Business Coaching Blog

There is no doubt about it, New Year’s Resolutions are a powerful tool to achieve goals, yet only a few follow up and follow through on their resolutions..*

Why is that?

One simple reason is that most people forget that decisions are made every minute of every day and they add up at the end of the week/month/year. Non-decisions are the same – the decision NOT made to put your runners on to go for a run. The decision NOT to turn down the (extra) piece of pie. The decision NOT to get up early.

“It is in the moments of INdecision
that dreams are destroyed.”
– Dr Marc Dussault

If you made a list of New Year’s Resolutions for 2012 – take them out right now and re-commit yourself to following through.

If you’re not motivated – the problem is you have impotent goals and dreams.

You need something that will MOTIVATE, INSPIRE and MOVE YOU TO ACTION.

Pick something exciting, but within the realm of possibility – something you can really get enthused about – something that would CHANGE you and your life.

I know too many “people who end up where they don’t want to be” simply through lack of planning and commitment.

No decision IS a decision – it’s the worst one of all – one made by someone else for all the wrong reasons.

There is no joy in living a life by default. To live a life by design, you need to know what YOU want and desire.

You decide.

By NOT deciding, all you’re doing is letting yourself down – no one cares that you don’t make a decision. That’s why it’s so easy.

One day leads to a week then to a month and before you know it, another year has passed.

If you get lulled into complacency, a whole decade can pass you buy.

That’s tragic.

Don’t just sit there – do something!

Anything! If you didn’t create a list of New Year’s Resolutions – do it now!

New Year’s Resolutions… they are aspirational, yet often vague and almost always corrective. People promise to spend more time with family, get fit, lose weight, quit smoking, reduce debt, consume less alcohol… yet just end up cataloguing the failings of the past year. As with most customs, New Year’s Resolutions are observed in gesture only, not followed up nor followed through. It’s a reflexive act rather than one of resolution or commitment.

People have been making New Year’s Resolutions since the time of ancient Rome, when the Julian Calendar was adopted in 45 BC. January 1 was introduced as the first day of the year after the Roman God, Janus (pictured left). Janus was the God of beginnings and endings, represented with two faces looking toward the future as well as the past.

Romans, believing that the gods witnessed the failures and shortcomings of the past year made promises to rectify the situation in the next year ahead.

Not surprisingly, 88 percent of New Year’s Resolutions fail.

One of the reasons is that people tend to make the same ones over and over and over again without conviction or belief they can really change. Statistically, it takes up to 10 attempts to change which is well beyond most people’s attention span let alone level of discipline to make the change a reality.

Alarmingly, research shows that 25% of 1 out of every 4 people give up in the first WEEK.

Most people, quizzed today would not even be able to list all of their New Year’s Resolutions… and we’re not even at the end of January!

So why is the prognosis so poor? One reason is that success is limited, yet most people (wrongly) believe it is achievable (when statistically it’s not – only 1 person can win a Gold Medal amongst hundreds of competitors).

Take quitting smoking as an example: It takes 6 to 12 attempts to stop smoking. One survey in 2008 reported that only 11%, 1 out of 9, people who set that as a New Year’s Resolution achieved their goal and stopped smoking.

There is hope – people who did achieve their New Year’s Resolutions did so, on average after 6 attempts.

To achieve your New Year’s Resolutions, you need a plan, simple as that. Ideally, you write a PLEDGE to yourself and you marshal help from others close to you who can help you.

For example, if you want to get fit, get a buddy to walk or run with you, play a sport… If you want to lose weight, have family members help by reducing fatty or high calorie foods in your meals.

Without a plan, nothing’s going to change.
The odds are stacked against you.

Of course as you’d expect, there is a way to stack the odds in your favour… CLICK HERE -> To Make Next Year Your Best Year Ever.

New Year’s Resolutions are one of the easiest ways to set the wheels of success in motion. They can be the catalyst to create your ultimate dream destiny…

“What if…”

What if… your childhood dreams actually came true…

What if… you could wave a magic wand and get anything you want…

What if… you could rub Aladdin’s Lamp and get any 3 wishes granted…

What if…

Those are two very powerful words.

Here’s the thing.

Some people get what they want while others don’t.

• It’s infuriating to know someone dumber than you is out-performing you in business or school.
• It’s aggravating to have someone less physically capable beat you at your favorite sport.
• It’s perplexing to see someone who started with less money than you build a ‘fortune’ that allows them to have the luxurious, stress-free lifestyle you’d like to have.

What if… you could learn how to accomplish all your goals?

What if… it took less than 5 minutes a week to implement?

What if… the strategies were proven and tested?

What if… they cost LESS than going to McDonald’s?

Just let yourself imagine those words.

Let your thoughts wander.

Listen to what you would say in the privacy of your own mind.

Feel what it would be like to have those things most important to you.

What if… You believed it was possible.

What if… You learned the strategies, techniques and tips you need.

What if… You applied them, one day at a time.

What if… You achieved one goal, then another, then another.

How different would your life be?

How much more could you do and contribute to others?

What if… you had a system to make them all come true?

What if… I gave you the link – would you make 2012 your best year ever?

Why not give yourself this gift?

* This is why New Year’s Resolutions are so important to me…

I recently created a short YouTube video (48 seconds) that highlights what you can do with the exponential power of the Internet.

In less than 1 minute, I am able to introduce myself as The Exponential Growth Strategist, promote my 1 Percent Improvement Doctrine to help you get more done with less effort, and make sure your business gets noticed by going from Bland To Brand.

And that’s just 20 seconds into the 48 second video!

Then I explain that you can increase conversions and sales with our Killer Kopywriting System as well as get news leads for a fraction of the cost with our brand new Internet Sales Lead Generation Toolkit so you can acquire the Mindset Of A Champion and win in business!

All of that in less than a minute!

The reason this video is on my Business Coaching And Mentoring blog is because all of our Internet Marketing Strategies are geared for REAL businesses who want to sell more of their products and/or services.

The Internet and its multimedia capabilities enable you to do that at a fraction of the cost, with minimum effort.

This entire campaign took me about 1 hour and cost less than $100 in total.

That’s hard to beat with ‘traditional advertising’.

This graph says it all…

As a regular reader or subscriber to this and my other blogs, you know about my holistic approach to business. One of the key components of what Exponential Marketing is all about is establishing authentic and genuine rapport with your suspects, prospects and clients via what I call “Killer Konversations“.

If you don’t engage interactively with your suspects, prospects and clients, they will simply gravitate towards suppliers and providers that give them the attention they seek.

The exponential question then becomes – what conversation / relationship do you want to have with them? And secondly, how are you going to manage them?

Sources Of Client Attrition

Creating the various client conversations is one of the main features of what we do within the Platinum Program. Click on the hyperlink to learn more about how we could help you grow your business.

We have all heard the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”, but a TERRIBLE picture can lose you 1,000 clients. This photo was taken from a Facebook page for a restaurant. You be the judge – would you want to eat there?

It’s no surprise (to me) that this restaurant is struggling to attract customers. It counts on its Facebook page for referrals – can you see a problem here?!?!

Today’s lesson – check ALL the photos you have online and ask SOMEONE ELSE who will be honest with you if it helps you or hurts you/your brand to have it online.

If you can’t afford professional photos – then don’t put any up.

DON’T USE STOCK PHOTOS for your products, that’s transparent and you’ll lose credibility and trust.

Please comment below to reinforce how bad this image is!

I love it when I learn my own lessons! I teach ambitious entrepreneurs and business executives how to find hidden opportunities in their businesses.

Opportunities that are sitting right there, under there noses…

That’s what happened to me today.

I figuratively tripped across a 4-minute audio that I completely forgot I had in my archives (I have more than 500 different electronic product components…)

It’s only 4 minutes, but it includes all of this!

Essential ingredients you NEED in your marketing to get
your PROFITS TO RISE FASTER than yeast in BREAD

• These ideas will enable you to bring home up to quarter of a million dollars per year more instead of netting a profit that makes you feel you are working in a job (Just Over Broke)  (00:24)
• Following these steps for improving your methods will bullet-proof your career and business so you will always lock in this much profit each year as a minimum (00:37)
• Changing this one thing will minimize your risk so you will feel you’re working your way to the upper crust rather than picking up the crumbs of clientele from the bottom of the heap (00:47)
• These vital ingredients enable you to look at things differently to get a bigger slice of the pie (00:54)
• Making these small changes within your business each week for less than a hundred dollars can grow your profits by a factor of 157. (2:40)
• Gaining new ideas on a daily basis provides the raw materials to get top-quality results within the first year (3:17)
• Learning to think exponentially is like the air in your dough: it will help your brand, business and profits rise to peak levels (4:00)
• The mindset you will gain from these distinctions will get people begging to give you their money so you will be rolling in dough (4:25) faster than you knead it!

Click here to access this 4-minute audio that reveals the 1 Percent Improvement Doctrine.

Exponential Marketing has a cornerstone concept: Add value to your clients and they will come back and refer more clients to you. Easier said than done.

That’s why I’ve included a simple example: An Australia Post Postcard Fact Sheet that helps clients prepare their documents for direct mail.

The question for YOU is “What basic information, like this can you make available to your clients?”

The more information you make available, the easier it will be for them to do business with you = you’ll sell more.

When you’re exponential, you create Pathways To Profits™ that guide people through the path of least resistance preemptively, smoothly, creating a memorable and hopefully unique experience they will want to repeat themselves and advocate to others.

This is what we help our clients do – create a Business Building Blueprint™ that summarises these processes so everyone in the business knows what to do and ideally, automate them leveraging the Internet so the business transforms from an effort-based model to a value-based model.

In a previous blog post, I explained how to use a promotional product to add value to your clients, prospects and suspects. I know this is an example of antimimeticisomorphism that takes a while to get a grasp of, which is why I wanted to show you an alternative, called Permacharts, shown below.

The charts themselves are self-explanatory, but which ones can help your clients?

Read More »»

There is a four step process everyone goes through as they make a purchase.

1. Consider – Before anyone makes a decision, they must consider this opportunity. Most salespeople skip this step to their detriment.
2. Decision – This is when the ‘sale’ takes place. However, most ineffective salespeople skip the consideration stage and try to force the decision that was never even considered.
3. Commit – Without a commitment, a sale is not a sale. As many as 20 to 40% of sales are lost due to a lack of commitment requested of the purchaser.
4. Resolve – Making sure the commitment is followed up and followed through to its conclusion to ensure the sales is completed. Up to 10% of sales are left unattended and therefore lost.

Consider – or lack thereof is the number one source of lost sales, by a long shot. Anecdotally, as many as 4 out 5 sales are lost because the prospects never considered the offer being presented in the first place. Without it, there is no decision to be made.

So how does one go about having people consider their offer or proposal? Read More »»

One of the foundational principles of Exponential Mindset Thinking™ is the 1 Percent Improvement Doctrine™. It seems simple enough as the videos below explain, but here’s the real challenge – most people, believe it or not don’t have the discipline to follow through. Even though it takes only minutes a day to essentially achieve their wildest dreams, they let themselves down – many within less than a week most within the first month.

I know how surprising that sounds, but that’s what I want to focus on for today – the fact that MOST don’t follow through means that when you do, you’ll get the lion’s share of the rewards.

That’s because no one else is doing it.

Read More »»

You be the judge if one idea can be worth $50,000.

Everyone involved in direct mail wants to increase response rates. I came across a blog post that explains how you can significantly increase direct mail response rates. I’ve used this strategy countless times. Of course you don’t want to overdo using post it notes as the video below confirms.

If you could do just one of these things a day, imagine what would be possible:

1. Write a new short blog post about something you saw through Google Alerts.
2. Post a useful comment on a forum or blog that your perfect customers commonly frequent.
3. Send a Top 10 list or helpful article to your clients and prospects.
4. Make one phone call to a new buyer to thank them for their business. Read More »»

When I got into this industry, I have to admit I was “naive”. I actually believed there were enough people out there who wanted to learn respectable and legitimate strategies to become successful.

What I keep seeing however are deluded people who keep getting attracted to the “get rich quick schemes about how to make money in your underpants working from home so you can make money while you sleep”.

What has me disheartened this week is that I got emails from 3 different people and together the message came through to me loud and clear.

MOST people want the easy way out.

MOST people don’t want the responsibility that goes with success.

MOST people aren’t open to constructive criticism.

MOST people when all is said and done, are frankly lazy.

MOST people have no willpower.

MOST people will never truly succeed to a point where peace and serenity prevails. Read More »»

Last week, I had the pleasure and privilege to attend the 2011 Australian Open Tennis Championship. In one of the semi-final matches, Novak Djokovic was playing the legendary Roger Federer and at one point had “vision problems”… Due to dry contact lenses.

So you’d think he would have eye drops in his bag…. Nope!

Can you believe that?!?!?

A multi-millionaire tennis player who wears contact lenses doesn’t have eye drops in his bag.

DUHHHH!!!!

But it gets WORSE.

Read More »»

Today’s blog post is an extension of one of my most popular products called Squash Lessons For Marketing. As a business coach, I mentor business people who are very ambitious and think their #1 goal is to beat their competitors. Using the squash analogy of dominating the T instead of your competitor is the difference between a good player and a top grade “champion”. When you dominate the T in squash, you’ll win the game regardless of the competitor. It’s that simple.

In business it’s the same thing – by dominating the T, it doesn’t matter WHO you’re up against, you will win. That is much better than having tricks up your sleeve to beat ONE opponent because you know his/her weaknesses. That doesn’t help you one bit when you come up to the next competitor!

Think about it.

That’s what this blog is all about – getting you to THINK about what you’re doing and not doing. If you’d like me to become your business mentor, contact me at your convenience and we’ll see if you’re up to joining my team of Platinum Program members – we/they play like champions by focusing on IMPROVEMENT rather than just winning.

I was recently working with a client, Bree Robbins of Paddington Pups in Brisbane. As her business coach and mentor, we were discussing how she can differentiate herself within her existing product and service offering.

I’m not advocating this is the primary theme, but rather a secondary or additional Pathway to Profit™.

When a dog attends a doggy day care it’s not just about having someone else bear the burden of keeping it for you. There are many socialisation skills your dog will benefit from.

For Bree to become an expert, she needs to start documenting what she already knows about dog socialisation skills. For example:

• What are the steps to proper socialisation?
• How is each one of the steps approached and how do you know it’s been ‘passed’ to move on to the next one?
• What is necessary for each stage to occur?
• What are the variables to be played with?
• What are the most popular conditions to overcome?
• What are the % of the most common afflictions?
• What is the diagnosis and prognosis for each?
• Aggression and unruliness, what are the tell tale signs?
• Sources of the unwanted behaviour?

By documenting her expertise, Bree is able to demonstrate her level of skill and mastery across multiple media, including her blog, direct mail, classes and of course YouTube.

If you want to grow your sales, you need to improve and enhance the clarity of your communications. One quick and easy way is to define what you mean when you use terms and definitions. For example, I explain all my exponential syntax, vocabulary and business definitions on a special page on this blog. I am constantly updating and revising it. If anyone needs clarification, I can cut and paste the URL in an email and instantly everything makes sense.

http://www.exponentialprograms.com/business/blog/definitions/

If something is still unclear, I can revise and update that particular definition, quickly and easily. Of course this has substantial SEO value, but that is a topic for my Internet Mastery Blog!

By having this tool, I can choose to use it whenever there is doubt or the need to reinforce a point of distinction.

This is a great idea to raise funds for charity. I share ideas like this with you to show you that when you adopt Exponential Mindset Thinking™ you can and will become more creative and innovative. Exposure to new and different ideas stimulates your Reticular Activation System (RAS) so it gets easier and easier with time. Like a muscle, your brain can be trained to seek out new ideas. Enjoy this video and let me know which one you think won the race.

If you haven’t seen this video, it’s a great metaphor for Exponential Mindset Thinking™, coming up with great solutions to apparently “unsolvable problems”. We have an event coming up called Etch-A-Sketch Thinking In The iPad Age that introduces you to this idea of coming up with fresh new ideas that get you out of trouble quickly and easily!

Every year, we stage the Exponential Business Building Bootcamp which is 3 full-on days where entrepreneurs and business people get together to learn the best strategies that are proven and tested to work. Each time it’s staged, there is new content, examples and case studies from real Australian businesses just like yours. Case studies that defy the odds and in some cases are so astonishing that unless you met the business owner face-to-face to ask him or him how she did it, you’d never believe it was possible let alone THAT EASY.

That being said, HUNDREDS of people have attended Bootcamps, but only DOZENS have attended more than once. Most people think once the box is ticked, that’s it. “They know it all.”

That’s like thinking one tennis lesson is enough to make you Roger Federer or Serena Williams.

Today’s post is two examples from multiple Bootcamp attendees…

Business Growth Strategy Case Study #1: Bree Robbins of Paddington Pups

At the Bootcamp, I use antimimeticisomorphism examples that show how thinking differently can trigger innovative and creative ideas. One of the images was appropriate for Bree since she owns a doggy day care in Brisbane. The day after the Bootcamp, I sent her the impossible dog photo along with some links and voila! We both optimised our search engine rankings.

On the last night of every Exponential Business Building Bootcamp there is a session on Internet Strategies where participants can ask any question to increase their online traffic, sales and/or conversions. The Internet Marketing Strategies we teach are proven and tested for real brick and mortar businesses – not the spam0like ‘link building’ and other affiliate marketing strategies associated with get rich quick schemes. The strategies we teach are based on leveraging my 1 Percent Improvement Doctrine.

Business Growth Strategy Case Study #2: Gavin Buckett – The Gourmet Guardian

Another Exponential Growth Strategy, among the HUNDREDS covered at the Exponential Business Building Bootcamp is the strategy of preeminence. We spend all morning of day one covering all the tips and techniques to make sure you become the ultimate source of information, knowledge and expertise in your industry or market. The reasons you want to do this are beyond today’s blog post, but what I wanted to show you is how a multi-award winner takes action.

As part of  the Exponential Business Building Bootcamp there is Pre Program Preparation™ and Post Program Planning™ that ensures participants get the maximum out of the event. Today, Gavin responded to message #9 with the following:

“The statistic I found WHILE AT THE BOOTCAMP is that out of 2070 members of the Australian Institute of Food Science and Technology (AIFST), only 25 (1%) have a cooking qualification/ experience. That means that 99% of my professional competitors have not worked in kitchens and food businesses.

Bare that in mind when you next go to the supermarket and try something new – 99% of food technologists have no practical cooking experience.”

Gavin Buckett is The Gourmet Guardian – an Australian Food Safety Specialist. You have to admit that with a quote like this (which he has started to use in his advertising and promotional material), you are positively predisposed to consider him more of an expert. That is one of the many reasons his business is growing by more than 200% per annum. He has attended the Exponential Business Building Bootcamp 4, maybe 5 times and each time gets additional distinctions to take his sales and profitability one level higher.

These two case studies show you first-hand how quick, easy and inexpensive these strategies are – that is the beauty and elegance of Exponential Marketing Strategies. You don’t need a multi-million dollar advertising budget – you just need to THINK and ACT EXPONENTIALLY. Contact us to find out how you can join the Platinum Program – it’s not just a great program, we guarantee that for every $1 you invest, you’ll make $3 – GUARANTEED!