Lip-Sticking

Rekindling Your Love for Your Job

Guest post by AmyK Hutchens

“Love withers with predictability; its very essence is surprise and amazement. To make love a prisoner of the mundane is to take its passion and lose it forever.”  ~ Leo Buscaglia, author, motivational speaker and professor

Can you remember a time when you were excited about your work and had extra pep in your step walking into the office?  Remember when you could not wait to get up in the morning?  Or, have your days unfortunately become predictable, mundane and even worse -- passionless? If you were to take a step back and look at your career as you would a relationship, would you say the honeymoon stage is over?

Though the above quote may be about a love of the romantic kind, its sentiment can ring just as true when it comes to one’s job. What if you could regain the excitement for your mission at work and find a way to fall back in love with your job? Would you want to go to work if you could experience the same symptoms of falling in love?

Butterflies in your stomach, a quickened heartbeat, and big, goofy smile that you wear all day, a feeling that the world is wonderful and full of meaning, and beaming goofiness at everyone who crosses your path…

The early stages of a relationship are built on attraction. Physical attraction. You're drawn toward someone who turns you on and lights your fire. Missing this fire at work?  (And I don't mean the lack of a cute co-worker.) You can spark these flames of passion at work just like you do in a personal relationship.  When it comes to attraction, chemicals such as phenethylamine, dopamine, and oxytocin flood your system.  These chemicals keep your mood elevated, senses extra alert, and give you the urge to bond with others. As this chemical romance increases, your attraction to the object of your desire intensifies and you start to feel just a wee bit giddy.

Summer Travel Sparks Business Ideas

Guest post by AmyK Hutchens

Need another excuse for a little R&R? Boost your creativity by getting away from it all. The most creative, innovative executives take leisure travel on purpose. And that purpose is not just for R&R, it’s for I&R – innovation and re-creation! They know that travel can induce brain activity in the form of theta waves. OK, they may not know much about “theta waves,” but they do know that whatever the wave, so many of their most excellent ideas ride them. These waves enable connections between formerly disparate ideas. In a theta state, brain cells never before connected find each other for the first time, and voilá, or Eureka! A new idea is born…no surfing required.

Long ago Gutenberg was quite pleased printing with the moveable tin type he had invented. Whenfaced with a request to print an inordinate amount of Bibles in a truncatedamount of time…he traveled. He took a trip into town to the local wine festival. While sipping the local Riesling he pondered the wine press across the street. Eureka! From the wine press to the printing press, the famous Gutenberg Bible was the innovative result.

The Key to Getting Your Team on Track—Give them All D’s

Guest blog by AmyK Hutchens, AmyK International, Inc.

Imagine if you could get your team on board to work in concert and change the future of your company for the better. What if, in the process, you were also able to give them a greater sense of worth and to inspire them to work toward new goals as a team?

Which enhancements to our product or service will make the biggest difference?  How can we cut costs?  Do things better, faster? Stand out from the competition? Every day you are faced with a myriad of challenges in making important decisions, creating innovative plans and taking action! The most critical of these steps is the initial decision you make, and I’m here to let you in on a secret to success – the best decisions are often not made alone.  By charting the path alone and expecting your team to follow you are missing out, not only on important feedback, but on using the decision-making process to gain buy-in and acceptance.  Instead, you will be amazed at the options that will arise when you give your team D’s.

Stress…A Necessary Part of The Holidays, And Life?

Guest post by AmyK Huchens

With the holidays quickly approaching and still so much to do this time of year, chances are, you like many people may be feeling stressed. Stress will never go away, and you may be surprised to know it is actually needed. That doesn’t stress you out does it?!

It’s when you mismanage stress or when you don’t manage it at all that it creates trouble. While too much stress can be mentally, emotionally and physically disruptive, (cortisol, a stress related hormone, when overproduced leads to heart disease, which is the #1 killer of women in the U.S.) not having enough stress can reduce your motivational resources and your energy levels.

Finding the right amount of stress to achieve optimal levels of performance is no easy task, and your ideal stress level is unique to you. Learning how to move from a victim of uncontrollable circumstances to a manager of your own priorities will help stop the devastating effects stress has on your mind and body, and while you will never be able to get off that speeding bus, you can take over the wheel and slow it down.

How can you start creating balance and reduce your stress in regard to your daily schedule of activities? You can’t.

Generational Selling

Guest post by AmyK Hutchens

With the holiday season upon us every retailer across the nation is gearing up for a way to reach out to their customers in a razzle-dazzle kind of way and get them to spend their precious gift giving dollars on their goods.  Marketing experts will be consulted, ad teams hired, and jingles recorded. Most of us will ignore all of it. Why? Because it's not about us. It's about them.

If retailers really want our attention, then instead of marketing to us with a "one holiday commercial campaign fits all" attitude, they might try a "this is all about you" approach.

Consumer purchasing power is widespread across the generations, and those retailers who know exactly who they are targeting will enjoy this holiday season immensely.

Who are you…essentially?

Guest post by AmyK Hutchens

 Debbie* is brilliantly creative. She leads the public relations campaigns for one of the largest healthcare facilities in the United States, but she yearns to be her own boss, brave the entrepreneurial path, and reinvent the long forgotten power of the written word. Jill* is an intellectual, with a brain that moves at warp speed. She has advanced degrees in education and worked as an elementary school principal while writing her doctoral thesis. As her mind mulled over the complex issue of praising children for their results or their efforts, her soul asked if it could go outside, sit under a tree and write fiction. 

These two smart, savvy and socially adept women were successfully climbing a career ladder, until their essential selves essentially threw a tantrum. Socially, these women earned top marks. They were accepted by friends, family, and society for being wonderful pillars of social order, but their inner knowing, their essential self, was tired of pleasing everybody else, tired of playing the game, tired of repressing deeper feelings and real dreams.

Is your brand creating thirst?

Guest post by AmyK Hutchens

In the mid 70s a famous perfume commercial told young women everywhere they could “bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never let their husbands forget they’re a man.”   The quintessential do everything, be everything woman of the decade was there on the TV emulating what women wanted and showing young girls what they could aspire to. The Super Woman race had officially begun.

Thirty-some years later, women today can visually recall with crystal clarity the beautiful and sexy model who intimidated us in her business suit and beguiled us in a sequin gown. We can hum the jingle and recite the lyrics almost verbatim, as we remember the analogy of her fanning money for “bacon”.  Why? Because that commercial ingeniously burned, e.g. branded, an emotional response in our brains. It piqued our curiosity, asking us, “Do you thirst for this lifestyle?” And women everywhere shouted a resounding, Yes!

And while the famous ad jingle is now just an ever popular click on Youtube, providing women these days with a giggle as we look back and think, That was my role model message at age eight, orThat WAS me, attempting to set large rollers in my hair while simultaneously balancing the books of a business and being home by six to serve a five-course dinner for my family of four.  Whichever the case, the tune and the images this perfume company sold us still lives on in our psyche. What magic spell was cast upon millions of women the day they sat in front of their television set, (sans cell phone, laptop and remote) and were baited, hooked, and caught on the idea that they could attain: corporate business skills, seduction techniques and chef de haute cuisine talents all from a perfume?  A magic spell cast through a little brainwashing.

Are Your Sales Conversations Telling the Right Story?

Guest Post by AmyK Hutchens

Just last December, Sharon, a harried CEO, shared that her executive team needed leadership training. With tighter profit margins, a faster pace, a growing customer base and more competitors, she needed her executive team to think, communicate, innovate and lead better, and… handle stress better. 

The CEO was presented with five new core concepts about leadership. Impressed with the fresh thinking, she had the first concept introduced to her team. Within two weeks they were having shorter, more productive meetings, communicating more thoughtfully via email, addressing challenges more directly, working more collaboratively and… even smiling more.  All this came about by being introduced to a few key tools and being guided on how to best to use them within one core leadership competency. Imagine what might happen when they become familiar with and incorporate all five?!

Balance – Myth or Method?

By AmyK Hutchens

Work/life balance: just uttering the phrase evokes emotion in most entrepreneurs and business leaders. And the emotive behaviors most often displayed? Laughter… followed closely by dismissal.  Work/life balance?  In real life, the concept most resembles a circus act, juggling, rather than some Zen-like homeostasis described in the “woo-woo” realm of life-coach mumbo jumbo. Balance for most professionals is a myth or, at best, a wistful goal as readily attainable as self-actualization. Ah yes…but when we attain it, won’t our lives be perfect?! Absolutely.

In the meantime, however, there are at least a few things we can do to achieve relative stability in our fast moving, perpetually changing, slightly stressful lives.

The Benefits of Tossing Your Employee Handbook

by AmyK Hutchens

The photo on page 25 shows your marketing department playing ping-pong in the cafeteria.  The caption next to your director’s shirt reads, “No tie required, but ironing is encouraged.”  Another picture includes your shipping department filling out their March Madness brackets and the description reads, “Playing for fun only, no money changes hands. Aren't they a well-groomed looking crew?”  The receptionist’s picture has an arrow pointing to her legs with this tag:  “Nylon hose is optional. We left that back in the 1970s and we welcome your comfort.” 

These pictures are not pinned up in the storage room behind the 5-gallon water bottles or in the lunchroom where they’re sure to be bleached by the sun’s rays. Rather, they are strategically and playfully illustrating the company’s culture and policies in a book created BY the employees to get buy-in FROM the employees.