Despite never working at a five-star restaurant, attending a single cooking class, or training under a revered chef, Ray has made a name for herself as one of the industry’s most successful cooks. She is one of Food Network television’s most popular hosts, the author of numerous bestselling cookbooks, and editor-in-chief of her own magazine. More recently, Ray stepped out even farther into the limelight with her own hour-long daytime talk show, “Rachael Ray”. What does Rachael Ray do when she has a break from her busy schedule? She takes time to relax:

“My rule is that whenever I have off 36 hours or more, I go to my home upstate. I like being home. I like a cozy life. The sky is darker, the stars are brighter, and things make more sense to me when I’m in the middle of the woods.”

On Sunday night, after completing my motorcycle course, I headed up to my family’s lake house to relax and enjoy the rest of the long weekend. I have always found spending time there and getting away from my business to be an invaluable experience. It’s a time to reflect on what you are currently doing, step away from the daily grind, recharge your batteries, and spark new ideas.

If you are feeling stressed about your business, here is my top 7 list of things to do to relax.

1) Get Away. As Rachael Ray suggests, getting away helps bring some sense to your life and settles you down. Try not to work next weekend and see how much more relaxed you become. The inbox will never be empty so don’t kill yourself trying to empty it.

2) Take a Walk. Almost every day I take a walk in the middle of the day to get out. It clears my mind, helps me focus and gives me some activity to get me out of my chair.

3) Eat Something Healthy. Bring healthy snacks to the office or stock your fridge if you work from home. Pigging out on junk food will cause mood swings and upsets your body’s ability to regulate its energy. I usually bring two fruits to the office and have a healthy sandwich for lunch.

4) Breathe. A great trick to use if you feel like things are getting out of control is to take 10 deep breaths. Breathe in for as long as you can, hold them for as long as you can, and exhale as slowly as you can. It is guaranteed to calm you down.

5) Focus on Something Positive. Think about what is going well with your business and why you started it in the first place. We too often focus only on putting out the fires and forget about the good things with our companies.

6) Exercise. Find something active to do that will take your mind off of work. I picked up dancing salsa and am usually out two to three times per week. It keeps my body active and helps me remember that there is more to life than work.

7) Avoid Negative People. This ties in to #5. Get yourself into a workplace where the people around you are supportive. An employee / partner /  co-worker with a negative attitude will only bring you down. If you spend most of your day working it should be with people who are positive and will help you get to where you want to be!

Evan Carmichael

This weekend my fiance and I went to get our motorcycle license. We enrolled in a weekend course where you do three days of instruction followed by a road test. My fiance got a perfect score and I racked up four demerit points (you fail if you get 12 points or more). Throughout the weekend I was thinking about what business lessons could be learned from this experience and came up with my top four:

1) Get expert help.

By taking the course we learned from people who have been riding motorcycles for years. They told us how to operate them and what to watch out for. By absorbing the information from their experiences we were able to cut the learning curve down dramatically and be proficient at riding a motorcycle despite having no previous experience ourselves.

The same applies for your business. If you are trying to grow a company there are going to be many challenges that you will face where it will be brand new to you. This is the perfect time to bring in an expert to help. It could be in the form of a consultant, a joint venture partnership, an investor, or a new employee. You cannot do everything yourself and if you try it will take you too long to figure it out to do it properly. Know what you are good at and focus in on those strengths. Find experts to come in and surround yourself with so that you can tackle the challenges ahead effectively. Also consider creating a board of advisors to help you focus on the big picture and give you solid advice on building a company.

2) Listen to your peers.

In our particular course we had 40 students and eight instructors. That means five students to each instructor and made it impossible for you to always get the undivided attention of the instructors. The students, however, learned from each other. A number of the mistakes that I was making were pointed out by my fellow students and it helped me progress.

In the business world the same logic applies. You cannot be isolated and operate in a vacuum. By listening to those around you - customers, suppliers, investors, partners, etc you are more likely to know how to improve your product or service to best meet the needs of the market. Attend trade shows, read the important publications about your industry and follow trends through services like Google News. Also consider talking to your indirect competition. You might be able to co-operate on a few projects and they can likely give you valuable information that can help you better target your clients.

3) Trust your instincts.

No matter how much the instructor tells you to do something, you don’t really learn how to ride a motorcycle until you get on it and start riding. A lot of it comes quite naturally and you need to combine the knowledge you have gained with your instincts to react to different situations.

In the business world you can have all the training and market research in the world but the projects don’t always succeed. There is never enough information to make a proper decision and by the time the information comes to play you have likely already missed out on the opportunity. You need to learn to trust your instincts given the information you have and be prepared to act on it so you can capitalize on the opportunity at hand.

4) Offer incentives to join.

One of the benefits of taking the motorcycle training course that we did is that, if you pass, you get 20% off of your insurance on your motorcycle. The insurance companies recognize the training as something safer drivers do and they give you a break on your payments. That 20% can quickly add up to major savings and help make the training course pay for itself. We even had a number of experienced riders take the course just to get the insurance discounts. It is a great business strategy to tie the program into the insurance companies.

What kind of similar programs could you work out with your company? A good tool to use is to look at where your clients are spending their money before they get to you and after they work with you. What kind of products and services are they purchasing? What are the nice to haves versus the must haves? Once you have created your list, contact the providers of these products and services to try and make a deal together. Ask if you can take their regular referral fee and turn it into a discount for your clients. That way you can use it as a marketing tool to bring new clients into your business.

If your product, for example, costs $500 and you can offer $500 or more in free bonuses or discounts from items that the customer would have to buy in the future anyway, why wouldn’t they sign up with you? A key aspect to keep in mind here is to make sure that what you offer has real value and are those must haves instead of nice to haves. If there is no perceived value then your clients won’t care how high a dollar figure you put on the free bonuses.

I hope you had a fantastic Labor Day weekend!

Evan Carmichael

Our 11th Review our Blog entry comes thanks to Kris Bray from Bizzvo. You can read what he had to say about us in his blog post: Young Entrepreneurs.

Kris is the founder of a web 2.0 style ajax based tool for small business called bizzvo. The projected originally started when Kris needed something for his own company to manage his contacts send emails to clients prospects and print invoices to bill his customers. Well the project grew to be quite more than just for himself. He saw so much potential and became quite passionate about the project that he even invested my life savings to development. You can learn more at www.bizzvo.com.

Thanks for the review Kris! If you are interested in doing a review, check out our Review Our Blog initiative for instructions.