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Day #62: Avoid the “I’d be happy if only I could get more of…” Trap

15 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by startingovernow in Being Valued, Building Relationships, Career Change, Don't be Afraid, Easy More Money Strategies, Getting Unstuck, How to Build Confidence, Leadership, Overcoming Adversity, Prioritizing Money, Productivity, Time Management, Work Life Balance

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5 year plan, change, executive coaching, free coaching session, getting what you want out of life, Goal setting, Mary Lee Gannon, Pittsburgh, starting over

365 Ways to Get ResultS: Day #62 – If only I could get more of…(+ FREE Coaching Offer)

You want something in your life that you don’t have. What a surprise. And you think you know what it is. More time? More love? A better job? A better boss? A thinner body? A fatter wallet? Not only do you know what it is, you are certain that if you catch it like Willie Mays hauled in Vic Wertz’s drive at the warning track in 1954 your World Series ring will assure you a field of dreams come true. If only you could “get” what you want you would be happy. Right? Has it worked yet?

Instead of simply focusing on what you think you want, go one step further and ask yourself “what does (more love…money…thin?) – mean? In this line of reasoning lies a values based answer instead of a superficial proposition that is insatiable. When you ask yourself,” What will this change in my life – what does it mean?” you are focusing on values. Values, not “Get Lists” bring fulfillment.

What will having more time change your life? A greater ability to focus on the things that really matter to you? What are those things? Family? Travel? A loved one? A new business? A better balanced life? Playing an instrument? Art? These are values. Time is not a value.

What will more love mean? Is it that love from another makes you feel better about yourself? Who defines how you feel about yourself? Or does feeling more love come from giving more love? What do you really want to work on?

What will it mean to get a better job? Better challenge? Better ability to learn? Better ability to try new things? Work that is purposeful? What is purposeful to you? These are values.

What will being thinner mean? More attention? What does more attention mean? Feeling better about yourself? What would make you feel better about yourself? Better health? Better diet? Being able to be more active? Values.

What will having more money mean? Security? What does security mean to you? Not having to worry that you won’t have enough money to take care of yourself or your family? Is the value family? What does the family value? What is enough?

If what makes you happy includes “Get” items you will always be working from a “Get List.” Toss the “Get List” over the center field wall and replace it with values activities whereby your emotions will breathe a sigh of relief while giving you a standing ovation. Batter up!

FREE Coachng Session Offer:

You never thought it would happen but here you are – not sure of what to do next and the parylization has cost you time, money, love, personal satisfaction and freedom. You are afraid. You are rejected. You are hurting. You feel helpless, disappointed and inept. You are ready to move forward in your personal life or business but doubt and indecision keep calling you back. Now is the time to decide that your happiness has been on the back burner long enough.

If you are not 100% satisfied by the life you are leading or the success of your business or the richness of your relationships…then you OWE IT to yourself to email Mary Lee now for a FREE 30 minute coaching session on how to change course at marylee@startingovernow.com or by going to www.startingovernow.com/Contact_Us.html. Just mention “Free coaching session” in the subject line.

Mary Lee Gannon is the president of StartingOverNow.com – Leading Productivity Solutions for People and Organizations. With more than 16 years of experience as a CEO of organizations with up to $26 million in assets, Mary Lee consults with businesses on strategy. She is a graduate of The Duquesne University Professional Coaching Program and an alumnus of the 2010 Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital Coaching in Medicine & Leadership Conference. Her personal urnaround came as a stay-at-home mother with four children under seven-years-old who endured a divorce that took she and the children from the country club life to public assistance from where she earned success to support her family. Services include: Workshops, Meeting Facilitation, Coaching, Webinars, Speaking and Management Consulting. Areas of Specialty: Strategic Planning / Board Development / Healthcare / Public Relations / Goal Setting / Meeting Facilitation / Training / Leadership / Time Management / Life/Career Transition. Her book “Starting Over – 25 Rules for When You’ve Bottomed Out” is available in bookstores or at Amazon. Get her FREE ebook – “Grow Productivity – A Leader’s Toolbox” on her web site at www.StartingOverNow.com.

Day #50: Create Your Triple Five Report Friday for a Killer Next Week

25 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by startingovernow in Being Valued, Career Change, Don't be Afraid, Getting Unstuck, How to Build Confidence, Leadership, Leading meetings, Overcoming Adversity, Productivity, Time Management, Work Life Balance

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better productivity, coaching your employees, creating a five year plan, executive coaching, facilitating a meeting, Goal setting, leading a productive team, Leading meetings, life purpose, management tools, Managint your team, Mary Lee Gannon, Pittsburgh, starting over, strategtic planning, your life plan

365 Ways to Get Results: Day #50: Create Your Triple Five Report Friday for a Killer Next Week

In my career I have repeatedly watched people either not set weekly goals or set their goals for the week on Monday morning. How dreaded is that? Who wants to come to work after a long relaxing weekend and start the day by having to figure out what to focus on for the week. I say set your goals for the next week on Friday when you have the benefit of what is and is not working on top of mind by using a simple three part report: The Triple Five Report.

Managers that have trained under me have their employees fill out this report every Friday, keep a copy and submit a copy to them before they leave for the week. I’ll give you some practical applications of that after I explain the report.

The Triple Five Report

Who is to do it: You. On you. (And your employees on themselves.)

When to do it: Every Friday afternoon. (Saturday or Sunday if you work weekends.)

Where to do it: At your desk.

How to do it: Have blank copies of the “Triple Five Report” form in a file nearby so that you may simply pull one out and hand write it before you stop working for the week.

Why do it: Because when you return to work the next week you will know right where to start without looking back at last week.

What to do:

1. Create your “Triple Five Report” form in a simple Word document. At the top of the page type: “Triple Five Report” under which you will create a line entitled “Name” and one entitled “Date.” Then on the rest of the page create a three row/one column chart where each row covers a third of the page. You will type the following statements at the top of each section. If you don’t want to create a chart, then just type the first statement below at the top of the page followed by the second a third of the way down and the last a third of the way from the bottom.

1. What were your five greatest accomplishments this week? Did you meet your goals from last week?
2. What were your five greatest frustrations?
3. What are the five goals you plan to accomplish next week?

2. Three-hole-punch the forms. Keep the uncompleted forms in a folder and the completed forms in a binder.

3. Hand write your answers to these three questions every Friday afternoon before you stop working. Keep them organized in sequence.

Managers, while this report is an opportunity for you to coach people on setting good goals, it is also your job to help people with step two of this report – their frustrations. If the specifics of the frustration is out of their hands and cannot be avoided, coach them to apply their strengths to be able change what they can control and to identify what may be eliminated from their to-do list. Help them prioritize their work in alignment with what is important to them and the organization. Be sure to send clear messages that will help them understand what is a priority and what is not. Then listen while they identify the path they will devise to get to your agreed upon destination.

When You Are in a Slump

When you are “stuck” or in a slump take a look at the binder that holds your reports and reflect on the goals you have been setting. Are they too formulaic and weak? Can they be farther reaching? Are you procrastinating? Reflect on your STRENGTHS and your VALUES which you have determined from other worksheets on my Web site. How would you apply your strengths to call you to a higher standard? Are your goals in alignment with your values?

I have used this Triple Five Report with my staff across a number of organizations. It truly helps them understand better what is important and what is not. It allows me to coach them to become the leaders they want to be while also eliminating useless work from their plates. And it keeps us all on the same page regarding the direction of the organization. I use it for myself to help keep me on target. As leaders we sometimes think we don’t need such discipline. Nonsense. Try it for a couple of weeks and see what new things you accomplish. Start now!

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Mary Lee Gannon is the president of StartingOverNow.com – Leading Productivity Solutions for People and Organizations. Mary Lee is a graduate of The Duquesne University Professional Coaching Program and an alumnus of the 2010 Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital Coaching in Medicine & Leadership Conference. Her personal turnaround came as a stay-at-home mother, with four children under seven-years-old, who endured a divorce that took she and the children from the country club life to public assistance from where within a short time she worked to the level of CEO. Services include: Workshops, Meeting Facilitation, Coaching, Webinars, Speaking and Management Consulting. Areas of Specialty: Strategic Planning / Board Development / Healthcare / Public Relations / Goal Setting / Meeting Facilitation / Acountability / Leadership / Time Management / Life/Career Transition. Her book “Starting Over – 25 Rules for When You’ve Bottomed Out” is available in bookstores or at Amazon. Get her FREE ebook – “Grow Productivity – A Leader’s Toolbox” on her web site at www.StartingOverNow.com.

Day #44 – Four Goal Setting Strategies That Rock

14 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by startingovernow in Being Valued, Building Relationships, Career Change, Don't be Afraid, Easy More Money Strategies, Getting Unstuck, How to Build Confidence, Leadership, Overcoming Adversity, Productivity, Time Management, Work Life Balance

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5 and 10 year plan, business coaching, creating goals and a plan, divorce coach, executive coach, Goal setting, goal setting for a 5 year plan, goal setting for business, how to set goals, Mary Lee Gannon, Pittsburgh, productivity expert, setting SMART goals, starting over

365 Ways to Get Results – Day #44 – Four Goal Setting Strategies That Rock

We all know that setting goals is the first step to achieving them. So why do we hate to do it? Because we might fail. Or worse yet, we don’t know what we want to get us started – even more frustrating. In order to plan for tomorrow, neat year, 5 years or 10 years from now you need a strategy to keep you on course. A plan will have goals. And the goals should stretch you, invigorate you and drive home your purpose. Studies support a linear relationship between the difficulty of a goal and performance. As a goal becomes harder to attain, performance increases, providing the goal is SMART.

1. First Make Your Goals SMART
Understand the principals of SMART goals – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely. These goals are so concrete you can’t mistake them. Often we don’t set SMART goals but if you understand the acronym SMART and follow it you have a blueprint for success. For example, a SMART goal would not be, “I am going to quit work and start my own business.” A SMART goal would be, “I am going to define my values and strengths today to help focus my area of interest. By Friday I will define my niche market by analyzing 20 business Web sites of competitors in various niches.”

2. Back Into Your Goals
Back into your goals to execute them. By that I mean ask yourself if you had already achieved the goal, “What would I have been doing just before that point?” Write down exactly what happened the week before you achieved this goal. What were you working on? Write down what you were doing one month before. Three months before. This is your plan of action. Make it concrete with specific steps that follow the SMART standard.

3. Set Heartfelt Goals
The goals that you are working on should serve the greater good and not just you or your team. The steps you are taking will serve you and your team automatically when they make the world a better place, rock someone else’s world or blow the roof off someone’s expectations. Goals that are financially based with disregard the greater human good will only serve a short term strategy. They are not a long term solution. Companies such as Zappos and Google are focused on the customer experience. Yet their profits are soaring. Entice people to push through limitations for a purpose.

4. Make the Goals Vibrant
Sticking to the exercise of setting and modifying goals is arduous, tedious and hardly fun unless you are energized by the feeling you will have with the results. Include imagery in your goals not only to inspire your team but so that you may foresee any challenges that may arise along the way. Tell a story. Ask your team to describe a scenario of what it will be like when this goal is reached. Who will be doing what? What will it feel like? Who else will be affected? What will it sound like? Smell like? Taste like?

As a leader, you are the one to take charge of the goal setting process. You hold yourself and your team accountable. It is hard to be accountable if the metric for success is not concrete. Following these four simple rules will set you on a course to fulfillment. Start now!

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Mary Lee Gannon is the president of StartingOverNow.com – Leading Productivity Solutions for People and Organizations. Mary Lee is a graduate of The Duquesne University Professional Coaching Program and an alumnus of the 2010 Harvard Medical School and McLean Hospital Coaching in Medicine & Leadership Conference. Her personal turnaround came as a stay-at-home mother, with four children under seven-years-old, who endured a divorce that took she and the children from the country club life to public assistance from where within a short time she worked to the level of CEO. Mary Lee’s services include: Workshops, Meeting Facilitation, Coaching, Webinars, Speaking and Management Consulting. Areas of Specialty: Life, Organization and Career Transition / Strategic Direction / Leadership / Time Management / Divorce / Productivity / Relationship Shift / Purpose. Her book “Starting Over – 25 Rules for When You’ve Bottomed Out” is available in bookstores or at Amazon. Get her FREE ebook – “Grow Productivity – A Leader’s Toolbox” on her web site at www.StartingOverNow.com.

Day #28 – The Rock Your World Quiz

23 Wednesday Mar 2011

Posted by startingovernow in Getting Unstuck, Leadership, Productivity, Time Management, Work Life Balance

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business coaching, creating a plan for your life, executive coaching, finding your life purpose, Goal setting, life coaching, living your dreams, Mary Lee Gannon, Pittsburgh, starting over, starting over now, time management, work life balance

365 Ways to Start Over: Day #28 – The Rock Your World Quiz

This is a lesson on how to break things into purposeful chunks so that you can move the mountain in front of you out of the way.

1. What one really far out there, totally off the wall, extravagant, beyond your reach thing could you get done that would part the clouds and rain a parade of sunshine into your life? This goal should be something you never thought you would accomplish and should be an act of purpose that you have dreamed about. Just the mere thought of it sends an exhilarating jolt up your spine and through your veins, emulating energy from you that lifts you right out of your chair. It’s the view from a magic carpet 30,000 feet above your life where you see, smell and hear yourself fulfilled, joyous, serene and peacefully making a difference that lies to rest every unsettled urge that ever existed in your spirit. In this place your strengths are at play in full capacity. What you are doing is in total alignment with your values. Your smile stretches right off your face and onto the face of others. This is your life’s purpose.

2. Now, on a scale of one to ten how close are you to getting that done?

3. What one thing could you do that would move you one notch higher closer to 10?

4. What are you working on that takes your time away from your purpose? (If you are answering emails and working late are you working for yourself or on someone else’s project? Can you truly be of benefit to others when your own purpose is not fulfilled?)

5. What are you going to do differently tomorrow than you did today?

If you have definitive answers to each of these questions, you will soon be doing things that rock your world. If not, you won’t. It is difficult to create new habits. But a strong vision of yourself in a place that fulfills you will keep you on track. Passion is not enough. Set goals. And work yourself closer to your goal everyday by eliminating what is not in alignment with your values. Start now!

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Mary Lee Gannon is the president of Gannon Group – an executive coaching and consulting firm that produces higher individual and organizational performance through Executive Leadership Coaching, Fundraising Coaching, Organizational Development, Board Retreats, Visioning, and Planning. Mary Lee’s personal turnaround came as a stay-at-home mother, with four children under seven-years-old, who endured a divorce that took she and the children from the country club life to public assistance from where within a short time she worked up to the level of CEO. Her book “Starting Over – 25 Rules for When You’ve Bottomed Out” is available in bookstores or at Amazon. Get her FREE ebook – “Grow Productivity – A Leader’s Toolbox” on her web site at www.StartingOverNow.com.

Day #12 – Plan “A” Versus Plan “B”

10 Thursday Feb 2011

Posted by startingovernow in Building Relationships, Don't be Afraid, Getting Unstuck, How to Build Confidence, Leadership, Leading meetings, Overcoming Adversity, Prioritizing Money, Productivity

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365 Ways to Start Over, 5 year plan, Day #12 - Plan A Versus Plan B, Gannon Group, Goal setting, How to be a success, how to be happy, Mary Lee Gannon, Planning, starting over, starting over now, Success, successful planning

365 Ways to Start Over: Day #12 – Plan A Versus Plan B

If you work on your weaknesses and back-up plan, then you will become a little better at being underperforming. If you use your strengths to focus on your big goal, then you will be sensational.

There is no reason to have a plan “B” because it detracts from plan “A.”

Get Mary Lee’s article on defining your Strengths.

Mary Lee Gannon is the president of Gannon Group – a full service executive coaching, training and consulting firm that provides productivity strategies for people and organizations by improving team performance, executive leadership skills, board performance, planning and project execution. Mary Lee’s personal turnaround came as a stay-at-home mother, with four children under seven-years-old, who endured a divorce that took she and the children from the country club life to public assistance from where within a short time she worked up to the level of CEO. Her book “Starting Over – 25 Rules for When You’ve Bottomed Out” is available in bookstores or at Amazon. Get her FREE ebook – “Grow Productivity – A Leader’s Toolbox” on her web site at www.StartingOverNow.com.

Don’t Blow Your Cool – Make Better Decisions in Real Time

21 Sunday Nov 2010

Posted by startingovernow in How to Build Confidence, Leadership, Leading meetings, Overcoming Adversity, Productivity

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5 year plan, building compassion, character leadership, don’t blow you cool, eliminating oppositions, executive coaching, executive coaching for difficult situations, executive coaching for teaching compassion, Goal setting, how to get what you want, how to make better decisions in real time, lead by example, Mary Lee Gannon, Overcoming Adversity, overcoming challenges, starting over, Starting Over No, strategic planning

Leaders transform vision into reality by rallying their team around more than just a well articulated idea – by truly engaging them in the strategy to get there. Execution of the strategy is where most leaders and businesses fail because the variables that affect strategy are not static but dynamic – constantly fluctuating: barriers to entry, competition, personalities, scarcity of resources and more.

Many things are outside of a leader’s control. Markets and the economy oscillate. Lending access varies. Customer perception and loyalty are influenced by social media. Staff members come and go as the average employee only stays with a company roughly 4 years these days.

If you as the leader cannot adjust your vision and your strategy in a dynamic synergy with the flux of your team, stakeholders, the market, and a global economy you are not poised to realize your goals. Someone else will beat you on this measure. You can’t be stuck. You can’t explode in front of people. You have to easily adjust to challenges in real time.

My clients who are effective leaders are bound by a moral code of ethics whereby they apply character, strengths, skill, and values to advance their mission by engaging their team. They are able to change their behavior and sustain the change to affect outcomes because they have prepared ahead of time to know how to execute under fire.

You wouldn’t wait until a ski lift takes you to the highest mountain in the resort to learn to ski. You need to know, already, who you are and what you believe: not what your colleagues believe or the company believes or your friends believe, but what you believe.

Leaders identify their strengths and build a barracks of skills so that they may respond effectively at a meeting, to a client, or to a dissatisfied customer with the finesse of a consummate and valued professional. If you need specific skills you don’t have, get them. Think through character issues – morality, honor, ethics – ahead of time so that you have the strength to address challenges head on with a steadfastness of nature that reinforces a productive and fulfilled culture of employees.

How to Make Better Decisions in Real Time

1. Make a list of needed skills. Write down all of the skills that you need to elevate you to the level you want to be. Not just to fulfill your current role.

2. Write down one thing you can do to build each skill. If you need better knowledge in a particular industry, ask colleagues to recommend a course or mentor for you. If you need a better image, spend time analyzing colleagues in similar roles or industries or talk with an image consultant.

3. Make a list of five of your biggest strengths. People who have not matched their character and professional strengths with their life’s work continue to feel unsettled and under-fulfilled. They may make erratic decisions or operate inconsistently with an impersonal persona. This article can help you define your strengths. http://www.startingovernow.com/Articles/Strengths-Free_Tools_to_Help_You_Define_Your_Strengths.html

4. Keep your list of strengths in your desk as a reference. When you are faced with a difficult decision, approach the issue from the perspective of each of your strengths. If you can’t decide whether or not to invest in a marketing plan, address it from your already defined strength of “resourcefulness,” and your strengths of “compassion” and “practicality.” Most importantly, which of your strengths will help you in a difficult situation so as to not lose your “cool?”

5. In an eruptive real time situation, draw on your strength. Whenever you feel threatened or that you may react in a way that is not in alignment with your values, remove yourself from the situation so that you may draw on your best strength to deal with it. Tell the person or team that you will get back to them with an answer once you have had time to process it. If you are not able to leave the room, draw on the strength that you have already defined that best equips you to deal under fire.

Lead by example. You establish your corporate culture and empower your team by having the confidence to know who you are, what you believe in and what it is you need to learn. Others will want to learn if they see that it is OK to not have all the answers all of the time. What is it that you need to learn? Start now!

Sign up for Mary Lee’s free Executive Coaching e-newsletter at info@startingovernow.com.

Get Mary Lee’s free tip sheets on “Strengths – Free Tools to Help You Define Your Strengths” and “How to Turn Thought Into Habit for Your Team” at http://www.startingovernow.com/Articles-and-Tip-Sheets.html.
Email this information to a friend. Follow Mary Lee’s tips on Twitter at StartingOverNow.

Mary Lee Gannon is the president of Gannon Group – a full service executive coaching, training and consulting firm that provides turnaround strategies for people and organizations by improving team performance, executive leadership skills, board performance, planning and project execution. Mary Lee’s personal turnaround came as a stay-at-home mother, with four children under seven-years-old, who endured a divorce that took she and the children from the country club life to public assistance from where within a short time she worked out of that to the level of CEO. Her book “Starting Over – 25 Rules for When You’ve Bottomed Out” is available in bookstores, on Amazon or on her web site. Email Mary Lee at marylee@startingovernow.com or visit her web site at www.StartingOverNow.com.

Goals – It’s Impotant to Fail Early

25 Sunday Oct 2009

Posted by startingovernow in Uncategorized

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at a crossroads, begin with the end in mind, changing careers, changing fields, changing majors, fail early, Goal setting

Remember back to when you were in elementary school and high school and you weren’t exactly sure what you wanted to do with your life? Then once you decided on a dream you had to decide the specifics of how to get there such as where you would go to college and what you would major in? Did you discover after you began pursuing a line of study or even after you graduated with a degree and were working in a job that you might have made the wrong choice?

Forty-four percent of all college graduates change their major between the second semester of their freshman year and graduation day.

Five years after graduation, 83 percent of the 2001 graduating class of Duke University was working for a different organization and 43 percent had changed careers at least once.

So chances are, many of you have set goals and have had to readjust those goals over time. And that is OK.

Inherently we don’t like to set goals. Why? Because if you set a goal and miss it you’ve failed. Or have you?

If you remember nothing else regarding goals, remember two things:
#1. Begin with the end in mind
#2. It is important to fail early

College, your job, your relationships with people, your outside activities – they are like a boat at the dock. You will get one. You will get in it. And your boat will start to take off from the pier. If you have a set of oars, you will drive the boat. If you don’t the boat will drive you. You probably won’t sink. But you might find yourself circling the same inlet for a very long time heading nowhere.

How many of you have heard people complain, “I hate my job.” “I don’t like so and so.” “I hate having to work on this report.”

Setting goals are like grabbing hold of the oars. Who’s driving the boat?

Goals are not only about school or your career. They also revolve around asking yourself questions such as, “In my next job do I ultimately want to live around the people I love – my family? Do I like to sail or ski and want to live in a climate that allows that? Do I want to take classes that will broaden my skills so that I can be hired in many different fields?

If you set goals, you will succeed. And goals are not notions. They are specific, measurable and have a time line. “I am going to finish that project early” is a notion. “I am going to do the research on Monday, write the abstract by Tuesday and complete the detail by Wednesday” are goals.

When I graduated from high school I went off to college in Michigan where I majored in an allied health profession and took a job in the Houston Medical Center upon graduation. In my first month living in Texas I knew I had made a mistake. Houston, though lovely, was not where I wanted to live the rest of my life, but I could gain valuable work experience there that I couldn’t get in any other part of the world. I hadn’t anticipated how much I would miss my family and the familiarity of a town I loved. I really didn’t want to fall in love and marry someone and have to live there the rest of my life so I set a goal – I would work in Houston for two years (personal goal with a timeframe) and then move to a place where my professional experience would stand out (professional goal with the end in mind). Two years to the day I moved back to Pittsburgh. Sure while in Houston I had to focus on smaller goals like where I wanted to live, what kind of furniture I’d buy, how long I wanted my commute to work to be. But the ultimate place I wanted to be was back in Pittsburgh with great work experience behind me.

Then I got back to Pittsburgh and set another goal. In two years I would buy a house. Well I hadn’t figured on falling in love so that goal got tossed out the window when I married and bought a house with my husband. We had four children. I continued to work in my profession before my first child was born but I was beginning to see that while I was very fulfilled in an allied health profession at 25, there really wasn’t a lot of room for advancement and I couldn’t imagine doing this work at 45 or even 26 for that matter. I have an entrepreneurial spirit and that personality type breeds restlessness and achievement.

I was at a crossroads: I could continue doing allied health work forever. (Remember the people that say they hate their job?) Or I could work at something new – which was risky. I decided to fail early at my first career choice and regroup.

So I started building a corporate gift business and an antiques business on the side while I was working in a large physician’s office so that when we started a family in two years, I’d have something in place for home. (Calculated risk with a time frame that gave me the luxury of a paying job while building a business on the side.) I had always loved writing and after my first child was born I began writing on a volunteer basis for organizations for which I was volunteering.

What happened was that the corporate gift business and antique business were getting too large to manage from home and I did not want to work outside of the home while my children were young so one day I saw an ad that said the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette was looking for freelance writers and I sent clips of my writing in to the PG for consideration. (The goal of staying at home with my children was ‘keeping the end in mind’ and being a reporter held a calculate risk of rejection.) I didn’t have a degree in journalism but that didn’t stop me. I’ll never forget what the PG editor said when he hired me. “Mary Lee, you can write like you are having a conversation around the dining room table. We can’t always find that.” So by now I had pretty much realized that I was not going back to the profession in which I had a degree. I was writing five stories a week for the PG. I had picked up a lot of freelance work such as being the public relations director of a public school district, the executive director of a trade association, freelance business writing and graphic design and more – all work I did from home.

I taught myself to write grant proposals when the public school district asked me to help them secure a grant for a summer program for special needs children. This work was not in my contract but that didn’t matter to me. I saw this as an opportunity to learn a new skill for which there was a need in society. I went to the Foundation Center of the Carnegie Library and looked up everything I could on grant proposals and then started calling funders all over the city to see if they would read my proposal. We succeed and the district was awarded $68,000 for the program. Next we pursued a grant to put Astroturf on the athletic field. I then started to see that raising money was not just about the written proposal but more about the relationships between those asking for money and those giving away the money. I mentored under a keen school board member and we secured that grant as well – $450,000. I never got paid for working on that grant either. And I wouldn’t be where I am today without having volunteered to learn how to do this work. The school district awarded me a citation from the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for my efforts in securing these grants. Shortly after this and when my youngest child was in school full time I took that citation on an interview which resulted in me being offered a full time executive director position at a hospital foundation in charge of all of the hospital’s fundraising. Now remember, I had never worked as a professional fundraiser. They were not offering me the job of major gifts officer, event planner, vice president of operations or any of the other myriad of jobs in the fundraising profession. They were offering me the lead job because of measurably what I had accomplished in a short period of time – $518,000 in grants on my first two attempts to fundraise.

I was with that hospital for less than two years and was then offered the position at a much larger hospital as president of their foundation where our capital campaign goal was $5 million over two years and we raised more than $10 million. That led to a bigger position at a hospital foundation where I was just recently recruited.

“I will do it by taking these steps it in this amount of time” is a goal.

Again: If you only remember two things about goals remember this:

#1. Begin with the end in mind
#2. It is important to fail early – don’t be afraid to take calculated risks and adjust your goals.

So ask yourself, “Who is driving your boat?” Do you want to get out of the inlet to a destination or is circling the same waters OK with you? What are the steps to get there?

It was Christopher Columbus who said, “You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” Pick up your oars and start now!

Follow Mary Lee on Twitter at StartingOverNow.

For the FREE Worksheets: “Change – Here’s How!” and “Overcoming Adversity is an Every Day Slice of Life?” go to Mary Lee’s web site at: http://www.startingovernow.com/WorksheetsandArticles.html

Mary Lee Gannon is a cultural turnaround and leadership expert who went from being a stay-at-home mother with four children living in an unpalatable marriage behind the facade of a country club life to the reality of divorce, homelessness, and welfare. As a national guest speaker she demonstrates turn-around strategies that transform corporate cultures and took her from an earning capacity of $27,000 to the president and CEO of a hospital foundation. Her book “Starting Over – 25 Rules When You’ve Bottomed Out” is available in bookstores and on Amazon.com. Visit her Web site for a free e-book at http://www.StartingOverNow.com. Sign up for her free e-newsletter at info@startingovernow.com.

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