Category Archives: Guest Posts

Stratospheric Success? Follow these Five Laws – Part 2 – Guest Post by Todd Pillars

The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David Mann In Part 1 we talked about Law #1: The Law of Value and proposed that there are five primary categories: Excellence, Consistency, Attention, Empathy and Appreciation, that you can use to increase the value you deliver to your clients and customers. (These are covered more in-depth in “Go-Givers Sell More”, Bob Burg’s and John David Mann’s second installment in the series, although that’s getting a little ahead of ourselves.) The main point is that we discovered giving doesn’t necessarily mean giving away for free.

The second Law, the Law of Compensation, states; “your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them”.

In January I had the privilege of attending Bob Burg’s Big Event 2011, with speakers such as Dr. John Maxwell, Les Brown, Carrie Wilkerson, Randy Gage, and Paul Martinelli and came away with a new appreciation for the seminar format. I’ve been to quite a few seminars, mostly motivational in nature, and I always left all fired up and ready to take on the world – for about 72 hours. Then for the following week I would have that adrenaline letdown, like you get after a minor fender-bender. You may have experienced the same thing. This time was quite different, though.

The six speakers, and all the sponsors, applied the Law of Compensation so expertly that a week later I’m still going strong. AND I’m a Personal Walking Ambassador for each of them, and a customer, for life. Why? Because I came away with so much Value that I’ll be nurturing the ideas and connections for a long, long time. I came away feeling I could put into action one idea from each of the speakers. Most importantly, I came away feeling that I can do it too.

Stratospheric Success? Follow these Five Laws – Part 1 – Guest Post by Todd Pillars

The Go-Giver by Bob Burg and John David MannThe biggest reward of using the “The Go-Giver” as one of our Bob Burg International Consultant coaching programs is that not only do I get to read the book, I get to devour it (while being mentored by the author), and then I’m priveleged to share it with others. There is true power in knowing your craft well enough to teach it to others.

In a short 30 minute chat with Jerry Kennedy on his Blog Whisperer Radio program it has solidified my belief that business as we’ve known it for the last two decades (more or less, your mileage may vary) is so antiquated that to continue “as it’s always been” is maybe the most deadly thing you can do to your business.

If your business has stagnated over the last 12 months, if it’s slowed down to “just getting by”, or if you have serious concerns if you’ll be in business 12 months from now you can cheer up! Pick up the book and follow along as we discover and APPLY these “Five Laws of Stratospheric Success”.

The first Law, The Law of Value states; “Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value that you take in payment”.

Changing the Conversation – Guest Post by Gary Klaben

Gary Klaben, Author of Changing the Conversation

Gary Klaben

Today, there is a strong pull between the profit maximizers and the purpose maximizers.  It is not that working on Wall Street or Main Street for large companies is all about profit maximization, or that starting a small business is all about purpose maximization.  It is about the tide turning towards purpose, while maintaining profit.

In Daniel Pink’s recent book, Drive (2010), he identifies and discusses three types of motivation.  Motivation 1.0 is the basic need to survive.  Our hunter-gatherer ancestors spent nearly all their time fulfilling this need.  Motivation 2.0 involves seeking rewards and avoiding punishment.  From the time of antiquity through the 20th century, this was the primary motivator after achieving survival.  Finally, motivation 3.0 seeks internal, intrinsic satisfaction — the fruit of personal freedom, challenge and purpose. What we like to call MVP (meaning, value & purpose).

Ours is a motivation 3.0 world.  The unexpected and unpredictable will increasingly occur.  Change is the only constant.  Continual surprises!  Microsoft’s digital Encarta encyclopedia — a profit maximizer — lost out to tens of thousands of online hobbyists writing and editing topics in Wikipedia’s open-source, interactive encyclopedia without pay — a purpose maximizer.

The Secret to Ultimate Satisfaction: I’m Just Going to Be Me… – Guest Post by Dan Waldschmidt

Guest Blogger Dan Waldschmidt

Guest Blogger Dan Waldschmidt

I’m just going to be me.

I am tired of being the person that you think I should be.  I’m just going to be the best “me” possible.

And isn’t that what you really want from me?

If You Motivate An Idiot… – Guest Post by Carl Taylor

Carl Taylor, Entrepreneur and Author

There are a lot of websites and speakers that are trying to motivate you. They motivate you to take action, to get off your ass and achieve more. But if you’re an idiot and someone motivates you, you are now just a motivated idiot, and you are going to do idiotic things faster.

Motivated idiots are those people who go to their first property seminar, hear a sales pitch disguised as education that says you must invest right now in this off the plan unit block, immediately sign on the dotted line and a few years later wonder why they don’t have the returns they expected.

I’m not meaning to have a go at seminar selling, or even property seminars; they are viable business methods and have their place.  What you should be focusing on is “their first” as in it was their first seminar. The presenter did a great job and got them motivated, but at this stage they were just a motivated idiot and they made an idiotic decision because they didn’t know what questions to ask.

You Don’t Need a Sales Process – Guest Post by Joel D Canfield

Apparently May was ‘launch a new coaching program online’ month. Launch guru Dave Navarro wrote about some negative reactions to the flurry of program launches which left some folks feeling assaulted. Dave shares some thoughts from his side of the table; he’s the expert and I’ll stay out of that.

Instead, I’ll get into this: would everybody please stop looking for a magic process, and understand that it’s all about outcomes?

We all want a machine where we drop in $20 bills and crank a handle that turns them into $100 bills. It doesn’t exist. There is no machine to make money in sales. Selling is not about processes.

Yes folks, you read that right: selling ain’t about process.

Guest Post: Todd’s #1 Time Saving Tip for 2010

If you’re not going to put 100% effort into doing a great job then don’t do your job. Just stay home. Catch up on some sleep. Take the day and vege. Heck, take the rest of your career off.

While that’s a pretty rough statement, in this “value-driven world” it’s very appropriate. Luckily there’s a positive side to it as well.

Very early on my grandfather drilled the need to “do your job well” into my head. His favorite one-liner was, “If you don’t have the time to do it right the first time how are you ever going to have the time to do it over?” (And believe me, if he thought it wasn’t right you DID do it over.) Lucky Strikes and Jim Beam aside, my grand-dad was a wise man.

He also taught me to shake hands the proper way, to remember names, and always say “thank you”. He never read an email and probably wouldn’t have made it as long as he did if somebody had sent him a TXT message. If he were alive today I’m sure he’d be labeled a renaissance man.

Spinning Plates: It’s Not the M-Myth – Guest Post by Joel D Canfield

It’s true: humans can’t multitask. As Jerry may have said (and if not, I’m saying it), it’s a fact, not an opinion; accept it and get over it.

You can’t multitask. But you can still do more than one thing at a time.

Remember the guy on Ed Sullivan who, um, right; you have no clue who Ed Sullivan was. Anyway, there was this thing called a ‘variety show’ on something called ‘television’ with ‘entertainers’ who, y’know, did stuff.

There was always some guy who’d come out with a bunch of six foot tall sticks on stands. Skinny sticks, maybe half an inch thick. He’d set a china plate on top of one, start it spinning, then keep it spinning with the stick. It’s a cool trick, and not as hard as it looks. Do not discuss this subject with my mother; it seems to upset her.

The Sugartone Business Blogging Contest

The folks over at Bloggertone have a great vision: they want to bring together bloggers who write about topics related to small business so that entrepreneurs and business owners can have a single source for valuable information about sales, finance, marketing, management and a host of other topics.  They’re off to a great start; since they launched in October of 2009, they’ve added 50 talented business bloggers to the family, and they’re growing by the day.

As a way to introduce themselves to a larger audience, they’ve been running a business blogging contest in collaboration with BizSugar, the bookmarking site for business-related articles on the web.  The contest is called Sugartone, and you can read a little more about it by clicking here.

Being the blogging-junkie that I am, I couldn’t resist the call to write a guest post for the contest.  You can read that post by clicking here.  I hope you enjoy reading the post as much as I enjoyed writing it; it touches on a topic that will be familiar to regular readers of this blog. 

And if you do enjoy it, maybe you could leave a comment and/or vote for the post?  That’d be the bees knees!

Guest Post: Do You Know Who’s In Control?

Joel D Canfield on the Motivation 101 Blog

Joel D Canfield, The Commonsense Entrepreneur

***Note from Jerry: I’m looking forward to a lively debate on this one.  My friend, Joel D Canfield, wrote this post.  I’m guessing some of you will have an opinion you’d like to share with Joel.  I certainly do.  I’ll withhold mine for a couple of days to allow the debate to run its course, then chime in with a post of my own in response (just because we’re friends doesn’t mean we always see eye-to-eye).  Only one rule: play nice.  Let your voice be heard, but please do it respectfully.  Let the games begin! ***


As I sit here waiting for my computer to finally open this image for editing, I ponder my control issues.