It’s time….to move, to transition from a place of basic personal and professional development, to a position of true personal strength. It’s time to put YOU on the map!
I have a lot of fabulous info and tools to share with you— to get you in motion, to get you strong, to give you peace of mind, and to help you create a FULFILLING life, a THRIVING business, and SOLID relationships. This is fitness for the soul.
It’s time for ALL of us to finally just be ourselves and contribute meaningfully AND powerfully to the world through who we were meant to be and what we were meant to do. You don’t need a hook or a gimmick. You just need to be YOU, and be it full throttle! There is no other you, and THAT is where YOUR power lies!
It’s time to get EMPOWERED——to STOP the ridiculous game of trying to please everyone else, be something you are not, or do it someone else’s way.
You CAN have a great life, a great business, and great relationships, but it starts with getting real and getting to where you are comfortable flowing in YOUR personal power and YOUR area of influence—not someone else’s.
I am living my DREAM. My dream is to be a true encouragement and inspiration to others, to have control over the way I use my time and my resources, to fully enjoy the experience of life, to love my work and my contributions, to be blessed economically, and in doing so to know I am a success.
I will help you find YOUR voice, YOUR passion, and YOUR creativity! YES, you have all of that within you RIGHT NOW. I write with YOU in mind. My entire goal is to empower you to embrace your life and live it fully and exceptionally, while touching the lives of others, being and feeling like a TRUE success, and having loads of fun.
I’ll help you grow your business, connect with others, be a giver, be a better person, grow personally and professionally, increase profits, understand the New Media and New Marketing Mindset, and enjoy your life with more authenticity, more time for what matters most, and more energy. I want you to live YOUR dream.
Please stop by often for words of empowerment and substantial tools you can use to continuously keep you on the track of being YOU, living your life and running your business the only way it will succeed—by YOU embracing YOU, and giving the real YOU to others!
“Too often we… enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” ~John F. Kennedy
“The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.” ~Will Durant
“Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.” ~Alan Alda
Once in a while I find myself deep in thought about life and business and such. It’s a good practice. Thinking purposefully can open the door to so many new ideas and possibilities. If you can think about thinking as a way of just reflecting, looking, observing, or even brainstorming in an objective manner, you can leave your usual thoughts and habits to discover greater success.
Here are some thoughts I looked at today. As you read them, don’t judge the words. Instead, simply be open. Maybe there is space here for you to explore something in a new way in your own life and business.
1. Create and develop amazingly USEFUL and BENEFICIAL products and services. Leave the so-so stuff for the armatures.
2. Don’t expect overnight success. Keep pluggin’ away at being exceptional in your business offerings, and give people time enough to catch on.
3. Be passionate about what you do (I cannot say this enough, have you noticed?). If you are not passionate with what you are doing, find something else you can be passionate about, since success takes time and you’ll need your passion to keep you going until you reach your financial goals.
4. Don’t follow the pack in your products and services, or in the way that you market them. See what everyone else is NOT doing and make it a point to do that.
5. Just because a product or has a great margin for profit, and just because YOU like it, doesn’t mean people will want to buy it.
6. Hire GREAT people and don’t be afraid of their talent. Treat them very well and let them help you win.
7. Don’t fight change. Open your arms to it. See it as the new way of life. If you are coasting, you are not growing, so make it a choice to ENJOY change and the effort it takes to go with it—the way you enjoy any sport. Let change help you to see the needs and desires of your customers, prospects, employees, business associates, and yourself. Let change bring you terrific opportunities to learn, grow and profit.
8. Make certain today’s to-do-list focuses on the priorities that matter most TODAY, NOT yesterday.
9. Your customer’s and prospect’s attention is so divided that they can barely hear their spouses, kids, and significant others anymore! On top of that, droves of marketers are shouting for their attention on every corner of the street and Internet. When you say something to your prospects, make it great, not just good or O.K. Say something that makes them want to give you a shout out, instead of something that makes them want to run from your shouting.
10. Don’t be fooled into thinking you have to create controversy (like they do on most talk radio, and on all of the news and interview shows on t.v.) The world is changing, and so is the way people want to talk. Forget controversy; instead, seek to always ADVANCE the CONVERSATION—with your employees, your prospects, your customers, your vendors, your business associates, and your joint venture partners. Drop the gimmicks and the need to impress. BE WHO YOU ARE and bring your incredible self to the conversation knowing that YOU are enough. STIMULATE and ADVANCE conversations that make you a vital and valuable part of someone else’s world.
“Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.” ~ Amanda Cross
Today’s message is one I shared with some of you in the recent past. I thought it was fitting to share again so that everyone could read it. I hope you enjoy the message.
Here goes:
A handful of premium customers at-a-time (in any given day, week, month) is better than droves of average buyers. If you can’t get all of the customers you THINK you want, “honey, love the ones you’re with”.
If you owned a small, chic, and fabulous gourmet restaurant that offered exceptional cuisine and fine wines, where people were encouraged to linger, and if you had 30 tables to fill during an evening for dinner (and you set that table number based on your table turnaround time, your price points, and your projected profit margins), then as long as all 30 tables were filled throughout the night, you could in a sense rest easy as you focus all of your efforts on impressing and WOW-ing those 30 tables of customers.
What you probably would not do is run out into the street and call people in for dinner (though that might not be a bad idea on one of those wild hair nights—just for the novelty and fun of it, but that’s another message)! You wouldn’t need to, because as long as you had 30 tables full, you would already have all of the people you need to meet your sales goals for the night (as long as you attended to them and properly romanced them). More importantly, if you had more than 30 tables worth of people in a given night, you would have no place to comfortably seat everyone, people would be rushed and wouldn’t be able to savor their exceptional wine and all of the extra delicacies your wait staff suggested to them, and the service would undoubtedly take a dive as servers and hostesses scurried to deal with the overflow.
I think a lot of people try to market to the masses—to get more and more customers that they cannot AMAZINGLY serve. Don’t get caught up on numbers. If you want to have a great business selling premium products and services to people who really appreciate the value of those products and services, you must have a different focus.
When I was doing design full time (and coaching only on the side), if I would have had too few customers, I would not have made a substantial living, but yet if I had too many, I would not have had a wonderful career either, because I would have been way too stressed and too tired for myself, my friends, and my family, and I would have been a raging maniac (and still on occasion, I was)! I learned during my brilliant career in decorating and design that there was a special number of clients (NOT simply LEADS, but paying customers) each month (or each week if you break it down) that I should have in order to have maximum profitability for myself and exceptional products and services for my clients.
That meant I had enough customers to make a great income, but not so many that I cheated them out of my full attention, or left sales on the table, or spent my days discouraged and exhausted.
Some people would be surprised at how low that miracle number of customers actually was, and it was low because with fewer customers I had more time to sell the amazing add-ons (like that fine wine) to the discerning people who most wanted and valued them. They were pampered (and I was too), and my customers absolutely loved it.
So this week, stop stressing about all of the customers you DON’T have. Focus diligently on the ones you DO have. If you have NONE, call up a few former customers and ask them how they are doing, and how they are enjoying the services or products you provided to them in the past. Quit thinking you need more, more, more (you do need some, though)! Do what you have to do in order to reach YOUR miracle number of customers to put you at a good balance of very good profits and always welcome sanity, with enough free time to enjoy your life and success.
Spoil your clientele, no matter how few. Sell premium products and add-ons that people value, and if you can’t get all of the customers you THINK you want, “honey, love the ones you’re with”.
“Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.” ~Peter F. Drucker
We have all heard of the 80/20 rule (also known as the Pareto Principle) at one time or another, but we tend to ignore its real power in our work and personal lives.
The concept of the 80/20 rule was first written about by the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, way back in 1895, hence the name Pareto Principle. This savvy economist noticed that in his society, there was a clear distinction of types of people in regard to money, prestige, power, and influence. He saw that there was a “top” 20% which he coined the “vital few”, and a “bottom” 80% which he termed the “trivial many”.
This economic finding caused Pareto to look further into his premise of an 80/20 rule, and he discovered that almost all activity was in line with this principle, too, which basically states that 20% of effort and activity will produce 80% of the results from that effort or activity. This is a phenomenal finding, and one that can help us to be more successful in our day and not waste time, money, or effort in our lives and in our businesses.
Based on the 80/20 rule, 80% of what you wear comes from only 20% of your wardrobe and 80% of what you eat when you go out for meals comes from a measly 20% of the restaurants you frequent! 80% of the free time you use visiting with the people you know well is spent with just 20% of those people.
Now let’s apply the principle to your business. You could bet that approximately 80% of all of your sales comes from just 20% of your customers, and about 80% of all of the profits in you business come from only about 20% of the products and services you offer. A whopping 80% of what your customers complain about likely comes from 20% of your offerings.
You can further assume that roughly 20% of the activities you spend your time on will result in 80% of the meaningful results you desire. So out of every ten things you set out to do, two of those activities will pack a powerful punch in terms of getting you moving ahead in a substantial way, and they will benefit you more than the other eight put together! Best of all, those two activities may take the same amount of time, or even less time, than any of the other eight taken individually.
Obviously then, you need to take a long hard look at your to do list each and every day, and try to decipher, from past experience, from the experiences of others, from past results, from your GUT, and from your good common sense, which one or two activities you should focus on or do first and foremost each day, and let the other tasks take a back seat (you can also delegate these). Spend your first efforts daily on the “vital few” activities, and AVOID doing the “trivial many” activities if your “vital few” are not yet done. Spending time on the “vital few” or the most results-oriented tasks is KEY to your definite success.
The vital activities that deserve your focus can be finding ways of improving products that are not working, or eliminating them altogether. Or your vital activities may be calling customers who you value most. Vital activities could be finding the team members who are producing, connecting, and innovating, and spending time with them, or finding ways to use their skills to help others in the organization or to help the organization itself. Your vital activities may involve organizing strategic creativity sessions with the intent of developing one new product. Your vital activities may be to finish developing a meaningful product or service that you halted because you got sidetracked.
As a business person, business manager, or manager of self, FOCUS on what matters most. Avoid the constant trivial interruptions that take your focus away, and especially avoid the overly-needy people who sap your energy and time. Learn to delegate tasks, and learn to assign sales associates or employees to a mentor who can help them, or simply remove the bottom 20% of tasks that are not necessary, and the bottom 20% people who are stagnant, lazy, disruptive, unwilling, or who will not think for themselves once they have been taught the ropes.
The Pareto Principle is a useful tool we can all use to manage our businesses and our lives. If you have a choice concerning which activities to invest your time in (and you do), which people to visit and associate with, which customers to follow up on and stay in contact with, which products and services to sell, and which projects to develop further, choose the 20% that will bring the most desirable, the most peaceful, and the moist profitable results.
Now do the math for your own personal life and business, and get ready to see AMAZING things begin to happen for you and those around you.
“Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.” ~Margaret Fuller
I am on vacation, and have been for a few days, and will be for several more. I am putting my phone away, turning off my pc, and focusing on myself, my family, and nature.
I feel no sense of guilt for this whatsoever.
I will return re-charged, re-energized, and hopefully much more delightful.
So far I am having a ball, zip-lining, drinking yummy stuff, visiting the beautiful mountains of Santa Fe’ and having a blast with the people I love. When I return to Texas, I won’t return to work. Instead I will meet my brother for seafood!
I love my work, and it is not work to me—it is just another part of the living I love, but there are things I cannot do when I am working.
So business can wait as I enjoy my time off to focus on other things. When I return to work on July 12th, I’ll be 100 percent there.
“Great things are only possible with outrageous requests.” ~Thea Alexander
WHAT DO YOU WANT?
It’s so mind-boggling that we work our tushies off, stay up late, get up early, take courses, attend seminars, get degrees, and run around like our heads are down the street and we have to hurry and get them, but we often ignore doing the simplest thing to get what we want: We don’t ASK!
We have not, because we ask not.
Sometimes we ask not because we are too busy playing games. Sometimes we ask not because we are tired. We may ask not because we are too proud (the bad kind of pride) or because we don’t want to look needy. Sometimes we ask not because we are stubborn. We may ask not because we think we are being humble and thoughtful of others.
As much as we ask not, you’d think it would pay off. Instead, we have not.
What if you suddenly made a decision to do things differently?
What if you decided that you would begin to ask?
This may help…
You already know you are a good person, right? You already know you are kind. You already know you are hard-working. You already know you are intelligent and skilled. You already know you would not take advantage of others. You already know you are fair. You already know you would do for others if they asked you (in most reasonable cases anyway). So stop over-thinking what you think other people will think. WHAT do you have to lose by asking? The truth is, you have nothing to lose, but only new and exciting experiences and benefits to gain.
I’ll tell you, false humility and ego have kept more people down than lack of money, lack of education, or lack of any kind of resources. NOT ASKING KILLS US! It kills our relationships and our businesses, it kills our friendships and our bodies, and it kills our spirits, too.
Not asking means we do everything ourselves. Not asking means we don’t get the sale. Not asking means we don’t get what we want in friendships and marriages. Not asking means we are passed up for the raise, the promotion, the new product line (that our competitor ends up getting because they asked first).
Not asking means we get a higher interest rate. Not asking means we pay a higher percentage to the real estate agency. Not asking means we eat alone (hey, even if we get turned down, we would have eaten alone anyway)!
We ASSUME other people know what we want. NO, NO, NO, THEY DO NOT. They are busy, they are consumed with their own day, and no offense, but they are not thinking too totally much of you throughout the day. You have goals, needs, tasks, and desires that others can help you meet, yet you do not ask.
But, ASKING…AHHHHHHHH, ASKING!
Asking means we get more love and snuggles. Asking means we get to hold someone’s hand. Asking means we get more sales. Asking means our commission just went up. Asking means we get to work with amazing people. Asking means we become part of THAT team, asking means we get to pick our date up in that really cool car. Asking means we get what we want that wasn’t on the menu. Asking means we are so much less tired because now we have the proper amount of help. Asking means we make a lot more money, and a lot more profit, too!
Asking means we let ourselves be human. Asking means we allow others to have the joy of sowing into our lives. Asking means someone else gets an opportunity to function in more responsibility while we get some needed rest. Asking means we are happier. Asking means we are warmer and more connected. Asking means we don’t burden others by expecting them to know what we want. Asking means we become grown-ups and take responsibility for our lives, giving up the tendency to complain about what we don’t have.
Go ahead: Ask for the sale, the raise, the special product. Ask for the backrub, the conversation, the love. Ask for the interest rate, the promotion, the price. Ask for the help, the nap, the puppy. Ask for the chicken sandwich with the sauce that normally goes with the roast beef dip.
You have not because you ask not, and I promise, you can have more, and be happier, if you will simply ask for—VOICE—what you want.
“The good Lord gave you a body that can stand most anything. It’s your mind you have to convince.” ~Vince Lombardi
This week I will share with you My 8 Proven Business-Building Tips that you can apply to your business (store-front or home-based) to build it to success. Most have to do with your mindset first, which in turn will direct your actions towards precisely focused effort to get you where you desire to be.
These practical and very doable tips are research-based and have been proven over and over again. They lead to success for the business professional who will practice them.
These tips are easy to put into action.
1. When you are not selling, MARKET your business
If you do not have an appointment on any given day, market yourself during the time you would normally be on an appointment. Think about a person who is seeking full time employment. To be successful in finding a job quickly (which would in turn generate money quickly), a person seeking a job should make their full time job the task of getting a job. Similarly, if you do not have a client or a lead, make your full time (or part time) job the task of marketing to get leads and appointments. Before long you will have a steady flow of clients.
Create Awareness (market) by doing events related to your industry or niche, writing articles, or getting your materials out there in your community. A few examples from my previous decorating business include distributing flyers, doing decorating seminars for the public, partnering with a builder and putting over a dozen sample treatments in his showroom, and writing a decorating advice column every Sunday in the Home Section of an area newspaper in conjunction with a local real estate company, to name just a few. I got many exceptional leads and sales as a result of doing these tasks, and it did not take long at all.
2. DON’T pre-judge who you think will buy from you: Target your marketing but be good to EVERYONE
Market to your target groups, and then serve every one who comes to you from these activities. NEVER be hasty to judge a book by its cover (especially when that book approaches YOU)!
Get out there in your local community and network. At events, strike up conversations and be polite and kind to everyone that you meet. Even if someone is seemingly not your potential client, remember that people have bosses and acquaintances and relatives. People tell people, and people who cannot afford your services right now tell people who can. Someone who cannot afford your products now may be in a position to purchase them later, and they will remember how you interacted with them when they couldn’t buy.
One time, when I had a storefront design studio, a woman came in dressed in ragged jeans and a t-shirt, and from her appearance I absolutely assumed she was someone who could not afford my products and services. She just did not look the part AT ALL. I thought she was someone who was waiting for the bus or had missed it, and was just coming into my shop to cool off from the hot Texas summer heat. However, I treated her the same way I did any other prospect (or any person): I was kind, courteous, and gave her my undivided time and attention. Little did I know she lived in one of the biggest homes in the most “well-to-do” subdivision in our area. I ended up doing custom cornices for her very large family room and it was a wonderful job with a very nice profit.
3. “Losing” a sale is still a positive thing
When you lose a sale, you are a step closer to your closing rate goal. Remember that in order to have an optimal closing rate (60-80% for most industries), you will have to lose some sales. Even a lead that did not become a sale can lead to a referral sale if you remain professional and courteous. Think about it in a positive light. Hearing one “no” means you are much closer to the “YES”!
4. Our futures and fortunes are in the follow through!
Follow-up on ALL of your prospects, even the ones you KNOW (or rather, think you know) will not buy. Through your follow-up they will see that you care, and through your sincere communication, you may get the real reason for the lost sale. This gives you another opportunity to actually make the sale by helping the prospect to overcome any fear, misconception, or obstacle that was standing in the way for them.
Suppose you did not follow-up with a prospect because you just assumed they were not going to buy, so “why bother”. Then, that prospect suddenly realized that they could make the extra room in their budget after all. There is a very great chance that the prospect WILL NOT CALL YOU after the initial sales presentation even if they figured out a way to broaden their budget. Instead, they may just go forward until another buying opportunity presents itself, and someone else will get that sale. On the other hand, if you simply follow-up—perhaps a week later and then maybe again in a month or two— they may interact with you and give you their business. Our fortunes are certainly in the follow through.
5. Invest in your business
Make room in your business budget to invest in your business so it can grow. Allow resources for the development of new products and services, for education for yourself and your associates, for interesting projects, and for advertising and marketing. Perhaps you could invest in a joint venture with another business owner, or spend a little cash to delegate tasks. You could put resources towards things like search engine optimization for your website, a regular “advice” column in a local community magazine, some yard signs and door hangers, or .towards a company vehicle.
Having my car fully wrapped was a good investment for me when I ran my decorating business. I got a lot of attention with my bright and attractive colors, and many people stopped me in parking lots and garages for my business card even though my phone number was clearly visible on my car wrap. I think people just wanted to say hello and strike up a conversation because the wrap was so extensive, so colorful, and so interesting. It was always a lot of fun, and it definitely led to business and great profits, meaning it was worth the investment.
6. Know your competition, but do not obsess over them
Understand basically how your main competitors function, and have an idea of their products, services, and prices. Then, find what you do that they do not, and brag about it. Know your competition, but never be obsessed with them or give them even one minute more thought than is necessary to serve your clients. FOCUS, FOCUS, FOCUS on what you do well and who YOU are, and shout it out in your wonderful, unique voice! Do not get sidetracked and caught up in the kind of negative energy that comes from fixating on another person or business. Focus on your customers instead, and you will enjoy amazing freedom and greater success.
7. Give your business time to grow
Do not be pulled off sides by get-rich-quick schemes, and do not expect instant sales and referrals just because you are in business. You must nurture and grow your business, each day doing something positive and meaningful towards your short-term and long-term business goals (which means you must have them and know what they are). This type of effort will definitely pay off, perhaps a little at first, but be patient and faithful in the little and you will see exponential and expedited growth once it all starts to take effect.
8. Have fun and be the kind of person people LOVE, LOVE, LOVE to be around
When you leave the presence of others, they should feel better for having spent time with you. Who wouldn’t want to do business now and in the future with a fun, positive, fair, and caring individual? You cannot separate “real life” from “business”. We are who we are, and know assuredly that your business success will reflect the kind of person that you choose to be. It IS a choice!
“Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.” ~Benjamin Franklin
“We are rich only through what we give, and poor only through what we refuse.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everyone wants to get rich quick, and there are a mazillion experts ready to take your money and tell you how. But don’t blame them. There are mazillions more who want to know how to get as much money as they can, so they can finally be happy. With that frame of mind, unfortunately, few will ever experience true wealth.
That’s because being RICH has NOTHING to do with money! It has everything to do with the way you live your life and the happiness you feel every day. To get rich, you have to first stop thinking about money, and start thinking about what drives you with excitement and passion.
For example, I am RICH. I live my life with a mindset that is positive and that also draws me to opportunities where I can help others, enjoy my days, and make great money, too. I had to be RICH before I could ever be financially well-off.
My passion—what drives me every day of my life—is empowering others to find their unique gifts and use them to create amazing lives and businesses. I would do this for free. It is who I am.
For you it may be designing and creating off-the-hook interior spaces, or mentoring others to be their very best, or helping people to get well and strong and energized, or it may be informing and entertaining your tribe through exciting seminars and special events. Your passion may be connecting with clients in the selling situation because you know you are changing their lives in unprecedented ways through the exceptional products that you sell.
To GET RICH QUICK, quit thinking that RICH means money, and get a brand new mindset. You must be RICH well before you will ever see the first shiny dime of your small business fortune.
Getting rich quick starts with your decision to drop a very dangerously deceptive mentality—the one that says you can be successful without a lot of effort or without putting a reasonable amount of time into your business.
If you are involved in the fallacy that one day you will “make it big” and never have to work again, I can bet that you are not tapping into your passion—you are not doing what you truly love. The people who become highly successful are so motivated, so inspired to help others, and so driven to always have a RICH quality of life, that they never even desire a day when they can quit “doing” what they love.
Research proves over and over again that doing what you are passionate about, or at the very minimum what you are peaceful about and extremely motivated to do, is the key to financial rewards. This is because you end up in a zone of productivity, often called “flow”, that continues to drive you through all obstacles, and the energy you emit from doing what is meaningful to you actually draws others your way, and many of these “others” have money to spend.
Do you still want to get rich quick? Maybe so. I think you should. Here’s how–here’s the RICH mindset you need in order to be financially wealthy and incredibly happy, too:
R- Reclaim your personal passion and redirect all of your efforts towards it.
I-Invest in yourself and in your business: education, extreme self care, marketing activities that have proven results and move you forward, and leisure time spent doing the things that make you happy and bring you peace.
C-Createenvironments where you can thrive: Ditch negative energy, spend less time with saboteurs and gossipy people, make your home a place of refuge, expression, and fun, and your office a station of peak productivity, connection, and creativity.
H-Hire Help. Spend time doing what you are good at, and delegate the tasks that are not directly tied to building your profits or caring for self. If you don’t, you will burn out because you are not doing activities that are profitable or that you are passionate about. Let someone else do your monthly newsletters or your daily books. If you are a designer, put together a small team of design assistants for the less complicated work. Hire a housekeeper because the money you pay for that is LESS than the money you lose on the sales you are not bringing in while you’re vacuuming the carpet!
And there it is. Now, to get rich quick (which precedes gobs of money), simply get clear on what it is you really love to do, and do it FULL THROTTLE. My friend Gary Vaynerchuk says “CRUSH IT”! I say “smash the heck out of it, and do it with all of your might”. Either way, bring your passion to the table, take great care of your mind and body, engage yourself in pertinent, consistent activities to bring you towards your goals, surround yourself with good vibrations, delegate what slows you down, then buckle your seat belt to take the ride of your life to financial independence and true personal empowerment.
“What is not started today is never finished tomorrow.”
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You hear it all the time, “Life is short, so you should live it fully”. For some people that means keeping the keg going, or grabbing as much money and fame as they can squeeze into every one of life’s transactions. Regardless of whether or not life is really “short”, the fact that we are here, that we are alive, and that we are cognitively aware, is a huge signal that at the very least, we should be living lives of purpose and meaning, not just running after the green stuff, the skirts, youth, and all of the other misleading bells, whistles, and detours this earthly existence can offer.
Since you have the opportunity—and somewhere deep down, the desire—why not spend your life doing the things you are really passionate about, the things you dreamed about doing, and doing them in the way you dreamed about being? It’s a good idea, but first you have to get still for a bit, and allow your personal desires to resurface. You may even have to conjure up a few from scratch, and that’s o.k. No matter what you are doing now, you can and should re-ignite with the passionate desires that once motivated you to see life as an exciting and rich experience. No matter where you are currently, you CAN live your life based on your deepest desires, and you CAN find, develop, and then live, your dreams.
That’s what I want to talk to you about—your dreams. There are two kinds of dreams: those you encounter while you are fast asleep, and those you bring into play while you are wide awake. For the rest of this message, I’d like to visit with you about the second kind, those you activate when you are awake—the ones you have total control over authoring and bringing to some type of fruition.
Dreams can be fantastic, fabulous, or even a little freaky! Dreams are more thanhopes, because you play a crucial role in fulfilling them. They are not left to chance. Dreams have the element of creation and animation built right into them. Dreaming is something you do, something you engage in, and something you are involved with. When you dream, you are first daring to believe that you can have more, then you are suggesting to yourself ways to create that. On top of that, the very act of dreaming fuels you to take the actions necessary to actualize what you know you want.
Dreaming is exciting because it stirs up your passions, and convinces you that what you desire is worth going after.
Dreams are dynamic, not static. They are moving, developing, unwinding, unfolding, and even changing as you go towards them with the determination to see them take shape. Dreams become realities through a structured process of applying yourself and your resources towards them in a “take action” manner.
That’s what it is all about, taking action. Here is a DREAM RECIPE that you can follow to create a delicious dish of your very own dreams, those that will feed you with more excitement, more meaning, and more personal passion going forward. Living your dreams actually forces all of the energy fields surrounding them to make more room for more dreams. It is a contagious and exhilarating process. It touches the lives of others, too. To live your deepest desires—your dreams—is to live divine.
As you create, plan, and actualize your dreams, remember this:
It is not so much the exact and perfectly literal expression of a dream that is important— although with proper planning you will see many of your dreams almost perfectly come to pass. It is the act of being present with your dreams that is the powerful part, because going towards your dreams leads you to your true destiny. Your true destiny is where the magic begins.
DREAM RECIPE
1. Pretend for a moment that you have no constraints, that YOU (not a false you) can have anything that you want, and that you can be anyone that you desire.
2. Think about what you would do in life (with your minutes, days, weeks, months, and years) if no matter what you did, you received the exact same financial reward and the exact same praise from others for doing it (so the motive is not money, recognition, or fame).
3. Get clear about your personal dreams. Jot down eight dreams you would like to see come to pass in your life over the next one to five years (or even a few years longer if need be). Include ONLY things you are passionate about—that excite you, thrill you, or invigorate you in some meaningful way (leave the other, less exciting ideas for another day).
4. Prioritize your dreams. Go back and circle from the above list, the four dreams that are the absolute most important to you AT THIS TIME IN YOUR LIFE (they may all be equally important, but which one are MOST important now. For example, you could want to have a child and also want to get a masters degree so you can teach, but the degree may be most important AT THIS TIME IN YOUR LIFE, leaving the plans for building a family for a later time).
5. Plan for fueling your way to your dreams. Dreams take resources, which may include money, time, collaboration with specific people, trading favors, or a combination. Get out four pieces of paper, and on each piece write out one of the four dreams you circled above. Then in the space below each dream, give a rough estimate of how much time you need to accomplish the dream, what some of the needed resources will be, and what some of the potential challenges you might face will be. Also include—and this is very important—what personal value each dream will help you to live out. Do this for all four. Next, get a little more specific about the action steps you will have to take to realize each dream. The more specific you are, the more likely your dreams will actually take form in “real life”.
6. Pick one of the four dreams to focus on NOW. You probably won’t be able to focus well on more than one dream at a time, so pick one of the four—the one that seems the most feasible at this time based on the resources needed, the obstacles you may face, and the value the dream will help you to live out. You can still make steps towards the other dreams as you focus mainly on one (for example, if one of the dreams is to write a book and another is to go back to college, you can begin writing the rough outline for your book during the same time you save money for your coming education).
7. Take at least one action step toward your focus dream within the next 36 hours. Anyone can write down a dream, but only those who take action bit-by-bit to accomplish them will get to live them out, and share the fruits of those dreams with others (the best part). Let’s say that your dream is to own a retail shop in Aspen, Colorado and you currently live in another state. An easy and first step could be to get online and start checking rental property rates and real estate prices for commercial properties in Aspen or you could find out what types of licenses or permits are need to do business in the state of Colorado.
8. Each week, purpose to take another step toward actualizing your current focus dream. Make the commitment to yourself to make realizing your dreams, one at a time, a lifestyle. Always be working on a dream you are passionate about and one you know is good and healthy for you and others. In the same way you decide to be a healthy eater by making many smart choices each day, allow every day to move you closer to living out your destiny. Make experiencing your dreams a lifestyle.
Dreams are not hard to attain, but doing so does take consistent effort over acertain period of time. Most people do not believe they are worth the investment and the steady, regular, continual effort. Believe me, you absolutely, positively ARE!
I see people everyday who are tired, stressed, and trying to keep up with how “SIMPLE” the Internet has made life in the current millennium!
I think people need a break, and they need to know what to focus on so they can do it well.
I asked my virtual friend and mentor Seth Godin a few questions I thought many people today were struggling with. I told him I wanted to share the answers with my tribe. He gave me the simple, shoot straight from the hip answers (true to Seth style, which is why I love him so much) that will best help you in your life and business going forward.
Margo:Is it a good idea or bad idea to have more than one blog, since some people do 2 different things (2 blogs are time consuming and hard to promote, but they allow specific communication)?
Seth: Have one blog per big idea. Have as many big ideas as you can hit home runs on.
Margo: How does a business person deal with all of the online marketing and social networking options? How do we chose what to spend our time on (how do we edit out of our lives some of these online services)?
Seth: Pick a social media tool you love, and do it better than anyone else and ignore the rest.
Margo: In the simplest way, what does it take to be successful and get your name out in the universe today (by simple I do not mean lazy. I just mean focused on a few key marketing opportunities where you can spend your time well and with quality content without going bonkers)? Seth: Be passionate and persist and be consistent.
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.”~Anthony Robbins
“The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don’t define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.” ~ Denis Watle
“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” ~ Henry David Thoreau – Walden, or Life in the Woods
“By recording your dreams and goals on paper, you set in motion the process of becoming the person you most want to be. Put your future in good hands — your own.” ~ Mark Victor Hansen
I hope you enjoyed the audio I sent you last week.
This week I promised you a very powerful goal-setting exercise, and here it is.
It WILL take a little bit of time, but the PAYOFF will be TREMENDOUS! If you take it seriously and look at it as a potentially life-changing session, it will put you light years ahead in your life and business. It will guide you step-by-step through a process where you will create MEANINGFUL life and business goals, prioritize them with incredible clarity, and determine with ease the action steps you should take to accomplish what you desire in a realistic amount of time!
This strategic plan puts YOU in control and allows you to continually move toward your most important personal and professional goals, accomplish them quickly, and bring what you say you want into reality.
Following is the EXACT TEXT and PLAN that I share each year with my coaching clients and my network of professionals. I have also personally guided individuals through this process, to see them realize amazing professional growth and success (at the very end of this message is a testimonial from a client).
PLEASE, invest the time in yourself to do it. You will save YEARS of wasted effort for the hour or so you take to do this exercise!
GOAL PLANNING that ACTUALLY WORKS!
Prioritizing your goals and the specific tasks you invest your time in can make a tremendous difference in the way you experience your life and in the success of your business. Skillful goal setting can free you up to spend more time doing the things you personally want to do—the things that are the most meaningful to you.
I encourage you to start this year off with a strategic plan to focus on what is most important to you and to make room and time for the business goals and activities that will catapult you into financial freedom, leaving you a lot of valuable time for family, friends, new business ventures, and many fun adventures.
You are going to learn how to leave behind all of the unprofitable “busywork” that gets you nowhere, and you will in turn become a Master of your own life and destiny.
You may have just left behind a year of dissatisfaction and frustration. You may have often felt overwhelmed which probably kept you from taking the actions you MOST needed to take. You may have thought about time management. The truth is though, that many of the time management principles that are “out there” would simply tell you how to do more things in less time, or more things in the same amount of time. This approach can pose a HUGE problem if the “things” you work on are not the right things to begin with! You need a TIME MASTERY APPROACH, where the tasks you spend your effort and energy on or even complete are totally in line with your values and especially your most meaningful business and personal goals.
In a nutshell, you need to:
• Establish meaningful business (and personal) goals
• Prioritize these goals
• Create a list of tasks to accomplish each goal
• Prioritize these tasks based on which are the MOST IMPORTANT
• Concentrate the majority of your daily efforts on those important tasks
Begin with a Goal Planning Session
Mastering your time begins with finding the right direction for your business and for your life in general. You have to know where you are going but more important than that, you have to choose where you want to go! This will require an initial small amount of planning on your part. Let’s call this your “goals planning session” (this can be a “business goals planning session” or a “life goals planning session” or both wrapped up into one). Either way, you should do one of these goals planning sessions about every 6 months since business goals and life priorities do change, and short term goals get accomplished quickly.
Your time mastery session will involve establishing and prioritizing meaningful business and personal goals, and prioritizing projects and specifically tasks in terms of how they fit into your long-term goals, your mid-term goals, and your short-term goals.
Once your goals are set, each day you will take a few minutes out to plan and you will decide DAILY which activities and tasks are most valuable for you to work on to help get you closer to accomplishing your targeted goals and dreams.
With this approach, every day you will inch a little closer to realizing your goals and dreams, even when part of your day is spent on menial tasks and routine items that most of us must do. A time mastery approach will help you to best use some of the prime hours of each day.
Following is THE exercise in goal planning that will change the direction of your life and business for the better. Please don’t make the mistake of believing you do not have the time to do the following exercises. You simply cannot afford not to.
TIME MASTERY Business Goal Planning Session exercise:
• Get out three sheets of paper, one each for your list of your long-term business (where you want to be in 4-5 years), your mid-term goals (where you want to be in 1-3 years), and your short-term goals (things you want to accomplish in the next 6 months). You can adjust the time frames to best suit yourself and your life, but make your short term goals within a few months. Put the labels at the top of each page.
• Take about 3 minutes for each sheet, and write your goals very quickly. Do not stop and think about it. If something comes to your mind, do not judge the thought, just write it down. When you are through with each page of goals, spend an additional minute or two adding to the page or fine-tuning it. Do this exercise for each page.
• It may help to know that a goal is not “something you do”. A task is something you do. A goal describes where you want to be or what you want to accomplish, for example, “I want to my yearly sales revenues to be $300,000.00 within 2 years, or, “I want to write a book on interior lighting”.
• Next, take the sheet of your long-term goals, and circle the 3 most important. Now label them A, B, and C, with A representing the long-term goal you want to focus on first or that you find to be most important to you at this time in your life, and B and C representing the long-term goals you will work on after long-term goal A is accomplished. Do this same activity for the other two pages (mid-term goals and short-term goals).
• You will now have 9 goals circled; 3 long-term, 3 mid-term, and 3 short-term goals. Each of these goals has an A, B, or C next to it. Now, Take out a clean piece of paper, and transfer the A goal from each sheet onto the new sheet.
• The new sheet will now have 3 top priority goals—-one from each category (a top priority long-term goal, a top priority mid-term goal, and a top priority short-term goal). This is your Focused Goals Target.
• The final step in this goal planning session is to make a list of all of the possible tasks and activities you could do that would help you towards accomplishing each of the three goals on your Focused Goals Target sheet.
• Create a page for each of these three goals (your top priority long-term goal, mid-term goal, and short-term goal) and list everything you can think of that would help you to attain this goal. This is another brainstorming session so you should just write and not make judgments. Take several minutes to do this for each goal. Then revise this list, adding more activities and crossing out others that will not work.
• Now it is time to prioritize tasks to ensure that you will make the best use of your time each day. Go through the list of tasks (do this for each page) and circle the ones you feel will give you the most result for your effort. You may end up circling 6 or 8 of them. Then draw a star next to the ones that you would like to work on first.
• Schedule these tasks into your daily to do’s, focusing on the ones with the stars first. Daily, when you plan your business activities, try to schedule in at least one or two tasks from e ach list to accomplish that day. Before you know it, you will be checking goals off of your Focused Goals Target because you will be accomplishing your business dreams and life goals in record time!
(Testimonial follows)
Congratulations! Have a Wildly Successful Week,
Margo
TESTIMONIAL:
I have spent my life in pursuit of a clearer understanding of the life I was searching for. Having many interests and many responsibilities, I often stayed overwhelmed with too many choices and not enough progress to suit my desires. Then, I met Margarett (Margo).
In just a few short meetings Margarett was able to assist me in the organizing of the clutter in my mind as she helped me define the basic personality aspects of my individual self. We skipped labeling and belief-driven needs to get, quickly, to the core of the 3 most important things I needed to achieve in my life in order to have personal, soulful fulfillment. The process was fast, clear and powerful.
I am happy to say that when I got very clear about what mattered and could articulate it and focus on it with action and intent, EVERY desire came into my life greater than I could have imagined. Far, far greater. And fast, too.
Within 30 short, committed days I had created situations that allowed me to call into my life, the clear goals I’d determined were the most important. I am overjoyed at the results. Pinching myself, actually. Smiling, lifting my face to the sun and pinching myself. This life is real and I am enchanted, clear and on track.
Carol Conlee,
Business Owner and Playwright
Central Texas
“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” ~Confucius
Links to special recordings follow this message.
Today I am sick in bed. I have been down since New Year’s day, and I feel just terrible (tomorrow I’ll see the doctor). I am also in between bootcamps right now (the fitness program I told you about).
I had a plan to walk/run 4 miles a day for the 3 or 4 weeks in between bootcamp sessions. This was a reasonable goal to me since I had worked up to it. Then, on about the third day of this plan, I re-injured (slightly) my calf muscle that I had injured more seriously about 6 weeks ago. Then a week or so later, I got really sick (and here I am in bed).
We set goals, and sometimes things happen that prevent us from reaching them in the time frame we alloted. If we are serious about accomplishing what is important to us, we will make the needed adjustments and then get back on track, after all, this is REAL LIFE! The steps toward our goals can be adjusted, and on occasion, they should be. We are in charge of the goals, not the other way around.
I am big on having a few meaningful, well-thought-out goals, and taking specific actions to reach them. I have spoken on this topic to many different types of career professionals. I believe that how we use our time can either help us create a great life, or lead us to frustration and lives of mediocrity and, as Emerson puts it, “quiet desperation”.
Although I am goal oriented, I am NOT one of these people who thinks good time management is making important calls while waiting in line at the grocery store, or cramming in some work on the laptop during a short taxi-cab ride. That is NOT effective or efficient time management. Cramming lots of things into a day is not necessarily a surefire way to reach your goals. (I have worked with people like this, and it’s annoying in my opinion. I personally love my “mini-vacations”, be it in a line at the store or in a taxi cab just “chillin’ ”. It makes me a more effective executive when I AM working.)
Last week I promised you some audio on goal planning and goal setting and on working on the RIGHT kinds of activities in order to make a huge impact in your life and business over time. Since I am sick in bed right now, and I can barely talk, I will not record a new audio, instead, I have two previously recorded audios that I created last year for a group of Interior Decorating Professionals, and I would like you to hear them. They are spot on! No matter which occupation you are in, these recordings will shed light on three different types of ACTIONS—the types you should be taking, and the types to avoid each day, week, and month so that you can reach your goals.
Then, next week, I will share with you (NOT on audio) a very specific, precise, POWERFUL, life-changing goal setting plan that will enable you to create and then set new and MEANINGFUL goals for yourself and for your business. The plan will then help you to prioritize these goals, decide which action steps to take, and find the motivation and tenacity to take those steps one by one, to actually accomplish what you desire!
The entire time you work the plan, you will be moving with definitive force toward your most important personal and professional goals. Next week’s plan is something you should look forward to getting. You may even want to carve some time in advance—make an appointment with yourself for next week to read the Monday Message and work the plan it contains, which is GOAL PLANNING that ACTUALLY WORKS!
In the meantime, today, just take some time to listen to these two audio messages about action. Give them a moment to load. Ignore the greeting at the beginning to “decorators” and apply the entire session personally to you and your business. Then next week we will be on our way to planning and creating new and better lives.
September 8, 2010 1157 King Richard I 1886 Siegfried Sassoon 1925 Peter Sellers 1932 Patsy Cline 1931 Jack Rosenthal 1933 Michael Frayn 1934 Sir Peter Maxwell Davies 1940 Frankie Avalon 1954 Ann Diamond
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It’s time for ALL of us to finally just be ourselves and contribute meaningfully AND powerfully to the world through who we were meant to be and what we were meant to do. You don’t need a hook or a gimmick. You just need to be YOU, and be it full throttle! There is no other you, and THAT is where YOUR power lies!
please everyone else, be something you are not, or do it someone else’s way.
I am living my DREAM. My dream is to be a true encouragement and inspiration to others, to have control over the way I use my time and my resources, to fully enjoy the experience of life, to love my work and my contributions, to be blessed economically, and in doing so to know I am a success.
TRUE success, and having loads of fun.
