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What Exactly Do You Do Again?

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Imagine that you’re on an airplane next to somebody. You know how it is—sometimes you can tell whether someone is open to conversation or whether a polite ‘hello’ will do. But if you get into a conversation, of course the question comes up: “So what do you do?

Most people will try to narrow it down into a few words: a manager at such and such a place; salesperson; lawyer, etc. In short, the answer, as impressive as it may be, is usually something that elicits, at best, an “Oh, that’s interesting,” unless it’s something like Sea World animal trainer or something really out of there.

Do most people fare any better at networking events where the answer to what you do is actually, really important? I don’t know, but if you’re giving “airplane” kinds of answers, I’d be surprised if anything beneficial would come out of that kind of networking.

In sales, in business, you have to be able to clearly articulate what you do in such a way as to make the person you’re communicating with say, “Wow, how do you do that?” Your ability to summarize the benefit of your product or service is the key to success in selling. If you can do that, you can make all the sales you want to make for the rest of your life.

If you can’t summarize what you do that way, it means that you don’t understand what you’re selling. If you don’t understand what you’re selling, it’s impossible for your customer to understand.

All people are concerned about is what your product or service does. How can it change lives? How does it improve someone’s work or family life? What does it do? What’s the before and after difference? That’s what people want to know.

Successful businesses know exactly what they specialize in and then become absolutely excellent in their area of specialization. A rule in business and in selling is that you never take on more than you can do with excellence. You don’t try to be all things to all people.

Companies that go under start off with one area of specialization, become successful, and then think they can walk on water. They start to offer everything in a mediocre way, and then mediocrity becomes everything they do.

Unsuccessful people try to do all kinds of things, but that’s like trying to ride three bicycles at once. Successful people pick a single focus, and they concentrate on that. The only way that you can succeed in life is by becoming an expert in what you do: an expert not only in your own mind, but in the minds of others. They must know that you are very good at what you do.

One of the big frustrations we have in life is when we waste so much time on low probability prospects who turn us off, turn us down, reject us, and we start to think we’re no good, or the product is no good, or life sucks, when that’s not the case, yes? We’re just talking to the wrong people. And much of the time, we’re talking to the wrong people because we haven’t really focused in on what we have to offer.

What are your stories of turning a business—or anything—around from trying to do too many things with little success to finding success in a single focus? Was it business? Career? Relationships? The Millionaire Mind community wants to hear from you!

Give Yourself Some Props

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There’s nothing like a little self-congratulation for the ego, yes?

I’d rather pat myself on the back and maybe look like an egotistical jerk than to maybe get no praise at all. We recently took a look at the power of receiving—including compliments. That doesn’t mean we can’t give ourselves some props, too. In fact, it’s important for success-building.

Why? Because we’re creatures of habit. Success is a habit as is failure; and mediocrity—which is worse than failure. Mediocrity is this lukewarm thing where there’s not enough pain to make you want to move.

The more success, failure, or mediocrity you live in habitually, the more natural that process becomes for you. When your mind is comfortable and used to success, success becomes your path of least resistance. And success therefore becomes normal and automatic.

So how do you utilize this law in your favor? Simple: recognize and acknowledge your successes. Some people say, “Not focusing on my success keeps me striving.” I say it keeps you unrewarded, unhappy, and in a pattern of failure.

We all love to be recognized and rewarded for our good deeds, yes? Feeling significant is a basic human need. Most of us unfortunately have let some of the greatest successes of our entire lives just totally slide into oblivion, without ever really acknowledging or celebrating them in any way, shape, or form. It’s important that we keep our big successes in the forefront of our mind for references and to reinforce our confidence.

Isn’t it true that our mind will almost always pick out what’s “wrong” with us? In what we can’t or shouldn’t do? It hardly ever goes back to the great things that we did. So if you want to go out there and do something new like make a couple of million dollars in a certain amount of time, it’s going to seem scary because your mind isn’t going to go, ‘You’ve handled this before. Not a problem.’

That has to be a conscious thought that we force in there. Left by itself, something new or scary will make the mind go, ‘Hell, I don’t want to do this!’ So it’s important that we keep whatever successes we’ve had at the forefront of our mind. We want to ingrain them as best we can on a physical or emotional level so that they’re part of who we are.

Can you come up with three of the greatest successes of your life in any area, right now? If you can’t come up with three successes, you are way too hard on yourself. If you have trouble coming up with three successes, you won’t even look at anything good about yourself which means you won’t look at other good things about other people or anything.

They don’t have to be incredible. They just have to be big successes for you in the situation you were in. What have you overcome? It could be business. It could be relationships. It could be money! It could be from childhood. It could be sports. It could be anything. We want to hear from you!

Split the Difference

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With so much turmoil going on in the world today, sometimes it can seem too selfish to think about personal riches while so many struggle for basics. This is a feeling I experienced periodically throughout my life—that flip-flop between getting rich as an unqualified goal and wanting to get rid of it all and retreat to a temple or something, or otherwise reject the idea of staying rich.

I’ve made it and lost it. I went from being rich to ‘money is not the most important thing in life’ and ‘why would you put that much focus on it?’ Honestly, I used to think this was a curse. It’s like I had this split personality where one side was about being an entrepreneur and focusing on finances. But I had this other part of me that just wanted to be at the monastery, meditate and eat in silence.

It took me years to figure out that neither extreme was really me. Sometimes it takes success to understand success in itself is not enough. I had to win and lose, tune out and turn on in order to learn that when you reach your first big goal, joyousness, gratitude, and satisfaction don’t just automatically jump on for the ride.

There has to be an intention for these intangibles, and that means knowing what makes you joyous, grateful and satisfied—where money has nothing to do with it. The money only takes it to a whole other level. So discovering these things about yourself certainly does require asking yourself quality questions—or in my world, that and some soul searching.

There’s an eloquent balance between wealth and spirituality that I can now fully embrace, as should we all. For the spiritual-minded in a world of such disparity, consider yourself blessed to have an interest in that and in financial success. Be the fortunate one to put the two together and help other people know that they can be rich and spiritual too. You can be rich and a good person with intentions that consider others.

If spirituality doesn’t ring true for you, throw that out the window anyways. Both riches at any costs and “money doesn’t matter” are two extremes that simply don’t work. They didn’t work for me, and I can’t think of anyone I know who can survive either over the long haul. Intend to split the difference. Balance is beautiful.

Now I look at my duality as a blessing, thanking my stars for the successes and failures, those swings from hermit to world conqueror. You can have your goals, and when you achieve them acknowledge yourself and be thrilled, but there better be something else bringing you joy in your life, or you can end up psyching yourself out of success.

Bank riches without inner riches is a bank account waiting to see itself dwindle, because you’ll look for other ways to use that money to fill a hole that it can never fill—even if that means consciously or unconsciously getting rid of it.

Do you have any stories of having a bunch only to lose it willfully? What was it that finally made you realize the money wasn’t enough, and what did you do to get that sense of real satisfaction? What was the particular lesson you can share with the rest of the Millionaire Mind community? We want to hear from you!

Nothing Has Meaning … Till You Say It Does

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We’ve all either seen, experienced or heard of someone who made the proverbial mountain out of a molehill. The consequences can vary anywhere from entertaining, to frustrating, even tragic. The everyday tragedy, though, is that so many people continue to assess a negative perception on life’s circumstances when they could just as easily do the opposite.

One of the most important spiritual laws of money, success and happiness is positive focus while also understanding that we live in a universe of duality—up/down; light/dark; black/white; right/left; in and out. You can’t have a back without there being a front. Yin cannot exist without Yang.

That duality is always going to be in everything, no matter what. You’re not going to get some good into your life without there being a downside, and vice versa. So what do we do? It’s our choice. If you see the negative side of things because that’s what you choose to look at, then all that exists for you at that time will be what?

You see the positive side, though, and what will exist for you? You and I know none of this is new, but how many people actually live this way? We get sucked into the mind Frick and we get into a habit of seeing things on the negative side, and we think that that’s what is. That’s the hilarious part. We think that what we see is reality. No! It’s your reality! You just made it your reality. Nothing has meaning until we give it meaning.

The sound is not loud, and it’s not quiet. It is vibrations going out. That’s it. You paint the picture. ‘It’s loud for me.’ For you; sure! You make it anything you want. It’s nothing until you make it something. You’re going to decide. You color things light, and then they’re light. You color them dark, they become dark. They aren’t anything. You make them something.

So what would you like to start coloring things? Light! Positive! What if it turns out to be a disaster? What do you do? You realize it’s not a disaster. It’s a nothing. It’s a neutral. You get to say, “I am going to color it that after this ‘disaster’ something good might happen.”

You’re the one in charge up here. Your thoughts aren’t anything. They’re just flickers of energy and they mean nothing until you let them mean something. You have to have empowering thoughts.

Now let’s get something straight … we know that it’s impossible to never have negative thoughts, right or right? Are we going to let that stuff live inside us? Of course we will. It’s going to happen, but the question is how long will you stay stuck in them?

What determines that? Your habits! That’s all it is. Change your habit by practicing positive focus. You practice and you move on.

Now we want to hear from you. Can you think of a situation where a pattern of negative focus cost you something? What was the specific lesson you took away from that? What practices did you implement to start cultivating a pattern of positive focus?

What’s Your Niche?

Posted on by 16
We can take that existential question, “Who are we and what the heck are we doing here,” apply it to business, and call it marketing. What am I all about, and who would or should care?
File this entry into the “I already know that” bin. Isn’t that the case with a lot of the things we say we know? “Oh, I already know how important marketing is.” The only distinction is between those who know and those who put that knowledge to use consistently and effectively.
So even though I can sound like a coo-coo clock sometimes, I do it on purpose because there are certain areas of business that you must, must, MUST get right or else stay broke. One of those areas is marketing.
It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve heard it. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve looked at it.
You need to relook at it, tighten it, tighten it again, and tighten it some more. The more you can tighten that marketing down the better off you are. Sometimes you find out different things as you proceed.
So what does that mean, ‘your market’? Back to basics: your market is who is ‘most likely’—very important words—to buy your product or service.
One of the biggest mistakes most people make is trying to be all things to all people. And they end up being no-thing to no one. When I was doing private consultations for many years, I would say that was 80% of my clients’ biggest problems—trying to be too much to too many different people. That’s a hard way to do business.
Why? It’s far too expensive to try and reach masses. Your message is watered down dramatically and never lands. It’s really hard to focus in and stay tight. This is where self-awareness comes in handy. Our ego mind says more is better, but that’s not true.
Less is better! Tighter is better! More focused is better!
Our marketing methods are going to focus in on two arenas: Who it is that you’re selling to and what’s your product? What it is that you do specifically for those people? How are you perceived? Are you perceived as the specialist for a certain group? If you’re not, you’re fighting a very tough uphill and expensive battle.
The key is to be a big fish in a small pond. The idea is to identify your specific market, your primary or your best prospects. The more you can define the people who buy, the more you know about them, the better you can find them and the better you can serve them. Marketing is all about finding those people and letting them know how you are going to serve them.
So here’s one to internalize as sincerely and with as much energy as you can: ‘If you can’t define them you can’t find them.
Now it’s your turn! In this community, knowledge is power, so what’s your marketing experience? What are some important lessons learned or issues that you’ve come across? I’d love to hear from you!
Next week we’ll highlight some more important features of marketing.

Searching for a Niche Group - Magnifying Glass

We can take that existential question, “Who are we and what the heck are we doing here,” apply it to business, and call it marketing. What am I all about, and who would or should care?

File this entry into the “I already know that” bin. Isn’t that the case with a lot of the things we say we know? “Oh, I already know how important marketing is.” The only distinction is between those who know and those who put that knowledge to use consistently and effectively.

So even though I can sound like a coo-coo clock sometimes, I do it on purpose because there are certain areas of business that you must, must, MUST get right or else stay broke. One of those areas is marketing.

It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve heard it. It doesn’t matter how many times you’ve looked at it.

You need to relook at it, tighten it, tighten it again, and tighten it some more. The more you can tighten that marketing down the better off you are. Sometimes you find out different things as you proceed.

So what does that mean, ‘your market’? Back to basics: your market is who is ‘most likely’—very important words—to buy your product or service.

One of the biggest mistakes most people make is trying to be all things to all people. And they end up being no-thing to no one. When I was doing private consultations for many years, I would say that was 80% of my clients’ biggest problems—trying to be too much to too many different people. That’s a hard way to do business.

Why? It’s far too expensive to try and reach masses. Your message is watered down dramatically and never lands. It’s really hard to focus in and stay tight. This is where self-awareness comes in handy. Our ego mind says more is better, but that’s not true.

Less is better! Tighter is better! More focused is better!

Our marketing methods are going to focus in on two arenas: Who it is that you’re selling to and what’s your product? What it is that you do specifically for those people? How are you perceived? Are you perceived as the specialist for a certain group? If you’re not, you’re fighting a very tough uphill and expensive battle.

The key is to be a big fish in a small pond. The idea is to identify your specific market, your primary or your best prospects. The more you can define the people who buy, the more you know about them, the better you can find them and the better you can serve them. Marketing is all about finding those people and letting them know how you are going to serve them.

So here’s one to internalize as sincerely and with as much energy as you can: ‘If you can’t define them you can’t find them.

Now it’s your turn! In this community, knowledge is power, so what’s your marketing experience? What are some important lessons learned or issues that you’ve come across? I’d love to hear from you!

Next week we’ll highlight some more important features of marketing.

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