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Category: Health and Wellness

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Best Practices Culture Growth Health and Wellness Industries

5 Ways Contractors Trick You Out of Your Money

We have all heard the horror stories about the Big Bad Contractor!  Contractors, in general, are viewed as dishonest and homeowners shake in their britches when something around the house breaks. It is unfortunate, because I have met a lot of contractors and most of them just want to do a good job for their clients and be able to sleep at night. They are normal people who picked a profession that has a lot of variables and it is a balancing act that is very difficult to maintain 24/7, 365, without issues.  

Imagine trying to juggle multiple objects of varying size, weight, and angles, while someone from the sidelines throws in more objects. That is what it is like to be a contractor! Joe fell off a ladder and delays the tile job, the plumber got stuck at an emergency and needs to schedule his part for another day, the homeowner had to reschedule last minute and yet demands the contractor gets done with the project by the end of the week or they will write a bad review.

The contractor’s job is volatile at best and the moment they lose control of the juggling act, they are labeled as bad and their reputation is threatened with the homeowner’s ability to review them or spread a warning about them across social media.

I always try my best to share things like this, because I think homeowners need to understand, going into any relationship with a contractor, that there needs to be a little bit of levity on their part.  With all these objects being juggled, it is likely that the contractor might forget to call them back or would be behind on getting them an estimate. When your hands are on fire, getting the fire put out as quickly as possible, with the least amount of pain as possible, becomes the contractors reaction to being overwhelmed.  In other words, they have to quickly focus on what causes the most pain for everyone.

Do they finish fixing an issue that has them trapped under a house in the mud, or stop everything and run back to their truck to call and say they are going to be an hour late?  The homeowner waiting for them to make the time window doesn’t care what the issue is, they have dinner at 6pm and this rotten, lying, so and so, didn’t even have the dignity to call and say they would be running late.  Is this person a bad contractor? Ask the homeowner that didn’t get the call.

Now, on the other side, let’s look at what people would usually view as a good contractor. The company has tons of resources, a fleet of trucks, can guarantee they can be on time, and when the technician arrives they are super friendly and look very professional. They must be good, because I see them on TV all the time and they offer financing and they are the official contractor to my favorite sports team. When you look on Google, they have hundreds of 5 star reviews!  THIS has to be a good contractor right? Let’s dig a little deeper. They are on TV all of the time, so their marketing expenses run into the millions. They have a fleet of decked out trucks and are fully stocked, so their daily cost for the fleet is running into the tens of thousands, they have SALES technicians that are trained to the hilt and earn a commission when they sell something. It is their job to get into that house on time, be friendly and helpful, and find anything that has a potential of ever breaking down in the lifetime of your home. Oh, and by the way, if we knock all of this out today, we can offer a huge discount and give you zero percent financing (for 18 months and then the interest kicks in).

If you give us a great review on Google, we will give you another $200 off or your choice of season passes to Six Flags!  Now THAT is a good contractor right? Well, not that they are bad at their job, but you now just paid up to 4 times what you needed to pay to fix the original issue and was sold a bill of goods that was nowhere near necessary.  By the way, even these guys could run into an issue and be an hour late, BUT a sweet representative from the office will call and let you know.

So the point of my rant is that it is very difficult to label a contractor as good or bad.  There needs to be a lot more thought that goes into it, than a missed phone call or whether or not they arrived on time.  I would wait all day long, and even be willing to reschedule, for the honest contractor that can fix my problem at a fair and honest rate and won’t try and take me for more than is necessary.

However, as I promised, these are the 5 ways a contractor can trick you out of your money and take advantage of you.

1. Misdiagnosis. You have seen the sting operations on TV. This is basically just a direct lie typically covered up by a bunch of technical jargon.  Don’t just take their word for it, make them show you and explain how they came to that conclusion.

2. Bait and Switch. There are two types of Bait and Switch

  • Couponing– these are the ones who advertise an extremely low price and then after getting to your home reveals what it will really cost to fix your “particular” problem.

  • The Product Switch – The contractor sells you the upgraded model of whatever and actually installs the lesser model since most of us do not know the difference.

3. Under Bidding. When a contractor knows they are competing against other contractors for your business they will sometimes give a lower bid and once they collect your upfront money they “find” an unexpected problem and has to add that to the bill.

4. Ding Dong Ditch. The contractor gets money upfront for materials and disappears off the face of the planet. Nowadays with the ability to get a disposable phone, it is incredibly easy to disappear.  Make sure you do your research and no how to physically get in front of the contractor with ease.

5. High Pressure / High Fear sales tactics. Many companies have changed their format to a commission based selling scenario for their technicians. Commission doesn’t rule someone out, but it obviously opens the door for a technician to use pressure or fear to get a bigger paycheck. It really all depends on how the owner trains their people, but if you combine high overhead with a commissioned sales technician, then it stands to reason that they need to get more money than necessary out of you.

Here at The Good Contractors List, we have worked with hundreds of contractors and there has been only one that I would consider bad and we exposed him AND ourselves on the Channel 11 News!  We messed up and we paid for it, but we did our best to warn anyone else about doing business with them. Click HERE for the story!

In conclusion, when looking for a contractor, I would do my research.  Do more than just read through their website. Go to the Better Business Bureau and see how long they have been in business. Google their name and the owner’s name to see if you can find anything derogatory.  Read through any reviews you find and see if there are any negative patterns that seem to be consistent. Look at the size of the company and aim for the ones who appear to be professional, but maybe not over the top in resources or marketing prowess. Even if you get a referral from a family member, do research on the referral and make sure they are reputable beyond your cousin’s one interaction with them.

Then, go into the relationship understanding that they are dealing with a lot of variables and there could be something that doesn’t go perfectly. It will mean a lot to them to have you rooting them on and working with them to give you what you need at a fair and honest rate.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Health and Wellness Human Resources Management

Increase Summer Focus by Embracing Intentional Distractions

Boost productivity by embracing distractions.

Have you ever considered having summer hours? In my small business, we have summer hours that start in June and go all the way to the end of August. Well, what does that mean? It simply means we finish early on a Friday afternoon.

Now, what I know to be true about where I live is everybody wants to escape and enjoy the beautiful summer weather. Some people have shore houses or lake houses or they want to go to the beach.

Can you create summer hours? What about giving your team flexibility to be able to work from home, outdoors or remotely on a Friday? Could they leave the office a little earlier so they can enjoy the beautiful sunshine and maybe avoid the crazy traffic that starts on a weekend? Does your business allow people to be more flexible in the summer?

You see, what I think is important is if you want to boost productivity, if you want to pay attention to what needs to get done, it means you also have to make time for play. So often, our team works so hard, working and answering emails at night, taking meetings after hours, attending conferences, and yet we don’t always give them the time to play.

Take the Summer Challenge

Can you make your more productive summer more fun? Can you have more play? Now, the easiest way to do is book it in. Create easy things. Like maybe people can go home early every other Friday or maybe you have people who alternate so that something is also covered in your office, but that they get the opportunity to work remotely. What are some ways you can implement summer hours or intentional play? Book it in.

Create systems allowing your team can work remotely. Provide employees with a flexible work schedule so they are off every Friday, or every other Friday. Maybe they could even extend the weekend. It could go to Monday. You just need to find what works for you.

Turn on your “Out of the office.” Make the message fun so others know you won’t be around but would be delighted to help them when you return.

If you decide on summer hours, can you make it fun, make it playful? Maybe with a few systems in place, you can have meetings outside.  Allow the team to understand the systems, make sure the team understands the protocols and policies. Let’s redirect phone lines. Let’s put “Out of office” messages together, and let’s make sure we make the most of our summer. Step away from your devices. Hang up the phone. Get out in the sun and enjoy your summer.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Health and Wellness Leadership

Leaders Who Lunch Are Better Leaders.

I know what you are thinking.

You are thinking that leaders who lunch are better because they are out there networking.  But that’s not why.

For leaders, lunch matters.

Contrary to popular belief, a sit-down lunch away from your desk is NOT a luxury. Rather,  it is an essential to your performance at work.  When leaders don’t take a break in the middle of the day, or perhaps not even all day, we push ourselves into survival-mode instead of performance mode. We are not pausing to refuel when we need it most to provide the energy our mind and bodies need to do our best work. And if you don’t even eat breakfast, then you’re running on empty all day.

Sure, you can push yourself to function without fuel for a while, but then you’re not performing optimally. I see this all the time with  leaders. They are so focused on the goal that the can forget the importance of the process to get there. They make it through the day over and over again, but they also collapse at night with a meal that is too big or not very healthy, because they are hungry and exhausted. Then they compound the problem with poor or too little sleep,  only to get up and do the same thing the next day.

Lunch switches off survival-mode to make us perform better.

Working on survival-mode causes leadersto work on basic instinct,  reacting before reflecting, leaving us to put out fires rather than thinking through a solution that might be different (and better) than we have always done.

In survival-mode, leaders focus on what is safe, because  we don’t have capacity to think out of the box and  coach our teams to become better at what they do. We might not even have the capacity to behave the way we would like to behave, because we are feeling the urgency – and the impatience and anger — that comes with running on empty.

We all end up in that situation from time to time, spending more time repairing the damage than  a much needed break would have taken.

When leaders don’t take time for ourselves, we tend to not take time for others, and it affects the company culture. Too often, employees tell me they don’t eat lunch, because their leader does not eat lunch. As a result, they think they are not allowed to go to lunch, or it is not appropriate for them to take a break.

When the leader is working on survival-mode, the whole team is on survival-mode. And the company hurts.

People who eat together, solve problems together.

Good leaders understand how important sharing meals is for company culture. They also know that a successful leader doesn’t hover over the team. Rather, they are part of the team, and nothing brings people more together than sharing a meal. It fosters a sense of community that cannot be created in a work environment full of business meetings, with just snacks and ping-pong tables  offered as an attempt to bring people together around a common vision.

Sharing a meal reminds us of family, helping us communicate in a more open and friendly way. Over a meal, we share ideas more freely, ask for help with problems more openly feel like we are not alone, fighting against the machine. It helps us feel part of, instead of separate from.

Our human resource is still our best resource and we need to nourish it. The company teams that eat together do not just talk business, they talk life. It is not a productivity meeting over food. It is a people meeting to create community and shared goals.

Sharing lunch serves up trust and safety.

The number one reason people are more satisfied at work is that they feel safe. They trust their leader, they feel seen and heard, they feel they matter, and they feel like they belong. When we are working on survival-mode there is no trust, there is no safety. Everything is danger.

When we share meals, we can bring our humanity to work, access our soft-skills, solve problems, and thrive together. So go ahead, put lunch on the schedule! You won’t only nourish your body, you’ll nourish your company.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Health and Wellness Human Resources Management

Retain Talent: Pay Attention to Employees

Think back through your career and recall the best boss you’ve ever had. What made them so special and unique?

Chances are better than not, they gave you authentic, frequent and personalized attention. Whether it was support for a project you were working or inquiries into your goals and aspirations, your best boss invested attention in you. They knew to retain your talent, they needed to uplift, support and invest in you.

Good leaders know their service to employees is key to retaining top talent and developing a staff of engaged, happy employees. Here’s the secret:

Recognize Hard Work.  It’s not enough to reward employees when they knock a project out of the park. Hard work, even on daily, mundane tasks is essential. It’s the tedious daily grind that can wear down a person’s mental well-being. As a leader, ensure you’re recognizing their effort.

Engage Often. Don’t just wait until the scheduled one-on-one to inquire about an employee’s work or their well-being. Stop by and check in periodically. Be careful not to appear as a micromanager. Instead, encourage the employee to use you to help meet their deadlines and objectives.

Watch and observe. Pay attention to the amount of time an employee spends behind the computer. Acknowledge if a team member is seeming particularly frazzled, stressed or overwhelmed and volunteer to help them if possible. Encourage employees to get rest and recover, even if it means stepping away from the computer and getting fresh air.

Get to know them. Understand their priorities. Does their family rank top of mind to them? Consider encouraging them to plan a vacation or take time off. Refrain from messaging them after hours and ask questions to show interest. Perhaps it’s a promotion they are working toward. Set up a mentor for them, a coach or development planning path. Be an accountability partner helping them reach their goals. Whatever they consider being most important to their life, understand it and see how you can help them achieve it.

Be genuine. Most everyone can detect someone’s sincerity in their interest. Don’t praise for the sake of praising. Instead, be sincere in your compliments and comments. When giving feedback, acknowledge your genuine desire for their success. Be meaningful in your questions and give everyone your undivided attention in every interaction.

Surprise elements. Jot down little notes about your employees to help you remember their favorite food, dessert, coffee or flower. Keep note of their anniversaries, birthdays and special celebratory events. Surprise them on special dates, or just for the heck of it. Either way, your attention to detail will not go unnoticed.

Employees are your greatest asset. If you want to drive accountability, boost productivity and create an engaged team of people, pay attention to what matters most to them.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Health and Wellness Human Resources Management

Achieve the Ideal Workday

Sit back and imagine your ideal, perfect workday. What would it look like? Would it be a day without meetings? Perhaps it would be a day without interruptions. Maybe your ideal workday is one where you are focused on accomplishing the monumental task that has been occupying too much headspace.

When you consider what your ideal workday looks like, it’s important to make it a reality. While not every day can be ‘ideal,’ many can with a little strategic thought and attention to planning.

Here are some strategies to help you achieve your ideal workday:

Prepare today for tomorrow. Schedule the last 15 minutes of each workday to review what’s on deck for the next day. These strategies will ensure you have an ideal start to the next day.

1. Scrutinize your calendar and the meetings scheduled. Are they necessary – do you have to attend? Are you prepared – do you have an agenda?

2. Consider what projects you want to accomplish and the deadlines that are looming. In your calendar, set aside chunks of time to focus exclusively on accomplishing those tasks.

3. Tidy up your workspace to eliminate distractions upon starting work in the morning.

4. If you travel for work, host video conference calls or face-to-face meetings, take a few moments to consider what you are going to have to take with you and set it aside.

5. Visualize what you need to wear to be comfortable, sharp and focused at work the next day. Lay it out, press it and accessorize the night before.

6. If you’re going to make it an early day, prepare your breakfast the night before.

Make a Game Plan: At the beginning of each workday, write down three non-negotiable tasks that must be accomplished before ending your day. Maybe it’s making sales calls or completing a project. Either way, keep the list short to help increase the sense of urgency and focus needed from you.

Contemplate Quiet. When you allocate time for specific tasks, use the time wisely. The best way to achieve this is to have a quiet, distraction-free workspace ensuring your total focus.

  • Honor the time set aside in your schedule for accomplishing specific tasks, as if it were a client meeting. Don’t be late or allow interruptions.
  • Close the door. Our pro-open-door society is great for engaging employees and colleagues; however, can be challenging to working in an uninterrupted environment. It’s okay to close the office door when you need the time to focus exclusively on the tasks at hand. If you don’t have a door, consider using headphones as a ‘do not disturb’ message you can send to others.
  • Go off-site or seek an alternative, quiet location when you need to ensure interruptions won’t occur.
Categories
Best Practices Culture Growth Health and Wellness Leadership Technology

Stop Playing a Game of Relationships Roulette

Attention is about connection. Attention is critical for cultivating healthy relationships – personally and professionally. Studies have shown us that when people fail to get the attention they need from a relationship, they will begin to seek it elsewhere.

Giving attention to someone is our way of prioritizing the relationship and showing them they are important to us.

When we give our attention to our spouse or partner, our relationship deepens.

When we give attention to our friends and family, our relationships become stronger.

As leaders, when we give attention to our employees, we retain their talent and create a sense of loyalty in the partnership.

My latest book Attention Pays, recently released and I’ve been ah-mazed at the number of people who have reached out to me about their experience reading it. Many of them have admitted they finally recognized the fact they were neglecting their more important relationships. Some even felt compelled to put the book down to give their focus to those they love in that very moment.  That makes me so happy. I am a work in progress, just like you. I need these reminders too.

I believe attention is our new currency. The more undivided attention we give to those that matter most, the more value they see in the relationship.

Here are a few strategies to help you focus your undivided attention on those in your life:

1. Device-free meals. Choose to keep the table a device-free zone. No matter the meal, no matter the company, choose to put it away. If you’re having a team luncheon, challenge others to do the same. Having dinner with friends? Make a deal with them that the first person to engage on their phone will have to pay the bill. Instead, use the time at the table to focus on those in your presence. Honor them and their importance in your life by engaging and gifting them with your undivided attention.

2. Purposefully plan. Be mindful and intentional about when you will spend time with those who matter most. Schedule time in the office to meet with employees to check in on their well-being. Set aside time each day to ask your children about their day. Consider planning a vacation with your friends or family that you can look forward to. Plan a date with your partner, child or friends. By planning ahead, you are letting others know how much you value the relationship.

3. Little things matter. Have you ever been surprised by someone who bought you a coffee on their way to work one morning? Maybe you’ve come home to find a small, unexpected package in the mail from a friend. Little things matter. They are one way to give attention to those who matter in your life. They let others know you care. Consider grabbing your partner’s favorite dessert on the way home as a special surprise. Or, pop an unexpected hand-written note in the mail to a friend or loved one. Reward an employee with a coffee or sweet treat for a hard day’s work.

What ideas do you have? Feel free to share in the comments below. Relationships are critical to our happiness and are important to our personal and professional well-being. Invest yourself in relationships and show those in your life they matter most.

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Management Women In Business

Interview with Aaron Young, Renowned Entrepreneur

Aaron Young is a renowned entrepreneur with more than 30 years experience and several multi-million dollar companies under his belt. Join us for an intimate interview where Aaron shares how his resilient and creative mindset successfully took him through many trials and tribulations.

Watch my interview with Aaron here!

Categories
Best Practices Culture Growth Health and Wellness Leadership Skills Technology

Your Privacy in the Wake of the Facebook Cambridge Analytica Scandal

While Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal continues to play out,  one of the big “AHA” moments has been the discovery of the amount of information that Facebook has captured on it’s users. 

The fact that Facebook captures data on users is not really a surprise, but the breadth of data captured was stunning to many, as were the lax safeguards in place to protect that data.  The scope of Facebook’s data collection is still a bit of an unknown, as we haven’t learned of additional data captured by Instagram and What’sApp, both of which are owned by Facebook.    Facebook’s empire is a data collection machine that powers the marketing campaigns of business around the world.

And Facebook is not the only data collection machine.  Most tech companies collect data for marketing purposes, and privacy and data protection varies on each..  Google collects data  via search, Gmail, maps and Google applications.  But also captures data via Android phones, Waze driving applications, and it’s Nest home automation subsidiary.  

So what are we supposed to do?  Unless you are willing to completely abandon the digital world, you have to accept that privacy is elusive online.  But there are few things you can do to minimize the amount data collected and the accessibility of that data .  Here are a few tips that could help:

Be aware of the information available on you and adjust your privacy settings accordingly.   Both Google and Facebook will let you see a good portion of the information they collect on you.  It doesn’t cover all of the data collected from related businesses, but it is still helpful.  For example, I found out that Google knew the 10 different cities that I lived in my life, and was making that information publicly available.  While I couldn’t delete the information, I could make it private. 

Close unused social media accounts.  Many of us have tried new networks, but ultimately abandoned them.  Despite our neglect, your information is still out there.  Use justdeleteme to jog your memory and delete as many old accounts as you can.  Some do not make it easy. 

Don’t use Facebook’s or Google’s single sign on for other services.    When you start using a new service or retailer and are asked to “create an account”, many will ask if you want to login via Google or Facebook.  While it is convenient and one less password to remember, this service also allows Google and Facebook to track everything you buy with that retailer. 

Don’t use third party applications on Facebook.  Those cute quizzes and other entertainment might be fun, but they are also data collections devices.  These are the type of applications that supplied the data for Cambridge Analytica.  Some applications just collect data, but some require that you submit personal information that is often the subject of commonly used security questions.   Don’t play along.  The fun is not worth the risk. 

Delete unused applications on your phone, desktop and other devices.   Many of us constantly add new applications, but are less diligent about deleting old ones.  Applications collect a lot of data, even when they are not being used.  So if you have not used an application in a while, delete it.  I purge applications every six months, and end up deleting more than half the applications on my phone.   

While digital privacy remains elusive, you can take action to minimize the breadth of personal information out there.  Take control!

Categories
Growth Health and Wellness Leadership

Are You Working on Survival Mode?

Most of the time, when I ask someone why they don’t drink enough water every day, the answer is… because I don’t have time to go to the bathroom. Wait… you are thirsty and you know you are getting dehydrated, but you still don’t drink any water?

What is the problem here?

The problem is not the water, the water is just the symptom. The problem is time. Our relationship with time is… complicated. In our busy modern lives, time is the new currency and we cut corners to save time. We multi-task and juggle as much as possible on our to-do list and we try to do it in less time, but I think you and I can agree, it is not working. We don’t get more done it just feels that way. And we are more busy than ever and when we look back on the day, we might wonder, where did the time go and how much progress did we make?

What does water have to do with it?

A lot actually. Because when we are dehydrated we don’t think as well; we lose focus and attention faster, we get more easily overwhelmed and we might even find ourselves more confused. You might also be more irritable and impatient. Yup… Next time you are in a meeting with an impatient, slightly passive aggressive person, pass them a glass of water and see if it helps.

When we are running low on water, our most basic and essential inner fuel, our bodies think we are under survival stress. Your body does not know that there is water in the faucet just around the corner from your office, your body thinks you are in the middle of nowhere and you have not yet found water, so it will try to preserve its energy and keep you from using it, by slowing things down until you find a waterhole again. Because why else would you starve yourself from what keeps you going right…?

When you are on survival-mode, your hormones run the show. Actually, your hormones always run the show, but when you are smart about your fuel, essentially you are the master of your hormones. When you are on survival mode your hormones take over, because their job is to save you from extinction. At the office that means your hormones are trying to save you from yourself. Or rather from your work which is keeping you from pausing for things like water and toilet-breaks. So in a round-about-way you are just working against yourself.

The time you spend, is time saved.

When it comes to self-care, and probably many other things in life, we save time at the end, when we spend some time up front. With self-care it works this way: the more you take care of your essential foundational needs for water, food and sleep, the more you optimize your human performance. It is really pretty simple, so simple that we don’t do it.

And yes, being dehydrated is not going to save you time, it makes you spend more time getting things done, because you are not focused. More time solving issues in meetings, because you are overwhelmed and cannot think straight. And simply being in-effective because you have to comeback to the same task over and over, because you lose your attention. Survival-mode will do that to you. And maybe all you needed was some water through out the day and a couple of 10 min. toilet-break here and there, and you could have saved yourself hours of being unproductive, unfocused, and unhinged. So instead, go drink some water and see how it makes you feel. You might just realize it is the quick-fix to unstressing, getting more work done, and the foundation for you performing at your best. As a CEO told me the other day, “I was having a hard time focusing and I felt tired before my meeting, then I drank a whole bottle of water and I felt fine again, I was ready for my meeting right away.”

Now go drink some water! And take a pause to enjoy it as well.

Categories
Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Skills Women In Business

Overcoming Adversity

Have you ever felt ready throw up your hands in frustration, and give up? It’s so easy to be convinced that the odds are against you and feel like there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. If this sounds familiar and need a new perspective on things, my client Pete’s story will help you persevere and encourage you to discover untapped strength you didn’t even know you had.

Pete’s story is a double-whammy of seemingly impossible situations:

First, the 28-year-old Kenyan designer was framed for murder, denied legal rights, wrongfully convicted and – because it was required by law in Kenya – sentenced to the death penalty. For 18 years he awaited the date when his name would be called, with no projected time frame ever given. The “tunnel” was as long and dark as it could possibly be, and he wondered how he could find the strength to get through each day.

But in the process, he was provided an opportunity. He was given the chance through a non-profit organization called the African Prisons Project to study law via a correspondence program – and I mean old fashioned paper correspondence; no internet in prison! – at a British university. He completed his degree and used that opportunity to fight and clear his name, ultimately emerging as a free man with a presidential pardon. Now that’s perseverance through adversity!

The second challenge – which pales in comparison but would make anyone else freeze in their tracks – happened in the fall of 2017. Pete was at the TED Global (not TEDx) conference in Tanzania, and was unexpectedly offered the opportunity to share his story on the main TED stage in a five-minute TED talk – with TWO DAYS NOTICE!

That’s when he reached out to me. From seven time zones away, Pete and I worked together to hone his message and craft his story, and ensure he could deliver it all with the impact that he wanted, all in two days. What was his message, you ask? No matter how dark things may seem, every day, take one step forward.

If you’re thinking to yourself, “I don’t have that kind of perseverance,” or “I could never do that,” I’m pretty sure Pete would have said the same thing about himself, until it happened to him.

Need some inspiration to help you get over the next hurdle? Listen to Pete.

No matter how big your challenges are, just remind yourself: if he can get through that, I can get through this. Dig deep: you are stronger and more resilient than you think.

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Are you planning to give an important talk or presentation, and want some help to ensure that your message lands correctly and your delivery seals the deal? Email laura@vocalimpactproductions.com or click here to set up a 20-minute focus call to discuss it with me, personally.