6 Small Business Systems That Will Save Your Life
My latest small business article for American Express Open Forum.
Everybody’s doing it. Are you?
The Best In The World, But Do You Believe It?
Here’s a video from the NFL Fantasy Football “Pick Me” Campaign. The best athletes in the world showing off their “unbelievable” talents.
But there’s a problem. Most people, myself included, don’t know whether or not to believe it’s real. Because these are Reebok sponsored videos (read: ads), are they acts of draw-dropping athletic mastery or are they tricks created through special effects and clever editing? Either way, it’s fun to watch. But this is representative of what you’re dealing with as a salesperson or someone who sells something, anything. Most people think there’s a catch, a trick, something up your sleeve.
The public is afraid of being bamboozled, and rightly so.
Years ago, I offered seminars all over the country as “pay what you want or pay nothing” events; no strings attached. I promised no up-sells, pitches or offers of any kind, not even a table selling books. Just a motivating, content rich, memorable small business success seminar. Still, my office received hundreds of calls from people asking, “What’s the catch? There has to be a catch.” The theory was that nobody would go to the trouble of producing seminars all over the country without a sales angle. I do. Do you? Of course, we know why there is such general distrust in the marketplace. People have been burned over and over again. We live in the age of the bamboozle. (Oh, and, by the way, I would understand if people thought there was a catch if I offered the typical pitch-fest seminars in the past. But I don’t, never have, and never will.)
Just like these athletes are the best in the world at what they do, I know I’m the best in the world at what I do—teaching you how to be a successful entrepreneur and small business success. But, no matter how long I’ve been doing it, how many books I’ve sold, how “famous” I am, I know that I have to do everything in my power to counteract the fear of the bamboozle. How do I do it? Lots of ways. I start by simply giving so much value that you think I’ve gone too far and then I give more.
(Update: For the record, I’m not the only “best in the world” at what I do. There are a number, maybe even lots of “best in the world” in every service driven field. Each client defines what “best in the world” means to them and will hire the person that is the “best in the world” for them given a whole host of various criteria.)
How to Play a Big Game
I just sent this note out to my Book Yourself Solid Certified Coaches and I thought I’d share it with you.
Challenge and difficulty are part of the game. Not just this game but any game. No one ever won anything without working for it. Sure, a few people have won the lottery by buying a ticket or hit the jackpot by pulling a lever. But that’s just dumb luck. Usually the ones looking for luck loose to the house. So, let’s play big. No, bigger than that.
So, you tell me… what’s the big game that you’re playing right now, at this very moment.
Overcome Insecurities To Develop Your Personal Brand
Steve Adubato wrote an an article in the Star Ledger, NJ’s largest newspaper, about Book Yourself Solid and how I overcame insecurities and conflicting intentions to develop a big (and meaningful) personal brand identity. Here is an expert:
Business coach Michael Port wrote a terrific book called “Book Yourself Solid” in which he offers this insight: “Business problems are really personal problems in disguise.”
Port says many of the challenges he has faced in “fully expressing himself” were blocked early on in his career by what he called “conflicting intentions.” He knew he needed to promote himself and his work in a more aggressive way, but he had an inner struggle because he kept asking himself what his father, a respected physician, would think if he engaged in this kind of self-promotion.
Read the rest of the article here.
The #1 Barrier to Success and Fulfillment
Failure to truly learn is the number one barrier to sustained success and fulfillment. In a brilliant and fun TED Talk in 2006, Sir Ken Robinson, says education is meant to take us into a future that we can’t grasp. Children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Yet, nobody has a clue what the world will look like in 5 years, let alone in 2065. Watching his talk is worth the 20 minutes it takes.
Sir Ken is quite entertaining but the subject of his talk couldn’t be more serious. He criticizes the prevailing approach to education as one that crushes creativity and doesn’t prepare us for the future. The prevailing approach to learning has been characterized as a “banking approach.” We gobble up information, and deposit it in our “brain bank,” so that we can withdraw it when we need it. We learn so that we “know about” things. But this interpretation of learning is very weak. Knowhow will beat “know about” any day. Just because you’ve read a book about business (or even a hundred), doesn’t mean you know how to generate great business results.
Learning is not just gobbling up information so that we have it at hand when we need it. That doesn’t work. True leaning is about becoming more skillful, even more masterful, in producing results that satisfy us and our customers. True learning expands the horizon of what’s possible. What previously looked impossible now looks possible, once we have learned. True learning is innovative and creative. True learning is cognitive, emotional, somatic, relational, and even spiritual. True learning takes us beyond what we know today. True learning enables us to unfold our potential, to express what’s ours to express, and to make the difference we want to make in the world.
True learning is alive, engaged, creative, fun, and freeing. True learning requires the freedom to make mistakes. If you don’t take risks, you never really learn how to do something. Going beyond what we know requires us to take creative leaps that may fail. Making mistakes is stigmatized in our culture today and we get marked down in school for making them. This crushes creativity and turns learning into a dead, disengaged, and dull thing.
As the world continues to change, the only sustainable competitive advantage for any business or service professional is true learning. Those that have learned how to truly learn, effectively and efficiently, will have the edge. Learning to learn will open up new possibilities for you to live in a future of your own design. This is our not-so-secret agenda at Booked Solid U.
As a service professional, the best gift you can give yourself is permission to make mistakes. Doing this is one of the most powerful ways of supporting your true learning.
The future belongs to the learners. Does the future belong to you?
