June 2009 | Bigg Success

Monthly Archives: June 2009

The Logical Way to Rediscover Your Creativity

Written on June 24, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Personal Growth

music-lessons In today’s Music Lesson, we want to look at Supertramp’s The Logical Song. It’s about a young adult looking back on his life. He’s lost and he’s trying to understand why. What led him here?

___

Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's music lesson on The Bigg Success Show! Click the purple player to listen while you read: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

___

Learning too much

His education taught him to be “intellectual, cynical”.

And he learned. So well, in fact, that he lost himself. “Please tell me who I am,” he says.

In the process, he became cynical. A certain amount of skepticism is healthy. When it crosses that fine line and turns into cynicism, it’s unhealthy.

Learning the wrong lesson

He says, “Watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical, liberal, fanatical, criminal. Won’t you sign up your name? We’d like to feel you’re acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable.”

We wonder … does that mean he’s a couch potato?

Bigg success is life on your own terms. However, the young man in this song has learned that the world doesn’t want you to live your life on your own terms.

Go along to get along.

That’s what we’re taught to do. We’re supposed to fall in line. We’re not supposed to think for ourselves. We shouldn’t be too “out there”. Don’t get “too creative.”

The logical end of creativity

We saw a great article on creativity from Scientific American Mind. In the article, the question was asked, “Why do so few people express creativity?”

Check out the answer by one of the experts:

He said that we “all express creativity when we’re young. But by the end of the first grade, very few of us do so.”

That’s what made us think of The Logical Song in the first place. Can you hear it …

“But then they sent me away to teach me how to be sensible, logical, responsible, practical.”

The expert in the article said the reason we lose our creativity is because of socialization. We learn to “stay on task.” We’re told to “stop daydreaming.” “Stop asking silly questions.” The result:

“… the expression of new ideas is largely shut down.”

2 keys to rediscover your creativity and reconnect with yourself

Reconnect with your youth

“When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful, a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.”

Reconnect to your youth to rediscover your creativity. Think about another song – Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World”.

See the wonder in the world. See the miracles around you. See the beauty that is ever present. See the magic as it happens.

View the world like a kid again and marvel.

Reconnect to nature

“And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily, joyfully, playfully, watching me.”

The first thing that jumped out at us was the very first word – “And”.

This second way to reconnect with yourself and your creativity is an extension of the first way. We must first get in touch with our child-like nature; then we can reconnect with nature.

Connect with nature personally. The young man in the song doesn’t just marvel at the birds singing. He hears them singing to him!

Of course, he turned into a radical!

Experts say creativity will be an increasingly valuable skill in the years ahead. There are a lot of opportunities to create the life you dream of living. Rediscover your creativity for bigg success!

___

Would you like more tips and tools to live your life on your own terms? Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly – it’s FREE!

___

Thanks so much for reading our post today. Please join us next time when we ask … what if Elvis were an entrepreneur. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes.

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00423-062409.mp3

Related posts

A Sure-Fire Way to Stop Innovation

The Power of Imagination

(Image in today's post by hisks)

0 Comments

Making More Money Per Hour

Written on June 23, 2009 by George Krueger & Mary-Lynn Foster in Time Management

time_money_balance Bigg success is life on your own terms. Today’s topic really covers two of the five elements of bigg success – time and money.

Specifically, we want to discuss charging for your time. If you’re a consultant, a coach, a freelancer or anyone who bills hourly, how do you determine what an hour is worth?

___

Hear George & Mary-Lynn discuss today's topic on The Bigg Success Show! To listen while you read, click the purple player: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

___

One of the biggest reasons small business people don’t reach bigg success is because they don’t charge enough. In fact, in many cases, the business fails for this reason.

So pricing your service is very important. We can think of two primary methods to arrive at a price:

The Market Approach

This is probably the most common way that entrepreneurs arrive at a price. With this method, you simply look at your competition to see how much they’re charging. Then depending on your strategy, you charge the same, a little more or a little less.

The Cost Approach

Here you determine how much you need to charge based on your cost structure and your opportunity costs. By opportunity costs, we mean:

How much could you make working elsewhere?

Add your hard costs to your opportunity cost to arrive at your price per hour.

Limitations

The downside to just using the Cost Approach is that it ignores the market. For instance, your price may be a lot lower than the market but you wouldn’t know it because you haven’t looked at the market. You would be leaving money on the table.

Or it may be a lot higher and the market won’t compensate you what you the amount you need for your time. The result would be a failure that could have been avoided.

The Market Approach also has its limitations. We have a friend who looked at his competitors’ hourly rate to determine how much he should charge. He opened up his shop and started losing a lot of money every month.

He was perplexed, so he did a little more competitive research. He discovered that all of his competitors were losing money as well. Everybody was in a price war; nobody was charging enough to make money.

So he increased his price based on his costs. He lost some customers when he did this but he started making money.

Because of the limitations each method has, we recommend that you use both methods when you’re trying to arrive at a price for your service. Then you’ll have two reference points from which to make decisions.

The Value Equation

Now we want to move to making more money per hour. From the customer’s point-of-view:

Value = (Service x Quality) / Price

From this equation, you can see that there are three ways to increase the value to your customer:

decrease your price

increase your service level

improve your quality

Of course, decreasing the price will very likely hurt you in the long-term. Look at it this way – do you want to work just as hard to make less money? Of course not. Yet a lot of small business people do this first.

So you would prefer to increase the value to your customer by providing a higher level of service or quality.

Let’s focus on service since quality is more up to you. Think about these four D’s:

dirty

difficult

dangerous

designed

By designed, we mean customized but we had to have a “d-word”! Dangerous might mean “risky”. However, keep in mind that risk is a matter of perspective. The customer may view something as extremely risky but you know how to manage the risk so it’s not really risky at all for you.

Here’s the key to these four D’s: Find something that your customer
doesn’t want to do, doesn’t know how to do, is afraid to do or just simply can’t do.

When you can do that, your customers will perceive more value for your service. You’ll find it easier to charge a premium. That’s more money per hour. That’s bigg success!

___

Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly – it’s FREE!

___

Thanks so much for checking in on us today. Please join us next time when we’ll talk about the downside of education. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes.

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00422-062309.mp3

Related posts

Make 55 Percent More Money – Part 1

Make 55 Percent More Money – Part 2

(Image in today's post by hisks)