your initial assumptions were incorrect.

The fact that you have a plan though will give you something to update, something to work from and a frame of reference when you evaluate new opportunities and ideas.

If you want to learn more about how to make your goals reality, join our email newsletter “Your Path to Your Dreams” and you will receive tips and advice, and even a free copy of our e-book “How to make Selling Easy” and “The Beginners Guide to Success”.

Get your bonus copy of my book "10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going"

Being an Entrepreneur

Daniel M. Wood — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 16:53:03 +0000

Most of my readers are entrepreneurs at heart. You want to do be, be more, create and do the things you see other people wrong, right.

You want to create something you can call your own, that you can stand behind and which you can control.

Starting your own company is a great option.

Starting as a project on the side
Many make the mistake of rushing in to a new project all guns blazing, just to learn that their ideas and skills weren’t really good enough.

I am more of the careful type, I like to test the project small scale before I go in 100%.

When I started my first company I kept my day job and worked on my new project evenings.
This worked well since I could get a lot of work done, I had a stable income so I didn’t have to stress about making the company profitable from the get go, since most companies don’t show a profit the first 12 months it was enormous relief of pressure.

Having the guts to go all in, even if you don’t in time
The mistake I made with my first project was that I didn’t have the guts to invest myself in it.
I knew that I needed help in many areas, but instead of hiring or investing, I tried to figure it out myself.

This is what killed my first company, the product was poor and it took too long a time to get it to the market, before I was able to launch there were multiple competitors already out there with much better products.

Having a clear goal and plenty of support
When you start your project you work double, both on your day job and on your side project, it is important to have the support of your family since it will take its toll.

Before you start it is therefore important that you have a clear goal of what you want.
What is it you are after? How will your life look when you succeed? What will your business look like? And so on.

Knowing this before hand will help you family see why it is a good idea for you to start your side project. Because if they only see it as you working more and spending less time with them, why would they want you to do it?
They love you and want to be with you, show them how in the long run this project will give them that.

The amazing feeling when you can quit your day job
The day you quit your day job and move over to your business full time is incredible, you feel as though you have succeeded!

This is the first step into becoming a true entrepreneur. Once you are working on your project full time you can dial up your efforts, expand and quickly start achieving your goals.

Get your bonus copy of my book "10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going"

Stress Management Training; How to Coach Yourself to Handle Stress

Daniel M. Wood — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 10:30:45 +0000

Stress management exists in many forms; in the last article we discussed several mindsets and techniques to help you be better at handling stressful situations.

Today I want to discuss your self-talk when handling stress. What you tell yourself helps handling the emotional stress of the situation and lets you use the problem focused techniques we discussed last time.

1. Preparing for the stressor (The stressful situation)

Self Statements:
- What do I need to do?
- I can work out a plan and deal with it.
- Remember, stick to the issues and don’t take it personally.
- Stop worrying. Worrying won’t help anything.

2. Confronting and handling the stressor (situation)

Self Statements:
- As long as I keep my cool, I am in control of the situation.
- I can meet this challenge. This tension is just a cue to use my stress management techniques.
- Don’t think about stress, just about what I have to do.
- Take a deep breath and relax. Ah, good.

3. Coping with the feeling of being overwhelmed.

Self Statements:
- Keep my focus on the present. What is it I have to do?
- Relax and slow things down.
- Don’t try and eliminate stress totally; Just keep it manageable.
- Let’s take the issue point by point.

4. Evaluation and Self-Reinforcement.

Self Statements:
- OK, what worked and what can I do better next time?
- I handled it pretty well.
- It didn’t work, but that is OK. I’ll do better next time.
- Way to go! You did it!

Whenever you are in a stressful situation, repeat these statements to yourself, they will help you gain control and put you in a mindset to handle the situation.
By controlling your mind you control your emotions and your actions, you put yourself back in the driver’s seat, which in itself reduces stress greatly.

In the Time Management Expert Course we teach techniques to help reduce stress and a system to make you more efficient which in turn gives you a better starting point to handling new stressful situations.

If you want to learn more, check out the Time Management Expert Course home page.

Get your bonus copy of my book "10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going"

How to Cope With Stress

Daniel M. Wood — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 17:48:33 +0000

My last couple article have been about the problems of stress and what causes it.
Now that we are all sufficiently afraid of the effects of stress – Obesity, Heart Disease, Cancer, Depression, Anxiety and Unhappiness to mention just a few – We will discuss how to handle stress.

Two main ways of Coping with Stress

1. Problem-Focused Coping
As the name suggests problem focused coping is about directly facing the cause of our stress and trying to resolve the situation.

2. Emotional-Focused Coping
Emotional focused coping try to manage the emotions coming as a result of the stressful situation and learning to handle and minimizing the emotional impact.

Your initial thought might be that problem-focused coping is always best, but that doesn’t need to be the case, you need to be able to handle the emotions coming from the situation before you can start doing something about it.
There are also situations which you have no control over that are stressful; here emotional coping strategies are the only ones you have at your disposal, which is why they are important to learn.

4 ways to solve the problem
If you decide to use problem focused coping techniques for solving a stressful situation there are some things you can do.

1. Planning
I like to make a list of everything stressful and try to come up with solutions to each problem.

2. Active Coping and Problem Solving
This is where you directly go and solve the problem, best used together with the planning techniques.

3. Exercising Restraint
Simply, you take control over yourself, focus your thoughts and get to work.

4. Assertive Confrontation
If your situation is with another person talking directly to them to solve the situation might be frightening but is often the best way to resolve a situation.

As you can see all 4 techniques are about directly facing and handling the problems that are making you stressed.
This way you get them off your back, into the open and hopefully dealt with so that you can let go of the stress.

How to handle your emotions
There are many ways to use emotional coping techniques, but I want to share some here:

1. Positive Reinterpretation
This is one of my favorite techniques, especially when I have a setback or a situation with a person. I try to see the situation in another light, what good could come of it? Why did the person act as they did? What is their view of the situation?

When you do this you refocus your thinking and quickly decrease the stress.

2. Acceptance
Some situations are out of your control, you have no control over what will happen, this can be very stressful.
Accepting the situation often makes it feel as though a load is lifted from your shoulders, try it!

3. Denial
The opposite of acceptance, sometimes it feels as though you have no control but when you refuse to accept it you can turn it around.

4. Controlling Feelings
When something gets difficult our mind starts to race and all kinds of thoughts pop up in our mind, controlling these thoughts and our emotions, breathing deeply, helps you get back the control.

As you can see all these techniques work in different situations and you might need to use multiple to overcome a stressful situation.
But using these as a basis you will be prepared to handle anything.

Emotional Support
Another method that will help is emotional support and I want to mention it because in many ways it is the most effective. As a species we are a social being.
Asking for help is therefore hardwired into our minds.

1. Getting help and guidance from someone who has been in a similar situation calms you down and gives you a roadmap of what you can do to solve the situation.

2. Just having someone listen to you really helps and lets you get things off your chest, it lets you work through the situation and be able to handle it, just having an understanding ear and shoulder to cry on works wonders.

3. When someone also affirms our value we grow stronger and our confidence rises again, that is another reason why emotional support is so important and helpful.

4. In some situations it is impossible for us to handle it alone, getting help in forms of money, coaching or connections might be needed.

You are now prepared to handle almost any situation.
I hope this list helps you and makes it easier for you to cope with stress.

Get your bonus copy of my book "10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going"

What is the Cause of Stress?

Daniel M. Wood — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:42:57 +0000

If we are to avoid all the problems stress causes as we discussed last time we need to first understand what causes stress and how to avoid it or at least decrease its hold over us.

Stress is a complicated issue but I am going to try and shed some light on the causes and on how we can counteract stress.

Stress is in itself an internal process; it is not happening “out there” it is a psychological response in you. But it is often caused by outside factors; these factors are called stressors and can be anything that is stressful, like having too much to do, having monetary problems or experiencing a catastrophy.

A stressor can be characterized by the following characteristics:

1. Intensity/severity
How powerful is the stressor, is it something that can really distress you or is it more like a little thorn in your side.

2. Duration
Is it a short term event or is it something that can be stressful over a longer time period.

3. Predictability
Is it something you can anticipate or does it come right out of the blue.

4. Controllabity
The amount of control you feel you have over the situation is one of the most important parts of a stressor, when we feel powerless the feeling of stress becomes a lot worse.

5. Chronicity
Is this something you will always have to live with ex. backpain or something that will go away ex. A financial setback.

Through these 5 factors we can determine the power of the stressor and determines what demands and resources the situation requires of you.

Your mind than makes an appraisal of the situation:

1. What are the demands required of me?

2. Do I have the resources to solve the situation?

3. What are the potential consequences?

4. What meaning do these potential consequences have to me?

This leads both to physiological responses and psychological affects.
You body becomes aroused and starts secreting stress hormones.
You begin to feel worried, your thoughts start to race, your confidence decreases, you start expecting the worst and you might start feeling hopeless.

The bodies’ arousal makes your body react by muscles tensing, your heart rate increasing, shortness of breath and you have an increased susceptibility to illness.

The reactions become more powerful if the answer to the second question is negative: “Do you have the resources to solve the situation?”, this is closely tied to your control over the situation.

If you do not feel as though you can solve the situation or that you are in control, the psychological reactions will be a lot more powerful which in turn will cause the physiological responses to become even stronger.

Luckily though there are a lot of ways to handle stress, a lot of research has been done in this area and we will be discussing these in the next chapter of this series.

If you want to learn more, check out the Time Management Expert Course home page.

Get your bonus copy of my book "10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going"

What Happens When You Get Stressed

Daniel M. Wood — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 09:32:05 +0000

The general reaction to a stressful situation, for example getting attacked is; Alarm, Resistance followed by exhaustion.

When you get stressed your body immediately prepares itself;
Your heart rate increases, blood pressure rises and stress hormones are released.
The alarm phase cannot last for long though and soon you move over to the resistance faze.

During the resistance phase your body releases stress hormones, this faze can last for a long time, but slowly the bodies resources run out and we move on to the exhaustion faze.
The stress hormones released into your body have the side effect that they weaken the bodies immune system, which is why when you are stressed over a long time you are more prone to become ill.
The stress hormones affect the activity of the heart; long term stress can cause severe damage to the linings of the arteries and because of your reduced metabolism, a side-effect of the stress hormones, it can contribute the fatty blockages in the arteries that cause heart attacks and strokes.

When in the exhaustion phase your body’s resources are depleted and need to restore. Your body is at its weakest and your heart, metabolism and your lungs are negatively affected.

As you can see the bodies stress response isn’t made for long term stress, rather it is a reaction to a fight or flight situation. When you are stressed for a longer period of time it is like being prepared for an attack for months, this is why the bodies natural stress defense can hurt you in such terminal ways.

Because of your weakened immune system you are more likely to get colds, other infections and diseases such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and even sudden death.

Stress causes you to age faster
Aging has been found to be linked to our chromosomes. In our chromosomes there is something called a telomere, every time the chromosome divides (e.g. creates a new cell) the telomere grows shorter. When the telomere becomes too short the cell cannot divide any longer and the cell dies. Cell death is what produces weakening in the muscles and skin, which causes us to age.

Fortunately the body has an enzyme we call telomerase that helps counter telomere shortening, this enzyme can in affect slow the aging process.
When we are stressed though our levels of telomerase go down, this causes us to age faster.

Mental Dangers of Stress
Stress can have severe psychological effects such as depression, anxiety and unhappiness.
People who have lived through highly stressful events, such as the loss of a family member are at high risk to develop the above mentioned diseases as are those who have lived with stress for a long period of time.

You have probably been depressed or anxious many times in your life, which is okay. The problem is that long term stress can make these feelings chronic.

Stress is dangerous
As you can see, stress has many dangerous affects, both mental (depression, anxiety, unhappiness) and physical (higher risk of sickness such as Cancer, heart attacks, strokes, it causes obesity and to age faster).

It is obvious that reducing stress is important, but the question is how.
In the next part of this series we will be discussing the causes of stress and later how to counter act stress.

Get your bonus copy of my book "10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going"

The 6 Steps of Change

Daniel M. Wood — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 09:18:47 +0000

Change is difficult. Taking action and making your new habit stick is a long process and takes determination, will and courage.
Psychologists have identified 6 steps of change that everyone goes through when making a change.
It isn’t a straight line though; people will go up and down through the steps as they try and change.

Often it takes 5-6 attempts to make change stick.

Smoking is an easy example so I will be using it to illustrate the steps.

1. Pre contemplation
At this point the person doesn’t see the problem with smoking, they aren’t aware of the consequences of their actions and/or don’t think them bad enough to care.

Typically people will think about how others have lived long while smoking and cancer as a result to smoking isn’t shown very much on the news so they don’t see much of the consequences.

2. Contemplation
During the contemplation period people have realized that they maybe should make a change and are considering it. They know smoking has negative effects but they still feel that the perceived benefits of change are smaller than the effort it will require to change.

Today not many people are in the pre-contemplation stage when it comes to smoking, because of all the information about smoking most people are in the contemplation stage. They know it is a problem, but not one large enough to care about.

If you want to get someone to stop smoking you need to show them how much the benefits will out way the effort.

3. Preparation
The person has decided to make a change, they often start making preliminary plans and might even be taking preliminary steps towards change.

They might start cutting down on their smoking trying and use less and less cigarettes each day. When people are in this stage they are basically evaluating their options and deciding how they are going to change.

4. Action
The first attempt at change often fails and people fall back into the contemplation or preparation stage, but during the action stage they are trying. They have quit smoking and moved into the maintenance stage.

5. Maintenance
When the person is trying to quit, they don’t smoke anymore and if they can hold out for 3-6 months the change will most likely be permanent.
Usually it takes about 5-6 attempts before it sticks but not always, some people make change happen the very first time through.

What you want to do is stay away from situations in which the bad habit e.g. smoking is promoted. Like visiting the smoking corner at work or going on social events where a lot of people smoke and instead trying to choose situations where people don’t smoke to spend time with them.

6. Change
After completing 6 months of maintenance most of the cravings have gone away, you will now be able to say no if someone asks you to smoke with them, change has happened and you are now a strong person without the need to smoke.

Conclusion
Change can be very difficult but now that you know of the 6 steps you will be able to use them to your benefit. You know what is happening in your mind while you change and you will be able to force change on yourself.

It can be used to start exercising, to stop smoking, drinking, using drugs or to develop other habits.
Whenever you are thinking about making a change, know that you are in one of the steps above and take the appropriate actions to make it easier for you to change and sustain the change.

Get your bonus copy of my book "10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going"

Free Give-Away to RSS Followers!

Daniel M. Wood — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 16:03:08 +0000

To all those who follow this blog by RSS we will be giving away an ebook called “10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going”.

I want to thank all those who have been following my blog and therefore in whatever way you follow us you now receive a free ebook.

By E-mail you get “Double Your Income”
By RSS you get “10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going”
and to the members of “Your Path to Your Dreams” we give away “How to Make Selling Easy” and “The Beginners Guide to Success”.

I hope you will like the 10 tips, I have found them very useful in my life and I am sure that they will help you.

Thank you for being here!

Get your bonus copy of my book "10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going"

How to Condition Yourself for Success

Daniel M. Wood — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 11:34:14 +0000

Rewards are a powerful way to help yourself become more successful.
When you give yourself a reward you condition yourself to succeed.

Conditioning
Since we are after the simple goal of relating success and a job well done with happiness and peace, classical conditioning as invented by Ivan Pavlov is a great method to program yourself to success.

Ivan Pavlov showed that stimuli that previously didn’t evoke a response (for example seeing a light on a monitor beep) can be conditioned to invoke very powerful responses (like those of a soldier looking at the radar screen during war times).

This can be used very effectively for success, you can teach yourself to identify completing an item on your list with the happiness by rewarding yourself with a piece of chocolate for every completed task.

How to condition yourself:
1. Chose the habit you want to condition a positive response to.
Make sure to specify what action it is you wish to reward so that you promote that action.

2. Chose a reward for completing the habit
It is important that the reward elicits an adequate response, it has to be motivating, but of course not so large that you go broke because of this exercise.

3. Every time you complete the habit – reward yourself.

4. Once you feel the habit is conditioned – that you feel pleasure just by completing the task, not necessarily because of the reward, start rewarding yourself a little more seldom, once every other time or every third and so on.

Once done being efficient – will make you happy!

Get your bonus copy of my book "10 Motivational Tips to Keep You Going"