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’.

Have you ever wondered why success gets harder as you become more successful?

It’s because of your opportunity costs that keep rising as you get more and more successful mixed with a short term focus on “making deals” and taking care of emergencies instead of working “on” the business…

It’s quite a dilemma that paralyses many entrepreneurs. They know they could do better, but remain stuck in the Vortex Of Mediocrity™.

So how do you break out of this stranglehold?

Simple – MAKE time to get away from the business. It can be a long weekend or ideally a whole week. PLAN for it so you’re not stressed and you don’t cheat.

Remove yourself COMPLETELY from the day-to-day pressures and DISCONNECT completely.

Then ask yourself the following questions:

• If I was to start over again, what would I do differently? What would I change?
• If I was a competitor, how would I exploit me/us?
• What are we really good at?
• What could we be really good at (or better at)?
• If I knew I could not fail, what would I try?
• What is the #1 complaint of the industry/marketplace that I can solve?\
• What am I not doing that I should be doing?

You can’t have the thoughts to start to answer these questions while you’re knee deep in the intellectual quicksand of day-to-day operations.

You need distance.

You need your personal journal (you might even give MindMapping a go!)

You need to do this otherwise you’ll stagnate.

I do this exercise every year at Christmas time which conveniently coincides with my New Year’s Resolutions.

If you have a business trip planned, consider extending it by a day or two and take those unfamiliar surroundings to start the process. Once your business is done – check out of THAT hotel and check into another one t0 completely shift your mindset. I mean it. Pick a hotel near the beach, mountains or go upscale or totally rough and tough.

Make sure there is CONTRAST so that your brain registers the new impulses.

It’s necessary to jolt your system into a new realm, to get a new perspective.

Give it a go and see what happens!

Even though I don’t own a dog, I love em! I especially enjoy visiting Paddington Pups as you can see below. I mean c’mon – life doesn’t get any better than spending it with happy, playful puppiess and dogs who love you unconditionally.

Paddington Pups is raising money and awareness for the Millan Foundation setup up by world renowned dog whisperer, Cesar Millan to provide financial support for animal shelters and groups engaged in the rescuing, rehabilitation and re-homing of abused and abandoned dogs.

Locals are invited to bring their puppies pooches for a $10 hydrobath tomorrow from 10 AM to 1 PM in Milton / Paddington (Brisbane) Queensland. All the money raised will be donated to the Millan Foundation and passed on to the RSPCA shelter at Wacol.

It gets better.

Anyone who has their dog washed will go into a draw
to win two tickets (valued at $290) to see
Cesar Millan Live at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre
Thursday November 17 – courtesy of Paddington Pups!

The reason I’m blogging about this is because Paddington Pups is not just a doggy day care. It’s owner, Bree Robbins cares about her clients – dogs (and their owners). She makes sure her team takes a proactive role in community based activities as part of their holistic approach to dog care and education.

As I blogged about previously on the Paddington Pups blog, there is a lot to be learned from The Dog Whisperer, but if you want to grow your business, you also need to learn to give back to the community because it’ll come back to you tens time over.

Don’t do it to get something back – pay it forward and let the ripple of positivity make it’s way through ‘the universe’.

If we all do our share, this will be a much better place for all – INCLUDING dogs and puppies!

If you want the genesis of this concept, watch Steve Job’s Commencement Address To Stanford University Graduates in 2005 shown below.

Listen to one of our Platinum Program Members
who explains this philosophy in his own words:

When we started, we were aiming to assist smaller businesses, those with less
than 20 employees.  This is because 55% of all employment income in this
country is paid by those businesses.  The multinationals only provide 2%.

So wanting to help Australia be a more prosperous and competitive economy
meant helping those smaller businesses to really become successful,
particularly in export markets.

So we started as a small, lower cost base business able to serve smaller
clients cost effectively.  Since then I have grown less enamoured with this
position over time.  There is a reason companies remain small.  Sometimes it
is because that is what they want.  Less.  Less is easier and can involve
reduced risk, though not always.  But often it is because they don’t have
the mindset, skill or vision to be anything else.

It is clear that for us to grow, I have to have the resources to do more work
and the income to pay for those resources.  So our business model doesn’t
scale if we want to move up in size.  Particularly with the type of clients we
have generally been working with.

This year I’m thinking about how to take what we are doing and push it past
the $1,000,000 mark.  So what I’ve started doing is pricing our quotes as if
we already were that size.  Sometimes this means the price is double what it
might have previously been.  But I’m also looking at the delivery side and
making sure it also looks like it should for the size of business I want to
be.

And it is working!  We are changing.  We are looking at moving to commercial
premises before the end of the financial year.  A new class of clients are
being attracted to us (and us to them) because our value proposition makes
sense to them.  Some of these clients are larger than our previous target
companies.  Some are wanting to grow and know they need the right
partnerships to get there.  There is a long way to go yet but the progress
is encouraging.

So my distinction is a simple one.  Start acting like who and what you want
to be.  Don’t wait for the growth and then respond.  Change first.  Be the
catalyst yourself.  Make it happen first in you and then it will flow out to
the rest of the world.

Steve Jobs would be proud.

Some people say that TV rots your brain and can’t teach you anything. I like to take a more exponential approach. TV is great way to unwind (if you’re like me and lucky enough to have the time and you can occasionally learn something from the boob tube and not just from documentaries.

Last week I was watching one of my favorite shows, Grey’s Anatomy (I actually bought the first six seasons on DVD to avoid all the annoying commercials!) and I realised that doctors are really on to something. I mean both real doctors and TV docs like the ones on Grey’s, but more on that later.

Grey's Anatomy and MasterMind Groups

Read More »»

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.

As The Exponential Growth Strategist, once of the cornerstone principles of exponential marketing is uncovering hidden assets. This real life example made me take notice because it’s utterly brilliant!

The only improvement I could make to this creative idea is to identify the balls to the matches played and sell those at a premium. (I asked, they don’t do this).

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.

As a business owner or corporate executive, you’re always looking for ways to be more creative and innovative to find fresh new ideas to make your next sales or marketing campaign a success. In an attempt to determine how great thinkers achieve their great outcomes, British marketing consultant Simon Sinek believes that he has stumbled upon a simple method to codify the way innovators think. He calls it the Golden Circle. In the YouTube video below he shows why it pays to be cynical.

Thank you to Ian Faulkner for providing this link, it’s much appreciated!

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 »»

One of the foundational principles of Exponential Marketing is creating value for your suspects, prospects and clients. Easier said than done. That’s why I wanted to remind you of a short YouTube video I created a few years ago that shows you how it can be done quickly, easily and inexpensively. All you need is to have an open mind to seek out and find ideas like this.

What the heck is antimimeticisomorphism?!?!

Simply stated, it’s the opposite of mimetic isomorphism – an academic term that explains what we all know to be true. “Monkey see, monkey do.”

As industries mature, competitors increasingly use the same strategies and techniques to market, sell and deliver their products – in effect commoditising them.

Antimimeticisomorphism means doing the opposite.

Not just to be different, but to be special, out-of-the-ordinary with a PURPOSE.

Because it’s a mindset, it takes time to adopt the ability to see and create boundless opportunities and uncover hidden assets within your business, career or life.

It’s what makes the super successful and ultra wealthy who they are.

EXTRA-ORDINARY.

Because the alternative is – well ORDINARY.

Want to learn more about antimimeticisomorphism?

You can Google it and you’ll find thousands of listings – all pointing to me.

I have two websites dedicated to antimimeticisomorphism, the first is the site that explains antimimeticisomorphism and the second are examples of antimimeticisomorphism.

On my Personal Coaching Blog, I have a whole category of antimimeticisomorphism examples.

As you can see, this is a foundational element of my Exponential Coaching Philosophy.

Have a look around and enjoy the discovery process – you’ll quickly realise that the more fun you have, the better your results will be!

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.

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 »»

As a reader or subscriber to this blog, you’re well aware of the Exponential Strategies I teach my clients. One of the foundational principles is to create value and the leverage will come, on its own, as if by magic. I have several award-winning clients, but one sticks out right now well above the others BECAUSE Ray Keefe is the first one to fully leverage the value of the many awards he has recently won…PLUS…

He’s taken it one step further to include me in his exponential approach.

You can read all about it in the article “Mentor engineers success” in this month’s edition of the Business South East Magazine.

As you read through the brief article, you’ll recognise this as FREE ADVERTISING for both Successful Endeavours and Exponential Programs.

It’s a win-win-win situation.

We both win and YOU win.

You win because you get undeniable proof what I teach works. You get someone else’s perspective on what it means to be mentored by a business coach, straight from a client, in a completely different setting and context.

You can’t buy that kind of advertising.

So there you have it, one MORE REASON to contact us about our business mentoring services – by the way, when you qualify, our Platinum Program comes with a 300% Results-Based Guarantee!

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.

One of the reasons I like to blog is to find and then share stuff you otherwise would never come across on your own. I got this request by email and thought it was a great idea. Sometimes you have to get our of your box and try something new to get a different result.