Last week, I signed up for what looks to be a cool new service called SeededBuzz (I saw that a few of my friends had “liked” their ad on Facebook, so score 1 for the effectiveness of Facebook ads).  The basic idea is that you can submit your best blog posts (called “planting a seed”) , and other bloggers can pick up on the theme and write posts of their own based on your “seed” post (otherwise known as “buzzing” your “seed”).  Once you get a handle on the goofy terminology, it can be a great way to meet, connect with, and befriend other bloggers.  And it works!

Meet Tia Peterson, creator of BizChickBlogs.  Tia knows her stuff: she’s been designing websites and messing with WordPress since graduating college, although she won’t tell us how long ago that was.  Her tips and advice for bloggers are spot on.  I met Tia via (heh…that rhymes) SeededBuzz, and this is why I love blogging: it’s all about the connections!

Anyhow, a few weeks ago Tia wrote a post that considered the question of why so many blogs fail.  I think that’s an interesting question, especially considering my new Blog Whisperer project.  The reason I started MyBlogWhisperer.com was the fact that so many of the blogs I was setting up for people were left vacant once they were completed.  When I would ask the owners of said blogs what was going on, I’d get different versions of the same answer: they felt like they didn’t have anything worth saying.

And I think that’s the number one reason most blogs fail: FEAR.  So many of us have been filling our heads with negative self-talk for so long that we refuse to believe that anyone would want to hear anything we have to say.  I’m here to tell you, though, that they do!  Believe it or not, there are thousands of people just like you who are looking for someone to give voice to their thoughts and feelings.  That someone can be you, if you’ll just get out of your own way.

And it doesn’t stop with bloggers. For so many of us, fear is the only thing between us and the success we desire.  The object of our desire, whether wealth, fame, a satisfying relationship, or a prosperous business, is right there, ripe for the taking; and yet we’re afraid to reach out and pluck it off the branch.

Isn’t about time you broke your mind out of the dungeon of fear?  Isn’t it time you conquered your fear, once and for all, and let your light shine?  I think it is.  I think it’s time for all of us to reconsider the power we give to our fear, and start to take some of that power back.  Stay tuned for suggestions on how you can do just that.

What do you think?  How has fear held you back, and how do you plan to reclaim your power?

pos·tur·ing

1 : to assume a posture; especially : to strike a pose for effect
2 : to assume an artificial or pretended attitude

This post has been stewing in my brain for days, and I think it’s about time I get it out.  If it seems a little disjointed, well, consider the source.

I’m calling out the “fake it ’til you make it crowd”; I think it’s time to put that idea to rest.  While the philosophy seemed like a good one at first blush, I’m beginning to understand that “faking it” is just another way of hiding from the fear of being open, honest and transparent.

The thought is that by pretending you’ve already arrived at the destination, somehow the journey will be less arduous and time-consuming.  If you’ll just act like a successful business person (i.e. “fake it”), so the theory goes, people will assume that you are a successful businessperson and will want to do business with you (i.e. you’ll “make it”).  Sounds good, right?  You can move to the front of the class without doing any homework or passing any tests; who wouldn’t want to do that?  Where do I sign up?

Here’s the problem, though: if you’re not a successful business person, pretending to be one is at least a little dishonest.  What happens if that new client, trusting in the posture you’ve assumed, hands over a project you’re not prepared to deal with and you continue to fake it?  What could your posturing cost you (not to mention your client) in the long run?

For the record, I want to be perfectly clear that “acting as if” and visualizing your success, both on your own and with your team, is one of the best ways to stay optimistic and to keep moving forward.  What I’m concerned about, though, is the growing number of people I meet who are taking these exercises out into the world with them, pretending to know things they don’t know, taking on work that they don’t know how to do and have no intention of learning how to do, and causing harm to others in the process.

And why are they doing it?  Because they’re living in fear of being “found out”.  They fear if their clients find out that they’re struggling, the clients will go away.  They fear admitting they’re having a tough time because they think it diminishes their value in the marketplace.  They fear having their failures exposed.  And so they “assume an artificial or pretended attitude”; they posture, hoping that no one will see the panic behind their plastic smiles.

It’s time to stop the madness.  It’s time we all stopped posing and started being.  It’s time to be OK with what IS, to accept it, to embrace it, to be grateful for it, to appreciate it, to revel in its perfection.

Struggling to pay your bills?  Welcome to the club…we’re accepting new members daily.  Wondering how you’re going to make payroll this month?  Know that you’re not alone.  Recovering from a failed business, a failed relationship, or a failed everything?  Me too.  And that’s OK.  You know why?

Because life, in its infinite perfection, is teaching us the lessons we need to learn to prepare us for the greatness we were born for.

It’s a fine balance to maintain, and difficult at times, to live in that space where you’re simultaneously visualizing a better future and accepting the “IS”-ness of the present moment; if you’ll be patient with it, though, it will get easier.  Deciding on the policy of transparency is a tough row to hoe, but the rewards outweigh the risks ten-fold.  Stay tuned for a discussion of the benefits in a future post; in the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Thanks for reading!

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?

Where did all this start?

We all have a sense about how the world should work.  Right?

The little spoon goes to the left of the big spoon.  The smart kid goes on to be the most successful person in the class.  If you work really hard then you end up having all the best parts of the “American Dream.”

But if you think about it, you didn’t come up with that idea. In fact, you don’t even know the person who came up with those ideas.  And yet for some reason we accept them as fact.

But they aren’t facts.  They aren’t.

What does that mean?

It means that everything you know about what you should be is now wrong.  The slate is clean.  You’re back to square one.

Ohh… and by the way, the people around you aren’t any better qualified than you to start putting plays on the chalkboard.  They are the same goofy nuts who laughed at the same immature jokes that you did in high school.

Sure they look all sophisticated and “put together”.  They look like people whose opinions should matter.

But here’s the reality.  They don’t matter.

Not one little bit.

So what does matter?

You matter.

You’re not a moron.  You actually know more than you think you do.  Sure you’re prone to get turned 37 different directions after listening to all the critics.

But we all do.

We all second guess our motivations, intensions, and strategies.  Sometimes we do it out-loud.  Most of the time, we keep that in our heads.

And that’s even more dangerous.  Because the monsters in that playground are even more dangerous.

So what’s the plan?

Here is the secret to ultimate satisfaction: “Stop doing and start being…”

Be the best “you” possible.

And only you really knows the full potential of what that could be.

It’s bigger than you have ever imagined.  It’s more successful than the critics would ever give your credit for.

Some people will love you.  The rest will still think you’re a loser.  Either way, you won’t really care you’re too busy being the best you possible.

And there is something ultimately satisfying about being all you can be.

__________________________________________________________

Dan Waldschmidt is a former high-growth technology CEO, one of the founders of IntroMojo, a popular inspirational speaker, and a sought-after strategist on creating edgy conversations in the marketplace. He blogs regularly on his popular motivational selling blog Edge of Explosion and is the husband to a cute gal named Sara and the father to two energetic boys. He’s just an ordinary dude who happens to have an outrageous vision. And he wants to help you change the world…

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.

No need to be alarmed as there is a cure… a 3 step process that you can use to avoid being a Motivated Idiot.

Step 1. Get Educated

Step 2. GET Educated

Step 3. GET EDUCATED

Education is the key…and I’m not talking typical education that you go to school or university for years and years to get. I’m talking about practical how-to steps and specific experiences – the kind of knowledge that you get from having been there and done that, from mentors and friends, the kind of knowledge that is shared in non-fiction books and videos and at educational seminars.

The better educated you are on a subject, the better the questions you can ask, which in turn will help you make better decisions.

So get out there and educate yourself, pick a topic and start absorbing information through books, mentors, seminars and so forth…then you will know that you are not a motivated idiot.

Here’s to YOUR Success.

Carl Taylor is the author of Red Means Go! - Secrets to Achieving a Happy, Effective and Successful Life with You in the Driver’s Seat, which is now available on iTunes!  Get TWO free chapters from www.carltaylor.com.au

When I say this has been an interesting week, you should understand that I’m probably making one of the most egregious understatements of my life so far.  Without going into too much detail, let’s just say that my vision of who I am and what I do has been shattered and rebuilt over the course of the past few days.  It wasn’t as bad as it sounds; in fact, it was just what the doctor ordered.

For the past several years, I’ve thought of myself (and promoted myself) as something of a sales expert.  I want very badly and am working very hard to travel the country and the world revitalizing the lives and careers of salespeople everywhere, to be the sales trainer of choice for organizations everywhere.

I have a great WHAT: a system I call HERO Selling, which you can learn about elsewhere on this blog.  HERO Selling is, I’m sure, going to change the face of sales for decades to come.  I realize that belief is stupidly optimistic, and I’m OK with that.

I also have a great HOW.  My vision is to talk about the things no one else is talking about, to bring topics like character, honesty and spirituality to the forefront of the conversation about what makes a great salesperson.

The piece I’ve been struggling with, though, and what I now realize is the reason I’ve had so much trouble reaching a larger audience, is that I really haven’t been clear about my WHY.  Oh sure, I have a mission statement; it’s all about raising the bar for the sales profession and brining honor back to the job.  It has words like “passion” and “enthusiasm” and it’s very inspiring.  The problem is that it’s not accurate.  It focuses on WHAT I’m going to do, not WHY.

This came as a bit of a shock to me, and I spent a few days in a foul mood while I was sorting it all out in my head.  Fortunately, I’ve managed to surround myself with some pretty spectacular people and they were a huge help.

What I’ve come to realize is that the thing that drives me most is my desire to have better communication with the people around me and to help others do the same.  I want to make it easier for all of us to share our ideas, because I believe that the free flow of ideas leads to a happier, more enlightened world.  That’s WHY I do what I do, and the more often I’ve talked about that, the more people who resonate with the idea respond in kind.  Funny, right?  The fact that the WHAT that springs out of that is focused on making better salespeople is a secondary issue.

So why am I sharing this story?  Because I think it holds an important lesson: people aren’t interested in WHAT you do or HOW you do it until they understand and agree with WHY you’re doing it.  The more clear you are about your WHY, the more attractive your product or service is to those who share your belief.

Try this: make a list of your five favorite clients or customers, the ones who are a delight to deal with, who never haggle over price, and who always take your recommendations about what to buy.  Next, make another list of the five clients or customers you like dealing with the least, the ones who you have to constantly persuade to do what you know is good for them, who always ask for a discount, and who drag their feet when it comes to paying an invoice.

Now think of all the conversations you’ve had with each client on each list, focusing on the level of resonance or dissonance that existed between your ideas and beliefs and theirs.  I’d be willing to bet my next paycheck that the five you enjoy working with the most and who represent your best customers are the ones whose beliefs most align with yours, while the ones you hate to deal with are the same ones who disagree with your view of how the universe works.

So here’s the big question: who would you rather do business with?  Wouldn’t you rather have more customers like your five best and fewer like your five worst?  Of course you would!

And the way to attract your best clients and repel your worst is simple: always speak from your heart.

When you’re talking to a prospective new client, stop puking up facts about the features and benefits of your product.  Stop telling them what you can do for them or how your service can save them money or make their operation more efficient.  In other words, stop focusing on the WHAT and HOW.  Trust me: even though they seem to be paying attention, they don’t really care.

Instead, tell your prospects WHY you do what you do.  Talk about the things that excite you, the ideas you believe in, what you’re passionate about.  Speak from your heart, and the ones who resonate with your heart-based communication will find a way to justify to themselves buying your WHAT and HOW.  These are the folks who will become your best customers, and eventually, your biggest fans.

For over a century, since the invention of selling as a profession, really, salespeople have been looking for the secret formula that would get more customers to buy.  They’ve developed sales processes and interview practices and presentation styles and closing techniques, and still they’re frustrated by the lack of results.  Countless millions of dollars are spent every year on books and training programs in an effort to uncover the secret to sales success.

Well, today is your lucky day: I’m going to tell you the secret to selling more than you ever have before, and I’m not even going to charge you for the information.  Sounds good?  Okay, here we go.

Before we get to it, though, let me warn you right now that you’re not going to believe that it could be so easy and obvious, which may cause you to ignore what I’m about to say.  Don’t ignore it, though.  Do your best to quiet the part of your brain that’s going to resist.  Take some time to evaluate the information, answer the questions presented, and see for yourself whether it makes a difference in your results.  If it doesn’t feel free to come back and call me an idiot…but not before you’ve tried it out.   So now, here we go:

Do something you believe in.

That’s it.  Nothing fancy or complicated.  I should also add that you knowing why you believe in it will make you even more successful.  Knowing why you do what you do, as in actually putting your reasons down in writing, is what will keep you going in spite of setbacks and failures; it’s also what will connect you to the customers who will become your raving fans.  They’ll be the ones who not only love your products and services, but also have an internal alignment with your values and those of your company.

Have a look at the video below.  Yes, I know, it’s a whole eighteen minutes long; trust me, it’s worth every second of the time you’ll invest in watching it.  It will help you understand that why you do what you do is infinitely more important to your success than what you do or your how you do it.  As it turns out, no one really cares what you do.

Watch the video, then spend the next eighteen minutes (or however long it takes you) answering the question: why do I do what I do?  And for all of you who are going to answer the why question with “To make money”, that is a totally valid answer, and I’d also encourage you to dig a little deeper and explore the question of why you choose to make money the way you do instead of one of the 750 billion other ways that you could.  Fair enough?

And leave a comment with your answer to the why question; who knows but it may just get read by one of your ideal clients!

OK, first things first.  I played a little hooky on the blog last week and  have gone a whole twelve days without posting.  I won’t bore you with the details; suffice it to say that I took on one too many projects and overwhelmed myself a bit.  Oddly enough, it was nice to have so much going on.

It feels like every possible good thing is happening at once: new products are being created (and sold!) over at Great Little Book Publishing, the Motivation 101 Blog was featured in the Sacramento Bee as their “Blog of the Week” last week, and everywhere I turn, projects I’ve been working on are starting to come together better than I ever dreamed they would.  I have a lot to be grateful for, no doubt, and one of the things I’m most grateful for right now in my life is the fact that people are actually interested in reading what I write.

It’s no secret to anyone here that I struggle with feelings of inadequacy from time to time.  What really comes as a surprise to me, though, is how many people I meet who feel the same way.

Just tonight, I was chatting with a friend of mine who has been gearing up to launch a new coaching program that is sure to explode the business of anyone who’s fortunate enough to grab one of the 12 available spots she’ll open up later this year (and yes, that’s real scarcity because she can only work one-on-one with that many people at once).  This is an extremely talented person who has demonstrated her ability to get results time and again, and yet she admitted to me that one of her most difficult challenges has been and continues to be the feeling that she’s not good enough to pull it off.

I was stunned.  This is one of the most outwardly confident people I’ve ever met, and here she was, telling me that she was as nervous as I am.  She feels the same worries and doubts, the same fear and anxiety.  It was good to know I’m not the only one, and it got me thinking about why so many of us walk around with these feelings of self-doubt.  What I realized is that it all comes down to our innate desire to avoid looking stupid in front of our peers.

What if I launch this product and nobody buys it?  What if people think I’m weird for doing this?  What will my friends say if I fail?  These are the questions that stop a lot of us dead in our tracks.  I’m happy to say that my friend isn’t let the fear stop her; she’s going full speed ahead toward her launch, feeling the fear and doing it anyways.

And me?  I found my strength, too, albeit in a place I didn’t expect to find it.  It’s my new anthem, the Weezer song “Pork and Beans”.  I find the chorus insightful, and I take every chance I can get to sing it at the top of my voice.  Although I’m still confused by the lyric about eating candy with pork and beans (that honestly sounds disgusting), the message of being me no matter what anyone else thinks comes through loud and clear:

“I’ma do the things that I wanna do
I ain’t got a thing to prove to you
I eat my candy with the pork and beans
Excuse my manners if I make a scene
I ain’t gonna wear the clothes that you like
I’m fine and dandy with the me inside
One look in the mirror and I’m tickled pink
I don’t give a hoot about what you think!”

It’s a great tune from a great band with a great message: just be yourself, and it’ll all work out in the end.  Oh, and you’ll have a lot more fun along the way.  And for those of you who like that sort of thing, here’s the video:

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.

Fast forward 20 years and we are multi-tasking our way through our day trying to cram 60+ hours into a (some say*) reasonable 40 hour work week. And then balance that with family, eating right and getting enough exercise and rest. If this is you then I have a question; How’s that working for ya?

Hey Todd! You mentioned a positive side, care to expand on that?

Yep, slow really is fast!

We slow down.

We do everything we do with 100% of our focused energy.

And we complete it – correctly and in a timely manner. (Do you remember that feeling called accomplishment?)

The bottom line is if we are not committed to doing something with everything we’ve got then why even start it? Eliminate it. And that frees up the time necessary to other things well.

Do it for 30 days. Your business, personal, and spiritual life will reward you in ways that you can only dream about today. Let’s both do it. And then we’ll talk in a month and share how our lives changed.

Thank you for taking the time read this. I appreciate you!

______________________________

Todd Pillars is an Appreciation Coach and Relationship and Referral Builder. Please contact him today at 419-855-2273 or todd@toddpillars.com to SUPERCharge your Referrals!

Or head on over to http://www.idealreferral.com to discover how to set your Referrals on AutoPilot.

“That age will be rich indeed when those relics which we call Classics, and the still older and more than classic but even less known Scriptures of the nations, shall have still further accumulated, when the Vaticans shall be filled with Vedas and Zandavestas and Bibles, with Homers and Dantes and Shakespeares, and all the centuries to come shall have successively deposited their trophies in the forum of the world. By such a pile we may hope to scale heaven at last.” – Henry David Thoreau in Walden

I know he wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I’m pretty sure Thoreau was talking about the internet when he wrote those words. We have the greatest repository of information the world has ever seen, right at our fingertips. That said, we should be the best-read generation of all time…but we’re not. A study conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2004 found that fewer than half of American adults read literature for pleasure. Fewer than half!

That’s a stunner, particularly considering the overwhelming evidence that being an avid reader is the one thing that most successful people have in common. Self-education by reading great books is a key to your personal development, which has to come before you can hope to make improvements in other areas of your life.

Understand this: if you want to improve your lot in life, you’re going to have to get in the habit of reading. A lot. Every day. Sorry: the fact that you don’t enjoy reading is entirely irrelevant. You’ll get used to it, and you’ll probably even start to like it after awhile. It may (and probably will) become one of your favorite activities. You’ll begin to wonder what you did all those years before you realized how delightful a good book can be.

And before you start to panic, I’m not one of those wackos advocating that you throw your TV away. I think it’s possible to do both…just not at the same time. Especially for those of you who aren’t accustomed to regular reading, you’re not going to want to start off with Moby Dick or Les Miserables to break yourself in. Try easing into the habit by reading something you know you’ll enjoy, a little at a time. If you’ll just commit to 15 minutes a day before you go to sleep, you’ll make a habit of it before you know it (and probably have more interesting dreams, too).

Once you’ve developed the habit, though, try picking up books that are a little more challenging, something that’s going to push the edges of your mind out just a little bit. Remember, the goal here is growth, so the more a book expands your intellect and forces you to think in new ways, the better. Thoreau nails it when he says that there is no difference “between the illiterateness of my townsman who cannot read at all and the illiterateness of him who has learned to read only what is for children and feeble intellects.” In other words, if what you’re reading doesn’t challenge your mind, you might as well go watch another episode of “Jersey Shore” (Thoreau predicted that, too).

It never ceases to amaze me that so many people neglect (or worse, refuse) to read. We have at our disposal the entire collection of human knowledge to this point in time; Thoreau would have given up his shack in the woods for the privilege to be here. He predicted that this time would come, and he said it would bring us one step closer to heaven.

Of course, that will only be true if we take advantage of our great privilege and develop a passion for reading. So what are you waiting for? What book is first on your list? Leave your current or future reading list in the comments section so we can compare notes.

It seems like I’m finding more and more occasions to quote Edward Norton’s character at the end of the movie “Fight Club”: after realizing he’s been suffering from a split personality, brawling with the other personality, and, ultimately, shooting himself in the mouth to get rid of his other personality (oh, and did I mention blowing up San Francisco’s financial district?), he turns to his girlfriend and says “You met me at a very strange time in my life.”

That’s what I keep wanting to tell the people around me: you met me at a very strange time in my life.  Changing careers, starting new ventures and partnerships, reconsidering long-standing relationships, trying to keep my head above water and reprogramming my unconscious mind has made for a very interesting couple of years, to say the least.  Here’s the thing, though: I know I’m not alone.

If there’s one good thing that’s come out of the economic upheaval of the past year or so, it’s the fact that so many of us are stopping to re-examine what’s truly important in our lives.  Sure, the answers have been pretty startling to some of us, but it’s been a cleansing that’s been a long time coming.  We’ve been so caught up in the material and mundane for the last decade that a lot of us forgot who we really are and what truly matters to us.

I’m not saying that we need to start shaving our heads and pummeling each other in basements and parking lots in the middle of the night.  What we do need, though, is a good healthy dose of temporary insanity, a chance to step back from the routine of life and have a look at the ruts we’re wearing into our souls.

It’s time to start questioning everything: our beliefs, our attitudes, our actions…everything.  Start greeting every day with fresh eyes and ask yourself whether or not you’re going to live it on purpose or on auto-pilot.  And when you come to something that makes you stop and think “Why am I doing this?”, for God’s sake stop doing it!

We’ve all been given a chance to hit the reset button, some more so than others.  The question is, what are you going to do with the new life that will be different from the old one?  How will it be better this time around?  Are you going to keep going to that job you hate, or are you going to figure out a way to do what you love?

Thoreau nailed it all the way back in 1854: The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.  Maybe it’s time that changed.  Maybe we all need to live a little more deliberately and spend some more of our time and effort sucking the marrow out of life.  Otherwise, when we come to die, we just might discover that we never lived.

**Note: Special thanks to Jim Pelley for suggesting I write a post about this after I told him yesterday, “Jim, you met me at a very strange time in my life.”  Thanks Jim!