Hey everyone!
2. Then tune in at 6:30pm ET and listen to Episode 47 of the Don’t Call It Small…Business Podcast as we discuss “Supporting the Entrepreneur In Your Life”. Be sure to share with others.
You can also listen using the player below.
https://www.spreaker.com/user/11391552/ep-47-supporting-the-entrepreneur-in-you
3. Thank you!
Copyright 2020. Natasha L. Foreman. All Rights Reserved.
This Thursday I will be leading a webinar, simply titled: How to Successfully Start, Revamp or Revitalize Your Business.
During our time together I will help you to:
To register for the webinar you can click on any of the images below or click on this link. I hope to see you Thursday at 7pm ET. Space is limited so register now and arrive 5 minutes early (if possible). Thank you!
I’m going to focus on today, today. What can I do, see, and be today? That is my focus.
If I have one foot in the past and one in the future, that means I’m straddling the present. If I’m straddling the present then all I can possibly do is take a dump on today or choose to move both of my feet into today’s space. I don’t know about you but I’m tired of dumping on my present. I want to thrive each day. I want to wake excited about what the day will bring, and I want to fall asleep at night pleased with all that I experienced, learned, and shared that day.
I want my life to be about healing reflection not regret. I want to make the most out of my days so that I’m excitedly sharing the greatness of now, and not dwelling on my hay day of the past successes. I want my setback to be a learning setup for bigger and better success, not a cesspool blame game of what-went-wrong.
Yesterday is behind us. Last year is behind us. So are all of the years past that you can’t return to and fix. What happened has happened. You don’t have a time machine to change things; and if you did, would you truly change every thing that happened in your past? Because you would have to in order to get your desired outcome, which means there’s a lot of great people and experiences you would miss out on all because you wanted to change one or more series in your life’s story.
Think of how much precious time you would then lose in the present and how that would then affect your future. There’s a better way to deal with our past….Learn from it and move forward. Stop dumping on your present, or that gift will no longer be your reality.
This isn’t a new year’s resolution, this is my daily affirmation. Focus on being, doing, and seeing all that God has called on me to be, do, and see today.
My self-talk for today….
Maybe it will help someone else who needs a loving push.
~Natasha
The time is NOW! Don’t wait. Don’t procrastinate. You’re only stealing from yourself when you do. Seriously.
Yes, I’m talking about the new book Believe Bigger: Discover Your Path to Your Life Purpose
Invest in this book, this guide, this map to explore sides and crevices of YOU that you have overlooked, neglected, abused, misused, underutilized—yet you want to RECLAIM, RESTORE, RENEW, REINVENT, RECHARGE, REACTIVATE and REALIGN.
Get your copy of #BelieveBigger by my dear friend Marshawn Evans Daniels if you want to do more, see more, experience more, give more, receive more, and be more.
Abundance of anything positive can ONLY come from faith, discipline, and action.
You have to DO. You have to MOVE. You have to GET UP and GET OUT OF YOUR WAY, THE WAY, GOD’S WAY.
It starts by thinking abundantly, feeling it, visualizing it, speaking it, and believing it LONG BEFORE you see the first buds sprout, long before the first harvest becomes ready.
To #BelieveBigger you have to have FAITH in what you hope for, in that which has yet to arrive—but you have already staked your claim as YOURS!
Health, financial wealth, intelligence, a fulfilling and rewarding career, work-life balance, to travel more, marriage, or to start a family of your own—whatever it is—YOU MUST CLAIM IT AS SO—CLAIM IT AS YOURS, and then do your part to make the puzzle pieces come together.
God has already shown you what is possible. He’s already said it can be yours. But do YOU believe in His vision for you? Or will you settle on the small—lower your expectations below what He wants to gift you? Will you let fear tell you it’s not possible or will you let faith tell you “Oh yes it is!”
Every successful entrepreneur knows that their forward-thinking vision must be stated, shared, and reinforced constantly and consistently in order for that vision to be fully comprehended and embraced; and the more that the vision is shared and embraced the more energy and passion is poured into making sure that vision becomes a reality. That’s the difference from merely being a dreamer and a doer. It’s seeing where you want to go and putting together the resources, and doing the job to achieve what you desire.
In organizations we focus on two primary drivers (besides our triple bottom line) which are Mission and Vision. A mission is your purpose—why you’re in business, why you do what you do. Your vision states where you want to go, what you want to be, what type of impact that you want to have as an organization.
Those same principles need to be taught and embedded in the mindset of individuals, not just business leaders. It’s not necessarily tied to your profession or you finding the cure for cancer (side note: but if you do please make sure that you keep those costs affordable for all).
Vision-tied-to-Purpose-aka-Mission….
What is your purpose in life? What is your purpose in your neighborhood or community? What is your purpose in your house of worship? What is your purpose as a member of your family? Why do you get up out of bed every day? Why do you keep living? Why do you want to keep living? Purpose is so bold and deep, so scary, so what if you swap the word and said “mission”, does it help? Probably not. Because purpose, mission, and vision, no matter what you want to call them they are all bold and dynamic, and anything worth achieving is a scary proposition. But if it doesn’t scare you a little or a lot then it’s not big enough, it’s not bold enough. You need to BELIEVE BIGGER!
A lot of people are suffering in their career and in their home life because they lack vision, and their hope is dwindling and dying a slow and painful death. They are focused on their present, their lack of, rather than on where they could be in the near or distant future. When you’re blinded by what you don’t have you don’t see the opportunities opening up around you and ahead of you. You walk right by them or you stop short of achieving them. You need to grab a defibrillator, also known as an AED, and you need to resuscitate your hope and vision.
Stop relying upon New Year’s Resolutions and start with (and be fueled by) vision and action plans. Resolutions are what we aspire to resolve to one day do, but we have become so casual and relaxed with them that we rarely achieve a quarter of the things on the list, and most of the things we aspired to achieve we fell short by January 15th of the year and never tried again.
An action plan fueled by a vision is our road map to GET IT DONE!
Some of you have fulfilled one mission in life and now you’re wondering, “what next?” well maybe, just maybe, Marshawn’s book can help you answer that question.
If you’re ready for that next level, of whatever it is and wherever it may be, then you need to get your copy of Believe Bigger at BelieveBigger.com or at any retailer that sells books, so that you can get moving and start claiming what’s waiting out there for you!
~Natasha
I was on Instagram a few moments ago and I saw a video that a personal fitness trainer posted of her class doing circuit training in the gym. It was awesome seeing these women of all sizes working out and focused. You could see in their efforts that they are determined to reach whatever goals they have set.
I didn’t notice any slackers. I didn’t notice anyone with poor form. They seem in it to win it. I could see the struggle and the sweat. These women weren’t playing.
It’s simple. They showed up and worked out. They could easily take the lazy route and just talk about how they want to lose weight, get healthy, or gain muscle—and never follow through. These women showed up and they are putting in the work.
Let me be clear about one point, since I’m sure someone is thinking this–I’m not referring to a class of well-trained, muscular women. Nope. Many people would have something negative to say about most of the women in this group. Some of you would even stoop low enough to fat shame them. Hence why I said earlier that they seem in it to win it and weren’t playing around with their work out. These women seem very determined to reach their health and fitness goals. They showed up and put in the work.
The ONLY way to reach your goal is to do the work. The people who want it fast and easy are the same ones who fall fast and hard. There’s no true sweat equity invested so there’s no motivation to keep consistently pushing forward, so you usually fall back to doing things the way you used to—taking on the bad habits that frustrated you to begin with, which leads to the hard thump we hear when you hit the ground face first (figuratively of course).
We need to break this “microwave mindset” that has caused us to expect results fast with little to no effort. It’s caused us to become lazy. We’re left to always look for something or someone else to quickly fix our problem or fill our need. We jump on every get-rich-quick scheme or diet fad.
We waste more time trying to find the short cut, when we could actually be working towards our goals.
Get your mind centered on PUTTING IN THE WORK. Or you will continue your weak attempts at New Year’s Resolutions, piles of unattained dream boards, and complaining about how you look or what you don’t have.
If you aren’t tired of hearing yourself whine, complain, and wallow in self-pity, I can guarantee you that there’s more than one person out there who is tired of hearing your mouth. Let me say what they can’t or won’t say to you…
No one faults the person who tried yet failed. But we roll our eyes in disgust at the lazy person who is shocked and dismayed that their lack of effort didn’t result in a win. Get your butt up and put in the work!
~Natasha
“If we wait until we’re ready, we’ll be waiting the rest of our lives”
~Daniel Handler
I’m a procrastinator. There I said it. I’ve said it before but with all of the “e-clutter” in our lives I’m sure that by now you have forgotten that I shared this vital piece of information about little ole’ me. Procrastination is a nasty little habit that can grow into a huge monster waiting to gobble up precious time and life-altering moments.
I want you to think (and be honest with yourself), is there anything that you know for a fact you have been avoiding to start or finish?
I announced at the end of last year that I would finally be writing my first book, a spiritual one associated with my Breaking Bread With Natasha blog that I’ve been curating since 2009. I avoided starting the process for two years, ignoring the requests from my readers to “write a book Natasha“.
Right before I made my year-end announcement I was hit with some personal life craziness, and then weeks later I found my 2017 blindsided by the unthinkable (well at least for me), and my book and pretty much anything that didn’t have something to do with my survival, was placed on the back burner–temporarily. The crazy thing is I couldn’t avoid it. This book is staring in my face and people are frequently asking me “how’s the book coming along?”
Darn those public announcements! I knew that it was important to announce this huge step publicly, because if I didn’t then who would hold me accountable and when would I ever write and publish this book that people say they really want and need? The answer is “no one” and “probably never”. So two weeks ago I made the decision to push past my personal life “junk” and jump back into this book that I started working on last August, picked back up last December, and tried my best to ignore ever since.
There’s never a “perfect” time to do anything. When are we ever truly “ready” to become a parent? You can’t go based on other people’s experiences, you have to find out for yourself. No one knows what they are up against until that baby enters their life.
The same is true in business. For every entrepreneur out there grinding, hustling, and slaving away to make their dreams a reality and their goals accomplishments, their company is their “baby” and sometimes they are blessed to have multiple “babies” throughout their lifetime. But if you ask an entrepreneur “how did you know you were ready to launch your company” and I know that the vast majority of them would say something like, “I didn’t. I just took the leap.” For the most part, entrepreneurs are action-oriented. We can be a little scatterbrained, flighty, and what some medical professionals might label as sufferers of attention deficit disorder. But I like to think of it as a passion to seek, find, explore, test, try…right now. Yeah right now!
If we wait for when we’re ready, if we wait for the perfect time, we may find ourselves empty handed with a bunch of “shoulda, woulda, coulda” thoughts floating around, or worse–we don’t live long enough to have those thoughts haunt us.
I shared my 2017 goals with everyone on January 3rd of this year, and knowing that we’re already in the month of May, I see that I have a lot of work to do to make up on the four months that I’ve allowed to slip past me. I can’t afford to let anyone or anything distract me to the point that I don’t fulfill the things that God has called me to do.
What have you been avoiding? In what ways and in what areas are you procrastinating?
Stop it!
Take action this week toward starting or finishing whatever goal or goals that you have yet to achieve. It’s your life and from what we can tell, we only get one to live out these experiences. So stop wasting precious time waiting for ready and perfect to show up. They aren’t coming!
~Natasha
Copyright 2017. All Rights Reserved.
By Natasha L. Foreman, MBA
The debate continues about the unemployment rate, job creation, and the potential boost in our nation’s economy. The Los Angeles Times shares all sides of the debate in last Saturday’s business section.
Although the national unemployment rate is currently at 8.1% (which is almost double in Black and Brown communities) the L.A. Times reported that this rate is not solely because more jobs are being secured by workers —since only 115,000 jobs were added in April (after winter gains of an average of $252,000 jobs December through February)– but rather because more people are discouraged and dropping out of the labor market.
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington was reported as telling the L.A. Times that workers are dropping out of the labor market because they no longer believe that there are jobs out there for them. In April the numbers shrank by 342,000 workers. That’s 342,000 that are reported to have lost hope in securing a job.
President Obama sees and reports things differently and more optimistically. He reminded people in his speech last Friday at Washington-Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia, that we are surviving the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, have created more than 4.2 million jobs within the last 26 months, and 1.6 million of those jobs were created just within the last 6 months.
Obama’s chief economic advisor, Alan Krueger told the L.A. Times that the jobless rate fell a full percentage point since last August, and that nearly three-quarters of that drop was due to increased employment. Dean Baker however said that some of the three-quarters was attributable to adjustments in the population.
Analysts claim that the warm winter weather we experienced across the nation has impacted the reported rates of job growth, as certain industries, such as construction—that were booming in December and January, have since seen no increase in jobs.
However, car sales are strong, manufacturing continues to perform well, there is growth in the demand for growth, consumer spending is up, and there is an improvement in the housing market that once was severely depressed.
The L.A. Times makes a point of reminding and educating readers that our country’s economy is vulnerable to various “shocks” such as high oil prices, China’s slowed-down economy, and the debt-strained problems of Europe. When the rest of the world is suffering, our country is hit hard also; and vice versa. We’re literally in this together.
Let’s also not forget that more than 90% of the companies in our country are small business enterprises, with less than 200 employees, yet maybe 90% of job seekers are applying mostly to large corporations—less than 10% of the businesses in the U.S.
Who’s helping to equip these small businesses with the resources to hire more employees?
Who’s reminding and educating job seekers about employment opportunities with small businesses?
Who’s bridging the gap?
We must realize that our economy is impacted by other world economies and “shocks”. We must focus more on the things we’re for and less on what we’re against, and then help to bring about a progressive movement towards solution rather than allow a spiraling effect that will lead to ultimate failure.
We should also be grateful for our country and the numerous resources here. Let’s consider if we lived in Liberia where the unemployment rate is a staggering 85%. What if that was our reality?
Let’s look for solutions rather than people to blame. Let’s look for business opportunities and leverage our strengths, rather than examples of our weaknesses and failures.
What can we do individually and collectively to bring about positive change and to be the change we want to see in our nation, and in the world?
What can you do to help with unemployment in the United States?
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Source: Don Lee. Los Angeles Times. Job weakness feeds fear of a slowdown. Business section. B1, B4. Saturday, May 5, 2012.
Copyright 2012. Natasha L. Foreman. Foreman & Associates, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Attend the Women’s Economic Development Agency (WEDA) Beyond the Basics Business Bootcamp this Weekend:
We are Celebrating March – Women’s History Month!
In the Atlanta area? Join us for an affordable $99 Business Bootcamp at the SBA funded Women’s Economic Development Agency (WEDA) located in Midtown Atlanta this Sunday Mar 18th!
For details and to register, go to Eventbrite at http://www.eventbrite.com/event/2990738379
Please share this with vendors in your network.
By Will Deyamport, III, MSEd
I started my doctorate at Capella University with a personal mission: to gain the knowledge-base and leadership skills necessary to obtain a leadership position in an education-focused entity, and to become a university professor. What that education-focused entity would look like has been my challenge over the past year and a half. But after speaking with a number of career specialists and figuring out what I want to do – as opposed to what I don’t want to do – I now have an answer.
I want to head an organization that leads the discussions about the cultural, social, and technological issues of our time. I am fueled by engagement and collaboration, and I want to be a part of an organization that fervently believes in the power of ideas to change how people think and live their lives. And as its leader, I plan on building a community of speakers, resources, open-courses, and conferences, featuring the world’s most innovative and passionate thought-leaders. From that I want to create a movement of like-minded persons – offline and across emerging and various digital and social media platforms.
Capella University has prepared me to be successful in such an organization because its focus on leadership, change management, organizational development, and problem-solving. I’ve also learned how to take research and apply it real-world situations. Most importantly, I’ve been encouraged to follow my passions and to lead with my strengths. Upon graduation, what I will take with me from Capella is a belief in the impossible and the confidence that I can be an effective and transformative leader in the 21st century.
Guest Blogger Bio:
Will Deyamport, III, MSEd is the founder of PEOPLEGOGY – a blog that focuses on life and career developments. Will is a Family Life Educator whose passions include getting people excited about their lives and digital and social media. In addition to his 11 years of experience in education, he has interned with the likes of Ingrid Stabb and J. T. O’Donnell. Will is a doctoral student at Capella University and is a monthly contributor to MyPathfinder Career Blog, where he writes about higher education. You can find him on Twitter at @peoplegogy.
Natasha 