Wake Up 2 Success: Recent Episodes
John Preston
This podcast is designed to help entrepreneurs deal with the stress and challenges of being their own boss. When you launch a new business, become a sales person, or join a direct sales company there is usually ample training giving to understanding and selling your product or services. However, there is very little training on how to manage yourself.
Self doubt, indecision, and fear can paralyze a business owner. Starting the day with a little education and a lot of support can be the difference between enormous success and failure. Wake Up 2 Success is designed provide those all important elements.
"The Mission of the JP Revolution" podcast addresses the challenges small businesses face in marketing and advertising, overshadowed by more giant corporations' prowess. The episode delves into the evolution of advertising tools from newspapers to digital platforms, highlighting small business owners' struggles to keep up. It emphasizes the critical need for understanding the psychology and impact of marketing tools, not just their operational aspects. The podcast encourages listeners to join a movement to empower small businesses through better marketing strategies, positioning them competitively against more significant players. This call to action is a plea to spread awareness and support local businesses.
Small Business in Small Bites has helped small business owners all over the world better understand their customers. WakeUp2Success has helped many of those same business owners deal with the internal stresses of running their businesses. Now both are being combined into a new more complex podcast and platform called The JP Revolution.
The JP Revolution aims to give the power back to small businesses that are being overwhelmed by the marketing power of big corporations. It's only through a better understanding of the science of marketing and advertising will those small business owners come to recognize that knowledge will help them overcome the endless resources of the big guys.
One of the biggest obstacles many of us face on our way to success is the simple fact that we like to stay in our comfort zone. It takes a lot of determination and willpower to take chances, risk rejection, and do the extra work needed to be successful. Many of us often fall short. Dreams were never earned inside of the comfort zone. You have to be willing to push yourself beyond those invisible boundaries.
In this episode, we take a look at just how important it is for you to get comfortable being uncomfortable.
Do you understand your customers? One of the most important aspects of taking your business to the next level is having a good awareness of how your customers make decisions about whether or not to use your products or services. Unfortunately, many business owners mistakenly think they know what's going on inside the minds of their customers but have misread the situation entirely. So much about marketing and customer decision-making is counter-intuitive. What seems to be happening on the surface si rarely what's going on.
Take online search (Google), for example. There is no question that in today's world if someone needs something (and doesn't know where to get it) they immediately do an online search. Your business name has to be on the screen when they search for your services/products. However, that's far from the whole story. They still have to choose you over all the other options that show up.
In today's episode, we delve deeper into just what happens next. What you might find out is that all those advertising options you swore didn't work, just may have been working after all.
"Imposter Syndrome" is a real thing. Because we know our own weaknesses, it's very easy for us to look at others as knowing more than we do... even when it comes to our own product or service. We walk around convinced that someone is going to see behind the curtain and realize that we don't always know what we are talking about. It's almost always not true, of course. That's another way our inner voice works against us in our pursuit of success. The truth is that unless we are really bad at what we do, we are almost always the most knowledgeable about our business in nearly every situation.
In this episode, we explore the importance of owning that expertise when you are trying to make a sale. The customer is looking to you for help. They need your confidence and knowledge before they will feel comfortable buying from you. It's not the time to deny your expertise.
Frequently the sales process is portrayed (and perceived) as a confrontational encounter. A mano-e-mano battle between the person with the goods or services versus the one with the money and the need. At least, that's the way many who aren't comfortable with the process like to see it in their mind. This image allows the would-be salesperson to assume a "noble" position when walking away from a possible transaction. "I am not one of THOSE salespeople," they will proudly proclaim when their fear of confrontation costs them a sale.
Top-level professional salespeople realize a different truth. The ultimate goal of the sales process is to create a win-win situation, and it's to negotiate a deal that will leave both sides satisfied. This episode looks at some of the basic steps needed to achieve this genuinely noble result.
Achieving the level of success that every entrepreneur-minded person dreams of always requires a mastery (or at least a proficiency) of sales. It is often a fear of sales or fear of coming off as a "salesperson" that derails many dreams. Once you convince yourself you are not good at selling; that voice inside your head will begin to shut down your biggest plans.
In this episode, we continue our look at some simple tips that will help you become more confident in your ability to sell. Ironically, the first step to gaining confidence in selling is to portray confidence while selling.
One of the biggest mistakes any salesperson makes is to spend way too much time talking about themselves and their products. No one likes to listen to someone talk about themselves. As hard as this is to hear, they don't care about your product or services. What they do care about is exactly how your product or services can help them. Everyone either has a problem they don't want, results they are not getting, or both. If you can aid them with either of those, you are worthy of their time, their attention, and their money.
In this episode, we discuss the importance of weaving exactly how you can help the customer through your entire presentation. Often, we assume that the customer will be able to connect the dots between our products and their problems. In many cases, there is a bad assumption!
Most news salespeople are terrified of coming across as "too pushy". They have visions of the old used car salesman in the plaid jackets seen in hundreds of movies and TV shows. To avoid being that person, they almost always err too far the other way. They become so passive that they never make it any further than the first objection. That would be okay if objections always meant "no". However, this is seldom the case. In most instances, an objection is a quest for more information and really the beginning of the sales conversation.
To void being "pushy", you want to make an effort to truly understand the customer's position and then help them overcome whatever barrier is preventing them from moving forward with the purchase. In this episode, we break this process into two simple steps: validate then conversate.
Truly great salespeople have three distinct skill sets: the ability to educate, the ability to persuade, and the ability to make the client feel comfortable enough to buy. Often, the first two make up the easiest part of the sale. If your product/service is good and you are a confident salesperson, it's relatively easy to persuade a customer they need what you have to offer. However, the customer's personal insecurities often block the sale. They convince themselves that they aren't qualified to make such an important buying decision. Those insecurities often lead them to avoid the risk and abort the purchase.
In this episode, we focus on the language and empathy needed to make the customer feel comfortable with making a decision to purchase.
In almost every episode of this podcast, we discuss the myriad of ways that you can get your head ready to take on each day. The one thing that works against us all in that regard is the fear and uncertainty that comes with the "sales" part of growing your business. Starting today we are going to have a series of daily sales tips. The more confident you are with selling, the easier it is to focus on other things.
Today's lesson is all about understanding that just because a customer doesn't say yes immediately doesn't mean he isn't already sold.
When you remember the person you were twenty years ago, are you thankful for the decisions you made back then? Or do you wish you had worked a little harder, treated people a little nicer, and made smarter, more productive decisions? Would your life be better today if you had just focused a little more on building your foundation for success? Perhaps, if you had known then what you know now, you'd already be retired living the life of your dreams in some exotic location.
Now let's flip that around. Right now, you do know what you need to do to be successful. Are you taking the right steps to ensure your well-being in the decades to come?
In this episode, we fast forward to You in twenty years and pose to him or her the same questions we just asked you. Will they be thankful for the work you are putting in today? Will they be proud of the decisions you are making right now concerning your growth and success? Today is your chance to do something that they will be grateful for.
How many days go by where you get caught up in the day-to-day grind and fail to do even one thing that moves you closer to your goal? Each day that plays out that way pushes reaching your goals one day further away. Eventually, most people just give up because it never seems they are making any progress.
In this episode, we focus on one simple fact... anything you do toward your goal, no matter how small, moves you closer. Accomplishing at least one goal-driven task each and every day will give you that sense of progress and the confidence you need to keep moving forward.
One of the saddest things about the business world is how many potential entrepreneurs who are amazing at what they do watch their business fail because they don't know how to run a business or are afraid to take the risks needed to be successful. Comfortability and complacency can halt the growth of any business in its tracks. When this happens, the one-time dreamer can become just like every other 9-5 employee working for a paycheck.
In this episode, we present three questions that will help you determine if you are truly an entrepreneur building your dreams or have slipped into a self-employed employee in a dead-end job.
Nothing can take the wind out of your sails faster than unexpected problems in your business. There's always some client that won't pay, a vehicle that breaks down at the worst possible time, or an employee who just up and quits. These headaches usually occur at the worst possible times. They make it very hard to stay positive and grateful.
In today's episode, we take a look at the single most effective way to ensure that these setbacks don't disrupt your momentum and/or your mood. The best way to eliminate the unexpected is to simply expect problems. Problems are just part of life and certainly part of the business. You may not know the specifics of the problem heading your way, but you know something's coming. It always does. If you accept that, you are better ready to deal with the problems when they happen because you have taken the stress out of the equation.
The average life span is about 75 years. When you take away the first 20 years when most of us didn't accomplish a whole lot, that leaves 55 years to accomplish everything we want to accomplish in life. That's roughly 3-million minutes. You take away the time we spend sleeping, it's a little less than 2-million. Seems like a lot until you start thinking about how many we waste each day doing things that don't move us any closer to our life's goals.
In this episode, we take a look at some ways to get yourself in the habit of using every second available to you to accomplish all the things you want to in life.
Success never lives within your comfort zone. When you are trying to achieve something great you have to be willing to do things that scare the heck out of you. You have to be able to make yourself takes chances that curl your insides. If you can't do that, your dreams will never get out f the starting block. In fact, that's how you know whether or not you're dreaming big enough. If your dreams don't scare you, dream bigger.
In this episode, we take a look at how to know if your dreams are worth pursuing. You need to know that if they are big enough, they won't only scare you but those who love you as well.
Why are we so hard on ourselves? That's one trait we all naturally share. Given the choice between focusing on something positive we accomplished or something we failed to complete (or complete right), we will always focus on the failure. Research has shown that if given 100 tasks of which we finished 97, we will worry extensively about the three left undone. In our minds, we will declare the entire endeavor a negative experience.
In this episode, we focus on the importance of shifting this perspective if you wish to keep plowing forward to success. Celebrating our wins releases endorphins into our system. As with all habits, this rush of endorphins can drive out behavior to repeat the experience. The next thing you know you are addicted to success.
When you are building a business, it can be so easy to get so caught up in doing the work that you forget to take any time for yourself. When you do take some r&r, you feel so guilty about it that you don't allow your brain to get the rest it needs to function at its best. If you are a parent, this guilt is ratcheted up a notch. You feel like you are forsaking your family if you spend any of the time you are not working by yourself. However, more and more research is indicating that alone time is essential for you to be at your best. Your brain simply needs time to process all of the nuances of growing your business.
In this episode, we focus on just why that time spent in your own thoughts away from the distractions of others plays such an important role in your business growth.
One of the toughest challenges for an entrepreneur is trying to decide when to take risks. Unfortunately, there are very few stories in the annuls of business history that tells of great business leaders who drove their companies to massive success by playing it safe. Playing it safe is a perfect strategy if you are completely satisfied with the status quo and have no aspirations for the future. That doesn't exactly describe the temperament of the normal listener of this podcast.
In this episode, we break down how to first determine if a risk is even worth considering. If it is, then you just got to rip the bandaid off and make greatness happen.
When you are first starting a business, you often need every dime of profit to keep the lights on at home. At that point, it doesn't always make sense to isolate your business accounts from your personal accounts. However, as your business grows it becomes absolutely essential to do so. As long as the ups and downs of your business are being felt in your household finances, it is nearly impossible to make the important decisions needed to grow your business. That new piece of equipment your business needs or that expensive ad campaign should never be in competition with the family's summer vacation.
In this episode, we find out the need to separate your personal and business finances goes much deeper than buying decisions. If you don't have those isolated from each other, it means that the stress of every angry client who refuses to pay his bill, every big deal that falls through, and every employee that walks off the job is felt at home around the dinner table. If your home and business finances are intertwined, it's impossible to leave work at work and enjoy quality time with your family.
One of the most important things you can do when building your business (or when making changes to your personal life) is to set goals. Without knowing where you are going, it's nearly impossible to get there. Without goals, you simply can't put together a realistic plan for moving your business forward. However, goals can be very intimidating. What if you set a goal and don't achieve it? Many fear that will "prove" that all of the doubts they have had about their abilities are correct. For those, that's just too scary to face.
In this episode, we find that just setting goals is often not enough. You have to take it one step further and set very specific detailed goals. It's often the specific details that power you through the rough times.
When you read many of the books on getting rich, they always talk about tapping into the great creative forces of the universe. They describe a way of life that puts you in the best position to communicate your dreams to this force. When you do that, they say, the universe will manifest your desires. My take has always been that when you get your mind in the right place (a place described in these books) that you are in a much better position to make the decisions and do the work required for success.
I still believe that, but in this episode, we explore the question of whether or not it hurts to hedge your bet and do some visualization just in case.
When you are your own boss, there is always a lingering temptation just to shut down and take some time off. However, indulging in such temptations will certainly slow if not completely shut down your growth. When you just randomly take time off, the guilt of unfinished (or unstarted) tasks will often prevent you from relaxing and enjoying your sudden free time. However, when you are able to reach your maximum productive state through deep work all of that changes.
In this episode, we take a closer look at the impact that truly relaxing and planned downtime can have on your rate of success. Such rest accomplishes much more than just recharging your batteries.
To enter into a highly productive state of deep work, you have to master the ability to shut out distractions. Unfortunately, not all of the distractions you deal with are inanimate. Sometimes, it's people that vie for your attention. That's makes controlling your environment a little more difficult. Whether those human distractions are customers or well-meaning family members, it's important you find a way to carve out the time to focus on the important things you need to accomplish to move your business forward.
In this episode, we learn some techniques for training the folks around you to give you the space you need to do the things you need to do to reach your dreams.
We all live incredibly busy lives with dozens (if not hundreds) of potential distractions vying for our attention. Is it any wonder that entering into a state of deep work and incredible focus is nearly impossible as we pursue success? The phone is always ringing; notifications are always dinging, and the internet is always calling our name. Ironically, none of those things would happen if we turned off our phones, deactivated our notifications, and deleted those tempting bookmarks from our browsers.
In this episode, we take a closer look at the various techniques you can use to cut down on those distractions that prevent you from doing your best work. Temptation usually walks through doors intentionally left open.
How awesome is it to find your passion and decide to make a career out of it? Wouldn't it be really incredible if every step along the way to turning that passion into a booming lucrative business was packed with excitement and thrills? I hate being the one to burst your bubble about that, but the truth is that much of the path to building a successful business is boring... sometimes excruciatingly so. To make it, you have to grind it out. You have to power through that minutia to find the glory waiting for you. Unfortunately, for most aspiring entrepreneurs plowing through the daily grind is too much work and they let their dreams fall by the wayside.
In this episode, we continue our discussion about the importance of focus, determination, and the ability to accomplish deep work on your way to success. Sometimes you just have to embrace the boredom and recognize it as just another obstacle standing between you and your dreams.
We leave in a world where we are constantly bombarded with people, entertainment options, and algorithms fighting for our attention. Unfortunately, when you are trying to grow a business these can become barriers to your success. You only have so much mental bandwidth, energy, and willpower, all of which can be stolen by these distractions. If you are overcome all of this to reach the level of success you desire, you must develop the skills to power through these distractions and focus on the tasks that most affect your business growth.
In this episode, we begin a look at how you can make this happen. It's all outlined in Cal Newport's book, Deep Work. He argues that focus is a skill disappearing from today's world and that mastering it will elevate you above all your competition.
Trying to build a successful career or business while also being a good parent can be incredibly stressful. Walking that tightrope can fill a mom or a dad with incredible guilt. Time spent working creates guilt about being away from the family, while time with the family pulls you away from building your career. It's easy to feel that the old adage "you can't serve two masters" is dead on. However, work-life balance doesn't have to be an either/or situation. Often the guilt we feel is really misdirected. When managed correctly, you really can do it all. We all run into a problem when our work life bleeds into our personal life because we fail to take full advantage of those hours dedicated to work then try to make up for it by working after hours.
In this episode, we take a close look at navigating this treacherous pathway. We also point out that perhaps the most important lesson you can ever teach your children is how to create success. By modeling what it takes to be successful and happy, you show them how to one day pursue their won dreams as well.
Today's world of technology has created enormous opportunities for you to accomplish anything you want to in life. Ironically, it has created equally as many barriers to prevent you from achieving those things. Each of us has a very finite amount of energy and a limited amount of mental bandwidth. We are surrounded by negative influences that can rapidly drain both. The TV is filled with bad news from around the world; social media overflows with everyone screaming about how evil everyone else is; the pandemic drags on, and the price of everything you buy is going up. It is way too easy to be overwhelmed and to just shut down.
The hardest thing to realize is that you personally have nearly zero control of any of those things. Yet, you spend an enormous amount of energy and bandwidth dwelling on them.
In today's episode, we focus on how important it is to shut yourself off from those things and spend your energy exclusively on the things in your life that you can control.
Have you ever felt like you are swimming upstream with your business or your sales career? Do you feel like the revenue you are generating is out of line with the amount of effort you are putting in? Or maybe you are noticing a diminishing return on new investments of your time and resources. If you are like most folks in the business world, you are susceptible to the Pareto Principle... or the 80/20 rule. It stays that in most organizations, eighty percent of your outcomes are generated by only twenty percent of your efforts. That means that most of the work you do simply isn't very productive.
In this episode, we take a look at how you can you the Pareto Principle to your advantage by identifying those efforts and processes that are producing the profit and just doing more of them. If done correctly, you can actually increase your profit without increasing your workload.
If you take a moment to think about every outstanding achievement in the history of the world, you realize that none of them just happened. These all sprung from long strings of start and stops, numerous small successes and large failures, and near-constant struggles by the men and women credited with the achievement. The heroes that made those great things happen, whether it was space flight, the building of the pyramids, the creation of the polio vaccine, whatever, overcame both external struggles and internal struggles to achieve their goals. They all share one common trait: they didn't quit.
It's sad how when we start to pursue our own goals, we forget all of that and expect to find smooth sailing between us and our dreams. All too often, the moment we struggle, we pack it in and walk away. When people doubt us, we doubt ourselves. In this episode, we focus on the most crucial element of achieving success: not giving up.
Real Estate Tycoon and Motivational Speaker Grant Cardone claims the reason most people fail to achieve their dreams is that they grossly underestimate the amount of work and the change of mindset that is required to be successful. His answer to this is simple. Set your goals ten times higher than you think is achievable, develop a game plan to hit that larger goal, then follow that strategy to the letter. He says if you do that, you'll blow away your old goals no matter what happens.
In this episode, we take a closer look at Cardone's 10X Rule to see how it can change your life and move you one step closer to the success of which you dream.
When you first become an entrepreneur, one of the biggest challenges is learning to deal with freedom. When you have a boss "hovering" over you, it's easy to avoid many of the temptations and distractions that arise during the day. However, even the tiniest of distractions can pull you away from the work you know you should be doing when you are your boss. When working from home, this problem is exasperated. There are always chores that need doing, TV shows to get caught up on, and home projects to finish. Since much of success depends upon making yourself do things you don't feel like doing, these distractions can quickly become barriers to your success.
In this episode, we learn some ways to keep these distractions at a minimum. If left unchecked, distractions can quickly become excuses, and excuses can put an end to our dreams faster than nearly anything else.
Do you consider yourself a perfectionist? On the surface that can appear to be a great strength when you are trying to build a business. It would seem that the attention to detail and minutia while driving to perfection would ensure success. Unfortunately, the opposite is often true. Since perfection is always unattainable, the quest for it can literally bring growth to a halt.
In today's episode, we take a closer look at perfectionism. It turns out that true perfectionism is rare; it is often a mask for a strong fear of failure that can prevent you from ever moving forward toward success.
When biographers of the future write your story will they be dreaming of the movie rights or just praying someone, somewhere will read it? Each day we write another page in the tale of our lives. Great stories are filled with plot twists, struggles, losses, recoveries, perseverance, and ultimately triumph. Great stories never feature a perfect hero facing no adversity or one that quits at the first sign of trouble. No ballad has ever been sung about the man or woman who decided their dreams just weren't worth the effort or discomfort required to make them happen.
In this episode, we take a look at stories that will never be told. Your's doesn't have to be one of those. Today, choose to make your story a bestseller.
Sometimes very small tasks that seem completely unimportant can hamper our professional growth in ways we never imagine. So much of our ability to accomplish the things we want in life comes down to our energy levels, our internal strength, and our confidence. Unfortunately, it doesn't take much to throw those things into disarray and prevent us from doing the work we know we need to do.
In this episode, we take a closer look at how "kicking the can down the road" with small seemingly trivial tasks can undermine our mindset and prevent us from focusing on the much bigger tasks we must accomplish to reach our goals.
One of the greatest temptations we face in life is to view the world from a position of scarcity. We want to believe that our options and the resources we crave are limited. This forces us to battle others for what we want and to hoard our assets rather than risk loss. The alternative, however, is to see through the world as an abundant place with plenty to go around for everyone.
in this episode, we take a further look at the Science of Getting Rich and how it focuses on a simple principle... the less you worry about money the less you will have to worry about money.
One of the most powerful tools to change your life is gratitude. When you are thankful for the good things in your life and the wonderful opportunities that surround you, you don't get bogged down in the trivial concerns of the world. Gratitude is armor against the challenges in life. It's also one of the keys to the life you want. Successful (truly successful) people live lives of thankfulness knowing that's what propels them past the point where others quit.
In this episode, we continue our look at The Science of Getting Rich. It's a book written over a century ago by a guy named Wallace Wattles. His formula for success includes large quantities of gratitude and is as relevant today as it was when it was written.
There are two subjects in the world that it's absolutely taboo to talk about out in the open: sex and money. Both are treated as dirty subjects; anyone who ever publically proclaims they want more of either faces ridicule and shame. Both are absolute necessities, yet carry such stigma. In this podcast about success, we are going to focus on the money side of this equation. Why is it that many people view the word "rich" as a "four-letter" word that should be avoided? Every business owner and salesperson thrives to make the most money they possibly can, but will then act embarrassed about that if asked. It's just not considered good form to say you want to be rich.
In this episode, we find out this bizarre outlook on wealth has been around for a long time. For some people, it is so ingrained in their subconscious that they will sabotage their own efforts toward success for fear of what folks might say to them or do to them if they ever did achieve the status of "rich".
If you are going to have any chance of reaching the level of success you dream of you have to develop a growth mindset. The problem is that most of us are firmly entrenched in a fixed mindset. It's just ingrained into us to believe that we have limits based on the talents and circumstances to which we are born.
In this episode, we wrap up our series on Carol Dweck's Mindset and the differences between having a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. One of the best things about knowing which mindset you fall into is that once you know you can change it.
There's good news for all of you out there who now realize that you are stuck in a fixed mindset. We've spent the last several episodes breaking down just what it means to have a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset. One is conducive to success; the other is not. These mindsets derive from a book by psychologist Carol Dweck which breaks down the various traits associated with each.
In this episode, we take a look at three simple techniques which will help you begin to crossover from fixed to growth... a move you absolutely have to make if you wish to reach your maximum potential.
Your perception of hard work is a direct indicator of whether or not you will be able to achieve your dreams. Over the last several episodes, we've delved into the two mindsets that determine your ability to succeed. Folks with a fixed mindset resent having to work hard to achieve success. They believe that the truly successful don't have to work because of their situations and skillsets. Growth mindset people know it's all about the work.
In this episode, we take a deeper look at how for the highly successful in the world it's the work that truly brings them joy...not just the end results.
Do you find yourself celebrating the success of those around you or do you resent it when someone else achieves a newer status or level of accomplishment? Those with fixed mindsets resent those who succeed. They tell themselves when someone else succeeds, that's it's because of the advantages that person had in life that gave him or her an edge. That absolves them from taking responsibility for their own failures.
In this episode, we continue our look at Carol Dweck's book Mindset. In it she outlines the two ways of thinking that dictate our ability to ah=chvie the level of success we want. Turn out how you see others reflects on the limitations you have imposed upon yourself.
When you start something, especially something you find important. do you always finish it or do you quit the moment it gets tough? Everyone can keep going as long as the path is smooth, quitting at the first sign of struggle is one of the surest signs of a fixed mindset.
In this episode, we continue our discussion of the two kinds of mindsets that determine our ability to achieve success. One thing is for sure, quitting is the sure-fire way to make sure you never achieve success.
From the time we are small kids many of us have it drilled into our heads that mistakes are bad and failure must be avoided at all costs. It's ironic when you think that when we are really small children, everything we learn comes from trial and error. Somehow, we are supposed to outgrow that. As adults, we are to avoid failure at all costs. At least, that's the way we believe if we suffer from a fixed mindset. In her book, Mindset, psychologist Carol Dweck separates us into two mindsets: fixed and growth. A person with a fixed mindset believes that their ability to succeed is determined by the talents and the circumstances with which they were born. Those with a growth mindset see those as starting points only with unlimited potentials for those who are willing to put in the work.
In part two of our series on Mindset. we take a look at how the way you view mistakes and failures determines your ability to achieve the level of success you aspire to. Hint... they aren't the bad things we've learned to believe they are.
Good habits performed consistently create momentum that leads you to where you want to go. Whenever we start a new productive habit (reading, writing, cold-calling, practicing, etc.) we know that we have taken the first step toward success. However, it's not always easy for that first step to become a second step, and then a third, and a fourth, etc. Lack of consistency prevents us from gaining any momentum.
In this episode, we steal an old trick from one of my favorite comedians who used it to create the momentum that helped him rise to the top of the entertainment world. He ended up using it to launch a show about nothing.
Sometimes, the battles that take place in our minds and the thoughts we wrestle with just seem silly upon closer inspection. If we were to ever imply that an athlete could compete at their absolute best without ever practicing, we'd be laughed at and ridiculed (and rightfully so). Yet, we, as business owners and salespeople, NEVER practice and yet wonder why we don't achieve the level of success we want. Go figure!
In today's episode, we turn once again to the advice of Herschel Walker. The Georgia football legend once again demonstrates that lessons from the gridiron can kick our businesses into the endzone as well.
One of the greatest temptations we have in life is to compare ourselves with other people. We see their success and imagine that they simply aren't facing the same challenges which hold us back. That's out fixed mindset at work. We like to imagine that it's our circumstances and talents (or lack thereof) that determine our ability to succeed. That is simply not true. It's our willingness to put in the hard work, the practice time, and mental fortitude required to achieve our goals. Unfortunately, when we start looking at others and competing with them we hinder our own ability to be the best version of ourselves we can be.
In honor of Georgia winning the National Championship this week, we are going to turn to the man who led them to their last championship in 1980 for advice. Herschel Walker is one of the greatest running backs in history. Once again, the mindset that creates success on the field can help you create success in your life.
The Georgia Bulldogs are the College Football National Champions. Former walk-on quarterback Stetson Bennett had a monster second half to lead the dogs to their first championship in more than 40 years. His coach, Kirby Smart, got a chance to defeat his friend and mentor, Nick Saban. The legendary Alabama coach was going for his 7th championship since 2009. Smart modeled his Georgia football program after much of what he learned working at Saban's side. Congratulations, Georgia.
Even though, Alabama fell short of its goal to take home the title again. Few can argue the influence Saban has on college football. In this episode, we take one more look at how some of the lessons he teaches his athletes can be used to help us become champions of business as well.
The ego is a very mysterious thing when it comes to success. You have to be confident enough (at least on the outside) to accomplish the things you want to make happen. On the other hand, you can't let your ego get so out of control that you run over those around you and refuse to listen to the people who can help you along the way. We all have known very talented people who were never able to achieve much success. Often folks who grow up more skilled than others at certain things never develop one important trait needed for success: humility. Talent only gets you so far. Humility allows you to take that next step to greatness by recognizing that others are needed for you to get where you want to go.
In this episode, we once again look to Alabama football coach Nick Saban. His Crimson Tide is set to take on the Georgia Bulldogs tonight. Today, we go deeper into how humility impacts your ability to succeed as Saban explains the traits he looks for in world-class athletes that tell him they are destined to be champions. (As you will hear, this episode was scheduled to run last week)
Life is hard! Success is hard! Building a business is hard! Achieving your dreams is hard! If that wasn't true, every person on the planet would have a full bank account, a rocking business where other people did most of the work, and beautiful homes all around the globe. The problem is that we all want those things to come easy. It's not that we are lazy necessarily; it's just that we are hard-wired to see struggle as negative. In fact, we are pretty wired to see everything as negative. Looking at life from a "glass-half-empty" perspective saps your strength; it's exhausting. Then which hit those challenges and are faced with tasks you just don't want to do, you don't have the energy to power through.
In this episode, we once again tap into the wisdom of legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban. He points out that making the conscious decision to see the world in a positive light makes it so much easier to do the hard things required to achieve greatness.
Becoming a champion on the football field doesn't just happen. Becoming one in the business world doesn't either. reaching the pinnacle of what you do (or even just getting really good) requires hard work and a certain amount of laserlike focus on the tasks required to get better and better along the way. The first step, however, is making the conscious decision that you are going to be a champion and not allowing anything you can control to block that path.
In this episode, we once again turn to Bama coach Nick Saban. He makes it very clear to his team on the first day of practice that they must decide right then and there if they intend to become a champion. Everything else builds on that decision.
If you are like most of us, it gets harder and harder every day this week to stick to your New Year's Resolutions. If you can make it for a couple more weeks, your new habits will start to form. That's when real change begins. In the meantime, you are going to have setbacks and failures. You will then have a choice: either let them derail you or simply begin again and proceed forward.
In this episode, we once again turn to the wisdom of Alabama coach Nick Saban. So many of the tips and techniques he uses with his players to create championship teams apply equally to the pursuit of excellence in life.
There is an old saying that if you could build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door. That saying is flat-out wrong!!! There have been hundreds of "better" mousetraps designed over the years; most never made it to production and never made their inventors rich. Why? Because despite modern mythology to the contrary great ideas very seldom lead to massive success. The idea is the easy part, it's the day-to-day work that decides whether or not that idea leads to success.
This week, as a tribute to the College Football National Championships, we continue to take a look at some of the wisdom that makes Alabama coach, Nick Saban, the poster child for success on the gridiron. To be a champion on the field requires much the same discipline and toughness that it takes to be a champion off the field. (Sorry Georgia Fans, I am still looking for a good Kirby Smart quote that applies to the pursuit of success off the field.)
The new year is upon us and it is now time to put up or shut about those resolutions you set for this year. If you are truly committed to making this your best year ever, you have a choice to make. Do you make the sacrifices that you know you need to make to accomplish real change or do you continue to kick that can down the road?
In this episode, we turn to the world of sports. The Alabama Crimson Tide is once again playing for the national college football championship. Few would question whether or not Alabama has been the most dominant football program in the country for the last several years. It stems from their head coach, Nick Saban. Today, what he has to say about the choice we must make to be successful.
The new year is here and the time to plan those resolutions is over. Over the past several episodes, we have mapped out just how to make sure those resolutions become reality. We have focused on looking for your deeper reason for wanting to make change. Knowing that will help you keep focus. We then looked into setting those resolutions and breaking them down into manageable parts. Now it's time to put all of that into practice.
As you pursue your resolutions, there are going to be ups and downs... successes and failures. In today's episode, we focus on how to not let those failures completely derail you. Ultimately, it does not matter what path you take to achieving your goals as long as you get to where you want to be.
As we continue to ramp up towards New Year's Day, it's time to be finalizing those resolutions. Unfortunately, it's a lot easier to make resolutions than it is to keep them. Over the last few episodes, we have discussed techniques to help ensure the success of this year's planned changes. First, we focused on the importance of understanding why the changes you want to make are so important to you. That allows you to focus on the end results rather than the action. Then we looked at using the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time Specific) to develop your resolutions.
Now that we have narrowed down on just what improvements you want to make in your life, the challenge is making it happen. In this episode, we look at how to break those resolutions into small bites that can easily be converted into small habits that add up to big changes.
What are you planning to change about yourself when the calendar rolls over this weekend? Â Over half the people in the U.S. will kick off the year with at least one New Year's Resolution. Â Two weeks later, most will have returned to their old habits cursing themselves inwardly for failing in their quest for change. Â It turns out, as we all know, making serious improvements to your life is just as hard on January 1st as it is the rest of the year.
In today's episode, we are going to try to increase your chances of success this year by focusing on being SMART about your resolutions. Â It turns out some of the classic techniques used in board rooms across the country to implement corporate change can actually help small business owners as well.
In just a few days, we kick off a new year. All around the globe folks are making plans to change their lives for the better in 2020. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these New Year's Resolutions will fall by the wayside long before the calendar flips to February. Some of those failures will simply be caused by a lack of willpower, but the majority will result from poor planning, overextension, and the inability to down back from temporary setbacks.
In this episode, we continue to assemble the perfect plan for making sure this is the year those resolutions become realities.
As we enter the last few days of 2021, we start focusing on the big changes we are planning to make in the upcoming year. We are assembling that list of New Year's Resolutions. On the outside, we are pretty pumped because we have a "plan" to start the new year. Internally, however, most of us have already resolved that we are not going to keep those resolutions. We are making wages with ourselves about when we will bail out and resume our current trajectory. For the gamblers among us, it's usually an over-under seven days bet.
Let's do it differently this year. This be smart about it and focus on the right things that will drastically increase our chances of success. All this week, we will be looking at various factors that contribute to our resolution struggles. In this episode, we focus on truly understanding why the changes we want to make are important enough to us to be made into resolutions in the first place.
One of the hardest things entrepreneurs ever do is to shut their minds down and stop thinking about their business. It's easy to take some time off and not actually do any work. In fact, many of us do way too much of that. It's a whole different ball game when we try to actually stop thinking about our business, or more to the point, worrying about it. But the ability to let our mind rest and recharge itself is essential to achieve the long-term success we crave.
In this episode, we delve into just what it means to your business for you to completely shut it down for a few hours or perhaps even a full day. What better time to do that than Christmas.
Christmas shopping is all wrapped up (or should be, at least). It's now time to think about a gift for yourself. Not just any gift, though, but a gift that will actually help you reach your goals and move you closer to your dreams. There is one trait that nearly every uber-successful person shares and that is an intense thirst for knowledge. They all set aside time every day to read (usually early in the morning). If you are looking for a great New Year's Resolution to kick start your efforts toward making 2022 your most successful year ever, upping your reading is one of the best. The problem is that there are so many good books out there, it's hard to know where to start.
In today's episode, we recommend some excellent choices to address the weaknesses that are keeping you from getting to where you want to be.
Everyone wants to believe that success comes all at once with a flash of action, but that's just not the case. The truth is that success comes slowly. It requires consistent action over a long period of time. Most successful people literally outwork and outlast their competitors. Success usually comes after what feels like an eternity of sweating and struggling. It seems like nothing is happening and then BOOM... the pieces fall into place.
If you want to see the impact of continuous steady exertion of force, look no further than your kitchen stove. In today's episode, we learn that it takes forever to get a pot of water to 211 degrees, but it's that next little bit of heat that can change the world.
There's a long list of reasons that we start our own businesses. They range from unlimited income to being fed up with the corporate world to being able to determine our own future. Above all of those hovers the freedom to set our own schedules and take off whenever we want to without having to get approval from above. The problem with that, however, is that many of us lack the discipline needed to recognize the difference between vacationing and simply avoiding work. Maintaining that delicate balance is especially hard this time of year when all most of really want to do is enjoy the holidays.
In this episode, we take a look at the difference between planned and unplanned vacation time. Planned vacations can leave us ready to take on the world while unplanned vacations can make us feel like total losers.
Success is and always has been about finding a way to do those things that you know you should do but just don't feel like doing. To power through those moments, you have to find your true purpose and motivations. At its core, "I want to make more money" just doesn't give you the juice to make things happen. You have to know why making more money is important to you? Sometimes the answer to that question reveals things about yourself that you would rather not face.
In this episode, we consider what some of those deeper motivations might be and focus on how you can use that knowledge to find the deeper purpose needed to drive your success.
We want to do it all. We really want to. We try so hard to be everything for everybody, but end up feeling like a complete failure who doesn't do any of it right. Sounds familiar? This is the life many of us lead. Our inability to ever tell anyone, "No", and our lack of focus leaves us in a constant state of beatdown. It is no wonder that we are not able to reach our goals and achieve the level of success we desire. Now is the time to change all of that. If you want 2022 to be the year you finally become the person you want to be you have to start by cleaning up after the person you are now.
In this episode, we take a look at the impact all the "clutter" in our lives has on our ability to be successful. As you begin to set your goals for next year, take a look at your current life. Identify those things that consume your time and energy that do not move you closer to your goals. Then get rid of them. You will be stunned at how much time you suddenly have to make your dreams come true.
One of the biggest struggles that an entrepreneur or sales professional faces each year is the intense desire to end the year early and just not work those last couple of weeks. We tell ourselves that the customers are spending time with their families and won't want to hear about my business. That's how we rationalize not working even though our business might not be where we hoped it would be by now. When in fact the last couple of weeks (outside of Christmas and New Years Day, themselves) can be some of the more productive times of the year.
In today's episode, we take a close look at how completely shutting down the last couple of weeks of this year, can severely hamper your ability to have the kind of year you are hoping for next year. It's just not that easy to hit the reset button when you've completely shut down.
Facebook and other social sites are now part of the very fabric of our world. However, when anything impacts society on such a large scale there will always be unintended consequences. Those who remember the days before Facebook recall a time when you weren't easily able to keep track of all your former friends and acquaintances. While it's often fascinating to know what's going on with your old high school classmates, it can also create real problems with your self-esteem. It's nearly impossible not to compare your lives with the lives those past friends project onto their profiles.
In today's episode, we take a look at how these inevitable comparisons make it increasingly difficult to accomplish your goals and build your business. It's very easy to go to a very dark place when you think everyone around you has done more with their lives than you have.
How often do you tell yourself you are going to start making big changes in your life "starting Monday." Then Monday comes and goes without you actually doing anything at all. Perhaps, you attempt to make the change on Monday but with a lack of enthusiasm that ensures failure. Many of us repeat this cycle over and over and never actually move any closer to our goals.
In this episode, we take a closer look at the dangers of "making plans". Sometimes when you make a plan to change, it feels like you actually did something. What's even better than that is to actually do something.
How often in your life have you talked yourself out of something that you really wanted to do that you were sure you'd enjoy or that would move your business or career forward in a big way? It happens all the time. We all have an inner voice that's a real jerk sometimes. While it's true that voice might occasionally stop you from doing something really stupid in your personal life, more often than not it can shut down your professional growth. Success in business usually requires taking risks of some kind with both your time and your resources.
In this episode, we take a closer look at that inner voice that sounds so reasonable to determine when it's trying to help you and when (and why) it often stands between you and success. Hint: that voice represents the side of you that doesn't believe you are capable of success.
There is perhaps nothing that brings our dreams to a halt faster than the fear of looking silly and embarrassing ourselves. So many things that we want to achieve in life require us to take risks. When we take risks, we have to put ourselves out there in ways that others might ridicule. That can be pretty scary for some. To avoid that many of us simply don't ever try.
In this episode, we explore a new therapy that can help you realize that many of your fears aren't real. A little embarrassment not only won't kill you, but it might make you better at doing what you have to do to be successful.
Have you ever felt like you are swimming upstream with your business or your sales career? Do you feel like the revenue you are generating is out of line with the amount of effort you are putting in? Or maybe you are noticing a diminishing return on new investments of your time and resources. If you are like most folks in the business world, you are susceptible to the Pareto Principle... or the 80/20 rule. It stays that in most organizations, eighty percent of your outcomes are generated by only twenty percent of your efforts. That means that most of the work you do simply isn't very productive.
In this episode, we take a look at how you can you the Pareto Principle to your advantage by identifying those efforts and processes that are producing the profit and just doing more of them. If done correctly, you can actually increase your profit without increasing your workload.
As your business starts to grow and your client list starts to expand, it can quickly seem that there is just too much to do. Every time a new task pops up, you immediately tell yourself, "I just don't have time to do anything else." While this is sometimes true, more often than not it's your mind playing tricks on you. If you ever take a few moments to break down minute-by-minute your activity throughout the workday, what will usually find it several hours or totally unaccounted for time.
In his episode, we take a closer look at just where that extra time goes and what you can do to retrieve it. That way you can use those extra hours to do the things you need to do to achieve the success you want.
There's a lot of truth to the old adage "Pride comes before a fall." However, there's even more truth to the idea that pride can prevent you from having success in the first place. Our ego can get us in a world of trouble when it comes to starting, growing, and maintaining a business. We are terrified of making mistakes and embarrassing ourselves. We worry so much about what other people will think if we ask for help that we often refuse to use the tools available to us. We make decisions about things we don't understand because we are too proud to seek out guidance. And, we refuse to tap into the expertise of our employees for fear they will lose respect for us as "the boss".
In this episode, we take a closer look at the many ways our ego gets us in trouble when we are trying to build something special.
Running your own business or working in sales is an emotional rollercoaster like no other. One day you feel like you are on top of the world (usually after a big sale), the next a sale falls through and you hit rock bottom. Unfortunately, many have trouble climbing out of those emotional low places. In fact, many spiral even deeper into darkness when their self-doubt and fear get fired up. That's when the average person calls it quits. Those who refuse to give up on their dreams develop their own set of tools (meditation, affirmations, motivational podcasts, reading, etc.) to recharge their energy and confidence.
Once their mind is back in the game and things are going well, many often fall back into their old habits and find themselves down again. In this episode, we learn that the truly successful folks treat these productivity-enhancing tools as vitamins to prevent the dark times rather than medicine to heal them.
Over 90% of the conversations we have each day are with ourselves. We talk to ourselves all the time. We even talk to ourselves when we are talking to other people. The trouble with that is that most of those conversations are negative. We tell ourselves we are not very good at things, that we'll never be successful, and the things we want are more than we can ever have. After a while, we actually come to believe those things. If you hear something often enough, it gets branded into your psyche.
In this episode, we learn how you can filter out many of those negative messages and turn them into positive self-talk that will actually rewire your brain to believe in (and hence enable) your ability to thrive.
We talk a lot about how our fear and insecurities can often prevent us from doing the things we need to do to be successful. We convince ourselves that some of our dreams and goals will be forever out of our reach. When we do this, it becomes so easy to not even try. What's the point, after all, if we don't believe our goals are achievable. That's the battle we all face when trying to do great things.
In today's episode, we learn firsthand that those emotional challenges aren't limited to our financial and business goals. They raise issues with our personal goals as well. Sometimes you just need the right person at the right time to kick you that push you need to take a chance.
Social Media is a powerful force in today's world. If used correctly it can help almost any business owner or salesperson reach the world. All too often, however, it has the exact opposite effect on a business owner. Instead of being a force for growth, it can become a huge time-suck that stops work from getting down and a tremendous demotivator that makes you think the world is such a bad place that there's no point in working hard. It's all controlled by computer programs called algorithms that try to figure out exactly what you want to see so that you will keep looking at the screen for as long as possible. The longer you look at the screen, the more money the platforms make. The irony is that the programs don't care what message they give you as long as it's a message you will keep watching.
In today's episode, we take a look at how you can reprogram those algorithms to give you uplifting messages, good business advice, and a positive outlook on the world. If that's what you are seeing online, you are perfectly poised for success.
One thing we realize as we get older is that time goes by very fast. It feels like, if you blink, another year is gone. Each of us has an average of about 41,000,000 minutes on this earth. That seems like a lot until you start thinking about how much we spent in school and how many minutes we would like to be able to spend in retirement. Take those away and you realize the number of minutes we have to actually build our success and our happiness is quite limited. It's best not to think about how many of those we end up wasting on a given day.
Successful, happy people respect their time in a way most of us don't. In today's episode, we take a look at just how important it is to establish what's truly important to you and then to make sure every minute you have moves you closer to those goals.
Over the next few days, we all get a chance to reacquaint ourselves with the idea of gratitude. Each November, on the last Thursday of the month, we all take time to recognize the things we are thankful for... usually while gathered around a table full of food. If we do it right and really take our gratitude seriously, we can often feel our stress leave us and our worries recede for a while. There's some fascinating research out that indicates gratitude can be a powerful weapon against all those negative emotions which often plague us all.
In today's episode, we explore the power of making gratitude part of your daily routine. If you make every day Thanksgiving, you will find that you soon will have much more to be thankful for.
What are you afraid of? Are those fears real or imagined? These are two questions you need to continually ask yourself when you are trying to grow a business or expand a sales career? Like it or not, it's our ability to overcome our internal fears that will ultimately determine whether we are successful. If we can't, those fears force bad decisions or, worse yet, prevent us from making any decisions at all as we move forward.
In today's episode, we look at the importance of taking those fears head-on. If we try to ignore them or let them drive us the wrong way, we are destined for failure.
Do you have goals? I don't mean the kind of vague "I'd like to do.... someday" kind of statements everyone makes. I am talking about the hard-core "Here is what I am going to accomplish in 2022" kind of goal. Most people don't. They tell themselves over and over again that they need to, but when it comes time to actually write them out they freeze up. Goals are scary! What if you set a goal, and don't make it. What a failure that would make you. And there's no way you could tell anyone your goals; they'd laugh at you. Those are the kind of thoughts that go through most people's minds when goal-setting time comes around. It's all crap and we know it, but that doesn't stop our inner voice from yelling those thoughts.
This year though, power through that and set some real goals... for the next week, the rest of the year, all of 2022, and perhaps even the rest of your life. You can't ever reach a destination if you don't know exactly where you are going. In today's episode, we talk about using the most powerful partners you will ever have when trying to reach your goals... your kids.
When you start your own business or go into direct sales no one warns you about the internal struggles that come with being your own boss. Self-doubt, fear, and indecision quickly consume you if you are not careful. As an employee, you have a boss often telling you what you have to do and when you have to do it. There's usually no room for that inner voice to derail you. When the alarm goes off, you get up and go to work because you have someone telling you to. All that changes, however, when you are your own boss. Now it's your choice whether or not to get up. It becomes incredibly easy for you to tell yourself, "Does it really matter if I sleep a few more hours?" Yes, it does! One morning sleeping late doesn't kill your business, but it does open the door to a string of bad decisions if you don't find a way to hold yourself accountable.
In this episode, we take a look at the need for accountability as you build your business. It's the hardest thing an entrepreneur ever has to do. The second hardest thing is to come to grips with the fact that it is okay to need help doing it. That's where a good coach can make all the difference in the world.
Social media has changed the world. It's created amazing new ways for us to communicate and share ideas. It's opened up new marketing avenues so we can reach customers all over the world in whole new ways. However, with the good comes the bad. It's also created avenues of hate and anger that never existed before. Its addictive nature can easily consume your time and cloud your mind in ways that destroy your productivity.
In this episode, we explore a question that every entrepreneur has to answer for themselves at some point or another. Is social media benefitting my business or retarding its growth by consuming time I could better spend otherwise?
Are you easily distracted when you are trying to get some work done? Do you find yourself closely relating to the dog in the movie UP who completely loses focus when someone yells "Squirrel"? Lack of focus can be one of the biggest obstacles we face when trying to build our sales career or our businesses. The more repetitive, mundane, and detestable the task is, the easier it is for us to let ourselves get off track. Often, however, those are the tasks that most influence our success.
In this episode, we explore the various ways you can minimize your distractions and stay focused on the things that matter. Just remember, temptation often walks through doors intentionally left open.
Each of us is constantly at war in our own minds (good vs. bad, productive vs. lazy, confident vs. insecure, and brave vs. fearful). We cheer on the positive side of that battle, but all too often watch as the negative side wins out over and over again. Unfortunately, our ability to achieve the things we want out of life is entirely dependent on our "good side" being victorious. We want to reach out to potential customers but we end up surfing the web. We want to respond quickly to angry customers but we end up ghosting their calls. We want to practice our sales skills and get better at handling objections but we end up scrolling through our social media streams. Losing these battles blocks our efforts to grow.
In this episode, we explore those internal wars and realize that winning is far easier than you think if you just start thinking about what you are thinking about.
What do you intend to do today to drive your business and/or your life forward? Do you know exactly what you want to accomplish today? Many of us do have goals we hope to achieve. If pressed on what we were planning to do today to move toward those goals, we would give a very generic answer. We'd say something like, "I am going to do everything I can to get me closer to my goals". We'd take a lot of pride in knowing that we were willing to assert such a "bold" intention as "doing everything". The truth is, though, that answer is BS. We take our business (and our lives) forward when we assert some very defined intentions as to exactly what we intend to do.
In today's episode, we explore the impact that a few straight and to-the-point intentions can have on the success of our business. I intend for you to realize how important intentions really are.
Most of us have been told since the day we were born that failure is bad and something that we should avoid at all costs. Unfortunately, that belief often becomes so entrenched that it can paralyze our growth as a person and especially as an entrepreneur. The truth is that failure is an essential part of our professional evolution. Success requires taking chances, but fear of failure can easily cause you to avoid the risks needed to succeed. If you never fail, you never learn what you need to do to improve. That's when your life becomes stale.
In today's episode, we try to help you shake off that fear and embrace those failures for what they really are: stepping stones to the success you want.
When you are building your own business, it can seem like the entire world is trying to stop you from attaining the success you want. It can often feel that you are on an island all by yourself. Your families ad friends have no idea what you are going through and their "support" can often make matter worse. That's why most highly successful people have support partners and/or coaches to help them keep pushing forward.
Choosing the right support system can be one of the most important business decisions you will ever make. Not everyone can provide you with the type of help you need to keep going. The wrong support system can end your dreams faster than none at all. Positive energy-producing conversations can devolve into emotionally draining bitch sessions in a matter of seconds.
In this episode, we focus on what to look for in a support partner(s) and how important it is to set some guidelines right from the start.
When you decide to branch and create your own business, it scares the heck out of those close to you. Often, they aren't entrepreneurial-minded and just can't see why you wouldn't take a nice safe job with benefits and two weeks vacation each year. Being your own boss just isn't right for everyone. Often your friends and family will inadvertently say things that will rattle your confidence and your resolve.
Others won't believe you are capable of building a business; those will subtly (and sometimes not too subtly) try to discourage you from moving forward. Still, others will have more sinister (and selfish) reasons for undermining your efforts.
In today's episode, we focus on the absolute necessity of building your own conviction and shutting out those voices if you hope to be a successful entrepreneur.
Do you really believe you can be great? One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from Henry Ford when he said, "Whether you believe you can or you believe you can't, you are right". So many people think they can achieve something great, or perhaps believe it's possible for them. That's not the same as truly "believing" they can be great. Without that absolute certainty, it's way too easy to let doubt, indecision, and fear block your path to success.
Unfortunately, many of us have been trained since birth to accept mediocrity and to not "get above our raisin'" as they say in the South. On top of that, we often cement those beliefs in our mind by telling ourselves things live "I suck at this" and "I'll never be one of those people who do great things". Simply put, if you want to be successful you have to stop doing those things... in this episode, we look at how to rewire your brain so that you do believe in your own greatness.
All salespersons and entrepreneurs have one thing in common. We all hate cold-calling or at the very least hate making that first call. It usually gets better after three or four dials, but some bizarre combination of fear, self-doubt, lack of conviction, and imposter syndrome makes it very hard for us to pick up the phone.
There are dozens of ways to contact customers nowadays that don't involve cold-calling. However, it still remains the most effective way for growing nearly every kind of business. Millions of books have been sold proclaiming otherwise. Telling folks what they want to hear is a big moneymaker.
There is and never will be a better way to connect with a customer than actually talking to them. In this episode, we offer five tips for making the process less painful and more productive.
I once read that Larry Bird would get up every morning and take hundreds of jump shots in the gym all by himself before anyone else showed up for practice. It's not surprising then that when game time came he was easily able to knock down shot after shot and is recognized as one of the greatest of all time. He simply practiced himself to greatness. The same can be said for just about anyone on any list of great athletes. They may have had talent but it was their work ethic in practice that elevated them above others with equivalent talent that you've never heard of. It takes practice (and lots of it) to be elite.
That same thing applies to the business world. Your best entrepreneurs and salespersons practice their craft daily so that when they are sitting in front of that potential client they come across as confident, knowledgable, and truly able to help the customer. In this episode, we break down what it means to practice and the impact it can have on your business.
It's commonplace to see athletes warming up before a game. In fact, it would be very strange if we ever saw an elite-level basketball player show up at the gym right at tip-off and start playing. We would probably question their dedication and professionalism. We know that in order for an athlete to be at peak performance, they have to warm up. They have to get their body ready and their mind focused or they just won't be at their best.
Why then do we, as business owners and salespersons, expect to be able to show up right before we start our sales pitch and expect to make sales. In this episode, we take a look at just how important those few minutes before a pitch are and learn some questions we should ask ourselves before we even start talking to a client or customer.
Running your own business is rewarding and exciting, but it also can be the most emotionally draining thing you ever do. The same can be said if your livelihood comes from sales. Self-doubt, fear, and indecision can not only paralyze our business but can leave us an emotional wreck. To prevent burnout, you have to find ways to recharge yourself.
This episode takes a look at the various ways you can fill your emotional cup so that you have the strength to do the things you know you must do to be successful.
If you sell for a living or own your own business, you need to avoid burnout at all costs. That condition can bring everything you are trying to build to a screeching halt. Burnout is your mind's way of protecting itself from prolonged stress. One day you are freaking out trying to get everything done and the next you don't care whether it gets done or not. When you're burned out, it just doesn't feel worth it to care about anything.
If you find yourself in that state, you have to find a way out fast or your business will quickly start to suffer. In this episode, we look at ways to dig yourself out of that funk and get back on task building the success you want.
How many times have you tried to start a new habit that just fell by the wayside after a few days. Perhaps, everything was going great, and then suddenly you reverted back to your own ways and felt like a total failure. It happens to all of us at some point or another. We then beat ourselves up for not having the strength to make the changes we wanted to make.
It turns out that, more often than not, your failure had nothing to do with a lack of strength or motivation. You failed because you didn't put the right systems in place for the new habit to take hold. In this episode, we talk about just what it takes for you to effectively create new habits of success.
We all have bad habits that stop us from reaching the level of success we want and having the lives we dream of. Some are huge like smoking and heavy drug use. Most, though, are just small things that we do that eat up large quantities of time that could be used to build our businesses. Regardless of the nature of those bad habits, they can feel nearly impossible to break.
In this episode, we take a close look at the mechanics of bad habits. It turns out that it's often our systems that fail us and not a lack of motivation and willpower. Change your systems and you can change your life.
All of us have this giant mountain of tasks that we need or want to do. Some are crucial to the success of our business and our lives. Others aren't. Some can be finished in a matter of moments while others take days. Not so coincidentally, the most frivolous tasks are often the ones that can be finished quickly. That make's them the low-hanging fruit of the time management world.
As we map out our days, it's vital that we focus on those things which will legitimately drive our business forward. In today's episode, we focus on the necessity to avoid the temptation to do that low-hanging fruit first. You may feel like you got something done, but your business doesn't grow.
We are our own worst enemies when it comes to making real changes in our lives. However, it's not for the reasons you think. Most of us believe that it is a lack of willpower or motivation that stops us from creating the habits we need to be successful or from getting rid of our bad habits. Most of the time, that's simply not true. Change is hard! We fail most often because we don't have the right systems in place.
In this episode, we did deeper into why we have those feelings of failure when we aren't able to change and take a look at how those negative emotions actually create a barrier between us and success.
How many times have you wanted to make real positive change in your life and simply lacked the motivation to make it happen? Did you feel weak because you couldn't do what you really wanted to do? Did you beat yourself up for lacking the strength to build those new habits or take that decisive action. You shouldn't.
In this episode, we find out that motivation is incredibly overrated when it comes to making real changes. Perhaps, you can get motivated enough to do something one time. However, our motivation is so unstable that it won't work for building productive habits.
Our success or failure in life and in business is often determined by our habits. The good ones drive us forward; the bad ones hold us back. Getting rid of those bad habits can seem like an insurmountable task. Creating and sticking to new habits can be equally challenging.
In this episode, you will learn two very simple habits that you can begin immediately and maintain with relative ease that will change your life for the better.
We as human beings are woefully bad at prioritizing on the fly. If we suddenly have available time and must decide what we are going to do, most often we will do nothing that moves our business forward. Sad, but true. We get so overwhelmed by the items on our to-do list. We simply can't decide which one to do first and end up doing none of them. Our frustration usually ends when we tell ourselves, "I am just going to grab a cup of coffee first" or "I'll check Facebook first". Then suddenly the time is gone.
In today's episode, we take a look at the importance of prioritizing at a time when the clock is not ticking and we can rationally determine which task we need to get done first.
Loss aversion is a very real thing that can halt the growth of your business in its tracks. The term refers to the natural tendency we all have to fear loss much more than we get excited about equivalent gains. Unfortunately, if you are an entrepreneur, this often causes you to make decisions that are not always in the best interest of your business. To reach the level of success you dream of require taking some risks.
In today's episode, we take a look at just how to recognize when you are being driven by loss aversion and how to take steps to determine whether the risk is worth the reward when the time comes to make a big decision.
We as human beings have a natural tendency to focus more on failures, losses, and incomplete tasks than we do on the times when things go right for us. It's unfortunate because such a focus often convinces us that the situation we are in is far worse than it actually is. When we feel like a failure and loser, we often act out the part and don't do the things we know we need to do to be successful.
In tonight's episode, we take a look at just how powerful focusing on the little wins throughout the day can be. They have a compounding effect that can literally change the course of your career and life.
With every job you've ever done in your life, there have been parts you love and parts that you hate. To get to enjoy the parts you love, you have to put up with some crap. It's tempting to believe that once you have your own business and are your own boss, the crap job days are over.
Unfortunately, the world simply doesn't work that way. Success comes from doing the things you don't feel like doing... the things that suck, in other words. In today's episode, we learn how embracing those things that are unavoidable takes the power they can have over you and your business away opening up the doorway to the success you want.
When you first branch out on your own and decide to become your own boss, no one ever tells you about the paralyzing fear and self-doubt that you, as an entrepreneur, will face. When the buck stops with you and your decisions are gospel, the fear of being humiliated and/or making bad choices can be crippling.
Once those fears take root, they can quickly spiral into a mental and physical shutdown, if you are not careful. Many a promising sales career has derailed because of these emotional downturns.
In today's episode, we explore just how you can nip these negative emotions in the bud by simply getting in the habit of thinking about what you are thinking about.
Before you can reach the level of success you crave, you have to know exactly what it is that is driving you to success. Once you have enough money to meet your needs, you must go deeper to find your true motivation. When you identify your higher purpose, you need to make sure that purpose stays top of mind at all times.
In today's episode, we take a closer look at how keeping your vision in front of you helps you do the things you need to do to be successful.
Over the last couple of episodes, we have focused on the importance of figuring out your higher purpose. Once you know what really drives you to be successful, you can better leverage that to do the things you need to do to be successful. We also talked about keeping those values in front of you at all times to help keep you going.
Often those terms can be harder to wrap your mind around that it seems like they should be. In today's edition, I am going to share my own personal vision board to help illustrate just what one looks like and how it can influence your actions.
It's easy to get roped into thinking that your ultimate goal in running your own business and driving sales is to make more money. The problem is that research has shown over and over again that money is a poor motivator once a person's basic needs are being met.
When more money is the key, it's easy to kick the can down the road. You tell yourself, "I'll get started tomorrow. After all, I've made it this long without all that extra money. What difference are a few more days going to make?"
Once you start to delay action, however, one day becomes two... two days become a week...etc. Eventually, you just give up on your dream. It's happened to all of us many times.
In today's episode, we explore the importance of digging a little deeper and figuring out what really drives you.
We've all heard about the power of making a decision. That's the beginning of all good (and bad) things in our life. How many times have you made the decision to lose weight, get in shape, or be more successful. In each of those instances, you probably knew exactly what you needed to do reach your goals. Then why couldn't that "decision" carry you to success.
In today's episode, we take a closer look at those decisions and find out exactly what goes wrong for many of us that blocks us from having the success we want and reaching our goals.
(Courtesy: You are a Badass by Jen Sincero https://amzn.to/3ByJzBe )
One of my favorite Zig Zigler quotes has always been "Rich people have small TVs and big libraries, and poor people have small libraries and big TVs." It's only in the last few years that I have gained a full appreciation of how true this adage is. There is one caveat, however. It's not enough to simply have a bunch of books in your library, you have to actually read them.
In today's episode, we take a deeper look at how just reading a few pages a day can elevate your success to new levels. It not only focuses the mind, but helps build the confidence needed to succeed. To quote Warren Buffett, "The more you learn the more you earn."
When you are running your own business or selling a product it is very easy to get discouraged and convince yourself that you are not very good at what you do. That's the inner voice that we all have acting up and preventing us from doing the things we need to do to be successful. Quite frankly that inner voice often lies to us. Those lies cause us to judge ourselves on emotion rather than facts.
In today's episode we focus on tracking your data and keeping track of what's really happening in your business. When you know the truth, you are better able to make the improvements needed for success.
One of the things that often holds us back from success is that we judge ourselves way too harshly over failures and shortcomings that we experience. When we do that, we often place some mythical powers upon the people we see accomplishing things that we would like to accomplish. We tell ourselves things like... "They are so successful because they don't have to deal with all the crap I deal with." or "Every time they walk through the door people just pull out their wallets to buy from them."
In today's episode, we talk about the dangers of judging your "insides" against the "outsides" of others.
Success doesn't come from making very large decisions and then putting those decisions in action. When they do that, change seems so overwhelming that we often just shut down. Real success (in all walks of your life) comes down to how we choose in thousands of micro-decisions. Do I eat the cake or not? Do I make another call or check Facebook? Do I go for a walk or watch one more episode of Money Heist?
We make hundreds of the decisions daily between what we know we should do and what we feel like doing? For most of us, one decision trumps all the rest... it's called The Heroic Moment. (Courtesy: The Way by St. Josemaria Escriva https://amzn.to/3BdpNuT )
Whenever you start your own business, take a sales job, or join on with a direct sales company they usually do a really good job of teaching you how to sell the product. However, they don't do a very good job at teaching you the most important element for success: how to actually make yourself do the job. Without a boss hovering over your shoulder, it's way to easy to push things until tomorrow. In this episode, we take a close look at the psychology of success.
In this first episode of Wake Up 2 Success, business coach John Preston talks about how taking action and getting started is often the biggest challenge for entrepreneurs. Self doubt, insecurity, and fear often cause the business owners to delay action. Getting started, even if in a less than perfect way, is better than waiting for things to be just right. Success is messy!!!