Here’s a question to ask yourself: If you absolutely, positively knew you would not fail, what would you do?

Would you do what you’re doing now? If so, you can quit reading. But check in next time – we’ll have something just for you, assuming you want to take it to the next level.

Now back to those of you who would do something different. What’s holding you back?

In most cases, it’s fear. Pure and simple. And rightly so. As our friend Jim Bouchard says, “The absence of fear is stupidity!”

How do you overcome it? Here are two suggestions:

Do your due diligence

Passion is great. However, if it’s not combined with evidence, you may find yourself passionately unhappy. Prove out your idea. Remember, where there’s growth, there’s opportunity. Whether you’re thinking of starting a business or changing careers, is the industry growing?

A great resource for this is the Occupational Outlook Handbook from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Services. It’s available online and it’s free.

Mitigate the risk

BIGG success is about entrepreneuring your life. Contrary to popular lore, entrepreneurs are NOT risk lovers. However, successful entrepreneurs are excellent risk managers.

They mitigate risk by managing it, sharing it and by seeing it differently.

• Risk management
  

Can you manage the risk by saving extra now and storing it away?

• Risk sharing
  

  If you’re thinking of launching a business, could you share the risk with a partner?
  

• Risk perception
  

  Is there something you know that most people don’t? Because of your unique knowledge and experiences, you may be able to look at a situation differently than most people.
  

As you keep finding ways to mitigate the risk, you’ll reach a point where what you’re contemplating doesn’t seem so risky. You realize you can’t fail. You’re ready for BIGG success!

If you’re contemplating a career change and still have questions, maybe we can help. Check out our coaching programs.

Image in this post from cobrasoft

In his fantastic book Think Like a Black Belt, Jim Bouchard says: “The absence of fear is stupidity.”

Entrepreneurs must be stupid. They forge ahead boldly while smart people cringe with fear.

Risk? Ha!

Entrepreneurs laugh at it. They love it. No amount of risk will stop them.

That’s the story if you believe popular lore.

Jim says that Black Belts exhibit courage in the face of fear. Entrepreneurs gain courage by minimizing the risk.

They shift it away. They share it with others. They manage it. They act once the risk is brought down to an acceptable level.

It’s calculated fearlessness, not an absence of fear. After all, entrepreneurs aren’t stupid.

Some people would just like to think they are. They’re the people sitting on the sidelines wasting their lives away.

If you’re ready for life on your own terms, maybe we can help minimize the risks. E-mail us at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com or leave a voice message at 888.455.2444.

Image in this post from Troy2007

The dining room had closed, but the drive-thru was still open. She noticed a man standing at the drive-thru window. He asked to use the bathroom.

She paused for a second, because company policy states that no customers are allowed in after closing. Then she recognized the man – it was Adrian Peterson, star running back of the Minnesota Vikings.

She let him in. When her boss found out about the incident, she was fired.

She said, “I never thought in a million years that that decision was going to cost me my career.” The good news is that, after a public outcry, she was rehired.  Source of this story: The Consumerist

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Who are they to say?
The reason we’re talking about this today is because of some of the comments people made about her quote.

The general theme goes like this:
Career?
What career?
Working at McDonald’s (or any other restaurant … or in retail … or any number of other occupations) isn’t a career.

And here’s our response:
Says who?
Who determines which careers are honorable and which aren’t?
What criteria are used to make these judgments?

This woman had worked for the same company for seven years. We don’t know this, but this may have been her first job. She may have performed well and got promoted to management.

As we said, we don’t know … but neither do the people who have made comments denigrating her career.

If it makes her happy, if she feels fulfilled by the work, who are “they” to say it’s not honorable?

BIGG success is life on your own terms. One of the five elements of BIGG success is work.

What makes the work you do honorable?
YOU!

If you love what you do, give it your all. Even if you’re not passionate about what you’re doing right now, even if your current job is a stepping stone, enjoy it and put everything you have into it while you’re at work.

We’ll close with a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King. A BIGG thanks to our friend, Jim Bouchard, who shared this quote on a recent post on his blog:

“No work is insignificant. If a man is called a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast: http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00663-012011.mp3

(Image in today’s post by srbichara)

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Let’s talk about social media strategy. Say you’re a small business owner. You don’t necessarily want to get on Facebook and have a Fan Page with only ten people. Would it be better to just be yourself on Facebook and tell people about your day, rather than setting up a Fan Page for your business?

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Yeah. I would say to first get accustomed to it. As a matter of fact, my Facebook Fan Page for the Marketing Doctor just started last week and I’ve been on Facebook for a year or two. I preferred my personal page where I described what I liked and disliked, linked to my blogs and things like that. You just have to take the first steps. Like anything else in life, once you overcome the inertia, magical things happen.

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We met you online, John. We met you through another good friend, Jim Bouchard, who we also met online. It’s amazing how powerful these tools are in placing every individual, every small business, close to par with large businesses.

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You could say that again! A small business is much more nimble to change. It’s the difference between a forty-foot sailboat and a multi-ton carrier trying to change course. If I could talk a little bit to the contact with Jim Bouchard, it was very serendipitous. I met his wife Alex on Facebook. She asked me to look at her husband’s web site and critique it. So I did, which was unique according to Alex. From that, Jim wrote back and thanked me. The point is that I didn’t think I was going to meet Jim through Alex. It was nothing like that. I was trying to assist. Through that assist, we’re here today. We never would have met if it weren’t for social media. It’s like going to a cocktail party but not leaving the house!

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Thanks John so much for sharing your wisdom with us.

We recommend that you get to know John better by checking out his site. He blogs, consults, speaks and offers great marketing tips for free in his online classroom.

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Thank you for reading our post today. Please join us next time when we’ll discuss making money multiply magically. 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/00475-090409.mp3

Related posts

What's Hot in 2009: Questions

When Things Don't Go Your Way

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Jim, I saw an interview with the author of The Richest Man in Town. As you’re talking about levels, I remember an interview with one of men profiled in the book. He said he really just thought about the next plateau. What came through to me was that you have to think about that long-term goal so you set the direction, but then you put all your energy into getting to that next level as you’ve described it.

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Right. That word plateau is interesting. Exactly the same thing happens to people on the way to black belt in martial arts. Sometimes you feel plateaus. There are places where you feel that you’re not getting anywhere. Of course, that happens in business all the time as well. The irony is that, very often when we’re experiencing that feeling, a lot of the work is getting done. But there’s no burst of recognition. All of a sudden you get a rank or you attain a certain financial goal with your business and you feel it. There’s a tangible reward there. The plateaus though, that’s where you have to keep going. That’s where the discipline part kicks in. And the perseverance part – knocked down seven times, get up eight. I’ve divided the Black Belt Mindset into three major sections – perfection, confidence and leadership. We’ve talked about perfection – excellence, discipline and focus – that are the action steps. Confidence really comes from doing that over and over again. That’s where the perseverance aspect kicks in. That’s where we’re developing the courage and the power to keep going because we’re facing those challenges. It’s cyclical. It always kicks back to discipline because when the roads get rough and you feel you can’t keep going – you get knocked down that seventh time – that’s what gets you back up again. Confidence means you have some reasonable expectation that the outcome is going to be positive. The only way to get there is through experience. You can’t gift somebody confidence. I don’t know if that helps people look forward because you’ve got to get punched in the nose a few times in order to really be successful. Read books like the one you mentioned that talk about business leaders or political leaders. These aren’t people who, by and large, had a golden spoon in their mouth. These are people who got knocked around a lot and they kept going.

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We say you’re the entrepreneur of your own life, whether you’re an entrepreneur in the traditional sense or working your way up in the corporate world. Either way, once you make a decision on your direction, you have to understand that it’s not just going to be easy.

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I couldn’t agree more, Mary-Lynn. It’s simple, but it’s not easy. We make it too complicated. It’s a decision! If you want to move forward, you just have to make a decision. Then you have to pull up your pants, turn your hat around and get going. We’ve lived in abundance for so long that a lot of people feel entitled to be in certain places at certain times. When the going gets tough, they don’t know how to deal with it because they haven’t been there. But really it comes down to a decision. You’re going to get busy living or get busy dying.

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We encourage everyone to get busy today building the Black Belt Mindset.

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That’s strapping on the black belt. One of my Masters gave me this great line one time. He said, “Your black belt isn’t really something you strap on. It’s something you carve out from inside yourself.” In life or business, what could work better?

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I think it’s interesting too that Mary-Lynn and I can look at what you’ve done or you can look at what we’ve done, but the reality is that everyone has to find their own path. So even if it worked for someone else, it doesn’t mean that particular thing will work for you. The alternative is that it may work for you and never work for anybody else. As long as it works for you that one time – it helps you get to that next level – that’s all that matters.

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We’re so like-minded in that respect. These ideas that we’re talking about – discipline, focus, courage, perseverance – do work for everybody because they’re so fundamental. If you can get down to these simple characteristics and build upon them, then you’re headed in the right direction.

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It’s always such a pleasure to talk with you, Jim. Whenever we talk, I’m always revved up for the rest of the day. It’s just good , good stuff!

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That’s because you guys are both black belts in bigg success!

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You can learn more about Jim on his site. We can’t recommend anyone more highly!

Thanks Jim for sharing your time and wisdom with us! And we thank you for checking in with us today!

Back to School season is upon us. So next time, we’ll kick off a series of ten posts on lifelong learning. Please join us. 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/00460-081409.mp3

(Image in today's post from jimbouchard.org)