Daily one-pagers about AI, leadership, technology, and being human.

johnmaconline

I'm writing to think, learn, and remember in public. I'll be here everyday.

October 24, 2017 6 minute read

How to Create Your Own Luck To Achieve Success

How To Create Your Own Luck

Are you lucky or unlucky? Is luck why some people seem to have it all, or have risen to a high level of success? Is unluckiness why you haven’t yet achieved your dreams?

For some, they would answer, “Yes!” I’m not where I want to be because I’m unlucky. Or..”Look at that guy, he’s got everything…he sure is lucky”.

Well, certainly there seems to be luck. I consider myself very lucky. I live in a world where there is ample opportunity. I was brought up in a loving home with loving parents. I was born in a time that has many advantages over some periods in the past. I could go on…

However, none of things are why I will or will not be successful or achieve my life goals. Those are things that are truly outside of my sphere of control.

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Is Luck Preordained?

Here’s a great quote from golfing legend Arnold Palmer on his view of luck:

“The more I practice, the luckier I seem to get.”

And here’s Sir Richard Branson’s view:

“I have not been any more lucky or unlucky than anyone else. The difference is when luck came my way, I took advantage of it.”

I think luck does come around. Good luck and bad luck. But is our personal luck preordained? Who cares? Because its not what happens to you that matters, its what you do with it.

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The Formula for Getting Lucky

One person who has studied successful people and the science and art of being successful is Darren Hardy. I’ve seen him speak in person, have been a student in his courses, and have studied both the Compound Effect and The Entrepreneur Rollercoaster. He’s one of the most knowledgable people on earth in this category.

Darren Hardy has a formula to create your own luck. Here it is:

LUCK = Preparation/Personal Growth + Attitude + Opportunity Recognition + Action

Let’s take a look at each of these parts to the formula.

Preparation and Personal Growth

Step 1 is to simply be prepared. Grow yourself…your skills, your mindset, your relationships. When luck comes around, you must have the ability to take advantage of it. The best way to be prepared is to continuously invest in yourself. Always be getting better.

Attitude

Your attitude is the lens through which you view the world. Luck comes around all the time, but you have to be able to see it. To see it, you must have the right attitude about it, which means you must be looking for it. You will never see it if you aren’t looking for it.

Opportunity Recognition

Similarly to attitude, you must be looking for opportunity. Many times opportunity shows itself somewhere unexpected, or even more common: it presents itself just outside of our comfort zone. Maybe you should go and speak in front of that networking group. Maybe you should call so-and-so and introduce yourself.

You should absolutely use your comfort zone as a guide. Getting out of your comfort zone usually leads to more “lucky” opportunities.

And sometimes opportunities come via unexpected paths. You start down one path, but over time, new opportunities present themselves and you find yourself ending up somewhere different than your original plan. Many entrepreneurs’ companies or endeavors have ended up somewhere different than their original plan. But they ended up more successful and impactful than they ever would have if the original vision was realized. You can only make this happen if you are recognizing opportunities when presented.

Action

Nothing happens, if you don’t do something. Action is always YOUR part making the luck, and without action, there is nothing. The opportunities that come via unexpected paths? They NEVER come if you haven’t STARTED down SOME path. Always start doing, and then recognize the lucky opportunities along the way.

The best approach is take action and then fail your way to success. Fear and resistance seek to hold us back. Sometimes others try to hold us back. Action is the only thing that overcomes this.

Create Your Own Luck

Luck is something that is real and exists, but its NOT likely the reason why you have or haven’t achieved your life goals. Many entrepreneurs, pro athletes, and high achievers talk about “creating your own luck.”

You can create your own luck, and here’s a formula:

LUCK = Preparation/Personal Growth + Attitude + Opportunity Recognition + Action

Will you make a fool of yourself sometimes by “failing”? Maybe…but if you keep going, and keep getting better, and keep taking action, and keep taking opportunities, those that thought you were a fool are going to be trying to figure out how you got so lucky.

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September 14, 2017 9 minute read

How to Improve Your Communication: A 4 Step Guide

Action Activity Personal Investment

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How To Improve Your Communication: A 4 Step Guide

There is one skill that is the grand daddy of them all. It’s THE super power: Communication!

If you could choose only one single skill to improve that will help you in all aspects of your life and business, its communication.

Whether you want to get better socially, or grow your network marketing business, or get your ideas across with your boss and team at work, this article will help you. Below I share 4 steps that will help you improve your communication.

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Why Communicate Skillfully?

Communication is the gateway skill to most things because most things involve other people. And it is indeed a skill, and can be learned, and practiced. You must learn new skills and get better at skills like communication to move your life and business forward.

Social and professional scenarios arise all day long that require interaction with others. In those situations, skillful communication allows you to:

Engage with your audience (one or many)
Build rapport
Put your audience at ease
Get your ideas across effectively
Be recognized as an expert and a leader
Develop magnetism

Let’s look at 4 steps to help you improve your communication.

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4 Steps to Improve Your Communication

These 4 steps are focused on 1-on-1 communication, although they can be applied to groups as well with some slight modifications.

1. Use F.O.R.M to Find Topics

One of the scariest thing for many people (myself included) is to engage in small talk. But effective small talk is a great bridge to meaningful conversation. “Meaningful” can be simply social, or it can be mission centric and related to your business, or volunteer organization, or job, etc.

You’ve got to get the conversation started. People love talking about themselves and their interests, so that’s a great place to focus. You can use the acronym FORM to find topics for effective small talk:

Family
Occupation
Recreation
Money

You can read more about how Simon Chan uses FORM here.

2. Ask Great Questions

Asking questions is the magic power for conversations that both engage the other person and can lead somewhere meaningful. But the key is for you learn how to ask GREAT questions. Great questions invoke thoughtful and somewhat personal responses from the other person.

Don’t ask yes/no questions or questions that can be answered with a single word or phrase. Questions that contain “Do/Are/Would/Have you…”, or “When is/was…”, or “Who is/was/did…” typically lead to yes/no or other single word answers. Avoid them as lead-in questions. The exception to this rule is to use the yes/no question to establish context. Similar to a rhetorical question.
Do ask questions that lead people to think about their answer. Questions that start with “What…”, “Why…”, or “How…” typically lead to thought provoking topics and answers.
Do ask follow up questions.
Do ask questions about the other person’s opinions. Use follow up questions to drill into the other person’s opinions of the topic at hand.

Here’s a great tip if the conversation is a small group conversation (i.e., a couple guys standing around with beer in their hands at a picnic): Ask the follow up questions to someone else in the group, rather than the person that answered the first one. This engages others and starts the conversation flowing around the group.

Some examples:

“What did you like best about the presentation (or what you saw)?”
“Did you see the play that Coach called last night? What would you have done there?”
“If you could wake up tomorrow and do anything, what would it be?”
“Boy that sounds like a horrible commute! What have you found to be your best route and time to leave in the morning?”
“If you hate <your job, your weight, your neighbor, whatever> so much, what have you done so far to change it?”

Looking for more examples of great questions? Check out Ray Higdon’s post here.

3. Be Interested, Not Interesting

People really want to talk about themselves. Let them. Your job, once you’ve asked a question, is to actually hear the answer(s)!

Listen and engage: Nod your head, “mhmmm….”, “right”. Be careful not to step on them when they talk, however. You are looking for something in what they say that can spark or continue the meaningful conversation.
Don’t interrupt: Nothing says “I don’t care” like interrupting. Ugh, I’m not proud, but I’m sure I do this when I’m not focused. It’s natural though (because at the end of the day, it’s all about you 😀 ), and it goes right along with the next one.
Don’t speed bump: Tell me if this sounds familiar…The other person is talking and you’re listening. Then you hear something for which you have a reply, or something to relate… or even worse… something you remember you want to say but actually has nothing to do with the conversation. You may not interrupt, but you’re waiting (impatiently) for a slight break so you can interject. The problem here is that you haven’t actually heard one word after your “Aha!” moment. What if the real nugget of the conversation happened AFTER that moment?

The double whammy of conversation killer is the “interrupt + speed bump”. You jump right in on top of the other person with your own point or story. A killer to any rapport you might have built up prior.

You will build the most rapport and be thought of as a better communicator if you listen more than talk. Be on the look out for what “The Art of Manliness” calls Conversational Narcissism.

4. Share Something Short and Relevant About Yourself

Even though the “speed bump” is a sure killer, you should still share stories about yourself at the proper moment. Keep them short and completely relevant to the other person.

Most important: Don’t one-up them!

We all love a good fish story: “Oh yeah, well mine was 38 inches!” And there are many situations where this is just lively banter and great fun. However, when meeting someone new, or communicating with a purpose, rarely is this received playfully. You likely have friends, or at least people you know well, with whom you shudder inwardly at this thought because he/she is always “one-upping’ you.

The conversation must still be about them. The purpose of telling a quick story is to come along side of the person with whom you are speaking. Sharing something relevant about yourself provides some inside information and makes you more relatable. It also shows you are listening and care.

Keep the conversation cooperative vs competitive. A slight, but important distinction.

Here are some examples:

Assume your counterpart has an awful commute story.

“Oh dear, that must have been awful! I absolutely believe you, because I had to drive that expressway myself for about 3 years. Do you remember that day when the road was completely closed? How do you wind down once you get home from that drive?”

Assume your counterpart has watched the information video that you sent AND they have answered “What did you like best about the video I sent?”

“I love that also! In fact, when I first saw this video that was exactly what drew me to this. I was wondering if this might be THE answer that I was looking for!”

Assume you’re discussing jobs and your counterpart has just told you that he/she was laid off at one time.

“I bet that sucked! Same thing happened to me last October, and I was scared to death. It sucks when THEY have control, doesn’t it? Do you have a plan if that happens again?”

Conclusion

Skillful communication is quite simply a super power. It can change your life and business. The great news is that like most skills, you can indeed learn it and get better at it. The most effective way to get better socially, grow your business, or make strides at your job, is to improve your communication. This article’s purpose was to get you started on that learning path.

Here are the 4 steps to help you improve your communication:

Use F.O.R.M. to Find Topics
Ask Great Questions
Be Interested, Not Interesting
Share Something Short and Relevant About Yourself

You should notice that these steps incorporate an undercurrent of awareness: Self awareness and awareness of the other person(s) to which you are trying to communicate.

Now get out there and communicate!

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September 6, 2017 7 minute read

How to Spend Money Wisely to Grow Your Business

Action Activity Business

How to Spend Money Wisely to Grow Your Business

You’ve probably heard one or more of the following:

“You’ve got to spend money to make money.”
“It’s a business, you must invest in your business.”
“A real business requires capital expenditure.”

But the problem is, you don’t have much extra money. You are willing to invest, but you really don’t know how best to use that limited capital.

Of course you want to grow your business, that’s why you are in business. But what do you spend your money on? And how much?

In this article I share with you some concrete strategies to show you how to spend money wisely to grow without breaking the bank.

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The Tackle Shop Dilemma

Recently, we vacationed on Hatteras Island. My sons love to fish, so we did a fair amount of fishing during the week. My boys, however, are at a great disadvantage in that I am NOT a very knowledgable fisherman. Truth is that they know way more than I do.

We showed to the Outer Banks with some gear, but clearly we needed some more. So we hit the tackle shop to load up on surf gear and bait, and WHAM! If you’ve ever been inside fishing (or hunting) gear store, you know exactly what I mean. It’s completely overwhelming!

Which pole?
What rigs?
What size hooks?
How much weight?
What type of line?
Which bait?

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Completely and utterly overwhelmed. What should I spend my limited budget on to ensure my fishing success?

Here’s a hint: The solution started with having a discussion with the proprietor.

Why Your Business is Identical to Walking in to the Tackle Shop

It can feel exactly the same when it comes to your business, can’t it? You have a limited budget, you want to grow your business, and there about a million things to spend that money on. What do you choose?

Just like in the tackle shop, to spend your money wisely, you must figure out the “What” and “Why”. To answer that, you must know what your goals are.

If you try to go fishing and all you have is a pole, with no line, rig, or bait, that’s not enough to catch any fish. Clearly you need a minimum set of equipment. If you had ALL of the equipment, would that help? Not likely, because you still need to know the RIGHT equipment for your type of fishing.

If you have the equipment, but not bait, that also is not enough. Clearly you need a minimum amount of bait. If you had ALL of the bait, would that help? No again, because you need to know the RIGHT bait for your type of fishing.

If you have the right equipment and bait, but you have no idea where to go, where to cast, or how to work the rig, that is also not enough. Clearly you need some amount of knowledge to be successful. Must you learn the secrets of fishing from EVERYONE who has ever fished? Of course not. You need to gain enough of the RIGHT knowledge for your type of fishing.

3 Steps to Determine How to Spend Your Money Wisely

How do you do it?

The good news is there are some concrete steps you can take to help guide you. You can use these steps to help you determine how to spend your money wisely to grow your business.

1. Survey the Scene

Walk into that tackle shop, take a deep breath, and look around. What are the different things on which you can spend your money?

In the Network Marketing profession, these things fall into the following 3 categories:

Tools: Product, marketing, advertising, office supplies, software apps, etc
Training and Education: Your company conventions, courses, books, seminars, events, etc
Your Team: Incentives, training, events, etc

To be successful, you will need to spend money on all 3 categories.

The first step is for you to simply understand what are the things in your specific business on which you can spend money.

2. Ask Questions

Walk up to the proprietor and ask what’s working today. Gather the opinions of others in the store.

Start with your upline or others in your company, and ask them how they spend their money. Reach out to other MLM leaders and ask them. Talk with your team to see what are their desires, interests, and challenges.

A passive way to “ask questions” is to spend some time on the internet reading MLM leader’s blogs and watching videos. Subscribe to podcasts such as MLM Nation, Your Virtual Upline, and Home Business Profits.

3. Know Yourself

Know the kind of fishing you want to do. What resonates with you? What works for you…or…what DOESN’T work for you?

Have you heard the phrase, “To be successful in network marketing, you just need to copy those that are successful!” I do believe this is true, but I think it can be misleading. I think it trivializes an important concept, and leaves out an important piece. To be successful, I actually think you need to combine “others’ successful practices” with “your own voice.” That’s where the magic happens.

To be successful yourself, you must find the methods, language, and practices that connect with you. It’s also true when deciding upon how to spend money wisely to grow your business.

For example, your upline may be promoting this awesome new Contact Relationship Manager (CRM) software application that she is using. She’s recommending that everyone on her team buys this app. However, you’re NOT an “app person”. You are a “notebook person”. Spending money on this CRM app is likely a waste of money for you. Be confident in your own system, and save the money.

Take another example: You’re at your company convention and have completely resonated with one of the guest speakers. You learned more in that 20 minute training than you had the entire convention. At the end of the training, the speaker is promoting a course that goes into depth on that same topic. You had completely connected with this person’s methods and content. This may absolutely be something you want to invest in.

Know yourself.

Conclusion

Investing in your business is paramount to growing it. The key is figure out how best to spend those limited resources.

To spend money wisely to grow your business, you can follow these 3 steps:

Survey the Scene
Ask Questions
Know yourself

P.S. You will likely “swing and miss”. You will spend money on something and then regret it in the future. It’s OK. We all do. The key is to take the lesson from that and Fail Forward!

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August 10, 2017 18 minute read

The Best Method for Time Management

Action Activity Productivity

The Best Way to Prioritize Your Time

Why is it that some successful people always have time to live awesome lives and you can’t fit in your son’s baseball game? How come some entrepreneurs are running multiple companies and you don’t have the time to get one business moving in the right direction? Is time your biggest hinderance from having the success you desire?

The reality is that all people…every one…no matter who they are, where they live, or what they are doing…have the exact same 24 hours in each day. So why are you struggling with having enough time?

Here’s a revelation that I had a couple of years ago, and it’s been absolute game changer for me. I don’t have a TIME problem, I have a PRIORITY problem! I realized that I was prioritizing my time completely wrong. Then I started to research HOW to prioritize my time more effectively. Since, I have learned the BEST way to prioritize my time. I was able to “find the time” necessary to start making progress in my business and live the life I’ve wanted.

To be honest, there are still days that get away. There are still days where I miss something that I wish I could do. But, in general things are moving forward much better.

In this article, I share the simple method I have found and use every day to help get you moving in the right direction. This is another article in the series based on the topic Focus on what YOU Can Control.

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Some Home/Side Business Scenarios

Let’s consider several hypothetical situations that might arise for the side and home business entrepreneur:

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You have been offered an opportunity to take part in a conference as a speaker. The topic of your talk will be based on the field in which you have your business. In addition, you will be offered the opportunity to setup a display and market your products.
You receive an invitation to lunch at 10am. You had already prepared your lunch at home, and had plans to get your workout in during the lunch hour. But the inviter is someone with whom you have or are trying to have a business relationship.
As above, you receive an invitation to lunch at 10am. You had already prepared your lunch at home, and had plans to get your workout in during the lunch hour. This time the inviter is a friend who wants to hang out and have a drink.
The school nurse’s office calls you to tell you that your 5th grade son is sitting in the office due to sickness.
You are working on your next blog article in your home office and feeling a bit stuck. A text comes in from your 16 year old son asking if you could quickly run to the store and deliver a new notebook to the school by 11:15. He desperately needs it to avoid a 0 on an assignment.
You are in your office developing some new marketing material. Suddenly you get a text message from your friend Jill asking if you saw what Melissa has posted on Facebook.
You are in the middle of following up with several potential customers. You receive a message from your team member Bill asking you to jump on a call with him and a customer.
As above, you are in the middle of following up with several potential customers. This time, the text from your team member Bill is asking you to look at the post that he just put up on Facebook.

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The Importance of Time Management

One of the most critical skills that is required for achievement is time management. The problem is that most of us are terrible at it. The side business entrepreneur’s most precious resource is usually his/her time. You are juggling a day job, family, and the entrepreneurial pursuit. Time is usually more important than money in most circumstances.

Investment in overhauling your time management skills is usually one of the best investments that you can make.

PROPER PRIORITIZATION is one the most important time management skills for having a successful day, week, month, and year. It is one that I have had to invest in myself, and have gotten much better at since I discovered how to prioritize my time. It’s been a journey for sure.

Prioritization

Let’s start with the definition of prioritize because I think there is some gold to mine there:

prioritize: verb

designate or treat (something) as more important than other things: prioritize your credit card debt.
determine the order for dealing with (a series of items or tasks) according to their relative importance: age affects the way people prioritize their goals

Prioritization of your time is about managing the order of tasks to which you apply yourself. You must prioritize according to what’s most IMPORTANT. The higher the priority of a task, the closer to the top of our list it should be.

You may be thinking, “Duh, of course!” The problem is that life continuously throws us stuff from another category: URGENT. Urgency and importance are NOT always the same thing. When you learn how to manage the URGENT vs. the IMPORTANT is when you start making progress.

A Closer Look at Important and Urgent

Important: The activities and tasks that lead to us achieving our goals. These goals can be either personal or group oriented, and private or professional.
Urgent: The activities and tasks that demand immediate attention. The problem is that “demanding immediate attention” can be defined by ourself, the current circumstances, or someone else entirely. These urgent tasks do not always relate to your own goals. Many times, urgent tasks are defined for us by others, and therefore, are really the achievement of someone else’s goals.

Urgent and important are NOT the same thing, but there is crossover, right?

So how do we coalesce these two categories of tasks, and prioritize correctly to achieve our goals? Here’s a great method…

The Eisenhower Principle

In a 1954 speech to the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches, which was being held at Northwestern University, former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower made public a useful principle by which he is said to have prioritized his time. He said,

“I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.“

He actually attributed that statement to a “former college president”, so did not claim it as his own. But this principle became known as the “Eisenhower Principle”. Stephen Covey in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People popularized the concept for the masses.

The Best Way to Prioritize

The principle can be visualized in a diagram, and then utilized easily for prioritization.

Let’s look at each of these quadrants and how you should use them to prioritize your tasks, and hence, spend your very valuable time. To illustrate this concept, let’s assume the following simplistic goal and a task associated with this goal. The task is what you are trying to prioritize:

Goal: Electricity can be used in the house.

Task: Pay the electric bill.

Q1: Urgent and Important

The task of “pay the electric bill” fits into this category if…The payment is required in the collection office today by 5pm or the electricity to the house will be shut off.

What: Crises, emergencies, and deadlines.

Strategy: Manage + Do

You MUST do these items, that’s why they are here. You will need to spend some time in this quadrant, and maybe somedays lots of time. Your goal, however, is to MINIMIZE your TIME spent here. There are two types of tasks in this quadrant:

Those that are foreseen

Those that are unforeseen

For those that are foreseen, procrastination is the likely cuplrit. You have likely put yourself in this position. You can minimize your time here in the futureby planning ahead and spending time in Q2 on those tasks.

Unforeseen crises or emergencies come up, and they are impossible to plan. One strategy is to leave time in each day to handle these. But in my opinion, that’s like planning for emergencies, and our goal is to eliminate them as much as possible. The reality is that when these situations arise, you deal with them as they come. When unforeseen emergencies pop up, you just take care of them. Another strategy is to use your management skills and delegate when possible.

Q2: Not Urgent and Important

The task of “pay the electric bill” fits into this category if…Today is the first of the month, and the payment is due on the 25th.

What: Strategic, opportunities, investment, diet and exercise, relationship building

Strategy: Plan + Focus

This is the category in which you should STRIVE to spend MOST of our TIME. Here is where you make progress on your overarching goals. You achieve these goals by planning the tasks that lead to them, and then giving them the proper focus in your schedule. You have the most prioritization and schedule flexibility in this quadrant. You can move tasks around to accommodate particular schedules and motivations.

In the example, you make sure that you prioritize the sending of the payment so that it arrives by the 25th. You do not have to send the payment today. However, if you have some time, or if you’ve scheduled a block of time for paying several bills today, then you may wish to.

Q3: Urgent and Not Important

The task of “pay the electric bill” fits into this category if…Today is the 10th, and the bill is due on the 25th. A billing agent from the electric company called and asked for payment today because he gets a bonus for having his allotted processing done by today.

What: Most notifications and interruptions, some meetings, most requests that start with “I need you to…”

Strategy: Avoid/Pushback/Delegate

This is the category in which you should strive to spend NONE of your TIME. There is no benefit to your overarching goals by spending any time here.

In the example, the billing agent has tried to make his problem your problem. Paying that bill today is NOT required, regardless of the billing agent’s request. If you don’t have free time, don’t do it…push back on it. If you have empathy for the agent’s situation (maybe he’s your brother-in-law), delegate it if you can. You don’t HAVE to redirect your day or a period of time in order to deal with this person’s request.

This quadrant is the biggest TIME SUCKER and PRODUCTIVITY KILLER for most people. AWARENESS is the key skill for staying out of Q3. You must be aware of whether the requested task is actually important, or just urgent.

Q4: Not Urgent and Not Important

The task of “pay the electric bill” fits into this category if…Never.

What: Distractions, entertainment, social media, organizing old records

Strategy: Limit

Simply limit your time spent in this quadrant. You need down time, as does everybody. Entertainment and work around the house can be very productive down time. However, scrolling through Facebook every 5 minutes is not productive. With your down time, you should seek to have “productively unproductive” time. Only you can determine what that is for yourself.

The task of paying the bill does require completion, so it doesn’t actually apply here.

This quadrant is a huge time sucker and productivity killer for many people. That is because they ALLOW themselves to get sucked in. Most people are self-aware enough to know that scrolling through Facebook every 5 minutes is not productive. Staying out of Q4 requires self DISCIPLINE.

Applying the Principle to the Home/Side Business Scenarios

Returning to the hypothetical situations posed in the first section…what do you do with each?

Question 1:

You have been offered an opportunity to take part in a conference as a speaker, and the topic of your talk will be based on the field in which you have your business. The conference is in 3 months. In addition, you will be offered the opportunity to setup a display and market your products.

Which Quadrant: Q2 (Important and Not Urgent)

Strategy: Say “Yes!” Now you can create a plan to develop your talk and start working the plan

Question 2:

At 10am, you receive an invitation to lunch. You had already prepared your lunch at home, and had plans to get your workout in during the lunch hour, but the inviter is someone with whom you have or are trying to have a business relationship.

Which Quadrant: Q1 (Important and Urgent)

Strategy: This is not a no-brainer, but you should be inclined to say “Yes.” In prioritization, and time management in general, we must remember that WE OWN OUR TIME, and we must be the master of it. If you respect your time, others will as well. This is a change in plans, but likely a good one because the person asking you is someone whom is important to your business and relationship building is key. There is another strategy that could be used here: you could discuss another meeting time or day with the requestor. If that’s not good (i.e., maybe the person is only in town today), then go to lunch. Move the workout to later in the day if that is possible.

Question 3:

As above, at 10am you receive an invitation to lunch. You had already prepared your lunch at home, and had plans to get your workout in during the lunch hour, but the inviter is a friend who wants to hang out and have a drink.

Which Quadrant: Q3 (Not Important and Urgent)

Strategy: This is also not a no-brainer, but you should be inclined to say “No.” This is a change in plans that may not be important enough to cause you to change your plans. If the friend has a particular reason (i.e., they are in need, or have an opportunity to share, etc), then maybe its a good change. The workout and healthy food intake is by definition a Q2 activity. It’s important, so don’t just jump at the lunch opportunity. Definitely employ the strategy of discussing another day to get together.

Question 4:

Your 5th grade son is sitting in the school nurse’s office due to sickness, and you have just received that call.

Which Quadrant: Q1 (Important and Urgent)

Strategy: Go pickup your son, or have your spouse pick him up. It needs to be done, so either do it, or delegate it to a person of trust and authority.

Question 5:

You are working on your next blog article in your home office, feeling a bit stuck, and you get a text from your 16 year old son asking if you could quickly run to the store and deliver a new notebook to the school by 11:15 because he needs it.

Which Quadrant: Q3 (Not Important and Urgent)

Strategy: Don’t fall for it! OK, maybe its a bit simplistic to categorize this as Q3, and it very well may be a Q1 activity, but this is precisely why staying out of Q3 requires awareness to properly determine if its actually important or not.

In this case (believe me, I’ve been there), it’s more than likely that there are no detrimental outcomes from your son not having a new notebook at 11:15 this morning. He can use an old one, he can borrow, he can use loose paper, he can ask the teacher, etc. There are many ways for HIM to solve HIS problem that doesn’t involve you blowing your entire morning of progress on Q2 activities (regardless of your present mental state). Even if the teacher docks points for him not having his notebook, it’s not the end of the world, nor will this minor transgression affect his ability to get into college. It’s a good lesson.

Question 6:

You are out to coffee with a potential business partner when suddenly you get a text message from your friend Jill asking if you saw what Melissa has posted on Facebook.

Which Quadrant: Q3 (Not Important and Urgent)

Strategy: Don’t look, don’t answer the text, and don’t get sucked in! Unless that post is a picture of your house on fire, you don’t care. Honestly, you don’t. Do NOT allow yourself to be sucked in by what Jill thinks is urgent, or by the likely gossip that is behind it all. You must have the discipline to stay locked on the task at hand, which is the person sitting right in front of you.

Question 7:

You are in the middle of following up with several potential customers and you receive a message from your team member Bill asking for you to jump on a call with him and a customer.

Which Quadrant: Q1 (Important and Urgent)

Strategy: Get on that call…but, it is perfectly appropriate to ask Bill if you can take that call in 30 minutes or an hour from now. Own your time. It may not be possible, but it may be. If not, you get on the call then. I am assuming that Bill is respectful enough of your time to only invite you when it is indeed important. Your team members contribute to your business and life, and you do to theirs. It is critical to support them.

Question 8:

You are in the middle of following up with several potential customers and you receive a message from your team member Bill asking for you to look at the post that he just put up on Facebook.

Which Quadrant: Q2 (Important and Not Urgent)

Strategy: You absolutely help them out…but, on your time. So wait until you are finished with your current tasks. Like with the scenario above, you definitely want to help your team mates, but in this case, its likely that you can provide necessary feedback later after your focus time is complete.

Conclusion

Prioritization is one of the most important skills for time management, and consequently productivity. The side business entrepreneur desperately needs to maximize his/her time. I have found that the Eisenhower Principle is the best way to prioritize for me. It does take some discipline, and practice. You must find the ability to recognize the actual importance and urgency of a request or task. When you get the hang of this, your productivity and your mental health start improve greatly.

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July 31, 2017 5 minute read

We’re All Failures…At Least the Best of Us Are

Failure Mindset NoFear

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We’re All Failures…At Least the Best of Us Are

We’re all failures…At least the best of us are.
– J M Barrie

Fear’s sister, and sometimes siamese twin is failure. They are attached at the hip because one of the greatest purveyors of our fear is failure. Fear of failure causes us the greatest resistance, holds us back the most, and keeps us in our shell when we could be busting out.

While in the “old me” mindset, I would look at those who are having success and assume it was because they:

have more talent
have more opportunity
know someone
are lucky

But the “new me” has realized that this is just not true. This thought process is just rationalization and its what feeds the fear.

During my journey, I found that those having success usually have a very different attitude towards failure. In fact, their attitude is the EXACT OPPOSITE than most of us! They embrace the failure and realize that its part of the process of moving forward.

At what are you trying to succeed?

Sports?

Here’s Jordan’s mindset on failure:

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

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Creative Endeavors?

Thomas Edison tried 10000 times before he perfected the electric light bulb. Here’s the way he thought of failure:

“I haven’t failed. I’ve just found 10000 ways that don’t work.”

Business?

How about Henry Ford, who failed at several businesses before he started the Ford Motor Company:

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”

What else?

This could go on and on. Google will overwhelm you with quotes and stories just like this. But here’s what you need to know…the key is in your ATTITUDE and your MINDSET with regards to failing. John C Maxwell says in his book “Failing Forward“ :

The difference between average people and achieving people is their perspective of and response to failure.

Aha! Change your perspective, and then change your response!

How do we do that? Well, like with most mindset issues, the first step is awareness of our conscious thoughts. Our subconscious will follow the conscious. When we can recognize from where we start, and stand up in the meeting and say, “Hi, my name is John, and I have a mindset problem….”, we can move forward and work on getting to where we want to be.

Constructive and Non-Constructive Failure Attitudes

From that same book, Mr. Maxwell gives us some examples of non-constructive and constructive attitudes toward failure. Find your weakness in the non-constructive list, and start moving it towards an attitude on the constructive list.

Non-Constructive:

Blaming others
Repeating the same mistakes
Expecting to always fail, or to never fail
Thinking to yourself “I am a failure”
And the grandaddy of them all: Quitting…Quitting is the demarkation line in the sand. You have not actually failed until you’ve quit.

Constructive:

Always take responsibility…start by looking in the mirror.
Learning from your mistakes
Knowing and embracing that failure is part of progress
Positive attitude
Taking new risks (because you no longer fear the failure)
And the grandaddy of constructive thoughts on failure: Persevering…Perseverance is the ultimate counteraction to failure. There is no ultimate failure with perseverance.

We’re All Failures

We’re all failures..at some point, and at some things. I’ve realized, based on both history of the world and my own history, that a constructive attitude towards failure is one of the keys to success. When we change our attitude towards failure, and start to embrace it, that’s when we start to move forward.

Go out there and FAIL!

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July 28, 2017 7 minute read

Focus on What YOU Can Control: Why You are NOT Getting Results

Action Activity Mindset

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This May Be Why You are NOT Getting Results

I suspect it happens to just about everybody. Certainly it has to me…many times: I’ve failed to generate the results that I desired.

In this post, I share with you a possible reason why you’ve never had the results you desire. Or maybe you’re no longer getting the results you did in the past. I also share with you the solution. Here’s a hint: Focus on what YOU can control.

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Results-Oriented Discouragement

You hear every day that we are in a “results-oriented” society. You talk about being results-oriented at your workplace or your business. You’re told you have to be results-oriented in your life. You’re constantly being told that only your results matter. You are inundated with result, results, results.

Guess what? This is essentially true.

Your results are what tell you if you’re going in the right direction or not. Results are what tell you the size of the impact you are making.

Think about goal setting, whether personal or professional. Almost by definition goal setting is results-oriented. When you go through an exercise of goal setting, most times you are thinking about the results you desire.

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But many times, if we are NOT getting the results we desire, we can get severely discouraged. When we get discouraged, it exacerbates the problem because our mindset starts to falter. I know, because I’ve been there. Whether it was a sales goal, a life goal, a content creation goal, or a fitness or health goal, I’ve NOT achieved many of the things I’ve set out to do.

So I’ve studied why that might be, and here’s what I’ve learned…

Focus on What YOU Can Control

The answer is to focus on what you can control in any situation. The results follow when you focus on and commit to performing the right amount of the right activities.

Results Dependent Upon Others

Results are an elusive target because a result can be dependent upon others or a situation. By definition, these types of results fall outside of your sphere of influence.

For example, take a sales goal. To close a sale, you are dependent upon another person making a decision. By definition, this puts the actual results with a particular prospect outside of your sphere of control. You can certainly increase your conversion rate by developing your sales skills. Getting better at closing and persuasion and other skills will help your conversion. But ultimately, a singular result is dependent upon someone other than yourself. You CANNOT control that particular outcome because the other person MUST make the decision.

But what CAN YOU control in this situation if you focus properly? You can control your level of activity! You CAN CONTROL the number of people with whom you are speaking! Even though you can’t control the outcome with any particular prospect, you can control your overall results. You control these results by speaking with the proper number of people on a consistent basis.

Results Dependent Upon Personal Accountability

Other times you’re not getting results because you are simply not holding yourself accountable. You must be personally accountable to the required level of activity to obtain the results you desire.

For example, take a goal of weight loss. To achieve weight loss you know you must (generally, this is not a detailed medical analysis) exceed the number of calories taken in with the number of calories burned throughout your day/week.

Guess what? That is entirely under your control! You can commit to and then perform the level of activity required to meet the needs of that formula. If you are not meeting your results, it’s not your spouse’s fault, or the fact that you travel, or that you have some nagging injury, or even your genetics. Its simply that you are not performing the right level of activity to meet your results.

Income Producing Activities

The other component to achieving results is that you must be performing the right activities. If you ramp up your level of the wrong activity, you still won’t make any progress. If you are not getting results, but you you have a high level of activity, its most likely because you are NOT engaging in the right activities. When you set your goals, you must break the goals down into the proper activities that will lead you there. Then focus on performing those activities every day.

What are the right activities that you should be performing? The right activities are what I like to call “income producing activities”, or IPA’s. I call all the right activities IPA’s, even if the result or activity has nothing to do with business. For example, I would refer to your daily workout as an IPA. If you are in sales, the most important IPA is prospecting. If you are writer, the most important IPA is writing. Don’t fool yourself, or let yourself be distracted by shiny objects, its the IPA’s that matter.

Conclusion

If you find yourself discouraged because of a lack of hitting your goals, shift your focus to what YOU can control. Focus on what YOU can control, and YOU can control your daily level of activity, and that you are engaged in the right activities, i.e., the IPA’s. Here’s the magic…The Slight Edge and The Compound Effect teach us that when we focus on performing the correct daily activities over time, we ultimately achieve our goals. We get the results for which we are looking.

For the goals you have set, figure out what are the right activities and the level of activity that is required daily to meet those goals, and then start doing them!

Are you looking for more depth on this and other mindset topics? If so, you might want to check out the course I’ve developed on exactly this topic Focus on What YOU Can Control: Stop Worrying, Take Control, and Start Having Success in Your Business and Your Life! This may be just the thing you need to help you break through!

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July 20, 2017 7 minute read

How to Identify Your Ideal Customer or Client

Action Activity Business

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How to Identify Your Ideal Customer or Client

Doesn’t everyone need my solution?

You may believe that your product or service or opportunity is for EVERYONE on the planet. But…try to think of something that everyone likes…essentially impossible. The same is true with your business. Not everyone will see the benefits of the solution you provide. The most successful entrepreneurs and businesses recognize this, and work hard to find their ideal customer or client. They know that their ideal customer is the one who will be interested, resonate, and have success with their solution.

To find that person, you must first be able to identify that person. Here I share with you exactly how to identify your ideal customer or client.

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Why Do You Need to Identify Your Ideal Customer?

You are in the business of customer satisfaction. You create satisfied customers by solving specific problems for people who see and are open to the value, benefit, and results of your solution (product, service, or opportunity). Unfortunately, that’s not everybody, even if YOU believe everybody can and will benefit from your solution. It’s not everybody, because its NOT about YOU or what you believe. It’s about THEM, and what THEY believe.

Therefore, to be successful, you must FIND the people who will see the benefits and the results that you are providing. To find them, you must start by identifying them. Once you’ve learned how to identify your ideal customer, then you can create marketing and advertising campaigns to go find them. That is how you get your solution in front of the people that can benefit.

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The 6 Steps to Help You Identify Your Ideal Customer

Identifying that ideal customer is all about being able to visualize who they are, his/her specific needs, and how your product, service, or opportunity can provide the solution. The more narrow you can focus, the more effective you will be. You can identify this person by simply answering a series of questions designed to you help very clearly understand who they are.

Here are those questions, with examples from my own health and wellness business.

With What does He/She Struggle?

You are solving a particular problem for your customer or client. What is that problem? The purpose of your solution is to produce a result for this particular problem.