Strength and Weaknesses Checklist

You know if you’re like me you probably got a very, very piece of advice when you were a child. You probably got this advice from a parent, or a teacher or you got it from somewhere and what that piece of advice was is the secret to success in life is to work on your weakness.

I’ll tell you something if you spend your entire life working on your weakness by the end of your life what you’re going to have is a really, really strong weakness. This is not the key to life… this is the key to frustration. This is the key to unhappiness, this the key to personal perpetual failure is working on your weakness.

Focusing on your strengths allow you to
continually improve your capabilities,
leading to ever-increasing opportunities — and success.

Keep in mind some weaknesses are worth improving… you make the decision… should you invest time improving or learning a skill or delegate to somebody else?

Strength and weakness analysis below is an exercise to help you gauge your ability to compete effectively. It’s your unique collection of superior skills that give you energy and great results.

Rating a Skills area. Examine the skill list below and rate your overall skill level for each of the 8 areas. Circle the appropriate number using a scale of 1-5… 1 as low, 2 as medium low, 3 as medium, 4 as medium high, 5 as high…. Highest possible score is 40.

Skills Ratings

1. Sales Pricing Buying Sales planning Negotiating Direct selling to buyers Customer service follow-up Managing other sales reps Tracking competitors	1	2	3	4	5
2. Marketing Advertising/promotion/public relations Annual marketing plans Media planning and buying Advertising copy writing Marketing strategies Distribution Pricing Packaging	1	2	3	4	5
3. Financial planning Cash flow planning Monthly financial Bank relationships Management of credit lines	1	2	3	4	5
4. Accounting Bookkeeping Billing, payables, receivables Monthly profit and loss statements/balance sheets Quarterly/annual tax preparation	1	2	3	4	5
5. Administrative Scheduling Payroll Benefits administration	1	2	3	4	5
6. Personnel management Hiring employees Firing employees Motivating employees General management skills	1	2	3	4	5
7. Personal business skills Oral presentation skills Written communication skills Computer skills Word processing skills Fax, e-mail, experience Organizational skills	1	2	3	4	5
8. Intangibles Ability to work many hours Ability to manage risk and stress Family support Ability to deal with failure Ability to work alone Ability to work with and manage others	1	2	3	4	5
Total

Focus on Strengths and Delegate Weakness

So here’s the key, if you can just focus in on your strengths, and then surround yourself with a team of people who are just focusing on their strengths, it produces and incredible organization… very powerful organization. Where people don’t need motivation, they don’t to be managed, they don’t monitoring. And that produces enormous results over a long period of time.

This week on twitter @QueenofSpain and @DaveTaylor started a lively conversation about where are the women speakers at conferences. Last year at Blog World all the keynote speakers were men.

Over the past few years, I hear more and more women complaining about the same thing.

I like to make a few disclaimers before going any further….

1. Nothing against guys. I’m married to one for almost 24 years. He is totally awesome.

2. Some of my best mentors are guys and I’m eternally grateful to them. I wouldn’t be where I am today if they didn’t take me under their wing and shared their knowledge.

3. My top clients are guys and I wouldn’t be in business without them.

With that said I too have become frustrated with the "good ole boy network" that appears to dominate the internet.

According to eMarketer women now outnumber men using the internet and The US Census bureau posted these figures on women business owners:

6.5 million -The number of women-owned businesses in 2002, up 20 percent from 1997. (The increase among all businesses was 10 percent.) An estimated 916,768 such firms had paid employees, with receipts of $804 billion.
$940.8 billion - Receipts for women-owned businesses in 2002, up 15 percent from 1997.

Those are some pretty impressive figures. So I decided to quit spending money on "good ole boy network" products and services a couple of years ago when I encouter the following:.

When I visit a web page and see nothing but guy testimonials or guy speakers, it says two things to me

1. Your product doesn’t work for women or your service isn’t for women.

2. You don’t need my money.

The earlier days of the internet didn’t give you much of choice. Let’s face it, guys were the earlier adopters. They were the one with the information. I learned a lot from them. But the demographics of the internet is changing.

Today there is no excuse. There are some very powerful and knowledgeable women on the internet including:

Deb Micek
Mari Smith
Denise Michaels
Alexandria Brown
Lori Morgan-Ferrero
Terri Levine
Melanie Benson-Strick
Anita Campbell
Penny Haynes
Donna Fox
Loral Langemeier
Stephanie Frank
And there are many more…

So why are women still being ignored?.

Here is my opinion and feel free to share yours

1. Habit.

Guys are just in the habit of looking within their circle of buddies for speakers, testimonial etc. I don’t think guys realize the subliminal message they are sending to women. At one of our Toastmaster meetings, a guy gave a speech on exception people. All people in his speech were men.

When it came time for his critique every women notice the male dominance of his speech. He lost 50% of his audience. His response… he wasn’t even aware of the message he was sending. He was also very grateful for the insight.

2. Bottom Line

If you promote an event virtual or real world with more women speakers, will people pay to participate?

Can women draw in the money or is it just perception that only men can draw in the big bucks?

Are women showing their support by spending their money for women dominated events?

Next week Adam Urbanski, of www.themarketingmentors.com/, put together a series of teleseminars featuring the top Social Networking experts.

Surprise… Surprise… all 5 speakers are women…. Kudos to you Adam.

This series is free… It’s a no brainer to sign up and attend.

I’m going to propose a challenge to all you women out there… put your money where your mouth is… upgrade and get the transcripts.

I believe women need to start supporting each other more not just emotionally but with purchase power. Men have supported each other monetarily for years.

Disclaimer: I make NO money promoting this!!!!!

Yes I did buy the transcripts to show support for my Coach Deb Micek and my mentor Mari Smith. I know these two will be sharing some incredible information and I can’t wait to here the other speaker too..

So Join us… The Contact to Contracts Seminar http://snipurl.com/0624

Multiplicity of Stuff - A Sign of a Successful Business

Every successful business sooner or later reaches this point… Multiplicity of Stuff Syndrome… the point where everything you did when you started your business no longer works.

It’s why I collapsed on the floor from exhaustion ending up with an ambulance rushed me to the hospital…

Originally the long hours and hard work you put in during the start up phase pays off. You start to acquire customers.

Remember the excitement of gaining your first customer… making that first sale?

You started your business with a burst of energy and enthusiastic euphoria. You put in long hours…Did lots of marketing….Went above and beyond to acquire your first customer. Your customer is so happy with your service and appreciates your efforts.

Your business is off to a great start and more sales roll in and more customers use your company to solve their problems.

Your business is growing… you feel excited… the vision of why you started your business is coming true.

But something happened…

Each sale…each new customer creates more work…more details…more paperwork… service obligations and many of the tasks you don’t have either the skills or experience to do. You take time to learn them…put in more hours to keep up with your business success.

The More Successful Your Business… The More Work and Time Challenges It Creates!

Each sale…each new customer creates more work…more details…more paperwork… service obligations and you keeping put in more and more hours to keep up with the "stuff" of your business. Sometime days you throw your arms up in the air because the phone keeps ringing… then you think… I should be happy the phone is ringing.

You find yourself caught up in some kind of environment where there is so much happening all the time that they can’t get any clarity on where you’re business is going.

Overworking shrinks your creativity…the life blood of your business. Tension builds between your business and family and your personal life suffers. Your energy levels go down and you become physically drained and exhausted.

You put in more hours but the work just keeps multiplying, the "to do" list gets longer and the core activities that created your income begins to suffer.

What Happened to Your Simple Fun Business?

Your simple fun business suddenly evolved into a complex time draining entity. You feel overwhelmed with little or no time for family and friends. Didn’t you start your business so you could have more time for the things you enjoy…like spending more time with your family and friends?

Because you lose your energy and feel drained, you work very hard all day doing little unimportant task and activities that don’t increase your profits. You are caught up in the "stuff" of doing business and profit and income suffers.

We call this the "Multiplicity of Stuff"… this stuff keeps piling up higher and higher… draining your energy and creativity… leaving feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. "Multiplicity of Stuff" builds that hurdle…

You keep working more and more hours just to keep up and then eventually you reach the point where you’re always behind playing catch up…

The longer you tolerate "Multiplicity of Stuff" the more your sales decrease… lower return on your efforts.

You figure it’s a time management issue… "If you can just manage my time better… you could get more done… you wouldn’t’ feel so overwhelmed, tired and frustrated."

Time Management Works Against You

Traditional Time Management works against you… the entrepreneur… It keeps perpetrating the Multiplicity of Stuff syndrome…which is why all those books and seminars failed to eliminate…this syndrome and keeps you trapped under the heap of stuff .

You can get out from under that pile of stuff but only when you start to think about time in a different way… go against the preaching of Traditional Time Management the encourages cramming more and more stuff into your already busy schedule…

Change your thinking and mindset about time… Start "Thinking Outside the Clock" and flip Your Time and do the exact opposite… work less… take more time off to increase your income.

	Ann Rusnak - The Time Diva Entrepreneur Time Strategist
Ann Rusnak, is the author of "Flip Your Time" a step-by-step system that shows you how to take control of the clock so you can increase your profits and spend more time with your family and friends and experience the luxury of time.