According to Hickey

The only guarantee is that things will change.  This is true of your career and business and in your home life.  We discuss how an unplanned change due to my son's shift from baseball to bowling impacts my schedule and free time and may be impacting productivity.  There are some things we can do to better process unplanned changed, whether it be trivial like youth baseball or major like an illness or loss of a family member.     

Spring is a great time of year to get another fresh start on business goals and also on personal goals.  Its time to have a planning session to review your goals and adjust your plan to get back on track.  We discuss how to use the LetGo app and Ebay to turn some things around the house into some extra cash.  Using these apps is also a great way for kids to make some money to subsidize their summers.  If you're looking to start a business, Amazon is the place to do so.  We'll review some pros and cons and what you need to do to get started.

Based on the feedback from the previous episode, we learned that most people prefer communicating via text message.  We also learned that people overwhelmingly despise voicemail.  How ironic that in an age becoming dominated by Alex, Siri and Google Home and countless voice recognition services that the recorded voice has become an annoyance.  In this episode we discuss this as well as how the popularity of text messages will make it a popular place for advertisers to broadcast their own messages.  So here is my 17 minute long voicemail for you all to enjoy.

Have you ever missed out on something because you weren't communicated with effectively or have you heard the excuse, "Nobody told me!" from your team or family.  Odd are it can be avoided with over communication.  Communication is a two way street and not only do we need to understand that not everyone is responsive to the way we want to contact them, we are also becoming more close minded about the methods we accept communication from others.  We discuss how expanding communication helped change a charity basketball tournament from a huge stress to an annual success and how the shift in communication can improve your business, friendships and family relationships.

Cyber criminals are working 24/7 to infiltrate your e-mail, social media accounts and business networks.  Although most people say that data security is a high priority to them, their behavior does not match their sentiments.  In this episode, we review simple ways to start protecting yourself and your business from cyber criminals that will greatly reduce the risk of your data being compromised.

Your comfort zone can hold you back from trying an activity that will provide you with great joy and have a positive impact on your relationships at home and at work.  After discussing some scenarios where John was able to step outside his comfort zone, we review steps you can take to improve your chances of success, making it less stressful to venture outside of your comfort zone and successfully complete the activity.

After receiving a complaint from a customer, we are given the opportunity to regroup, restart and show our best work.  Only 1 in 25 dissatisfied customers will ever complain.  The same may be true for unhappy employees.  We discuss how to receive a complaint and create an action plan to solve the issue at root cause.

How well people know you dictates whether or not they will say hello to you or approach you when you meet in public.  John discusses how his use of LinkedIn to tell his story lead to memorable in person encounters at a wine tasting at his son's school.  Listen for tips and the strategy for growing your linked in network, why you need to expand your network now, and how to create meaningful content without a marketing team.

We underestimate how much personal information everyone is exposed to throughout the workday and how that affects everyone's mood and focus throughout the day.  We discuss self awareness, emotional intelligence, exercising empathy and using focus to achieve greater empathy.

John discusses how an attempt to take a day with an empty calendar backfired.  He applies some of the teachings from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People course by Stephen Covey and the book Getting Things Done by David Allen to create a plan for a productive work week.  These concepts, adjusted for our own style can relieve stress and anxiety at work, with children getting ready for school, recovering addicts, health improvement and weight loss.