Monthly Archives: September 2008

Moving Beyond Personal Productivity

personal A bigg salute to Stowe Boyd for his recent post on the /message blog. He argues that personal productivity isn’t important anymore. It’s the productivity of your network that matters.

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icon for podpress  Hear George & Mary-Lynn talk about today's post on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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That made us think of Stephen Covey. As he says in 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, we have to move from independence to interdependence in order to achieve maximum effectiveness.

In the higher order of things, personal productivity is important, but interpersonal productivity is most important. 

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marylynn Producing The Bigg Success Show takes a lot of work. We have five deadlines every week. We’ve divided up our duties pretty evenly. But sometimes I get done and George is still working. Sure I could move on to something else I need to do. But in some cases, it’s better if I help him catch up.

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georgeWe’re programmed to think that it’s our individual effort that matters. However, in the end it’s the team that wins or loses – helping your team, by helping your team mate, helps you. Mary-Lynn helps me when I need it, so I help her when she needs it.

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Interdependence leads us to a new business venture

It’s the network, stupid! That’s the paradigm for the 21st century – for us as individuals and for businesses and other organizations. It’s the end result that matters so we must focus on being effective, not just efficient. Our network can produce results that we couldn’t produce on our own.

Recently, we had an idea for a business. We talked a friend whose business is in the market we were targeting. After our conversation, we had a different idea so we started working on it!

Interdependence got us a better idea!

Now, we could do this whole thing ourselves. However, we have another friend who has a business that dovetails nicely with our expertise. We believe that we can grow the business much faster by working with him.

We’re a couple of months away from launching this national business. So far, it’s taken us two meetings and three series of e-mails.

Interdependence got us further faster!

Perhaps even more importantly, we think we’ll make more money by letting him do what he does best and sticking to what we do best.

Interdependence will make us more productive!

Developing a business at that speed couldn’t have happened if the relationship didn’t exist already. Trust has been built up over time and it’s taken a lot of trust to get to the point we are, especially at the speed we’ve been traveling!

If you’re willing to be truly interdependent, you can enjoy the power of interpersonal productivity. That’s what it takes today to be a bigg success!

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Next time, we talk with two experts in leadership about engaging your employees. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

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Getting Aggressively Passive: Creating A Passive Income That Sets You Free

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(Image by ilco)

Smart Investors, Tough Times

investing People who find joy in bad news have to be pretty happy lately. The financial crisis has dominated the news, as we watch Wall Street and Washington scramble.

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icon for podpress  Hear George & Mary-Lynn talk about today's post on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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We don’t usually do this – in fact, we’ve never done it in the 230 shows we’ve done so far. But this subject is so important and so timely. So we want to share some valuable information that our newsletter subscribers received in their In boxes last Friday.

In the last edition of The Bigg Success Weekly, we discussed “Profiting from Panic”. It was about maintaining the proper mindset in the midst of all this turmoil.

We started with the safety net that exists for depositors, investors, and insureds. Here are some links directly to pages that can answer your questions about banks, brokers, and insurers in a hurry. 

Banks

In general, banks are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). However, not all money invested through banks is insured. What would happen if your bank failed? If you have accounts with a failed bank, what should you do? How can you obtain a release of lien, if a failed institution is your lienholder? The following links provide the answers to all of these questions:

What is the FDIC

A Guide to What Is and Is Not Protected by FDIC Insurance

FDIC Bank Find (make sure your institution is FDIC insured)

When a Bank Fails- Facts for Depositors, Creditors, and Borrowers

Is My Account Fully Insured?

Obtaining a Lien Release

Brokers

Accounts with brokerage firms also offer some protection through the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC). The coverage isn't anything like that offered by the FDIC, but it's still important to know what remedies might be available to you. 

How SIPC Protects You

Insurers

While banks and brokers have federal backing, insurance companies have backing through associations at the state level.

The National Conference of Insurance Guaranty Funds

If your insurance company fails, you'll want to contact your state's Department of Insurance, since insurance companies are overseen by that department in each state in which they operate. Click here for a directory of each state's office. 

Your State's Department of Insurance or Guaranty Association

Two billionaires, two eras, one mindset

Warren Buffett, the richest man in the world according to Forbes, recently invested $5 billion in Goldman Sachs, in the midst of all this turmoil. That’s pretty typical of how he’s made his fortune – he says he’s “fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”

He has also opined, “We want to do business in [a pessimistic] environment, not because we like pessimism but because we like the prices it produces.”
 
From: The Warren Buffett Way: Investment Strategies of the World’s Greatest Investor, by Robert Hagstrom, Jr. 

Warren Buffett is not alone.

J. Paul Getty was one of the first billionaires and the richest man in the world in his day, according to The Guinness Book of World Records. He said, “I began buying stocks at the depths of the [Great] Depression. Prices were at their lowest, and there weren’t many stock buyers around. Most people with money to invest were unable to see the forest of potential profit for the multitudinous trees of their largely baseless fears.”

He went on to say that he made over 100 times his investment on many of these stocks!

From: How To Be Rich, by J. Paul Getty.

Our best strategy

So we can learn from these two men that we shouldn’t panic, even in turbulent times. Now, you may not want to rush out and buy a bunch of stocks. However, you probably shouldn’t sell out right now either.

These two billionaires made a fortune by going against grain. So keep making those 401(k) contributions. By investing consistently over time – paycheck by paycheck – you’re dollar-cost averaging into the market. In bad times, you’ll buy more shares with the same money than you can in good times – just like the billionaires. 

Above all – diversify, diversify, diversify. Diversification is one of the four key investment principles, according to William Sharpe, a Nobel Prize winning financial economist. Our newsletter subscribers read about these as well as some ideas to simply put them into practice.

Today, more than ever, it’s important for you to take on the role of Chief Investment Officer for you and your family. You can’t count on Wall Street or Washington to do it for you!

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If you would like to get the newsletter we’ve referred to here, just e-mail us: bigginfo@biggsuccess.com, with “Profiting from Panic” in the subject line. We’ll send it to you and sign you up for The Bigg Success Weekly!

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Next time, we’ll discuss why it’s so important to move beyond personal productivity. Until then, here’s to your bigg success! 

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Related posts

Why Your Brain May Not Be the Best Money Manager

Getting Aggressively Passive: Creating A Passive Income That Sets You Free

Recession Progression

Warren Buffet’s Single Piece of Wisdom

Want to be a Millionaire? Here’s How to Think Like One

(Image by PocketAces)

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