You have less than 120 days left in this year, and it’s January 1st 2009.
Sounds like from a fiction movie.
Anyways, where’d the time go? Remember all those New Years resolutions you’ve made in what seems like last week?
So how are you doing with them?
You see, I’ve noticed an interesting thing over the years working with people. Everybody sets big goals in January. They’re going to conquer the world. They will double, triple, no quadruple their income, lose weight, stay fit, save more money, and on and on…
But as time passes they forget about them.
They make a list, tuck it away and never look at it again.
And then another year goes by and they’re at it again, make a list, and …. 2 weeks later they forget all about it.
Well, today my kid is back to school, actually she’s starting 1st grade, and as I’m driving her in the morning I see all those school buses and a new school year is beginning.
So I thought, why do we have to wait until Jan. 1st to set some goals, 2008 isn’t over just yet.
As far as I’m concerned today is the absolutely perfect time to revisit what you’ve set for yourself and give it a push to finish off the year with a bang.
We have less than 120 days in the year, so why not set and achieve some real goals for this year.
By the way IF you do this, it will put you in the top 3% of the people in the world who actually set goals.
This is something I like to do once a quarter.
First of all it gives me an opportunity to review my progress, then it allows me to refocus my thinking, my energy and keep my conscious mind on track, while at the same time reinforcing this programming in my subconscious mind.
I went ahead and recorded an audio for you so you don’t miss a thing.
Go ahead and listen to the audio as I will walk you through the process and the specifics of how you can have set yourself up to have this be your best year, in just 120 days.
You might want to get out a sheet of paper so you can jot things down and when you hear some ideas that inspire you or things you want to add to your goal list make sure you note them.
Feel free to share your comments as you begin to put this into practice.
Here’s another quick example how we truly attract people and events into our lives.
I love playing tennis, but currently don’t have anyone to play with. Mostly because I don’t want to play in the evening when most people are off of work.
Anyways, I thought about it recently, how I’d like to find someone to play with regularly, especially now that I’m watching the U.S. Open.
Last night I get a call from my neighbor down the street, and he wanted to see if I wanted to play tennis with him on a regular basis.
Where did that come from?
It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that I’ve had this intention for sometime now, could it?
You know when I started selling financial services, I was almost 19 years old. Knowing absolutely NOTHING about this industry, how the products worked and how to present them, was a bit of a challenge.
I mean after all, would you trust a 19 year old kid with your finances?
On top of that I knew nothing about sales or marketing, as the saying goes, I couldn’t even ‘close’ a door.
So how do you overcome these challenges?
You become a pro.
What I’m about to share with you is amazingly simple and fairly easy to do.
BUT, as the legendary motivational speaker Jim Rohn says, the things that are easy to do, are also easy NOT to do.
I decided that I will make myself so knowledgeable and so good, that clients will have no other option but to do business with me.
So I went to the bookstore and got myself some personal finance books and books on mutual funds. I found some great training literature on different insurances, and I dove right into it.
If you make commitment to read 1 hour a day, even if it’s only in 15 minute increments, that’s over 365 hours a year. In 2 years you would have put over 700 hours of study into the thing you want to get good at.
Ya think you might get good at it?
I’ll tell you this. The amazing thing is that almost no one will do that. And when I say no one, I mean 99.999% of the people that say they’ll do it, WON’T.
Why?
Who cares why, that’s just the way it is. Actually I do know the answer to why they won’t do it, but that’s a long winded explanation, and you can read my previous posts on that, or go to www.businessattractor.com and find out more about how your mind works.
But the bottom line, is that most people will simply not have the little discipline needed for their success.
And if you simply make a commitment to read and learn every day, in a very short period of time, you’ll rise above the rest as you’ll become the expert.
I’ve done this successfully for years. Starting at 19 and getting myself to a such level of competence, that people didn’t care how old I was, all they saw is how I can help them.
I then spent many hours studying sales, marketing, and communication. Again with just a little time everyday, you can become a wealth of knowledge.
When I switched my business to marketing and consulting the same thing happened.
I already knew that I was more than capable to learn anything I need or want to learn if I simply take 1 hour a day and devote it to learning.
So if you want to be an expert in a specific niche. Or if you want to radically improve your sales and marketing, follow this simple, easy to do daily routine and watch yourself become the go to person in that area.
As I’m watching the Olympic Games, I’m just absolutely amazed at the mental toughness that these athletes have.
Can you imagine preparing your entire life for this one moment. As in most of these athletes cases it really all comes down to a moment.
Yesterday, Lolo Jones from United States, hits a hurdle with her leg in a 100m women’s hurdle.
The thing is that she was on track to be first and get the gold. She finished first in U.S. Trials, and was clearly a contender for the medal.
As a result of this moment, a minor mistake of either not raising her leg to high, or starting the jump too soon, she finished 7th.
Or you watch these gymnasts who are seem like they’ve got springs in their feet, as they do triple somersaults and land on one leg on a beam, and all of a sudden they fall or a small balance check shaves points right off and the medal goes to someone else.
The thing is that every one of these athletes have superior ability. Incredible strength and perseverance.
They’ve done their routine thousands and thousands of times.
They’ve visualized the successful accomplishment and the outcome, and one little nano-second can be the difference that gets them the gold or nothing.
And yet they gracefully get themselves up and keep going. What’s more is that a lot of them push themselves harder to be back in 4 years and do even better.
Now you think about the world that we live in. I mean the business world where we get to perform every single day.
It doesn’t come down to any one moment does it?
The Olympians have one shot at the gold. We don’t.
Everyday you have the opportunity to go for the gold in your business. Everyday we have choices we can make that can move us forward.
If you make a mistake, don’t get the deal, lose a client, your ad fails, or whatever…. so what?
What’s the worst that can happen? Nothing? So be it. You pick yourself up and do it again, and again, and again.
There’s no trials to compete in. There are no judges that deduct points whether fairly or unfairly.
There’s just a marketplace and they vote with their wallets.
For a long time I was quiet mediocre in sales. But I’ve drilled this thought into my head. “There are people out there. Whether I do anything or not, they will buy financial products from someone. So what do I have to do to get them to buy from me?”
And I held this thought for a long time, reminding myself of that every time something didn’t go my way.
It led me to believe that:
1. It’s possible
2. That I can do it.
It also led me to get better in sales, take courses, read books, excel in communication. And I developed this almost cocky confidence that I’m good. My belief level changed and so did my results.
How can you do the same?
Does your market have room for one more? If you’ve been affected by the economy, look deep into your niche and be brutally honest with yourself. Is it you or the marketplace. Are there others who are doing great, and it’s something you can model, or do you need to go into a different niche?
Maybe that’s the answer. The brilliance of marketing is not trying to create a need and force the market to conform to your wants and needs, but rather to tap into an existing one and get better at providing that.
And even if you make a mistake, and we all do, time and time again, as long as we have more wins than losses, than we too get to take home the gold.
And we don’t have to wait 4 years for that one shot.
Many self-help books and courses talk about removing negative thoughts, eliminating them, and I completely agree with that. However, negative thoughts and emotions play a very important role in your life. Without them progress would be very difficult.
Here’s a little twist.
You see, whenever you’re feeling negative, what that means is that you’re not in alignment with what you really desire.
Since we attract what we feel, the minute you catch yourself feeling negative, you know that in that moment you’re attracting the opposite of what you want.
This is good. Because most people have no idea what’s going on in their life, but if you understand what happens during the time you’re feeling this way, you can change your point of attraction.
Negative thoughts and feelings guide you and let you know that you need to correct your course.
Of course after that you want to remove the thought/feeling and replace it with what you do want.
As you start catching yourself thinking negative, you should congratulate yourself because you’re now aware of your thinking, and when you become aware you start gaining control.
As you notice that negative thought or a limiting belief start surfacing up, you know that you’re now attracting the opposite of you what you want and it’s time to change your thoughts.
Now isn’t that a better way to handle it, then to beat yourself up over the fact that you’re not positive 24 hours a day?
Plus it’s really impossible to stay positive all the time. Whether we feel positive or negative, they’re just signals that we’re receiving about what we’re attracting at any given moment.
Today I’d like to share with you something that I see missing in so many marketing campaigns.
If you’ve been trying to break into the internet marketing world, you probably get daily emails about new product launches.
It seems as though every day there’s a new “magic” pill that comes out that will flood your bank account with money without you having to lift a finger.
And a lot of these marketers have carefully crafted their sales messages to make them so compelling that it’s hard to resist.
But there’s one thing that I see missing in most, not all, but most of these campaigns.
I guess, I was lucky that I’ve spent over 10 years in direct selling before going online, because in that world you had to have it.
It’s also one of the reasons why I was able to develop a large client base in my old business, that still calls me today to do more business with me even though I haven’t done a damn thing to promote my other business in almost 3 years.
One of the questions that often comes up from people is – ‘how do I get started?’
It’s also one of the things I’ve noticed about a good majority of people who take courses, go to seminars and try to educate themselves in new areas.
They get all this knowledge but some fear inside of them keeps them from starting.
In training dozens of people in the financial services industry, I’ve seen the same thing happen. They would attend all the trainings and learn everything about business, sales, and financial strategies, except most wouldn’t get started.
A few days ago I wrote a post about the #1 reason why people fail to get started.
Today I’d like to share with you a follow up to that.
In one of the comments about my “dog” post, someone said that there needs to be a training program for people transitioning from a J-O-B to an entrepreneur.
It’s true that most people who take a shot at the free life of an entrepreneur, focus basically on the freedom without having a specific schedule of things to do.
Who can blame them?
After all, they’re used to the 9-5 mentality, of coming to work at a specific time, going to lunch and finishing also at a specific time. They’re told what to do, from school through college, and then for 10, 20, 0r 30 years at their jobs.
Then one day they get the freedom of not having to show up anywhere and no one to report to.
And that’s just half of the problem.
The other half, is that all these years they’ve been told very specifically what to do, and now there’s no one to tell them what to do.
They have to CREATE work. And this the biggest challenge of all.
Most people aren’t used to creating work, they’re used to processing it. Even at a high level corporate positions.
Now you see, I was lucky. I started on my own very early in life, and I didn’t develop this bad habit of processing work.
I knew I had to go create it.
So what’s the best way to get started and get yourself moving?
One of my mentors early on in my career, said something very profound that has been forever burned in my mind.
Here’s a very profound idea about marketing your business.
This one could make all the difference in your response and how people perceive you.
Before I share it with you, I assume you do want to grow your business and your bottom line, right?
Let me illustrate it for you out of my own file cabinet of experiences in sales.
In my previous life, I had to call a lot of prospects and set up appointments to go see them.
Now who likes getting a phone call at their home from a sales person. And then having that sales person come to their house and sit there trying to sell them something (even if it’s good for them and they need it).
So I had to always make it look like NOT a sales situation. Of course when I start talking to them about coming over and meeting with them to discuss their financial situation, they knew that it was going to be a sales call, BUT I always made it look like a very casual experience.
On the phone I would tell them that I’d like to pop by and share some ideas with them. Same ideas that I shared with their friends who thought that you would benefit tremendously by taking a look at it.
When I came over, I always dressed business casual, never a suite. That’s a big no, no. Someone in a suite with a briefcase, has SALESMAN written all over him.
I would talk to them about them and their kids. I’d ask them some questions about their goals and dreams, to make them very comfortable with me, and only then I would go into some of the details of what I do.
I would do everything in my power to make it look like I’m not there to sell them anything.
Let’s go back to your marketing.
Look at your marketing material, however you market. Whether it’s a sales letter, a website, or an ad in the paper.
Does it have SALESPERSON written all over it? Does it smell like someone trying to sell you something?
The minute they sense sales, they’re gone forever never to return again. And you’ve just wasted an opportunity to tell your story.
So look over your pieces, and see how can you make it stand out, and yet be inviting and non-threatening.
Don’t worry about making huge claims and big promises. Everyone does that. Be different and unique.
I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand traffic.
Thanks to my lifestyle, I don’t usually get stuck in one, but sometimes, I forget that it’s rush hour time, as I get in my car.
Yesterday was one of those days, and I was on my way to my friend’s, who’s also a business associate, shop to pick something up.
Without looking at the time, I left my house at 5pm, without even a thought about rush hour traffic, I called and told him that I’m on my way and I’ll be there in 30 minutes or so.
About an hour and fifteen minutes later, I finally got there. The traffic was heavy, although as compared to other major metro areas, it’s not that bad.
As I was slowly moving at a pace of 20-25 mph, I’m looking around the busy highway and all I can see is a bunch of people, with a blank look on their face, slowly moving to get home.
I imagine that they go through this routine everyday, in the morning and at night.
By the looks on the faces of most of these people they’re not that excited about this whole segment of their day. And yet they continue to do the same thing, going to the same job they don’t particularly like, working for a wage they feel is too low, driving in rush-hour traffic that they hate. And in our city, most people would say that they’re lucky to even have a job nowadays.
Is this a way to live?
Why do these people allow themselves to stay stuck in this trance of being in a rat race?
There could be a number of reasons, but the main one is they don’t want to change.
They’re actually ok with it.
Oh they may say they want more money, a better job, an easier simplified life. But do they really?
Is there some hidden benefit to staying where they’re at?
I think there is. If there wasn’t one, they would do something about it wouldn’t they?
How about you? Are you stuck in an experience you’re not that thrilled about?
So what are you doing about it?
Are you reading the right books?
Are you associating with the right people?
Are you associating with the right people?
Do you plant the seeds of prosperity and abundance into your mind or thoughts of lack and limitation?
And finally are you taking action, moving forward, and creating the life you desire, or do you just wish and dream about it?
There’s an old story I’d like to share with you.
A traveler walks into a convenience store in a small town to ask for directions. As he approaches the clerk behind the counter, he sees a dog that’s howling on the floor.
The man asks the clerk why is your dog howling, and the clerk says, oh never mind him.
So the man starts asking for directions, and the dog continues to howl a bit louder. He asks once again why is the dog howling, is there something wrong with him? And the clerk once again says, don’t pay any attention to this, there’s nothing wrong.
So they continue talking and now the dog is howling really loud. So the man stops and says, there’s something wrong with your dog, tell me what is wrong with this dog?
And the clerk says, there’s nothing wrong with the dog, he’s just laying on a nail that’s stuck in the floor, and that’s why he’s howling.
The man looks at the clerk with a puzzled look, and says, why in the world is your dog laying on a nail?
And the clerk answers him with a very profound statement. He says, sir, he’s laying on a nail, because he’s not uncomfortable enough yet.
There’s not much more than I can add to this story.
Except that we all need to look inside ourselves for the real reason why we experience what we do.
Have a comment about this? Don’t be shy and speak up.
And also, feel free to bookmark this post so others out there can read this. This maybe a wake up call for some.
