Hopefully, you have taken the time to write your goals and recognize which direction you want to head with your business and personal life.  If you have done that already, great – but there’s more to it.  You need to develop questions that will help you identify if certain activities and opportunities will help you achieve your goals or not.

If you do find that particular systems, activities or even people are keeping you from meeting your objectives, then you need to quit.  When you decide to stop an activity, quit using a system or let an employee go, it can be difficult – at first.  However, you have to keep the mindset that you are the sole person responsible for your financial security and your family’s.

Saying “no” and learning to quit the things that are keeping you from your goals is a crucial step to success.  It is only by saying “no” that you are able to say “yes” to things that are worth your time and effort.

For more information on time management, check out the program, Militant Time Management for Lawyers.

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What a bunch of morons.

Here’s what a smart entrpreneur would have done.

1. Delivered the donuts in a Krispy Kreme truck that remains parked just outside the door while the event is going on.

2. Brought a banner to hang up over the donut table that said “Donuts Courtesy of Krispy Kreme, Ask How You Can Get YOUR Free Donuts”

3. Stayed during the event, handing out coupons for more free donuts, coffee, redeemable within 5 days at the store (thus driving traffic through the front door)

4. Started the Krispy Kreme Birthday program and had the kids (its an elementary school) and their parents signing up for the “free donut on your birthday program.”

Don’t you think that in a recession this company could have thought of any of this to drive more folks through the door this weekend? Morons.

Instead, they’ve got a couple of hundred parents saying Krispy Kreme, what a bunch of cheapskates.

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Bad idea.

Look. I don’t smoke and hate the smell. I think its a disgusting, harmful habit. I personally would not choose to eat in a restaraunt that allows any smoking.

But….

If a business owner makes a choice to allow smoking in his restaraunt and then employees make their free choice to work there and patrons make their free choice to spend there money at the restaraunt, where’s the problem?

Its very, very dangerous to allow government to interfere with the free market economy. Today’s its smoking, tomorrow it might be what color you can paint your walls.

No one has the “right” to a smoke free restaraunt that they can freely choose to enter or not. It is not an invasion of your personal right to a smoke free meal when you knowingly and willingly enter a restaruant where smoking is allowed.

Again, I wouldn’t go there. I wouldn’t spend my money there. I would tell my friend not to go there. But I don’t have the right to tell the owner what to do or not do with his capital. And since the government derives its right from the citizens, it doesn’t have that right, either.

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Recently, Fairfax County Schools have been contemplating having the high school kids start later. This is a proposal put for by a group called SLEEP (Start later for excellence in education proposal.)

Kelsey, my junior at Robinson, gets on the bus at 6:35 in the morning. A recent article in the local newspaper quoted some parents who were supportive of the change and said things like “Johnny does want to get out of bed that early” or When I get up with Johnny that early can’t find anything else to do after he leaves for the bus because no one else was up.” You can actually read their comments here.

As you might guess, I thought that this was ridiculous. (So did Kelsey and a bunch of her friends, all of who are involved in after school activities and lead busy, productive lives.)

Here’s the letter I wrote to the editor of the Connection. (The Connection truncated the letter since they had so many to publish. This is the full version.

Editor:

The amount of whining by parents complaining about the “early start” that many students have to their school day was shocking. Since when is it a bad thing that a 13-year-old goes to bed “on her own volition” when she is tired? One mother complained that while she got up “early” with her children and tried to get started on some household business she “couldn’t because no one else was available so early in the morning.” It’s incredible that she could not think of one thing to do at that hour that did not involve other people.

Two quick thoughts:

1. I’ll bet that if we followed these children (and often, their parents) around for just five days, and documented what they are doing with their lives every fifteen minutes we would find a lot of wasted time. Text messaging with friends, updating your Face Book “profile” and watching reruns of American Idol do not a productive society make.

2. I would also bet that if instead of school these children (and again, their parents) were getting up to head to a job which required that they do moderately complex reading, writing and arithmetic and that the show up on time every day in return for a pay scale of $100.00 an hour that they would figure out a way to do it, especially if they only got paid if they showed up on time and did productive work.

Children who see their parents whine about an “early start” in a public newspaper will be some of the same children who are taking mommy and daddy with them along to job interviews later. This is not the kind of self discipline that America was built on.

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Today’s Washington Post headline blasts the news that 600,000 more people lost jobs in January. The Wall Street Journal has a picture of a roomful of white collar workers in a hotel room in McLean, Virginia, waiting for a job interview.

There has never been a better time in most of our lifetimes to find highly qualified people who are ready, willing and able to help you keep moving. If you are standing still, waiting to be “rescued” from this recession, you are a fool. Keep moving.

I came back from my own conference (the only legal conference, of any sort, that is selling out all of its events) so rev’d up with ideas I could hardly think. I immediately went on the search to find the quality folks I needed to “get things done.” I’m not sitting still, waiting for rescue. (In fact, started new business last month as well.)

Hired three this week. Great, smart people. Tired of the corporate world. Looking to use THEIR GIFTS and TALENTS in a productive way. Not waiting for a bailout.

What are you waiting for?

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Most solo and small firm attorneys that I know have a slightly different definition of success. They love the autonomy that goes with running their own practice–choosing the clients they want to work with–not accepting  the low hourly rates insurance companies pay insurance defense lawyers… and on and on…

These folks tend to become heroes to their families and you know what?

When life is in control you end up making more money and having more fun. I’ve seen it happen over and over again…Napoleon Hill and Andrew Carnegie were right..there are scientific “secrets to success.”

I would remind everyone who’s reading this blog that you are the average of the five people you hang out with most. What you are is a product of who you “run with” and what books you read.

If you are not at your desired level of success and you honestly want to achieve more, start by looking at what and who you have surrounded yourself with.

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