When someone reacts, it is often an emotionally negative response. When someone responds, it is a forward-thinking, progressive-acting answer.Reacting is often an emotional response that drags you down. Be responsive, forward-thinking, and push yourself to be better as a leader.

Reaction And Response

Incorporate more risks into your business and work style. Think about how to change your core processes, do them faster and increase your sales.Try borrowing from other industries' methods to change your model. Also, think about how to scale your business and how to change it to connect with more customers.

Break Rules

Incorporate an end vision for your business and shape tasks to achieve that vision -- every week and month. Turn those ideas into executable plans.To get started, break up your objective into achievable and measurable milestones with deadline dates for each (and mark those dates in your electronic calendar). Then share those milestones with key accountability partners to drive personal accountability.

Have Vision

Try incorporating important elements like planning, daily workouts, personal study, and positive affirmations into your daily routine to see maximum results.Get up at the same time every single day to start off your daily routine -- and make it your choice. Write down your short- and long-term goals every morning to set your workday on the right track.

Create a Daily Routine

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As I work with entrepreneurs, small business owners, and sales leaders, I continue to see one main difference between very successful people and unsuccessful ones. That difference can be illustrated using a simple analogy:
When one goes to the doctor with some ailment, the doctor will typically prescribe some treatment and ask for a follow-up visit. During that return appointment, what the doctor says is extremely important. If they say, "You are having a reaction to the treatment," that's a negative response, and they take a different course of action. If the doctor instead says, "You are responding well to treatment," that's a positive response, and they continue to move forward. All of the difference comes from the two "Rs": reacting versus responding. The same goes for being an entrepreneur, small business owner and sales leader: How you choose to react or respond can shape your success. Don't react (which is negative) but instead respond (by failing forward).
To help illustrate this, I'll share an example of in narrative form. This is probably not typical, but still very applicable -- and yes, their names have been changed, but the story is true.
I'll tell you about Lt. Dan Williams, a barber in northern Florida. He's a long-since-retired military veteran who served in the Marines in Vietnam, a small-business owner and a conversationalist extraordinaire.
Dan's small barbershop continues to thrive, and as I got my hair cut, we began talking about his style. We discussed how his business was always booming and what he did to be successful. Slowly, we got into more personal matters, and he told me about his last vacation -- which was filled with wind sailing, snorkeling, scuba diving and more.
And then the conversation took a twist. He told me something remarkable about his secret to business success, as well as life success.
He told me about his wife, Linda.
Dan started by saying, "You know my wife, Linda? She is 71 years old, and she came with me on that vacation. She is currently living with stage four colon cancer. She was given only two years to live. And that was seven years ago."
I couldn't believe it. I asked, "How is that possible?"
He said, "Respond, don't react."
When someone reacts, it is often an emotionally negative response. When someone responds, it is a forward-thinking, progressive-acting answer.
In business, entrepreneurship, and even life, I've noticed that the most successful people respond to adversity rather than reacting.
Here are three techniques Dan highlighted for me that taught him how to respond and not react, and how I apply them to business:
1. Create a daily routine: Dan and Linda created a daily routine to attack her constant fatigue, health challenges, and regular chemotherapy. For the business leader, try incorporating important elements like planning, daily workouts, personal study, and positive affirmations as cited by the Hal Elrod in The Miracle Morning to see maximum results. Your professional success can be determined by your daily routine. Here are some ideas to get started:
* Write down your short- and long-term goals every morning to set your workday on the right track. Try writing down how much revenue you want to generate this year for your business or your personal sales target every day.
* Get up at the same time every single day to start off your daily routine -- and make it your choice.
2. Have vision: Dan and Linda looked at how their life could be and not what people thought it should be, even with a terminal diagnosis. Instead, they chose how to live. They began with the end in mind, as Stephen Covey suggests in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and built their lives around that goal. As a business leader, incorporate an end vision for your business or sales team and shape tasks to achieve that vision -- every week and month. Turn those ideas into executable plans. Here are a couple of ways to get started:
* Take your ultimate business goal or objective and break it up into achievable and measurable milestones with deadline dates for each (and mark those dates in your electronic calendar).
* Share those milestones with key accountability partners to drive personal accountability.
2. Break rules: Being told you only have two years to live is something almost unimaginable. Facing this requires one to face the ultimate fight-or-flight syndrome. Dan and his wife decided to take all the risks they could and live every day to the fullest. As a business leader, incorporate more risks into your business and work style. Every great entrepreneur and leader started by taking risks. How can you change your core processes and do things three times faster? How can you sell to five times as many customers? Here are a couple of ideas to get started:
* As author William C. Taylor suggests in his book Practically Radical, try borrowing from other industries' methods to change your model. Boldness like that makes leaders great. For example, I've looked to other successful sales models to try and rethink how I could be approaching my customers. I've gotten brilliant ideas from the timeshare sales model, pharmaceutical sales model, and more, all of which I applied to different industries.
* Think bigger. How can your business connect with more customers? What needs to change in order for that to happen? Is it new products? Do you need new processes? Start thinking about your business in larger measures and see if your model can be applied on a more massive scale.
These three strategies can help build you and your businesses forward and are therefore responsive. Reaction is often an emotional response that drags you down. Be responsive, forward-thinking, and push yourself to be better as a leader.
Dan and Linda are truly an inspiration. Though we all haven't been told we have two years left to live, we can live and work as if we've been given that same choice. There is nothing holding us back from choosing to have a strong daily routine, having a long-term vision and breaking rules so that we take control of our businesses and lives and live to the fullest.
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As I work with entrepreneurs, small business owners, and sales leaders, I continue to see one main difference between very successful people and unsuccessful ones. That difference can be illustrated using a simple analogy: When one goes to the doctor with some ailment, the doctor will typically prescribe some treatment and ask for a follow-up visit.

Respond, Don't React, For Leadership Success

Reaction And Response

Break Rules

Have Vision

Create a Daily Routine

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