by Dustin Wax

No matter what you’re doing, there comes a time when you are going to want to take things up a notch. Maybe it’s your career — even if things are going along fine right now, ultimately you’d like to get a promotion, increase your client base, or reach a larger audience. Or maybe it’s a hobby that you think you’d like to turn into a career.

Getting started with anything can be a struggle, but once you reach a certain level of success, it can be hard to figure out how to make whatever it is you do truly remarkable. The things we do have a way of developing their own inertia, and if we’re not careful, we get carried along in the routine without ever realizing the full potential of what we and our lives can be.

How can you shake things up a bit? What do you have to do to take your project, your career, your product, or your life to the next level?

1. Build Your Brand

Long-time readers know that I haven’t always been fond of the idea of personal branding. Consider me convinced.

The strength of your brand is how well you are associated with whatever you do. For instance, lifehack.org offers tips and hacks to increase personal productivity. When people hear the word “lifehack”, they think of personal productivity, and when they hear “personal productivity” they think of lifehack. It’s a pretty strong brand. Some people have equally strong brands: when you hear about permission marketing, chances are you think of Seth Godin.

How strongly is your name linked with what you do? What could you do to link them more strongly? Some things to consider:

• Traditional marketing: Commercials, print ads, billboards, bus wraps — anything that gets your name and message in people’s faces. There are a few problems, though: people might mistake your message, linking you with the wrong speciality; people tend to tune out a lot of advertising as a survival mechanism; people often respond negatively to blatant branding efforts; it’s quite expensive.
• Blogging: A blog is a conversation with your audience, and can help build up a loyal following that actually cares about what you do.
• Word-of-mouth: Hard to create and hard to fake, but very effective. Seek out people with a great deal of influence and focus on convincing them of your value. If Seth Godin wrote on his blog that I was the best web writer he knew of, you can bet that within the day my career would be at the next level (maybe the level after that, even!).

2. Build Your Audience

Make a concerted effort to increase the number of people who know about you. Branding is part of this, but it’s not all of it. Give something away, find a new outlet, tell everyone you meet what you do, hand out cards wherever you go, show up at conferences and exhibitions, go to your kids’ classrooms and talk about what you do (and make it interesting enough that they tell their parents). Make yourself useful so people have a compelling reason to pay attention.

3. Increase Your Output

Give your audience, whoever that is, more of what they expect from you. Double, triple, or septuple your output. If you’re a writer, write twice as much. If you’re an actor, get into more plays. If you’re a filmmaker, pledge to produce four short films this year instead of one. Make a painting a day. Aim to top your sales quotas by 50% every month. Do whatever it takes to make yourself more productive. Learn to do whatever you do in half the time — then halve it again. (Read lifehack.org every day, of course!)

4. Improve Your Output

Make whatever you make twice as well. Improve the quality of your work until people have no choice but to stop and gape. Create benchmarks for your output, and aim to top them every single time. Take classes, read book, follow a mentor, practice twice as much, commit yourself to doing what it takes to master your craft or profession.

5. Expand Your Niche

Do what you do now but with a wider outlook. If you write about dogs, start writing about pets in general. If you sell widgets, get into the widget case business. If you’re a musician, learn how to produce. Think about the people whose needs you aren’t meeting, and figure out how to meet them. Don’t try to create a new niche altogether, just look for ways to complement and leverage the work you’re already doing.

6. Restrict Your Niche

Or, do the opposite. Focus yourself on a narrow part of your niche until you’re the only one doing it. If you write about sports, write about baseball, then write about left-handed pitchers. If you make household appliances, make appliances for college students (and then for left-handed college students, maybe). If you paint landscapes, paint trees. If you do marketing consulting, offer viral marketing techniques that work with teenage boys. Become the person people have to go to when they have very specialized needs, because you’re the only one that does it.

7. Cross-Develop

Figure out how to use what you know in an entirely different way. If you coach little leaguers, write a book about coaching. If you offer one-on-one organization coaching, work with a developer to create home organization software. If you’re a TV camera operator, tutor middle schoolers in video podcasting. Find a new way to challenge yourself and put your knowledge to the test — while developing new knowledge and skills.

8. Expand Your Network

Your audience are the people who buy, read, or otherwise use your product; your network are the people that help you make it, market it, or distribute it. Focus on building strong relationships with a variety of people both in and out of your profession. Don’t try to fake it — strong relationships have to be genuine or they won’t last. Join a social networking site like LinkedIn and work it like mad. Go to trade shows, conferences, and exhibitions and talk to every exhibitor and every presenter. Make a list of 20 people in your field you want to know and email them introductions. Build relationships with your 10 best clients. Build relationships with someone from your top competitors (if that’s legal). Join a professional organization and run for an office.

Obviously these are not all exclusive — you can and sometimes have to do more than one at the same time. And they’re not all necessary — some even contradict others. But all of them shake up your routines and make people pay attention to you, whether those people are potential clients, potential customers, or potential partners.

None of these are keys to instant success. All of them require hard work and time to show any effect. If you’re ready to take it to the next level — and you’re ready to put in the work and commitment that entails — then go through the list and ask yourself how each item could help get you there.

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by Matt Eventoff

The ability to communicate effectively is one of the most important skills a person can have. It often determines whether a leader is viewed as being effective or ineffective, a plan is considered successful or a failure, and whether or not a deal gets done.

For a leader, success, or failure, is often determined by one presentation, speech, debate or announcement. With a good performance, an unknown becomes somebody. However, with a poor performance, a promising future may sink into oblivion.

I have had the opportunity to work with leaders throughout the corporate and political worlds. It never ceases to amaze me difference that these three simple steps can make for most people, regardless of talent level, natural communication ability, or leadership position, when it comes to public speaking.

Step 1 – Slow Down!

We have all seen it. A business leader approaches the podium. This individual has a reputation for being knowledgeable, charismatic and informed. Sure enough, the leader makes his or her presentation, is engaging throughout, uses positive body language, yet when he or she glances at the crowd, everyone looks confused, and a little bewildered. The audience probably would have responded to the message being delivered, had they had time to process it.

Slow Down!

Slow Down!

Slow Down!

Public speaking is not a race. People want to hear what you have to say, but you have to give them the ability to. When you are addressing a crowd, whether 5 or 500, every second of silence feels like an eternity – to you. It does not feel like an eternity to your audience, it feels like – a second of silence!

Take brief pause, a breath, a sip of water, whatever you need to do to slow yourself down. Your audience will appreciate it.

Step 2 – Smile!

Smiling is contagious. Period. Smiling will improve your confidence, will improve the disposition of your audience, and will improve your speaking – dramatically. Smiling is the equivalent of body language 101. Nothing will get the audience on your side faster than an authentic, genuine smile.

So you have to give a presentation to your group today, and you didn’t exactly have a great morning. You had a fight with your significant other, your car wouldn’t start, the bus never came, and you feel a cold coming on. You are not exactly in a smiling mood.

Whatever you do, never, ever, fake it. You will not fool anyone, and nothing spells insincerity like a fake smile. Think about your morning. Think about your kids. Think about how funny Larry’s outfit looks. Think how funny you must look!

There is always something that will put a smile on your face, and you are the best person to know what that something is. So think of it, try to put whatever has you upset out of your mind (I know – easier said than done), laugh at how impossible that is, if you have to, but whatever you do – SMILE.

Step 3 – Stay Brief!

Stay brief. Keep it simple. Less is always more. Always.

“These three steps are not guaranteed to make you a great speaker. Becoming a great public speaker requires a significant amount of time, patience, and practice (and training) However, by employing these 3 simple secrets to stronger public speaking, your public speaking will improve, your ability to hold your audience’s attention will improve and you will feel more confident as you speak.

About Matt Eventoff:

The owner of Princeton Public Speaking, Matt Eventoff is a veteran strategist who has had tremendous success leading corporate and political campaigns. He has been intimately involved in all aspects of message development and delivery for more than 15 years.

Matt is highly regarded throughout corporate and political communities for his outside-the-box strategic thinking and communications strategy. He serves as and advisor and trusted confidant for numerous political and corporate leaders.

Matt specializes in preparing and advising corporate and political leaders prior to interaction with the media, corporate restructurings, speeches, negotiations, board meetings, presentations, interviews, conferences and every other speaking engagement or opportunity imaginable.

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The history of Henry Ford and the Model T illustrates a fundamental truth about leadership: leaders never outgrow the need to change.

On his way to dominating the automotive market with the Model T, Henry Ford embodied innovation and progress. By pioneering the assembly line, Ford slashed the amount of time needed to manufacture an automobile. He installed large conveyor belts in his factory, allowing workers to stay in one place rather than roaming around the factory floor. He also shortened the workday of his employees from nine hours to eight hours so that his factories could operate around the clock.

The efficiencies Ford introduced allowed cars to be manufactured at a fraction of their previous costs. In under a decade, automobiles went from being luxuries affordable only to the wealthiest Americans, to being standard possessions of the average American family. Ford profited handily from the popularity of the Model T, and Ford Motor Company grew into an empire.

However, the dominance of Ford Motor Company was short-lived. As competitors changed their operations to copy Ford’s concepts mass production, Henry Ford made a tremendous leadership blunder. With cars rolling off assembly lines like never before, consumers began to demand a variety of colors. However, Ford stubbornly refused, uttering the famous line, “The customer can have any color he wants so long as it’s black.”

In Ford’s mind, producing multiple colors was foolhardy since black paint dried the fastest and could be used most efficiently. Amazingly, Ford did not comprehend the human preference for variety. Customers flocked en masse to other producers who catered to their color preferences, and Ford Motor Company never regained its grip on the market.

For so long, Henry Ford had focused on moving from inefficiency to efficiency that he refused to move in the opposite direction – from efficiency to inefficiency – even when doing so would have been wise and profitable. Ford’s genius in sparking change had catapulted him to the pinnacle of American commerce, but later, his inability to change cost him dearly.

In this edition of Leadership Wired, I’d like to overview the central challenges faced by leaders when they try to make changes in their lives. In doing so, I have drawn upon the wisdom of my friend, Sam Chand, author of the book LADDERShifts, and a prominent thinker in the field of leadership and change.

Issues That Make Change A Challenge

Critics
Along the journey of leadership, you’ll meet all sorts of people, and I guarantee you’ll bump into a few critics. Early in my career, I didn’t know how to handle disapproval, and I bent over backward to keep everyone happy. In spite of my best efforts, I failed. Some of my people still didn’t like me.

Trying to appease everybody invites trouble. Appeasers end up being average because they always gravitate to the middle of the road. They’re afraid to make waves, and therefore, they avoid changes. My leadership began to take flight when I allowed myself to press people to change – whether they thanked me or cursed me.

People You Have Outgrown
As we climb the levels of leadership, we come to the sad realization that most people aren’t committed to personal growth. Friends who once shared our dreams begin to settle for second best. Members of our inner circle quit when the journey gets hard. If we are to change ourselves for the better, then we need to change the company we keep.

Eventually, we must change our relationships by disengaging from the people we’ve outgrown. Disassociating from colleagues can be especially painful given your history together, the contributions they have made in your life, and your personal feelings toward them. Disengaging is painful because you care about them. It’s painful because they may not understand why you’ve drifted away from them. It’s painful all the way around, but remember, unless you are willing to endure these pains, your own growth as a leader will be limited. Leaders only grow to the threshold of their pain.

The Weight of Responsibility
When we’re young, leadership has an idealistic appeal. We yearn to be in charge and out front, making the decisions. However, the reality of leadership involves the heavy burden of responsibility. Missteps by a leader can affect people’s livelihoods or an organization’s sustainability. The fear of getting it wrong can paralyze a leader.

If we, as leaders, want to make significant changes to increase our impact, then we must be willing to shoulder progressively greater loads. Although added responsibility gives us a greater opportunity to exercise leadership, it also magnifies the consequences of our mistakes. To be a change agent, a leader must be willing to take ownership of key projects and pivotal decisions.

Personal Inadequacies
As we grow in our leadership, we advance into uncharted territory – areas beyond our comfort zones. Such occasions give us growing pains by confronting us with our inadequacies. Our wisdom fails to solve a problem, or we stumble into a situation requiring more wisdom than we possess.

Facing our limitations can be daunting. At times, we’d rather stick to familiar roads than blaze a new trail and risk failure. Ultimately, pushing our personal boundaries is the surest way to grow, improve, and expand the scope of our influence.

Review

Issues That Make Change A Challenge:

1. Critics
2. People We’ve Outgrown
3. The Weight of Responsibility
4. Personal Inadequacies

Reprinted with personal permission from Dr. John C. Maxwell

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by Brian Tracy

Entrepreneurship is the art of finding profitable solutions to problems. Every successful entrepreneur, every successful businessperson has been a person who has been able to identify a problem and come up with a solution to it before somebody else did. Here are the five rules for entrepreneurship.

Find A Need And Fill It
First, find a need and fill it. Ross Perot, when he was working for IBM, saw that his customers who were buying IBM computers, needed help in processing their data. He went to IBM with this idea and they said they weren’t interested, so he started his own business. He eventually sold it out for $2.8 billion dollars. He found a need and he filled it.

Find A Problem And Solve It
The second rule is to find a problem and solve it. A secretary working for a small company began mixing flour with nail varnish in order to white out the mistakes she was making in her typing. Pretty soon, her friends in the same office asked if she could make some for them. So she began mixing it on her kitchen table. Then, people in other offices started asking for it, and she eventually quit her business and worked full time creating what is today called Liquid Paper. A few years ago, she sold her company to Gillette Corporation for 47 million dollars.

Customers for Life
The highest paid salespeople and the most profitable companies have the best reputation for customer service. You learn a series of low-cost, no-cost ways to get customers to buy from you, buy again, and tell their friends. A satisfied customer is 10x easier to sell to than a new customer. A referral from a satisfied customer is 15x easier to sell to than a cold call.

Look For Solutions
Find a problem and solve it. Find a problem that everybody’s got and see if you can’t come up with a solution for it. Find a way to supply a product or a service better, cheaper, faster or easier. Clemmons Wilson saw that there was a need for hotels that could accommodate families that were traveling, and he started Holiday Inns. And Holiday Inns has now become one of the most successful hotel chains in the world.

Focus On Your Customer
Here’s the key to success in business. Become obsessed with your customer. Fixated on your customer. Think of the customer. Think of what the customer wants, what the customer needs. What the customer will pay for, what the customer’s problems are. Thomas J. Watson, Senior, the founder of IBM, taught his people and built his company on this principle. See yourself as working for the customer. Once you’ve come up with a product or an idea, then start to invest your time, talent and energy instead of your money, to get started.

The Source of Most Great Fortunes
Remember this, most great fortunes in America were started with an idea and with personal efforts. Most great fortunes were started with the sale of personal services. This is called sweat equity. In other words, instead of cash equity, put in sweat equity. Put in the sweat of your brow to begin your business. You can learn valuable lessons operating on a small scale.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action:

First, find a need and fill it. Look around you and search for needs that people have for products or services that are not being met. One small idea is enough to start you on the way to business success.

Second, find a problem and solve it. Look around you for problems that you or other people have that are not yet being solved. Look for solutions that nobody has thought of and give them a try. One good solution could change the whole direction of your life.

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flickr image by Dalydose

by John Hoff @ eVentureBiz.com

A short time ago I received an email from a young entrepreneur asking me how he was suppose to compete in a marketplace where the competition was high and more established companies had big advertising bucks. I mentioned a few ideas to him but the one that concerned him the most was creativity. Give him numbers and he’ll work them, but tell him to come up with some creative idea, forget it.

He said he doesn’t have a creative bone in his body.

People who tell themselves that have already lost unless they decide to do something about it.

The development of a creative thought process is no different than learning martial arts. At first, someone shows you how to stand, execute proper body movement, and teaches you a Kata (a.k.a form – a set of movements that help develop your technique).

Once these techniques are learned you must practice them to become a good fighter. When fighting, it is taught that the best place for your mind to be is no where at all, called Mushin (means “no mind”). The point of Mushin is to blank out your mind so that you are in a state of “openness.” In other words, it allows you to simply react and not worry about what might happen when fighting.

The same can be said when learning to be creative. You first learn what techniques help develop a creative thought process and then you have to practice them while keeping your mind open to endless possibilities no matter how ridiculous they may seem.

But how do you train your mind to become a well-oiled creative thinking machine?

Like the first sentence of this post says, you have to first believe you are a creative person. Following that you need to exercise your mind in various ways.

Let’s take a look at some creative mind-pumping ideas and activities that will help widen your mind’s creative eye.

I. Listen

Don’t Jump the Gun
It is important listen to everything and not judge or come to your own conclusion prematurely. This is vital if you are to create a product that wins in the eyes of your customers and employer. Remember, listening does not equal simply hearing.

Examining
Try listening to a different radio station (or TV channel). See if you can figure who the intended audience is. Who would be the dedicated listeners and who might be the occasional? What influential people might be listening to this station? What is it’s market?

II. Brainstorm

Brainstorming can be an effective way to generate creative ideas; however, before brainstorming about your subject at hand, try warming up the creative juices.

Warming Up
Grab a pencil and blank piece of paper and just start writing. If nothing comes to mind, write that, then write whatever comes to your mind next no matter what it is. Then expand.

In another example, grab yourself a pencil and paper and create something new and describe it, no matter how absurd it may seem. Try creating a new life form. Where does it come from? What is its goal? Or try creating a person. Who is she? Expand on the idea.

These are good exercises to get you in the mindset of thinking outside the box.

III. Counter the Negatives with Positives

This is probably one of the more important ones to do. Whenever you want to do something but your mind tells you that you can’t, write that thought down and then next to it write down 2 or 3 reasons why you can. Do this quickly and often. Soon you will notice that you have trained your mind to automatically react with a positive thought whenever you think of a negative one.

IV. Be Ready

If you’re searching for creative ideas, keep a pen and pad handy at all times, you never know when a thought might pop into your head – or maybe someone else’s thought spawns a new thought of your own that you can build off of.

For example, one of my favorite shows is Kitchen Nightmares. I was watching an episode one night and Gordon Ramsay was offering up business advice to the store owner. During the show, I kept getting up and jotting down a few ideas that he had mentioned that I wanted to expand on for my blog. The result was an article you can read here.

V. Learn

Obviously, the more you know about everything, the more you can come up with creative ideas by linking things together. You wouldn’t know how Physics and landscaping might go together unless you knew at least a little bit about both.

Therefore, the more you know, the more you can create.

Ideas to help you expand your horizons

• read blogs
• take classes
• read books
• try something you’ve never done before
• teach something to someone
• participate in a group or online community
• talk to people you might not otherwise talk to

Can you add to the list?

VI. Evaluate

Often times I find when I’m stuck in a rut and can’t come up with a creative idea, I evaluate things.

Magazines
If you’re stuck, try flipping through a magazine and evaluate the ads. Which ones catch your attention and why? Who is the target audience? What might you do differently if you were to write the ad? On the ones that catch your attention, how can you modify what they did to what you’re doing?

Your Competition
Get online or flip through the yellow pages and evaluate your competition. See if something they are doing spawns an idea for you. Is there something there you can build on that they could have but didn’t?

Self-Evaluation
Grab a piece of paper and draw a line down the center. Label the left side “My Weaknesses” and the right side “My Strengths.” List all your weaknesses and then under the strengths side, combat those weaknesses with your strengths that might compensate.

You now have a blueprint of what you need to work on and what you have to build off of.

Ask Questions
When stuck on the problem of trying to be creative, ask a series of questions to gain a new perspective of your product or idea.

• What can I substitute?
• What can I add to it to make it a little better?
• What is not needed?
• What is the opposite of this?
• Where did this come from?
• How has something like this been used?
• What else can it be used for?

Can you add any?

VII. Exercise Your Creative Thought Process

Try some of these activities from time-to-time.

• Every day pick any topic and write it down; then create a flow chart and see where the flow takes you.
• Think of a product. How could it have been invented in a different way but produce the same result?
• After reading half a book, close it and write or think about how you would end the story.
• Read non-fiction books and solve the problem before it’s answered.
• Do crossword puzzles, it gets you thinking about all kinds of stuff.

After a while, by doing these exercises you’ll find that your mind approaches ideas in new creative ways.

VIII. Travel

One of the best ways to generate creative ideas is to go to new places or simply just get out and go for a walk. Don’t have the money to travel? No problem. Go where you need to go but get there in a different way.

New experiences and going to new destinations is a great way to gain new perceptions that can generate creativity.

So there you go, 8+ ways to to mold you into a creative thinking machine.

Do you consider yourself creative?

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By: Brian Tracy

The essence of a successful business is really quite simple. It is your ability to offer a product or service that people will pay for at a price sufficiently above your costs, ideally three or four or five times your cost, thereby giving you a profit that enables you to buy and to offer more products and services.

Add Value in Some Way
The key to a successful business is to add value by bringing the product or service from another place to where you’re selling it, or by creating the product or service and selling it at a price higher than your total cost of production. You become wealthy by either selling a few products or services at high prices, or by selling many products or services at lower prices with smaller profits.

The Best Strategy of All
The best strategy, of course, is to aim to sell a larger volume with a smaller profit on each item. Most great fortunes in America have been made selling large quantities of products over a wide area, thereby broadening the market and reducing your dependency on just a few customers.

Go From the Known to the Unknown
Early in my business career, I learned another key rule for business success and it’s simply this. Start off in an established field and only experiment with new products or services out of your profits from your established business.

Success Leaves Tracks: Follow Them
One reason many entrepreneurs fail is that they have grandiose ideas of being the first into the market with a brand new, untried, unproven product. Don’t you fall into this trap. As you begin to magnetize your mind with visual images of wealth and success, as you begin looking everywhere for profitable ideas, you will begin to attract into your life the people and opportunities you need to achieve your goals. I’ve learned from long experience that you must learn to trust your intuition, your gut feeling concerning any business decision.

Flood Your Mind With Ideas
Read every publication, explore every opportunity. Remain open to all ideas. But in the final analysis, trust yourself. Trust your inner voice to tell you the right thing to do. All great businesspeople become great by listening to their inner guide. It will never fail to lead you to your highest good and heaven help the person who refuses to listen to it.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to start a successful business by trusting your intuition before you make a final decision:

First, always remember that the key to success in business is your ability to add value to your customers by providing them with something they want and need at a price that enables you to make a profit. Keep your thinking focused on the benefit that your customer will enjoy from what you are offering.

Second, get all the information you possibly can. Speak to as many people as possible. And finally, sit down quietly by yourself and listen to your intuition before you make the final decision. This is the best investment of all.

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Give yourself pep talks.

Take a moment in the morning of each day, to actually tell yourself how much you love yourself. Talk to yourself and remind yourself of your successes. Focus on the future, and live in the moment. Learn to get better each and every day.

The more that you focus on the negative and dumb stuff that you have done, the more that the guilt and the feelings of inadequacy pops into your existence.

Gratitude is the most powerful word in the English Dictionary.

Here is a podcast that I did back in 2005 for Hunatrainer.com Community Boardcast. It was an interesting moment in my life where I had an epiphany pertaining to relationship and abandonment. I let it go, and with the magic of a song it creates a pretty interesting 15 minutes or so of audio.

 CG019.mp3 Abandonment Issues via HunaTrainer, Sept 2005

Successfully,

Travis Wright

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On January 20, 1961 Jim Kouzes was first inspired to dedicate himself to leadership. That was the day he was one of only a dozen Eagle Scouts who served in John F. Kennedy’s Honor Guard at the Presidential Inauguration.

CG.com #017 Podcast – Jim Kouzes

I was very honored to interview with Mr. Kouzes. For over 25 years, they have interviewed countless leaders and developed the widely used and highly acclaimed Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI), a 360° questionnaire assessing leadership behavior to over 250,000 individuals.

He talks about some of the key traits for leaders to explore new ideas and to dive into helping their members grow as people.

He talks about The Five Practices of leadership, which are:

1. Challenging the process
2. Inspiring a shared vision
3. Enabling others to act
4. Modeling the way
5. Encouraging the heart

And he answers questions such as:

• What is the one thing you have done this week to make you better than last week?
• What are some of your productivity tricks?
• What advice would you give a CEO of a startup company?
• What are the most troubling aspects of leadership today. What are people encountering problems with?

Jim Kouzes is the coauthor with Barry Posner of the award-winning and best-selling book, The Leadership Challenge, with over one million copies sold. He’s also an executive fellow, Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University. Pick it up and absorb the wisdom.

Books that Jim Kouzes Recommends:

Anything by Warren Bennis
The Change Masters- by Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Leadership – James McGregor Burns

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By Carmine Gallo

Great leaders inspire. They inspire everyone in their personal and professional lives, including customers, colleagues and employees. Here are five men who stand apart, and what we can learn from each of them.

Richard Branson, Founder, Virgin Group

Richard Branson turned a small student magazine into one of the largest and most diverse conglomerates in the world. His Virgin empire now extends to airplanes, soft drinks, music, mobile phones, and more (some 350 companies in all!). After launching his magazine, Branson started a small record mail-order business and opened a music shop in London. His record label, Virgin Records, signed an artist who would become a bestselling hit maker at the time, Mike Oldfield. Virgin also introduced the Sex Pistols and Culture Club to the world.

Branson went on to launch Virgin Atlantic Airways and Virgin Mobile, as well as many other businesses. But he’s best known for the outlandish lengths he’ll go to for self-promotion (for instance, dressing up in a wedding dress for the launch of Virgin Brides) and as an adventurer. He has made several attempts at flying a hot air balloon around the world and now has plans to take citizens into space.

Whether you’re flying, drinking or being entertained, Virgin’s got you covered. Branson is one of the world’s most inspiring entrepreneurs because, as Inc. Magazine once wrote, “He’s game for anything… in fact, everything.” Branson’s motto is to have fun. If a particular business enterprise doesn’t bring him enjoyment, he’s out of it. But it’s more than his fun, gregarious personality that inspires those around him.

Branson is well known for encouraging fresh ideas. He even keeps a notebook in his pocket to write them down in case he’s away from his office — which he usually is. Branson is always interested in learning new things and he encourages others to do the same.

Quote: “A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Before Arnold “The Governator” Schwarzenegger won the hearts of voters in the 2004 gubernatorial election in California, few could have predicted that the former six-time Mr. Olympia and action movie star would end up running the fifth largest economy in the world. Except for Arnold.

Growing up in Thal, Austria, Arnold had a clear vision for his future: He would become the greatest bodybuilder of all time and conquer the American movie industry just like his boyhood idol Reg Park, another bodybuilder turned actor, had. Arnold went on to star in a string of action movies like Total Recall and the Terminator franchise. Terminator 3 made him the highest-paid actor of all time, with a reported $25-million payday.

Arnold’s life story is well known, but few realize just how much he inspires those around him. I covered the first 100 days of the Schwarzenegger administration for CBS in California. His energy, enthusiasm and confidence are contagious not only among his staffers, but also among the press who assemble daily outside his office.

A senior communications staffer once told me “Arnold makes me a better person.” That’s the point, isn’t it? To make people around you feel better about themselves. Arnold pushes his staff to continuously improve their lives. One man once told me he’s never exercised or consumed as much trail mix in his life! Arnold’s passion for life and for achievement are both quite infectious.

Quote: “For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not to simply exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.”

Trump was inspiring many well before The Apprentice…

Donald Trump, Real estate mogul

Before David Letterman made Donald Trump famous for his combover, Trump had amassed an ever-increasing number of properties as CEO of the Trump Organization. He also has a penchant for naming the buildings after himself. Starting with Trump Tower, he developed Trump World Tower, Trump Place Apartment, Trump International Hotel and Tower, and Trump Casino and Resorts.

In 1990, a recession left Trump in a bind, unable to meet loan payments. He was brought to the brink of personal bankruptcy, but after a series of restructures and some property sales, Trump was able to salvage his empire. He’s now worth an estimated $2.5 billion — although Trump himself places his personal net worth closer to $5 billion.

In 2004, Trump became executive producer of the popular NBC television show, The Apprentice. As of its fourth season, the show’s ratings had lowered somewhat, but it continued to be a solid bedrock for the network’s Thursday night line-up.

Donald Trump didn’t need the success of The Apprentice on NBC to become wealthy or well-known to the public; the project simply added more to an already massive bank account. The billionaire real estate developer knows a few things about inspiring others and being inspired himself. Trump once said, “As long as you’re going to be thinking anyway, think big!”.

Trump does what he loves, and he hires people who love buildings and dealmaking as much as he does. Having more money than the people who work for him has little to do with his ability to inspire. Trump inspires because he brings out the best in people. He educates as he orders. Even on his television show, he doesn’t say, “You’re fired,” without offering advice on the nature of business. Trump also values and nurtures relationships. He may be tough on his enemies, but he’s true to his friends.

Quote: “Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.”

Phil Knight, Founder, Nike

Phil Knight first developed his plan to create and market superior athletic shoes as a student in Stanford’s MBA program. But it took hard work to transform his concepts into the empire it has become. At the age of 26, he began peddling running shoes from the back of his Plymouth at track meets.

In 1972, Nike sold $3 million worth of shoes, then went on to double its profits every year thereafter for the next decade. In 1984, Nike signed and promoted Michael Jordan, turning the basketball legend into a hero and Nike into a company that transcended simple sneakers. Nike struck gold again by signing and promoting then-U.S. Amateur golf leader Tiger Woods to a five-year, $40 million contract.

Knight can certainly enjoy his fortune, now estimated at more than $5 billion. But according to those who work for him, Knight is always moving, always thinking ahead. He once said the worst thing that could imagine happening would be to have one of his grandkids ask him, “What’s a Nike?”.

It is also the relentless pursuit of innovation that drives Knight and those around him. Knight tells colleagues that he rarely has time to reflect on the past, because every six months is a new lifetime and he’s always thinking about how to stay two steps ahead of the game.

Quote: “The trouble in America is not that we are making too many mistakes, but that we are making too few.”

Steve Jobs, CEO, Apple

As cofounder of Apple in 1976, Steve Jobs helped to bring computers to the masses with the launch of the Apple II and the Macintosh. After a power struggle in 1985, Jobs left Apple. He returned in 1997, and has since been credited with reviving the company and spearheading new innovations like the enormously successful iPod.

Jobs has two titles. In addition to his role at Apple, Jobs also cofounded Pixar, a movie animation studio that’s produced such gems as Toy Story, A Bug’s Life and Finding Nemo. Jobs is allegedly worth over $1 billion. Not bad for a guy who dropped out of college after one semester.

A famous story recounts how Jobs first offered the position of Apple CEO to John Sculley in 1983. Sculley was working for Pepsi at the time. Jobs turned to him and asked, “Do you want to sell sugared water all your life or do you want to change the world?”. Jobs has a vision. A big, bold vision that he shares with customers, colleagues and, most of all, the people who work for him. We all want to follow people who paint a vision of a future so bright you need shades. That’s where Jobs succeeds.

Quote: “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
inspire yourself to succeed
You don’t have to be on the fast track to billionaire status to learn something from each of these men. If there’s one common theme to their success stories, it’s this: They have a passion for what they do. Whether it’s building businesses, building buildings or building bodies, these men were first motivated by improving the world and improving themselves.

Carmine Gallo is a business presentation coach and author of 10 Simple Secrets of the World’s Greatest Business Communicators.

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The last time I checked, there are more than 52,000 business books in print on the subject of leadership. It is reasonable to ask, “Why another?” Jack Stahl provides his answer in this book, based on his extensive real-world experience as a senior level executive, notably as president of Coca-Cola and then, until recently, CEO of Revlon. True, both are major corporations. However, Stahl asserts – and I wholeheartedly agree – that “organizational dynamics are often similar in different environments, and most of the important leadership skills and techniques presented here will apply across diverse organizations large and small, and to various management roles. The frameworks are guidelines that I know have helped me.”

Specifically, Stahl focuses on seven “frameworks” and devotes a separate chapter to each, with “Key Points” and “Leadership Insights” featured:

1. Leadership and Management: “A modest view of your future brings modest results and rewards. Think big and give people the opportunity to win big.” This is what Jim Collins calls a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG).

2. Creating a high-capability organization: “People focus on those skills and behaviors that leaders say count.” Also, what they reward.

3. Developing people: “And important oversight technique for major projects is to schedule frequent project updates, and be sure that when someone says something is done, it is totally complete.”

4. Brand positioning with consumers, clients, customers, etc.: “A `brand’ represents a promise to consumers of what to expect from a product or service. Brand positioning is the process of establishing that promise in the minds of the reader.”

5. Customer relationship management (CRM): “Asking questions and listening patiently and carefully – in order to understand your customer’s business, where they want to take it, and how well you are serving it – is the foundation of great service.”

6. Financial strategy and management: “As the leader, you must help make clear to your people the link between their actions and the creation of value for your company.” Also, and at least as important, the creation of value for each customer.

7. Influencing people: “I have presented six frameworks for creating leadership success. The seventh is a linchpin for them all because success in any leadership role will depend upon your ability to effectively influence people to take actions to achieve success.”

As these excerpts correctly indicate, Stahl provides no head-snapping revelations in this book, nor does he make any such claim. Rather, he shares everything he has learned (thus far) about what works…and what doesn’t…in the seven basic business areas. To his credit, after briefly identifying the “what” of effective leadership, he devotes most of his attention to the “how” and “why” for those who wish to strengthen their leadership and management skills. I especially appreciate his effective use of various checklists for appropriate and effective action, such as the key building blocks for creating a high-capability organization (Page 31), seven basic techniques for leaders that are critical to successful people development (Page 64), customer relationship skills that focus on what is most important (Pages 109-110), and four important elements of an effective control and reporting system (Pages 153-154). These and other checklists facilitate, indeed expedite periodic review of Stahl’s key points.

I commend Jack Stahl for his pragmatic approach as he shares a wealth of lessons he learned while occupying a series of progressively more demanding executive positions. His insights will be of special value to those now preparing for or have only recently embarked on a business career. I also recommend it supervisors in need of their own improvement in one or more of the seven areas on which Stahl focuses. Ultimately, however, it is the responsibility of each reader to absorb and digest the material provided, and then apply it effectively. Because Stahl is a pragmatist with a bias for results, he would presumably agree with Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton’s admonition to beware of the “knowing-doing” and “doing-knowing” gaps. Or as former Texas football coach Darrell Royal once observed, “potential” means “you ain’t done it yet.”

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Bill George’s Authentic Leadership and then True North (co-authored with Peter Sims) as well as Ram Charan’s Know-How, Dean Spitzer’s Transforming Performance Measurement, Paul Spiegelman’s Why Is Everyone Smiling?, Thomas H. Davenport and Jeanne G. Harris’ Competing on Analytics, James P. Andrew’s Payback, Richard Ogle’s Smart World, and Matthew May’s The Elegant Solution.

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By John Chappelear

In my workshops on productivity and leadership, “Change the People or Change the People” is one of the most popular tips I share. It helps the attendees understand more clearly the roles and responsibilities of managers, supervisors, and executives, and the roles and responsibilities of the employees. Over the next few months I will provide a short series of articles discussing similar tips that I have developed, based on some very consistent issues, problems or challenges that appear frequently nationwide, regardless of the size of the company.

The idea behind the phrase Change the People or Change the People is that first you, as employers, must hire correctly. Then you must work to train, encourage, develop and support the people you hire so that they will perform successfully, based on your clearly defined expectations (the subject of a future article). And if you can’t get the people to change then you should change the people.

Numerous studies support the Pareto Rule of 80-20, these studies show that no matter how hard you work with employees to create positive direction, about 20 percent of the people won’t change. For a myriad of reasons they simply don’t want to learn new skills or change the way things are currently being done.

That doesn’t mean that the 80 percent are an easy fix. No, they are not. Many of them will have less than stellar attitudes or behaviors regarding the changes or the skill building you are expecting. Initially, they will be protective of the safety of “but we’ve always done it like this”. And moving them forward can be difficult, as well.

I believe that behavior and attitude are two sides of the same coin, attitude being the mental side and behavior being the physical side. Behavior is attitude acted out, if you will. It becomes ingrained in all of us, by experiences reinforced over time. If you want to make changes in behavior and attitude then you must give your staff new experiences and consistently reinforce those experiences over time.

To make attitude, behavior and eventually performance change your employees must feel safe in their environment and know that when they acknowledge a weakness or the lack of a particular skill set it will be met with a supportive solution and not embarrassment. Building trust is the first key to building better people.

One of the best trust builders when you are trying to correct or improve performance is to focus on the solution to a problem, and look to improving results by working on the problem, not attacking the person. “Can’t you tell time?” is not the most effective way to address tardiness. A simple way to see if you are on the right track is to watch the first pronoun you use, is it “you” or is it “I”. Using “You” immediately puts the other person on the defensive, and almost completely shuts down their receptivity. Using “I” helps keep the person actively involved in the conversation and will allow them the objectivity to help plan a solution with you.

Another performance enhancer is to be sure you and your employee both see the issue being addressed, as a problem. Sometimes that can be cleared right up by simply asking a yes or no question. “I am concerned because ______. Can you see why this would be a problem?” Getting the employee to agree there is a problem is crucial to finding the resolution.

After you have asked the yes or no question(s), it’s now time to get some solution input and that will come from asking open ended questions. These are questions that start with; who, when, where, what, and why, (yeah, that’s right, just like 7th grade English class). “When do you think we can resolve this issue? Where would we find the budget to spend on that idea? Who do you think would want to work on that project with you?” Opened ended questions are a powerful growth tool, because they address the issues and require the people being coached to think of a solution(s). And we all know that their solutions are going to be a lot more palatable than your solution, (even if they are the same).

If the solution requires training or additional coaching, it is made easier by the fact that the employee has already acknowledged that; (1) there is a problem, (2) they agree it is a problem, and (3) they are willing to be a part of the solution.

Now, you are very close to setting people on the right track, but you need a strong finish. Ask a series of directed question(s) that end eventually with “yes” and a commitment. A directed question is one where you know the answer you want and you are directing the questions toward that answer. After assigning a task or addressing an issue that needs work or anything else that requires a final “buy-in” always ask: Does that seem fair? Do you have enough time? Does that seem reasonable? Use questions that will result in a positive response and the commitment to move forward.

This is a simple plan to help you work through negative issues toward a positive resolution. But what do we do when people don’t respond to our help, support, encouragement, and nurturing? That’s a good question, because we all know that what we should do is ; “help them find somewhere else to become successful”. Every manager I talk with has someone who is performing below acceptable levels and yet, is still employed. Why is it that poor performers are still employed? When I finally get to the truth, I find it’s usually guilt. The manager feels guilty because he or she has not taken the necessary steps to help improve the performance of the employee.. This is why it is so important to find out the needs of your employees, involve them in the solutions, encourage them to learn new skills, and help them become more successful. Then you will know if they are in the 80% that wants to learn or the 20% that doesn’t. When you realize that you have done everything you can to help make this person develop more successfully and they are just not going along with the plan then the guilt goes away and the need to improve or remove this person becomes clear.

So that’s why I maintain, “Change the People or Change the People”

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by Peter Montoya

In an age of faceless corporations, free online advice, and companies that deliver rubber-stamped services, entrepreneurs who realize that they are the real commodity, not their products, will set themselves apart from the competition. Let Personal Branding expert Peter Montoya show you how to turn YOU into a “brand” in this brand-driven society and how to use your Personal Brand to generate better results, more clients, and greater profits.

In an era of faceless corporations and online advice, the best way an entrepreneur can succeed resides in his or her ability to market a strong Personal Brand. Individuals who market themselves as “product experts,” or whose services are not adequately unique or specialized, risk blending into the background or being replaced by larger competitors in their industry.

In the face of grim prospects and competition, some thoughtful entrepreneurs are taking a different approach — packaging themselves as the product through creative, aggressive marketing.

As opposed to “product-” or “fact-based” marketing, Personal Branding uses brochures, logos, direct mail, the Internet, public relations, and other channels, not merely the salespeople, to position entrepreneurs as the brand of choice.

Personal Branding promotes an identity of the individual that communicates on an entirely new level and gives consumers a reason to choose your products or services over those of your competitors.

What will your name attract?

THE WORLD IS NOT FAIR

As an entrepreneur, you don’t need to be told about the injustices that exist in any given industry. But Personal Branding is a fair way to tip the playing field to your advantage. To be a leader, one whose client base continues to expand even during down times and who boasts at least a mid-six-figure income, you must create your Personal Brand identity; you must turn yourself into a salable, valued asset instead of just another face in the crowd. You must build your brand — YOU!

Take the multibillion-dollar category of athletic shoes. You have Nike, the colossus. Hard on its heels you have Reebok, Adidas, Fila, and others. What’s the difference between them, other than logos and advertising? Virtually nothing. So why does Nike own the world of shoes?

Brand identity. People buy based on how a brand makes them feel emotionally. They don’t buy based on logic. If “Just do it” strikes a chord with a football player, he’s going to grab Nikes. It’s got almost nothing to do with quality. Your average American doesn’t check Consumer Reports ratings before he or she buys a pair of high-tops.

The same truths apply to any product or service. If you can build a brand identity around your practice or business — something that instantly creates a reaction in your audience — you will attract clients and maintain your client base, no matter what times are like.

NAMING NAMES

Charles Schwab was just a broker toiling on Wall Street. Then one day, he decided to turn his name into a brand. He sent the Street reeling with discount brokerage services, which brings up a powerful Personal Marketing principle: differentiation. But more importantly, Schwab turned on the marketing machine and began saturating the media with his name, face, and company identity. Years later, Schwab is perhaps the best-known name in finance to millions of Americans.

You can do the same for your services and business. All you need to do is follow these fundamental principles when building your brand:

* Differentiate yourself. Schwab and others started out by hanging their marketing hats on something that made them different from their competitors. Whether you choose to highlight your education, your high-tech equipment, an aspect of your service, or your expertise in a certain facet of finance, pick something that sets you apart from others and begin from there.

* Create a position. Your position is the place you occupy in the minds of your prospects. You might specialize in a specific service (Jiffy Lube made millions with this concept) or focus on a specific audience (real estate people often focus on a community; others can pick a dream client with unique needs and goals). Decide what position suits your background, abilities, and audience, and then build your marketing around driving that position home.

* Consistent and persistent. Once you’ve determined your position and your differentiator, create your brand by advertising yourself — over and over. Use print ads, direct mail, radio, websites, speaking engagements, newspaper articles — and any other medium available to communicate your name, your slogan, and your message to the target audience.

* Customize your services. Once you’ve built your brand, begin changing and evolving your services and business to fit your identity. If you preach personalized services, you need to qualify your identity by promising to offer a specified amount of one-on-one time with your clients. If you talk about your large, helpful staff, hire one. If you promise a unique specialty, back it up by offering a focused blend of products and services based on that specialty.

BRANDING IN ACTION

Brian Williamson, a professional photographer in Missouri, had fallen into some less-than-desirable jobs in his career. He was constantly being typecast as a wedding and senior portrait photographer, so his jobs were limited to that. While Brian was making a good amount of money overall, he wasn’t making as much money per shoot as he knew he could. He was facing burnout, and he wasn’t living up to the potential of his skills. He wanted to concentrate on taking portraits for models. He knew that the work was there and that the marketplace wasn’t extremely crowded.

“It felt like I was in a rut,” said Brian. “I knew that I had to make some serious decisions if I was ever going to change my situation.” Starting in February 2000, Brian — with the help of a professional ad agency — printed and began distributing a personal brochure showcasing his works, philosophies, specialty, and personal style of doing business. The brochure never mentioned the words “wedding” or “senior portraits.” It focused on the services he wanted to provide most.

“Of the 1,200 talent scouts, ad firms, and referred clients who received brochures on the first mailing, I received around 40 calls that led to 17 jobs,” Brain recalled. “The people who called later confided that [they] thought they’d be comfortable working with me because I had shared my philosophies and personal information in the brochures and postcards.” After offering a referral discount to talent scouts and distributing his brochures through his happy clients, the brochure led to more and more business with every passing month.

Brian attributes the success of his campaign to the quality Personal Brand identity it conveyed to prospective clients. While many photographers in the industry had reputations for being introverted and difficult to work with, he was positioned as an outgoing, caring professional who helped models take a crucial step in their careers.

A SINGLE POWERFUL IDEA

Combine a personal connection with a memorable slogan and you’ve got something. A slogan is a single powerful phrase that captures the essence of your position, your personality, and your services. Slogans like “Just do it,” “Don’t leave home without it,” and “The ultimate driving machine” have become part of popular culture, showing the power of a memorable slogan.

In creating a slogan for your practice, focus on getting past trite phrases to find something that captures you as a person. Stay away from timeworn ideas and clichés that make you blend into the background. They’ve been done a million times, and they say nothing to your prospects. One of the core principles of Personal Branding is making your message unique to you, and for that you need a unique slogan. Focus on ideas that will elicit an emotional reaction from your target audience.

THE MASTER PLAN

A thorough marketing plan is the first step in any successful marketing program. Sadly, it’s a step many entrepreneurs skip. A marketing plan takes time to create and revise, and that’s time that many busy professionals simply won’t invest. If you want to brand yourself properly and spend your marketing dollars wisely, invest the time as carefully as you invest in any other important facet of your business.
Here are some critical elements of a successful marketing plan:

* Budget. How much are you going to spend on your Personal Branding campaign? It’s shocking how many people create a plan without any coherent idea of what they’ll be spending. Look at your marketing budget as a percentage of your total income, and plan on spending between 15 percent and 30 percent of your income on marketing to conduct a proper campaign. If you think that sounds high, consider that some of the top independent professionals spend as much as 40 percent of their revenue on marketing.

* Strategy. What are your goals? In what amount of time? Who are your competitors, and where are they failing to meet the needs of your target audience? These are all strategic elements of your plan. They include the broad plans you have for your business: growth goals, where you’d like to be in five years, and so on. List them as specifically as possible, and then outline how you’ll get there.

* Niche. Niche marketing is another tent stake of Personal Marketing. Under it, you don’t market to everyone, but to a smaller select audience of carefully chosen prospects. It’s exclusionary marketing, and it’s proven to work. Look at the types of clients you want, the money you’d like to make, and the people in your sphere of influence who you think have the best chance of helping you reach your desired income level. Ideally, you should closely identify a single exclusive demographic and focus your brand on that group’s perceptions, needs, and demands.

* Tactics. What will you mail? When will you mail? How long will your mailing campaigns last? How will you distribute your brochures? What publications will you look at for print advertising? These and other deployment questions are crucial, and you must answer them all before making a move. Make sure you have complete direct mail schedules and a list of ideas for distributing brochures and other materials.

Some advisers think a marketing plan is for people who are already successful. In reality, it’s what you must do to become successful.

MARKETING ALWAYS HAS AN EFFECT

Creating a marketing plan, developing your position, and doing the demographic research in choosing your niche is well worth the effort for one big reason: Marketing is never without effect. It either enhances your business or makes you look ridiculous. Proper Personal Branding, given a year to work its magic, will turn you into a brand that endures even when market conditions force your competitors to scramble for bottom-feeder clients.

Here are five tips for making the most of branding:

* Clone Yourself. Branding gives you the chance to build equity and salable value for your business that doesn’t depend on your sweat. By hiring the right staff to perform revenue-generating tasks that don’t involve you, you’re freeing yourself to create the most possible revenue, and you’re building a business identity that has resale value, just as physicians and dentists do.

* Watch Your Competitors. See what other people in your industry are doing, and do the opposite. Most of them will make silly marketing mistakes, but they’ll try to take you down with them. Resist the temptation and stick to Personal Branding principles.

* Use Your Name. Build your brand by using your name (Charles Schwab, Donald Trump, and Oprah did it). You want to build a practice with enduring value around your persona, and your name captures that idea better than anything else. Remember, your clients do not make decisions based on what is rational — it is the emotional connection they will have with you personally that will impact their decisions.

* Publish. If at all possible, write articles, write a book, create a website. Having published information available to the public enhances your brand identity and increases your equity.

* Saturate the Marketplace. When you think everyone in your area is sick of hearing your name, do another mailing. Research shows it takes the average consumer up to five strong exposures to a brand to even recognize and remember the name of a person or product! So even if you think people are sick of you, they’re not. Keep pushing your brand.

Personal Branding is radical to some people. But we’re working in radically changing times. In an age of free information, Web service companies, and corporations that deliver rubber-stamped services, entrepreneurs who realize that they, not their products, are the real commodity are the ones industries will look to for leadership. And, during a time when far too many competitors are equal, a brand that sets itself apart in the perceptions of the customer will become the most successful.

Focus on your Personal Brand — your experience, your character, and your skills. Turn YOU into a “brand” in this brand-driven society and use your Personal Brand to generate better results, more clients, and greater profits. Peter Montoya is president of Peter Montoya Inc., the world’s only Personal Branding agency.

DOES BRANDING REALLY WORK?

Try this demonstration of great branding and prove it for yourself. Can you match these slogans to their companies?

“Just do it” “Don’t leave home without it” “The ultimate driving machine” “We bring good things to life” “Finger-lickin’ good” “Be all that you can be” “It keeps going, and going, and going …” “Our repairmen are the loneliest guys in town”

|Energizer| |GE| |Kentucky Fried Chicken| |Nike| |Maytag| |American Express| |BMW| |United States Army|

What powerfully simple slogan identifies your brand? Would your customers or clients be able to recite your slogan?

SCRATCHING YOUR NICHE
Marketing your Personal Brand to a specific sphere of influence.

Most Personal Brands are marketed to domains — spheres of influence. And this target marketing, or niche marketing, isn’t a sacrifice. It’s an asset. You can use it to work with the clients you want, and effectively bypass the clients you don’t want.

Niche for Growth
Want proof that target marketing works? Look no further than Steven Wolfe, a Registered Investment Advisor based in Orange County, California. Wolfe expects his business to grow more than 400 percent over the next three years, from 35 clients to more than 150. What’s more remarkable than his growth rate is how he’s achieved it: by marketing his Personal Brand specifically to families who own automotive dealerships.

“I have immersed myself in their world, and I know their potential financial pitfalls better than they do,” Wolfe says. He directs all his resources to this market segment, or “niche,” using such methods as exhibiting at the National Automotive Dealers Assn. trade show, advertising in the industry magazine Automotive News, and allying with more than 60 CPA firms and law firms specializing in auto dealers.
Wolfe offers a select menu of services: succession planning, investment management, estate tax planning, and trust agreements. Through research, tailored marketing messages, and a constantly promoted Personal Brand, he’s built a thriving practice with few competitors. It’s a perfect example of successful target marketing.

What Is Target Marketing?
Your target marketing should be a tightly focused Personal Marketing effort, using messages directed at a specific domain. Many independent professionals use the “trawl net” method of marketing: They drag their “net” over a huge area and hope they catch someone — anyone. Sadly, casting a huge net takes a lot of money, and the catch is usually bottom-feeders, not trophy fish.

Choose Your Audience
To target market, you must reject the “all things to all people” model and narrow the scope of your prospecting. You must instead market your Personal Brand only to those people, companies, and organizations likely to value your leading attribute. With consistent effort and quality tools, you can get most — if not all — of your business within this domain.

Objections Overruled
The concept of target marketing is often met with protests from independent professionals who are confused or fearful. Here are two of the most common objections and why they’re faulty:

Objection: “If I market to a niche of potential clients, I might be overlooking hundreds of other potential clients.”

True. The idea of excluding large groups of people from a sales effort seems counterintuitive. However, even if you wanted to, you can’t possibly service all of the people who could potentially become your clients. It’s far better to brand and market yourself to your sphere of influence, not the world. It saves you from worrying about people who probably won’t become your clients anyway.

Target marketing is a very effective scalpel — not a net or a sledgehammer. There’s no need to expend great effort for meager results. The effort is precise and controlled, and the results are what you intend.

Objection: “How can I make the income I need from a small group of prospects?”
Don’t settle for an undersized domain. Define your domain based on its ability to generate the income you need.

About the Author

After graduating from the University of California, Irvine with a degree in political science, Peter Montoya went to work for a nationally recognized sales trainer. During the next five years, he lived in 25 major cities and performed over 2,000 training sessions in every industry. Then he was hired by an advertising agency to offer seminars. These seminars focused on a radical new concept: personal branding. When steadily increasing numbers of service professionals began attending these seminars, Peter realized the entire country was begging for a personal branding revolution. Soon, he left to start his own firm – Peter Montoya Inc.. Peter Montoya Inc. has met every conceivable marketing challenge for an impressive collection of clients – with thousands of clients representing every type of profession. Through public seminars and private presentations, Peter educates tens of thousands of professionals yearly. He delivers more than 100 speeches each year and spends half the year on the road interfacing with clients. Peter is a busy man. In addition to running an advertising agency and performing over 100 seminars per year, he is also the publisher of Personal Branding magazine and is conducting further research on the personal branding phenomenon. But his true passion is leading the personal branding revolution, transforming armies of service professionals from mere salespeople to master marketers.

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By Lynn A. Robinson, M.Ed.

“Follow your heart.” “Listen to your inner voice.” “Trust your guidance.” It all sounds so easy. But what do you do when your inner voice sounds like your inner critic, or worse, your inner child run amok!? How can you learn to depend on your intuition to help guide you to the right decisions?

1. What does your intuition tell you? Your intuition can contribute “quick and ready” insight according to Webster’s dictionary. Too often we discount the role of intuition in decision making. Begin to pay close attention to what your intuition is telling you; it could lead directly to positive changes in your life.

2. How Does Your Intuition Communicate With You? Each of us has a predominate form in which we receive intuitive information. It may come through feelings, images, body sensation (gut feelings) or through your thoughts. When you are making a decision pay particular attention to all of these ways that your intuition communicates with you.

3. Ask your intuition questions. Many people believe that intuition comes completely unbidden. I have found that when you ask your intuition for additional insight it will respond with answers. Ask, “What should I do in this situation?” or “What do I need to know about this.” Remember you may get the answers from a variety of sources. (Feelings, words, physical sensations, and images.)

4. Act on the information you receive. Developing your intuition is like learning any new skill. It’s not unlike learning an athletic ability. The more you practice the better you get at it. If using your intuition is new for you it may be best to use it in relatively low risk situations at first. This will help you develop your “intuitive muscles.”

5. You may not receive information immediately. If you don’t understand something, ask for clarification. It is possible to get your guidance in dreams, for instance. Many people ask for intuitive guidance during a meditation and don’t receive information immediately. You may find that the insight you desire will come seemingly unbidden at some point later in the day while you’re involved in other tasks.

6. Learn to take small steps. Most of us feel quite anxious when making big changes in our lives. We’re afraid we’ll make a mistake that we’ll later regret. I’ve found that taking small steps towards a decision works great. You may find, as many do, that as you take those small steps, that the decision becomes clearer, your resolve becomes stronger and the fear begins to lessen.

7. Write down the guidance you receive. Whenever you’re facing a tough decision, write about it in a journal you keep for this purpose. Always jot down what your intuition is communicating. What feelings do you have about this decision? What images come to mind? Are there any body sensations that indicate a good or bad decision? Is there a still, quiet, inner voice that informs you? It’s helpful to look back at this journal from time to time to see how accurate your guidance was. Did you trust the information you received? Did you act on its wisdom?

8. Don’t forget your left brain! Remember to use your logical or rational mind in this process as well. There needn’t be a competition between the intuitive mind and the rational mind. Your rational side can help you find out facts and assist you with details of your decision. Your intuitive or “right brain” simply adds another level of information often described as, “You know, but you don’t know how you know.”

9. What’s your goal in making this decision? When using your intuition, it helps to be clear what outcome you want. Many people get stuck in the process by thinking of all the things they don’t want. When you’re clear about your goals, your intuition can inform you about the clearest, most direct path to achieve it.

10. Intuition is guidance from your higher self. Your intuition is always there to guide you and provide for you.

Author’s Bio

Lynn A. Robinson, M.Ed. is an intuitive consultant, author and popular seminar leader. She is the co-author of “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Being Psychic” and the author of “Prosperity! The Intuitive Path to Creating Abundance.” Boston Magazine voted her “Best Psychic.” Her free “Intuition Newsletter” is available by e-mail at http://www.lynnrobinson.com. Her company, Intuitive Consulting & Communication, (IC&C) produces audio tapes on intuition, prosperity and everyday spirituality.

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by By HARRIET RUBIN – NYTimes

Michael Moritz, the venture capitalist who built a personal $1.5 billion fortune discovering the likes of Google, YouTube, Yahoo and PayPal, and taking them public, may seem preternaturally in tune with new media. But it is the imprint of old media — books by the thousands sprawling through his Bay Area house — that occupies his mind.

Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Books in the California home of Michael Moritz.

“My wife calls me the Imelda Marcos of books,” Mr. Moritz said in an interview. “As soon as a book enters our home it is guaranteed a permanent place in our lives. Because I have never been able to part with even one, they have gradually accumulated like sediment.”

Serious leaders who are serious readers build personal libraries dedicated to how to think, not how to compete. Ken Lopez, a bookseller in Hadley, Mass., says it is impossible to put together a serious library on almost any subject for less than several hundred thousand dollars.

Perhaps that is why — more than their sex lives or bank accounts — chief executives keep their libraries private. Few Nike colleagues, for example, ever saw the personal library of the founder, Phil Knight, a room behind his formal office. To enter, one had to remove one’s shoes and bow: the ceilings were low, the space intimate, the degree of reverence demanded for these volumes on Asian history, art and poetry greater than any the self-effacing Mr. Knight, who is no longer chief executive, demanded for himself.

The Knight collection remains in the Nike headquarters. “Of course the library still exists,” Mr. Knight said in an interview. “I’m always learning.”

Until recently when Steven P. Jobs of Apple sold his collection, he reportedly had an “inexhaustible interest” in the books of William Blake — the mad visionary 18th-century mystic poet and artist. Perhaps future historians will track down Mr. Jobs’s Blake library to trace the inspiration for Pixar and the grail-like appeal of the iPhone.

If there is a C.E.O. canon, its rule is this: “Don’t follow your mentors, follow your mentors’ mentors,” suggests David Leach, chief executive of the American Medical Association’s accreditation division. Mr. Leach has stocked his cabin in the woods of North Carolina with the collected works of Aristotle.

Forget finding the business best-seller list in these libraries. “I try to vary my reading diet and ensure that I read more fiction than nonfiction,” Mr. Moritz said. “I rarely read business books, except for Andy Grove’s ‘Swimming Across,’ which has nothing to do with business but describes the emotional foundation of a remarkable man. I re-read from time to time T. E. Lawrence’s ‘Seven Pillars of Wisdom,’ an exquisite lyric of derring-do, the navigation of strange places and the imaginative ruses of a peculiar character. It has to be the best book ever written about leading people from atop a camel.” Students of power should take note that C.E.O.’s are starting to collect books on climate change and global warming, not Al Gore’s tomes but books from the 15th century about the weather, Egyptian droughts, even replicas of Sumerian tablets recording extraordinary changes in climate, according to John Windle, the owner of John Windle Antiquarian Booksellers in San Francisco.

Darwin’s “Origin of Species” was priced at a few thousand dollars in the 1950s. “Then DNA became the scientific rage,” said Mr. Windle. “Now copies are selling for $250,000. But the desire to own a piece of Darwin’s mind is coming to an end. I have a customer who collects diaries of people of no importance at all. The entries say, ‘It was 63 degrees and raining this morning.’ Once the big boys amass libraries of weather patterns, everyone will want these works.”

C.E.O. libraries typically lack a Dewey Decimal or even org-chart order. “My books are organized by topic and interest but in a manner that would make a librarian weep,” Mr. Moritz said. Is there something “Da Vinci Code”-like about mixing books up in an otherwise ordered life?

Could it be possible to read Phil Knight’s books in the order in which Mr. Knight read them — like following a recipe — and gain the mojo to see a future global entertainment company in something as modest as a sneaker? The great gourmand of libraries, the writer Jorge Luis Borges, analyzed the quest for knowledge that causes people to accumulate books: “There must exist a book which is the formula and perfect compendium of all the rest.”

Personal libraries have always been a biopsy of power. The empire-loving Elizabeth I surrounded herself with the Roman historians, many of whom she translated, and kept one book under lock and key in her bedroom, in a French translation she alone of her court could read: Machiavelli’s treatise on how to overthrow republics, “The Prince.” Churchill retreated to his library to heal his wounds after being voted out of power in 1945 — and after reading for six years came back to power.

Over the years, the philanthropist and junk-bond king Michael R. Milken has collected biographies, plays, novels and papers on Galileo, the renegade who was jailed in his time but redeemed by history.

It took Dee Hock, father of the credit card and founder of Visa, a thousand books to find The One. Mr. Hock walked away from business life in 1984 and looked back only from his library’s walls. He built a dream 2,000-square-foot wing for his books in a pink stucco mansion atop a hill in Pescadero, Calif. He sat among the great philosophers and the novelists of Western life like Steinbeck and Stegner and dreamed up a word for what Visa is: “chaordic” — complex systems that blend order and chaos.

In his library, Mr. Hock found the book that contained the thoughts of all of them. Visitors can see opened on his library table for daily consulting, Omar Khayyam’s “Rubáiyát,” the Persian poem that warns of the dangers of greatness and the instability of fortune.

Poetry speaks to many C.E.O.’s. “I used to tell my senior staff to get me poets as managers,” says Sidney Harman, founder of Harman Industries, a $3 billion producer of sound systems for luxury cars, theaters and airports. Mr. Harman maintains a library in each of his three homes, in Washington, Los Angeles and Aspen, Colo. “Poets are our original systems thinkers,” he said. “They look at our most complex environments and they reduce the complexity to something they begin to understand.”

He never could find a poet who was willing to be a manager. So Mr. Harman became his own de facto poet, quoting from his volumes of Shakespeare, Tennyson, and the poetry he found in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” and Camus’s “Stranger” to help him define the dignity of working life — a poetry he made real in his worker-friendly factories.

Mr. Harman reads books the way writers write books, methodically over time. For two years Mr. Harman would take down from the shelf “The City of God” by E. L. Doctorow read the novel slowly, return it to the shelves, and then take it down again for his next trip. “Almost everything I have read has been useful to me — science, poetry, politics, novels. I have a lifelong interest in epistemology and learning. My books have helped me develop a way of thinking critically in business and in golf — a fabulous metaphor for the most interesting stuff in life. My library is full of things I might go back to.”

It was the empty library room and its floor-to-ceiling ladder that made Shelly Lazarus, the chairwoman and chief executive of Ogilvy & Mather, fall in love with her house in the Berkshires, which was built in 1740. “When my husband and I moved in, we said, ‘We’re never going to fill this room,’ and just last week I realized we needed to build an addition to the library. Once I’ve read a book I keep it. It becomes a part of me.

“As head of a global company, everything attracts me as a reader, books about different cultures, countries, problems. I read for pleasure and to find other perspectives on how to think or solve a problem, like Jerome Groopman’s ‘How to Think Like a Doctor’; John Cornwall’s autobiography, ‘Seminary Boy’; ‘The Wife,’ a novel by Meg Wolitzer; and before that, ‘Team of Rivals.’

“David Ogilvy said advertising is a great field, anything prepares you for it,” she said. “That gives me license to read everything.”
Harriet Rubin is the author of “Dante in Love” and, most recently, “The Mona Lisa Stratagem: The Art of Women, Age and Power.”

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By Stephen James Joyce

Individually we humans are the smartest creatures on earth. Or at least we like to think so. You notice I said individually. However, sometimes when working together we produce far-from-perfect results.

Throughout history, we have pulled off amazing feats as a result of our ability to collaborate and build upon our collective efforts. As a species, when we coordinate and play to our higher purpose, we are pretty amazing. The launching of the Hubble telescope is a testament to what we can achieve with our collaborative efforts. Never has our ability to ‘pull together’ been more important or more challenged by the environment we live in. Collaborative Intelligence (or CQ) exists in all groups, and is defined as the process of harnessing the intelligence and energy of networks of people.

The cooperative potential within corporations and teams is huge; tapping into their Collaborative Intelligence becomes a game everyone needs to play. Highly successful organizations are those with the most effective teams – this is no accident. The question is: “How can we tap into and build more collaborative intelligence?”

Here are 10 ways to harness greater quantities of collaborative intelligence:

1. Establish a ‘higher calling’ for the team. This is a common purpose that represents a higher calling and brings context to the significance of the team’s existence. For example: Apple Computer stating that they ‘educate the world’. Providing a service to society is the simplest way that an organization can isolate a higher calling for its existence. This process must be entered with full sincerity. A ‘true’ higher calling is reflective of the culture and intentions of the organization as a whole and therefore is core to what the organization is ‘for’ and how it plans to achieve that.

2. Establish a reward system for innovation and creativity. Ensure that rewards are equally available for ideas and innovations that don’t work as for those that do. Rather than the practical results of any particular idea, the focus will be on the level of innovation, even those that don’t result in ‘success’ in a conventional sense. History is piled high with examples of ‘mistakes’ that became innovations of great value. When we reward attempts at innovation we are stating that it is the intention that is important.

3. Plan to use all of the experience within the team. Think of the years of life experience represented in a room of 15 people with an average age of 35. It represents over 500 years of life experience. That’s a lot of wisdom to tap into. Great team leaders and managers know how to harness and tap into those years of experience and wisdom.

4. Raise awareness of the importance of shared assumptions. Assumptions cause us to run on ‘autopilot’. Supported by assumptions that go unchecked and unchallenged, teams can continue to run the same old routines for a long time without anyone noticing. If the same old routine is getting you and your team the results you need, then that’s a good thing. If not, maybe it is time to lift the hood and have a peep into what’s driving the team’s behavior – at the assumptions.

5. Encourage team members to find out about each others roles. The more they know about others perspectives, the more likely they will be able to empathize with them when the going gets tough. In the past empathy has been considered a ‘soft skill’ that has no place in the business arena. In reality empathy is an important business skill. The ability to put ourselves in another’s shoes helps us understand what others’ needs and motivations are.

6. Intention is the Keynote. Just as a teams attention is important – so is intention. Intentions have an eerie way of manifesting into reality. Setting intention causes our attention to notice specific aspects of our environment. Intention directs attention so we must plan that very carefully. Having the team form a positive intention around an objective is one of the best ways of doing this.

7. Celebrate successes along the way. Celebration acts to reinforce the progress a team has made and empathizes the importance of the team process in reaching desired objectives. The rituals observed in different cultures, such as Ramadan, Christmas, Honokaa, and graduations, are a testament to how important celebration is to us. Making celebration an integral part of the life of a team / organization helps the individual feel more deeply connected to it.

8. Invest resources in learning. Continuous improvement is only possible when individuals and the team as a whole are learning new things. By publicly demonstrating support for the learning process, leaders model the importance of building ‘learning organizations’. This serves everyone in the long run. Creating ‘learning teams’ is one of the core strategies for running an organization that is highly adaptive and responsive to change.

9. Provide opportunities for sharing ideas during the project-planning phase. People do not argue with their own material. That is, when everyone has taken an active part in the planning process then creating the ‘buy-in’ for the project is much simpler. Because it belongs to them, they are much more likely to give the project their full support.

10. Balance ‘top-down’ with ‘bottom-up’ processing. This means that directives and guidance from the top must be balanced with feedback and ‘street-level’ information. Swarm Intelligence is a very real factor in the functioning of any team/group. One of the reasons Baboons are faster learners than chimps is that they congregate in larger numbers and are quicker at sharing large amounts of information. The reward for this distinction is that Baboons have the nickname of ‘rats of Africa’ and the Chimps last hope of survival is a wild life trust. Most organizations would benefit by facilitating more bottom-up processing.

Managers and leaders are realizing that more efficient collaboration is the key to their teams being more effective. Because human beings are involved, the solution is not going to be solely technological. Many companies have realized that everyone having a Blackberry has not solved more problems. With the high levels of employee stress reported, it appears that the human portion of the equation has not benefited much – we just have to run a little faster it seems. Helping teams tap into greater levels of collaborative intelligence @ Work promises many things least of all making it possible for us enjoy our work more, which has to be a good thing.

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By Dr. Sharon House

Recently, Dr. Phil McGraw, the author of “Life Strategies” sat down with four women on Oprah to talk about why they haven’t been able to take their excess weight off. It was music to my ears… here, finally, was someone talking about what I have said for years… to manage your life, eliminate your payoffs and you’ll manage your weight.

Exactly the same thing applies when it comes to managing negative habits. So often I hear folks talk about wanting to eliminate habits but complaining that they can’t get themselves to follow through. They feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and angry with themselves for their ‘lack of willpower’ to stick to the agreements they have made with themselves. What they don’t realize is that it has nothing at all to do with willpower! It’s not even the behavior change that frightens them as much as the thought of what it might entail, along the way, to get what they want!

We are not random creatures. Everything we do, we do for a reason. Everything we do has a payoff of some sort that at some level serves us. We may not consciously be aware of what the payoff is, but “it” is there waiting to be discovered and uncovered. It will be discovered only if we are willing to shine the light inwardly and admit the unvarnished truth – “I am a procrastinator (or _____________fill in the blank with your negative habit) and will remain a procrastinator (or_________________fill in the blank) as long as there is a payoff for me in doing so!”

The truth is most people work much harder at hanging on to what they currently have than moving towards taking the (often) courageous actions and risks that may be necessary to start working hard at finding solutions and creating strategies to get them what they say they truly want.

Think of something you procrastinated about at some time in your life. What finally happened to change your mind and propel you into action? Did you suddenly feel the pain and pressure to “just do it” and get on with your life? Did the thought of the consequences of not taking action become more painful than the thought of continuing to put up with the negative energy drain it was creating in your life?

Anything you want that holds value for you will require that you make a choice between holding on to old negative payoffs or moving towards creating positive new payoffs. Negative payoffs such as feeble excuses, unconvincing rationalizations, flimsy reasons, past painful experiences, negatives attitudes and “fully automated” behaviors (such as nail biting) must be traded for positive payoffs in the form of solutions and strategies that pull you towards creating the long term results you want most. The bottom line is: You’ve got to lose those old payoffs to gain new, life enhancing ones to get to where you want to be. As Emerson once said, “There is no loss without gain, and no gain without loss.”

Creating awareness around the payoff for the behavior is the first step towards resolution. The second step is examining the specific behavior in detail to help foster understanding. With understanding, you can then proceed to the third step of designing and implementing a strategy for change.

One of the key ingredients to long term habit change is learning to live your life in the present, responding to things that are real and not hanging on to your fears of what was (the past) or what might be (the future). When it comes to habit change and management, it is essential that you live in the present and take it one day, even one little success, at a time.

Carpe diem! Seize the day, my friends!

Author’s Bio

Internationally known as “the House Doctor with your
“Prescriptions for Success”, Dr. Sharon House is a creative, intuitive, and solution oriented master certified personal and business coach. Visit her at her two websites, http://www.InstaCoach.com or http://www.HouseCoach.com.

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by Ellesse @ Goal Setting College

There is a feature in the Investment section of my Sunday local newspaper that I’ll never skip, even though I’ve a notorious reputation in my circle & family for missing out on important news. It’s a weekly success story column on people who’ve made it good in the respective domains. And when I say “made it good”, I’m actually referring to the fact that they’ve carved a niche for themselves in the selected fields, lived a fulfilled life serving others with their skills and amassed quite a fortune while doing so.

As I continue to read such columns every week, I’ve noticed one common trait in all the featured personalities. Yes, not one of them. Not some of them. But all of them.

Despite the fact that they’re from different backgrounds, all of them possess the same mindset when it comes to money. In the past, I couldn’t put a name to this mentality. But after embarking on my own personal development revolution many years ago and recently having recapped this concept from the first free lesson in Bob Proctor’s Science of Getting Rich program, I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This is the infamous money consciousness that renowned personal development gurus have been referring to all these years.

From a layman’s point of view, this is what we call the wealthy mindset. This wealthy mindset basically means, irregardless of the physical condition that you may be currently in, so long as you see yourself bathing in financial abundance, your actions will maneuver in a way to manifest the wealth that you see yourself enjoying in the first place. If you possess the wealthy mindset, your endeavours will acquire the Midas’ touch. Literally.

The fortunate thing is, all of us possess the innate ability to fire up this wealthy mindset and there’re in fact different approaches to do so. Below are the top 5 steps.

(1) Eradicate Your Limiting Beliefs About Money

Some people scorn at the mere mention of money. How many times have you heard people say “Oh, I’m not doing this for the money” or “Money isn’t everything.” Well, they’re not wrong. The fact is money in itself has no absolute value. It’s the things that money can buy when in circulation that makes it valuable. It can buy material possessions yet at the same time, if you look from a different angle, once you’ve got enough of it to be financially free, it can literally buy you off from laborious work to spend more precious moments with family. You can also contribute it to charity and benefit the less priviledged.

On the other end of the scale, some people tend to overvalue the importance of money so much so that they become slaves to it. They loved money and let this passion cause their downfall.

In essence, if you never come to terms what money can bring forth into your life (i.e its value), your uneasiness with the “idea” of money will limit your ability to attract more of it. To put it simply, just imagine this, would you go into a car showroom if you’ve never had the intention to purchase a car? You may not want to buy it now, but the fact that you walked into the showroom implies that you appreciate the value of what a car brings. It can serve as a means of transport for you and your family. Or, if it’s a luxurious car, it may bring you the associated prestige with owning it in the first place. Because of your perceived value tagged to owning a car, you’ll find means and ways to get one. Likewise with money.

Remember, you can’t desire something that you’re not in resonnance with.

Therefore, it becomes imperative that before you learn about other steps to hone this wealthy mindset, you should start having a conversation with yourself to remove the beliefs that’s limiting you about money. You can make use of the following exercise to help you with this.

a) Write down the limiting beliefs

- I shouldn’t earn more than what my husband is bringing home
- Rich people don’t care about the poor”

b) Ask yourself power questions to trigger a refreshed view about money
- If money is not an issue an all, what will be the positive things that you can do for your family and community?
- Out the things that you would like to do, which one ties in closely with your personal values and goals?
- What are the reasons you aren’t rich yet?

c) Tease your original limiting beliefs to create new affirmative statements

- My husband will be delighted to know I’m earning more than him because we’ll have more income to go for family holidays with the kids
- Selfish rich people may not care about the poor but I know I’m not.

d) Pick the most sensational one and repeat it everyday

(2) Decide You Want to Be Wealthy & Justify Why

Everyone has the right to be wealthy. Yet, most of us allow a temporary lack of money eat into our minds, literally confining us into the vicious cycle of poverty. One of the colloary of the Law of Abundance states “People are poor because they have not yet decided to be rich”. So long as you manage a conscious decision to become wealthy and have utmost faith that you can achieve it, you act accordingly to what you believe. Say “Yes” to getting wealthy today! And say it with conviction.

Deciding to be wealthy only gets you started on the quest but what sustains you throughout the journey is the why. What is the reason that you want an extra $1 million into your bank account? Why do you want to work your butt off, sacrificing your weekends to man your business? Where can you seek inspiration if the going gets tough and you’ll feel disheartened? Yes, it’s all in the why. If you do not have a burning desire supporting your decision, you’ll find your motivation waning sooner that you think you can last.

Take a piece of paper and scribble down all the reasons that you can think of. Maybe you’ll like to retire earlier and travel around the world? Or you can quit your job and be a full time parent? Etc etc.

Needless to say, the one that resonates with the deepest part of your heart should be written on a index card to remind you of your bottomline.

(3) Determine How Much Do You Want

How much you want will inadvertently determine the action that you’ll need to set forth to reach it. For example, if it’s $2,000 per month that you’re looking for, working in your existing job might suffice. However, if $100,000 per month is what you intend to achieve, other alternatives such as starting your own business, investing in properties or working on your skills to get a better paying job may be more effective. More importantly, knowing how much you want prepares your mind for the potential issues you may face and keep it upbeat.

The challenge therefore becomes, how do you know how much you want? It’s tempting to arbitrarily quote a figure but this will probably do you more harm than good. If the amount is much higher than what you want, your approach to acquire the wealth may be too drastic within the same timeframe. And you may end up burning yourself out. In the event that the amount is lesser than what you need, you’ll probably have to delay your gratification longer than you expect.

Determining how much you want need not be rocket science. You can do this by taking into consideration the objective for which you want the wealth for and do a high level analysis of the costs necessary to sustain it. Say if your reason is to provide your family with a comfortable lifestyle, you can include the costs of travelling overseas for holiday twice a year into your analysis. Continuously review this list of costs to ensure that you’ve got most if not all covered.

(4) Brainstorm On How to Get There

A lot of people think having a wealthy mindset involves only constantly thinking about getting rich. It’s only part of the equation. Brainstorming on how to get there is another important element that actually exposes the mind on the many possibilities.

Suppose you want to get from point A to point B, there’s route 1, route 2, 3 all the way to n (i.e. infinity). When you’re planning how to get there, the mind starts considering the many options and may prompt you to act on one of them. Along the way, your wealthy mindset may attract different opportunities, encouraging you to change course and go through a totally somewhat exhilarating experience.

One of the many featured personalities in my local newspaper, super affiliate Ewen Chia was a classic example. Initially, his plan was to market his own music compositions through the internet. But incidentally, he stumbled on online internet marketing and embarked on a unconventional route to becoming a internet millionaire. It was not an easy route as he had to juggle learning about the new knowledge and a full-time job. But his burning desire to be rich and financially free got him through the hurdle to get him to where he is today.

(5) Imagine As If You Already Have It

5 years before he bought his million dollar mansion, John Assaraf, one of the teachers in “The Secret” had been visualizing it every day on his Vision Board.

Jim Carey, one of Hollywood’s most famous comedian, wrote a cheque of $10 million to himself for “acting services rendered” and dated it Thanksgiving 1995, . By the time it was 1995, his asking price for the leading role in the movie “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls” was $20 million!

Now, what do all these show?

That before you physically acquire the wealth that you’ve envisioned, you need to live it as if you’ve possess the amount of money that you desire! Since the subconscious mind is unable to differentiate between actual possession and mere visualization, by imagining that you already have it, you’re encouraging your subconscious mind to seek ways to transform your imaginary feelings into the real thing.

I know many people refute this step thinking that it’s impractical. But if you think about it, isn’t everything around us a true manifestation of someone else’s imagination? The Wright brothers imagined being able to fly and the reality is, we’re now able to fly in an aeroplane from 1 country to another in a matter of hours and sometimes, even minutes. Thomas Edison imagined lighting the whole room using a single source and as a result, the lightbulb was invented! Christopher Columbus imagined a new world and found the American continent. And many many more.

It’s a fact that without the imagination of these great visionaries, we’ll not be able to enjoy many of their discoveries. At a micro level, you too possess the same capability to create, improve your own destiny by constructing it in your mind. Brian Tracy said it best in his statement, “All improvement in your life begins in the improvement in your mental pictures”.

So how do you build this imagination?

Golfing legend Jack Nicklaus has an excellent technique called “going to the movies” that’s easy and fun to apply. He’s known in the industry to have a very clear picture of how he should play the game before actually going into one.

In his own words, he states “I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp, in-focus picture of it in my head. First I see the ball where I want to finish, nice and white and sitting up high on the bright green grass. Then the scene quickly changes, and I see the ball going there; its path, trajectory and shape, and even its behaviour on landing. Then there is a sort of fade out and the next scene shows me making the kind of swing that will turn the previous images into reality.” You can do the same.

For example, you can imagine receiving many income cheques when you opened the mailbox everyday. Or you can picture yourself receiving an award for being nominated the best entrepreneur in your country. Not only does it send the message to your subconscious, it serves a great form of daily motivation. You can try out this daily exercise in one of my earlier article 5 Tips to Daily Motivation.

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By Leon Edward

Perhaps you have heard the old saying “If there is a will, there is a way”. Many say that the same holds true with concentration. If you can learn to harness your power of concentration, then you will have the willpower to do just about anything.

Perhaps you have even heard the ever popular News caster known as Diane Sawyer, when she was asked about what the secret to her success was. She replied that her big secret was paying attention. So the big question is still, “How does one basically maintain focus and concentration?”

Below is a list of great tips to help you no matter what you are up against. Whether it is a business meeting, a certain project, school and even everyday work obstacles.

1. Go with one step at a time
There will be many times that your mind is racing and you can’t stay focused as you are being pulled in many different directions.

Instead of trying to keep focused on so many different things, take time to prioritize your list and do only the things that needs to be done at that time. This will allow you to stay better focused and get more accomplished.

2. Take the initiative and do just five more things
As we all know, there are just two types of people in the world, the first is those who are the doers, they do as they see fit. Then there are the watchers, who watch the doers, wishing they could have the confidence to do it all like the doers.

Keeping yourself focused and making yourself do just five more things for the day, will help you to gain better control and get ahead in your endeavors.

For example, When you feel like giving up on the treadmill, make your self do just 5 more minutes, or if you are trying to get your homework done and are overwhelmed, just do 5 more problems.
3. Keep a note pad handy
Keeping a note book close at hand will help you when those great ideas pop into your head at the most impossible times. Without the notebook, you may get distracted and loose your train of thought.

Keeping your thoughts jotted down on paper is a great way to stay focused.

4. Tunnel Vision for Better Focus
It might even help to give your self tunnel vision by cupping your hands around your eyes to help you to get focused at the task in front of you

For example, you are working on a project at your desk but your co-workers are being loud and it is hard to stay focused. Put your hands around your face, cupping your eyes. This will help your brain get focused and help you get your task complete with less distraction.

5. Take a break
Sometimes you need to stop and take a break. If you try to run yourself without one you could loose focus and what ever you are working on will show the harsh results.

By taking breaks every now and then, you can take care of many tasks and prioritize your day better. So get up and walk away from your desk every so often to clear your head and improve your concentration.

6. Keep track of your time for tasks
People do not realize that by keeping g track of their start and end times when working on something, can greatly improve their concentration. You can see where your concentration has wandered and where you need improvement.

7. Stagger your tasks
In order to not get bored with the jobs at hand, try to vary them to keep your minds eye sharp.

If your mind gets bored you will find it most difficult to stay focused on anything.

By practicing these tip sand trick on a daily basis, you will improve your concentration and notice that you are more focused than ever.

Author’s Bio

Leon Edward helps people improve IQ, focus, memory, concentration, creativity, speed reading, public speaking, time management and reducing stress.
Download his IQ Mind Brain Memory Self-Help library at his website http://www.IQMindBrainLibrary.com

Also, Leon Edward helps people improve in Leadership Development, Goal Setting, Success, Motivation, Self-Improvement, Happiness, Memory Improvement, Visualization, Stress Reduction and more at http://www.AwesomeSuccess.org or learn to program your subconscious at his website http://www.justvisualizeit.net

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By: Brian Tracy
The Essence of Business Success

The essence of a successful business is really quite simple. It is your ability to offer a product or service that people will pay for at a price sufficiently above your costs, ideally three or four or five times your cost, thereby giving you a profit that enables you to buy and to offer more products and services.

Add Value in Some Way
The key to a successful business is to add value by bringing the product or service from another place to where you’re selling it, or by creating the product or service and selling it at a price higher than your total cost of production. You become wealthy by either selling a few products or services at high prices, or by selling many products or services at lower prices with smaller profits.

The Best Strategy of All
The best strategy, of course, is to aim to sell a larger volume with a smaller profit on each item. Most great fortunes in America have been made selling large quantities of products over a wide area, thereby broadening the market and reducing your dependency on just a few customers.

Go From the Known to the Unknown
Early in my business career, I learned another key rule for business success and it’s simply this. Start off in an established field and only experiment with new products or services out of your profits from your established business.

Success Leaves Tracks: Follow Them
One reason many entrepreneurs fail is that they have grandiose ideas of being the first into the market with a brand new, untried, unproven product. Don’t you fall into this trap. As you begin to magnetize your mind with visual images of wealth and success, as you begin looking everywhere for profitable ideas, you will begin to attract into your life the people and opportunities you need to achieve your goals. I’ve learned from long experience that you must learn to trust your intuition, your gut feeling concerning any business decision.

Flood Your Mind With Ideas
Read every publication, explore every opportunity. Remain open to all ideas. But in the final analysis, trust yourself. Trust your inner voice to tell you the right thing to do. All great businesspeople become great by listening to their inner guide. It will never fail to lead you to your highest good and heaven help the person who refuses to listen to it.

Action Exercises
Here are two things you can do to start a successful business by trusting your intuition before you make a final decision:

First, always remember that the key to success in business is your ability to add value to your customers by providing them with something they want and need at a price that enables you to make a profit. Keep your thinking focused on the benefit that your customer will enjoy from what you are offering.

Second, get all the information you possibly can. Speak to as many people as possible. And finally, sit down quietly by yourself and listen to your intuition before you make the final decision. This is the best investment of all.

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By Leon Edward

Everyone has heard of an IQ test. The potential of the brain is called intelligence quotient or I.Q. These tests use the theories of unitary and multiple, which is believed to the two main theories when studying the brain.

Unitary refers to the part of the brain where the linguistic and mathematical capacities and confined them to that area. While the multiply theory include the parts of the brain that use visual/ spatial, musical/rhythmic, body/kinesthetic, interpersonal or intrapersonal development.

It has been determined that there is only three ways to increase your brains potential.

You first have to determine what you are good at. Very few people are good at everything. A person is considered intelligent whether their skill is derived from music, visual, body, or intrapersonal, intelligence.

Most people possess these skills and probably do not even realize it. If you are a creative person at heart, try your hand at writing, acting or singing.

You may be amazed at how well you do. Some people are born with in affinity for numbers; you may not think it is anything special, however others may. There are so many different areas in which you the potential excel.

Gymnastics, Dancing, building or designing, you do not know what you are capable of doing until you try. You get the most amazing feeling when you accomplish something you have never done before. If you do not even try, you are doing yourself a great disservice.

Very few people are classified as geniuses. A genius is a person who has extreme intelligence. Such people include Einstein, Mozart and Bach. These brilliant men accomplished greatness through their genius. This is not to say that you have to be a genius to be successful. It simply means that you should use your brain to the fullest extent that you can. The more you try to improve yourself, the more your brain will benefit from it. When you utilize your brains potential you can achieve anything. Using your will power can point you in the right direction.

Broadening your horizons will also increase your brains potential. This is not to say that you should sit down and study the encyclopedia. When you study, you are acquiring knowledge through all five senses- touch, taste, see, smell, and taste.

You want to learn from your experiences in life, and experience everything in life. You cannot do that by studying. This is an excellent way to increase the potential of your brain.

New skills can be learned everyday. Talent comes in two forms, either you are born with it or you learn it. The brain is like a sponge, ready to absorb everything that is brought to it. The old adage that practice makes perfect holds true.

It is not difficult to maximize the brains potential. Many people everyday do it without even realizing it.

By simply reading a book, or singing along to your favorite song on the radio, you can increase your brains potential.

There are many IQ tests that one can take; however, many people question the accuracy of these tests.

Author’s Bio

Leon Edward helps people improve IQ, focus, memory, concentration, creativity, speed reading, public speaking, time management and reducing stress. Download his IQ Mind Brain Memory Self-Help library at his website http://www.IQMindBrainLibrary.com

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