Don Roulo is the CEO (Chief Encouragement Officer) of Life Quest. He is a life, career and business coach as well as a Certified 48 Days Workshop Facilitator. He travels nationally and internationally to conduct business and career training as well as marriage and family workshops.

By DON ROULO

Last week I started a two part series on the three must haves to achieve personal and professional success – people, time and money. I started out with how these three must haves are important to our personal success. I did this first because I believe it to be the foundation to our overall life success. Remember, your long term professional success can never rise above the level of your personal and family success – never!

If you work the normal 40 hours a week, you spend as much time, if not more, with co-workers as you may spend with your family. These work relationships play a huge part in your professional success. You have the opportunity to learn from those you work with. You also have the opportunity to teach those around you at work as well. Building good relationships can do nothing but help you succeed.

If you own a business of any type, you have employees and customers. How you treat and relate to your employees will determine your success. Your employees’ talent, skill and creativity solve problems and do things you alone could not do.

Without customers you have no business. Even if you have an online business and don’t see your customers they are the base of your business. There needs to be some form of relationship with your customers. They need to trust you and value your product or service. There is no way around people being a part of your professional success.

You need to become extremely effective in the use of your time. We all only have 168 hours in a week. One of the best uses of your time is to think and dream about your career or business. Too many people are just wandering through their career or business. They give very little thought to their future work except for what is right in front of them. They are reactive to situations which occur instead of being proactive.

In order to be proactive you must take the time to think and dream. Think about the positive and negatives in your professional life and make a plan to move forward. Dreaming is virtually a lost art any more. You need to dream about how to do your job better, make your business more profitable or starting a new business. Turn on your dream machine again.

What can you do to turn on your dream machine? Go fishing and don’t put bait on the hook. Take a walk alone. Turn off the radio, TV and computer to quiet your brain. As I said last week, I have 2 and a half hours of uninterrupted time when I mow my grass. What can you do to give you time to think and dream?

Zig Ziglar says, “Money is not the most important thing in life, but it is a close second to oxygen on the ‘gotta have it’ scale.” One of the main reasons we all work or have a business is to make money. However, money is simply a tool to take care of your families and help others. It is a method of exchange.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin has a great way of looking at money. He says money is simply green certificates of appreciation. You receive green certificates of appreciation when you provide time, goods or services someone appreciates. In turn, you give green certificates of appreciation when someone has provided you with time, goods or services you appreciate. We all like getting green certificates of appreciation don’t we?!

No one can achieve great professional success without valuing people in their life, taking time to think and dream and simply remember money is just a tool to make life work.