A Word from A
WAHM
"A
Gift For You"
- ©
1999, by Cheryl Demas
-
I dreaded the first Halloween after my
daughter was diagnosed with diabetes. I was afraid that one of
her favorite holidays would become just another occasion for
sadness, a reminder of all of the candy she couldn't have. When
you think about it, candy is a big part of a lot of our holidays,
chocolate eggs at Easter, Christmas has candy canes. But on the
sugar-scale, nothing compares to Halloween.
So, we made an arrangement. I
agreed to buy all of her trick-or-treating candy at the rate
of 10 cents per piece. Nicki had always enjoyed trick-or-treating,
but she was never willing to stay out for too long, so I thought
I was pretty safe with my 10 cent deal.
Because of bad weather, there
weren't many trick-or-treaters out that year, so everyone had
a lot of extra candy. She made sure everyone knew about our arrangement
and the neighbors were more than happy to oblige. They threw
handfuls of candy into Nicki's bag, and told her to come back
again on her way home. She went after candy like Clinton after
an intern.
She came home with almost 15
pounds of candy, and I came home $40 lighter.
She was motivated because she
had a new goal. She wasn't just going after candy, she was on
a mission, a mission to set a new candy-collection record.
If you feel like you're in a
rut with your business, try setting a new goal for yourself.
Make it something concrete, like a dollar sales amount, or a
new traffic level for your website.
Now that you have your goal,
you need an incentive. When we're working by ourselves, we don't
get the typical awards that are often used as incentives in the
traditional workplace. So why not buy yourself a gift certificate?
Choose your favorite store, buy a certificate, write "congratulations!"
on the envelope and put it away until you reach your goal.
Now I've got a certificate to
Macy's waiting for me in my filing cabinet, and I just need to
a few more visitors to WAHM.com this month to reach my goal.
So, pass this on to your friends. I will thank you, and Lenore
in cosmetics will really thank you.
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