September 5  
International Day of Charity #CharityDay
National Cheese Pizza Day
 
September 6
Read a Book Day #ReadABookDay
 
September 7
Labor Day #LaborDay
National Beer Lovers Day
 
September 8
International Literacy Day #LiteracyDay
 
September 13
Grandparents Day #NationalGrandparentsDay
 
September 15
International Democracy Day #DemocracyDay
 
September 21
International Day of Peace #PeaceDay
Miniature Golf Day #MiniGolfDay
 
September 22
Autumn Equinox – First Day of Fall
 
September 23
International Day of Sign Languages
 
September 24
World Maritime Day
 
September 27
World Tourism Day
 
September 29
International Coffee Day
 
September 30
International Podcast Day #InternationalPodcastDay

If there is one thing that is true, it’s that things change!

The Market goes up and down, Government starts out great then crumbles, children develop their own minds and take over the ownership of themselves…. and when things change, we are challenged.

What worked before stops working. Then we have a choice, keep beating a dead horse, or adapt.
This spring we noticed a tree in our front yard that had no buds. All the other trees in the neighborhood were blooming, but ours was dead. We had a choice. Leave it there, standing as if it was fine, or cutting it down and plant a new tree.
When you look around at others in your industry, are there things that they are doing to bring forth fruit, that maybe you neglected?

It is an honest question, just between me and you – no one else will know.

This is where a secret ingredient can be tucked in your back pocket.
Accountability to rise up to the challenge of change.

When you need to see better results, you need to take better actions! You need to change, and with that, you need a strategy to overcome your challenge.

Here are three simple steps that will have you overcoming your challenges today and seeing better results tomorrow:

1. Isolate the obstacle.
Single out exactly what is in your way. Is it time management? Lack of a network? Inability to close deals? Being too reactive and out of control? Are you resisting getting on and using Facebook? If you had to isolate one challenge – what would it be?

2. Clarify the needed action/s.
Take your obstacle and clarify what a possible solution would be?

I would highly suggest getting in a great frame of mind first! Think about how much love you have for your family or go on a brisk walk somewhere beautiful. Visit a bird sanctuary or zoo. If you are spiritual, go to a local Labrynth and enlarge the capacity of your mind.

Then when your mind is in a positive state, ask it “What action do I need to take to overcome this challenge?”

When we are in a high state of mind, we have an amazing ability to access the ‘executive centre’ of our brain (rather than being stuck in the animal nature), and in that place there are many answers waiting to come to light!

What is an action you can take? Get super clear.

Perhaps you will realize that you need to pick up your phone and call through your entire database and let your network know that you are thinking about them and are here to help.

Maybe you need to stop procrastinating and start doing a certain thing.

Another action you could take is to read a great book on getting more organized like Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Successful People.”

You may be surprised that your brain already knows what you can do to solve your challenge!

3. Reach out for accountability.
As I often say, “Leaders are not afraid of immediate discomfort, they are motivated by future triumphs!”

It might hurt your pocket-book, or your schedule, but reach out to others for accountability. Start a business mastermind group, join a support group online, hire a coach.

Once you have an idea on a course of action, you must find the motivation to take action. If you can’t make yourself do what must be done, then include someone in that process with you.

What separates us is the ability for transformation, to pick ourselves back up off the ground, to try again. Yes, things are always changing, but you, my friend, can overcome your challenges using these three simple steps.
​
Written by Sue Styles
Canada’s bossy business coach and one mother of a motivator!
Sue helps entrepreneurs organize their efforts, focus on what matters, and put proper basic foundations into place so that businesses can grow. She teaches practical business tactics from lead generating to client loyalty so that you can close more deals in style!
Sue has been interviewed in FORBES Magazine, is a guest contributor for R.E.M. Online and Host of Youtube’s Hindsight’s 20/20.
www.suestyles.com

Dakota Kidby of Social Centric Inc. will be leading our AMBADEVELOPS Lunch & Learn Tour to provide insight into emerging digital & social media strategies, the latest innovative technologies, and best practices to move your business to the next level.

Tell us about you.
I'm a social media marketing consultant with a public relations and marketing background spanning over 11 years. When I'm not out marketing my wonderful clients to the interweb, I enjoy learning about wine and cooking or hiking with my five-year-old labradoodle Bailey!

Do I have to be on every social network?
NO. Absolutely not. And you shouldn't be..... why? Not every social network might make sense for you. Not to mention, to be on every network is a tonne of work.

What type of content should I share?
Engaging, meaningful content that speaks to your consumer, is brief and visual in nature and always concise.

What’s the best time to post?
If you are just starting out, the best time to post is between 11AM and 2PM.
Otherwise you can look into your analytics to see when your users are online.

Should I pay for social media advertising?
It depends, what is your budget and what is your capacity? Don't outspend your budget when you might be able to do it yourself. If you have built in social marketing to your marketing plan, then yes, hiring a professional can make life easier.

What’s my social media ROI?
Engagement. Staying away from getting too wrapped up in vanity metrics and tracking who is coming to you from social. You can do this via a "how did you hear about us?" campaign, lead generation and more.

Dakota Kidby
Social Centric Inc.

Seasonal slowdowns are a reality and all businesses go through peaks and troughs. Whether it’s the time of year when clients may not require your services or whether your customers are not in a position to purchase property due to COVID related issues, businesses often go through challenging times.

Here are our top tips that will help you stay productive and keep working towards success, even during the slow times.

Create a strategic plan
It’s easier to accomplish anything with a plan. A strategic plan covers all the things your business can do and narrows it down to things it is actually best at doing. Pinpoint your competitive advantage and start by stating what your business can do better than any other company. When you understand that your competitive advantage is critical for success, that’s when you work towards drawing customers to use your services instead of your competitors. Moreover, for being more profitable, examine your customers’ needs and how you can provide value to your customers.

Develop an audience persona
Without any doubt, your audience is the driving force and lifeline of your business. The best way to start is by seeing your website’s analytics. It will give you a lot of useful information like where your visitors came from (both geographical and referral sources), which types of articles they viewed the most, and how long they spend on a specific page. Another way to garner insights is by connecting with your audience on social media. Your strategy can be fed well by customer service interactions. Consider your team's feedback on the audience they're interacting with the most.

Conduct competitive research
Understanding your competitors is important for any business. Good competitor research is an essential tactic to figure out what your competitors are doing and what threat they may present to your firm. The first step is to identify your top ten competitors. There are various tools available online that can help you discover your top competitors. Look closely to see what they are doing differently – this may be their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts or social media campaigns. This may give you an idea of where in your business you should be spending more time and money.

Business needs maintenance
Every business needs constant up-to-date technology solutions. Luckily, it is easier than you think. All you have to do is regularly schedule to maintain each part of your business, from network monitoring to malware scans. Your business’s success largely depends on having access to innovative software and tools that are fully functional without any security gaps. You can avoid various issues by simply backing up important data regularly. Also have anti-malware measures installed because any network that connects to the internet is vulnerable to malware, which can eventually cause irreversible damage.

Market your business
Marketing your business online has become crucial as well as easy within the last decade. Try to socialize more and more on social media. Popular social media channels include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn, Google Plus, and Snapchat. All of these social media platforms are unique and have unique ways of engagement. Rather than trying to master all at once, pick a few and master them first. Also, create valuable content through blogging, creating videos, or hosting podcasts. Know what your customer wants and be consistent everywhere your brand goes.

Increase sales leads
Define a clear value proposition. Describe your offerings clearly, why that offering is relevant to your business needs, and how the company will deliver its promise. Don’t just settle for good content, go for relevant content that engages and informs your potential customers. Remember that your website is your best lead generation channel; optimize all pages to convert various buyers.

Build a personal brand
A personal brand is who you are what you stand for, the values you embrace, and how you express those values. In order to build a personal brand that reflects your personal and professional identity, you must figure out who you are. Ask yourself a few questions like, what motivates you? In which areas you excel? Which roles drain your energy? Imitate successful people and then do better.

Check out this article by Shannon Hewlko of Hewlko Creative Direction + Design: How to build a personal brand.

Provide value to your customers
If you want your target audience to choose you before your competitors, then give them real value. Understand and meet your potential customer’s needs and comprehend what is valuable for them. Try to be innovative. Solve your customers’ problems in a completely new and different way through blogs, articles or sharing relevant news on your social media channels. Ask for their valuable feedback. This will help you understand what your users think of your brand, allowing you to improve and build good relations with customers.

Prioritize your personal development
Personal development can be achieved by taking the time to set and reach our goals. Setting life goals can enhance your career prospects, increase your self-confidence, and lead to a more fulfilling life. A goal without a plan is just a wish. Set a time to reevaluate your progress.
​
The AMBA Webinar Series will be returning soon, bigger and better than before! We have incredible speakers lined up who will educate and inspire. More information coming soon.

As many people are now working remotely due to social distancing measures taken to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19), video meetings are more important than ever. Like many of you, the AMBA team use Zoom for our weekly webinar series, team meetings and more.
However, videoconferencing can create a divide between the people communicating. Guaging responses to presentations and conversations is tough over video. Still, there are several body language and facial expression cues that you can read on camera. Listed below are some tips to read the body language of your client in a video meeting.
Notice the posture
No matter what the video quality is, you can easily notice their body posture. Make sure you watch the client’s posture throughout the video meeting and pay attention to changes. An individual who goes from sitting straight to leaning back depicts boredom. An interested client will sit straight up with expressions of interest.
Subconscious gestures
Small gestures reveal a lot about a person, a lot more than an individual can even realize. Strong active nods are a sign of agreement, while a tilt shows confusion or disagreement. The person’s hands, light tapping on the table, and fidgeting are often signs of boredom or distraction.
Facial expressions
Eye contact is a great way to understand facial expressions and to keep the client engaged. If the person is furrowing their brows or ignoring eye contact, you may have lost the individual’s interest. On the other hand, if the person’s brows are relaxed and there is a smile on the face, it’s a positive sign.
Movement
Video conferencing limits you to watch only the person’s face and upper body, but you can still see a lot of individual movements. Shifting position now and then is a sign of boredom. It could also show that the person finds it difficult to sit still for long. Videoconferencing has its limitations, but it can still be used to determine important things about your clients.

​The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has resulted in many people working from home. There's many tools out there for making working with your team sharing content easier - here's a few that the AMBA team swear by!
Trello
Trello- an efficient and transparent business tool that makes the team create, design, and allocate the task in visual interface. As a user of this tool, it offers the ultimate benefit to develop cards for each and every task and sort them in any manner, i.e. department wise, etc. As soon as one of the task progresses, it makes the team members move towards the other category of the cards. Hence, serving as a tool which allows all the members of the team to be aware of the projects’ progress. In comparison to email, this collaborative tool has been witnessed as an engaging one.
Serene
Serene is an application that assist businesses in dealing with specific issues by letting the team stay focused and achieve the ultimate goals. This tool shows its’ importance with the fact that it lets the team go with their goal.
Slack
Slack is among the essential business tools or say a perfect communication management app that suites well with the task that needs to done remotely. As a business owner, you’ll be free enough to develop a channel for separate departments of the team where direct messages can be send over. Its basic features comprises drag-drop files, pinning the documents, and bookmarking of the messages. Being a quicker, efficient, and a user-friendly app, slack application cuts down the internal emails.
Where the remote team makes use of slack, it works as a water cooler that helps in the developing the bonding between the members of the team.
Google drive
This is one of the prioritized tools when it comes to working from home. None of the business would lose important details. Therefore, makes use of google drive that serves as a platform where one can keep all of the files in a centralized location. The team members can easily store and share the documents, excel files, as well as the PPT presentations. The tool further allows synchronizing of the files so that each member of the team can view it and have it updated.
Zoom
Zoom is an essential home business tool that works as a perfect end-to-end conferencing tool, used mainly for the purpose of engaging the team members and having an efficient and productive meetings conducted. It is rich in features that are demanded including the sharing of content, screen sharing, local recording, etc. Hence, an exclusive tool for sharing the ideas among the participants in comparison to all the other available tools.
A beginner can easily have it downloaded and send the meeting link which can be reached upon by the other members via any android device or personal computer.
Monday
Monday refers to an efficient project management platform where the entire business team can assist each other via allowing them to track every type of work going on, task management, and the execution of number of task. Just like how Air works, Monday ensures the integration of numerous yet favorable business tools which is also referred to as a core feature for the modern day users.

Brett Wilson is one of Canada’s favorite dragons from the CBC show Dragon’s Den. He wrote a book called “Redefining Success” after he lost his family in the pursuit of business and riches. I have it here on my shelf. One excerpt says,
“ along the path to business success, he tripped over a multitude of misguided priorities. For many years, Wilson pursued business with uncompromising focus, working long hours, 7 days a week. In the process his marriage and his health suffered greatly …” It is true, we get what we focus on.

Starting a new career and business is often thrilling and (nerve-racking) to begin with, but the excitement of hustling and doing another deal can often merge into and replace other priorities if we are not careful.

In the first few years, you may excuse the constant distractions, but many solopreneurs recognize that long-term they may be sacrificing the very things that they are working for.
If BALANCE is something you only dream about, then these tips are for YOU!

Here are three ways to make the most of your time and guard your priorities:

Annually
Look ahead over the whole year in your calendar and block off weekends away, holidays and special evenings like birthdays and anniversaries. If you don’t schedule them in, chances are they will not happen. Sure, you may stumble upon a nice long weekend by chance, but don’t leave it up to chance! Prioritize it at the beginning of the year when you create your Business Plan.

Every expert will tell you that marriage and relationships ‘take work’ – my question to you is ‘When are you doing the work?”

Daily
During the hours from 5-7 am & pm, engage and be present. The truth is, 75% of your phone activity is not the highest priority. Between 5-7am and pm look at your family, not at your phone. This is a habit you can control.

Choose to guard your family time like Bobby Orr, nothing is getting through when he’s on defense! Getting your children up and out the door on the right foot and getting your day started being pro-active rather than reactive can make all the difference in the world!

I would also highly suggest that children under twelve can greatly benefit from bedtime stories. A simple night-time routine with attention from you will cover a multitude of daily interruptions.

And if you have teens (so sorry! I had four of them at one time, thought my head was going to explode!) – even the coolest teen will feel special if dates are blocked off for them once a month. A simple Sunday each month, or date night after their sports practice when you give them your focus and just listen to them. Priceless.

Moment by Moment
Oprah had a guest on her television show one time that I will never forget, Toni Morrison. She said, “when someone you love comes into the room, SEE them!” Does your face light-up? A simple habit that takes less than one minute can reap a lifetime of love.

Consider reacting to your family when they enter your space as a privilege and joy rather than an intrusion.
What are the simple, regular moments that you can turn into memories that will last a lifetime? Just think about it.
Cooking in the kitchen could become a relationship-building tradition! Just as simple as that.

I want your business to soar, but I don’t want you to be the next Brett Wilson, with regrets and severed family relationships. The great thing is that IT IS NEVER TOO LATE! Brett has exemplified this as he repaired the damage done and re-established relationships with all of his children.
​
Take to heart some simple time management strategies and create the balance that you need, and your family wants.

Written by Sue Styles
​Canada’s bossy business coach and one mother of a motivator!
Sue helps entrepreneurs organize their efforts, focus on what matters, and put proper basic foundations into place so that businesses can grow. She teaches practical business tactics from lead generating to client loyalty so that you can close more deals in style!
Sue has been interviewed in FORBES Magazine, is a guest contributor for R.E.M. Online and Host of Youtube’s Hindsight’s 20/20.
www.suestyles.com