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These 5 Factors Make You a Bigg Dog

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dog_daysToday we’re wrapping up our five-part Dog Days series. Mark Twain said:

“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight; it’s the size of the fight in the dog.”

Bigg dogs aren’t bigg because of their size. They’re bigg because of their attitude.

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There are 5 C’s that put the fight in the dog:

Calling

Bigg dogs just know they were put on this earth to do something special. They can feel it deep in their gut. It consumes them. They have to live up to their full potential. It drives them each and every day.

Courage

Sure, bigg dogs have fears, but they don’t let their fears drive them. They conquer their fears by confronting them head on. That’s one of the first victories we experience in our quest for bigg success: victory over our fears.

Confidence

They have confidence that their time will come. They don’t doubt that they will find their bigg opportunity. They know they will have their moment in the spotlight. They believe they will live their bigg dream.

They also have confidence that they will be ready. They know they will do whatever it takes to prepare for it. They will work harder and smarter than anyone else to be ready when their time comes.

For these reasons, they have confidence in themselves. They have prepared – mentally and physically – for this day that they knew would come. Now that it is here, now that the game is on the line, they want the ball. They are the go-to person and they will find a win to win.

Contemplation

Bigg dogs are thinkers and doers. They are always on the look out for opportunities that match their passions, preferences and proficiencies. When they see potential customers with a problem, they know they may be on to something.

They determine how easy these customers are to identify and reach. If it can be done, that spells opportunity.

Then they look at competitors. They know they don’t want to go head to head with large companies. They also look at competitors of all sizes.

If there aren’t any large companies dominating the niche and if there aren’t too many competitors in total, they get going!

Contempt

They know they will face adversity. They show scorn in its face. They press on to bigg success and that what makes them bigg dogs!

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Thank you for reading our post. Check out the entire Dog Days series. You'll find the links below under 'related posts'.

A lot of us have seen our portfolios take a huge hit. Please join us next time when we’ll talk about investments that don’t lose value. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

 

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00455-080709.mp3

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Dissing Plan B

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success_and_failure Here’s a great quote by entertainer Steve Harvey …

“Don’t live by old sayings that don’t apply to you. For instance – ‘Have a Plan B.’ Having a Plan B means you believe that Plan A might fail. Having a Plan B requires that you put time and energy into what you could’ve been doing for Plan A to make it work. And if Plan A doesn’t work, guess what, get a new Plan A.”

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There’s some real wisdom in his quote. We’ll look at it line by line:

“Having a Plan B means you believe that Plan A might fail.”

Believe

He’s emphasizing how much we have to believe in success, not in failure. We have to believe, in ourselves and in our plan, in order to succeed. The first person who has to be on board with our plan – the first person who has to follow us so to speak – is ourselves. If we’re not in line, we’re in trouble!

Throw away the security blanket

There’s another thing that comes to light with this quote. Think Linus van Pelt, Charlie Brown’s best friend and Lucy’s younger brother. He never went anywhere without his security blanket. 

We can’t succeed if we hold on to our security blanket, or blankets, as the case may be. We have to throw it away once and for all if we’re going to succeed bigg.

A lot of times we hold on tightly to that security blanket just in case. Just in case, things don’t go as planned.

Well, here’s the brutal truth – no matter how good we get at planning, things never will go as planned.

That’s when we have to hunker done. We have to double our efforts to make our plan work. We have to overcome all the obstacles that we will face and keep the faith.

The covenant with Nature

We must keep on believing that we will succeed because we have no choice but to succeed. When we reach that level of resolve, the forces of Nature begin to conspire with us, instead of against us.

It’s not a miracle. It happens too frequently to think of it that way.

It is no accident. Because that implies a randomness that doesn’t exist.

It’s isn’t luck because it happens more often to people whose thoughts lead to certain behaviors. The more determination we have, the luckier we get!

It’s more like a covenant. Nature says, “This is how much you have to believe. Here is what you have to let go of in order to have my blessing.”

Now, let’s look at the next line …

“Having a Plan B requires that you put time and energy into
what you could’ve been doing for Plan A to make it work.”

Setting priorities

Since we only have a certain amount of time, we can’t afford to waste it if we’re going to succeed bigg.  It’s all about priorities.

We tend to think that:

  • we’re super-human
  • we can do ten things at once
  • we don’t need to focus on just one or two major objectives at a time

The bare naked truth is … all of that is a lie!

We do have to determine what is most important right now in pursuit of that bigg success of which we dream. Then we have to focus all our energy on only that.

In the last part of his quote, he says,

“If Plan A doesn’t work, get a new Plan A.”

So the question is, how do you know if Plan A isn’t working?

One way to judge it is if you keep running into the same wall over and over again.

You’ve tried to climb over it.

You’ve tried to go around it on one side.

Then you tried the other side.

You tried to dig under it.

You even tried to blast through it.

You’ve tried five times, but the doggone wall hasn’t budged.

Plan B is like Step 2

It may be time to start thinking of your alternatives. And here’s where we deviate slightly from Steve Harvey. Because we think Plan B is like Step 2 on your path to bigg success. You have to have a clear picture of what bigg success looks like to you before you start. Then you need to map out the steps to get there.

With your plan in place, you’ll focus all your time and energy on Step 1 before you begin to take the second step. So we’ve thought about it before we start, but we don’t worry about it until it’s time.

We think Plan B is just like that. Before we start working on Plan A, we should have thought about Plan B. We’ve prepared for the contingencies. But that’s where we stop.

And the important distinction is this ….

Plan B doesn’t send us back where we were before. Plan B moves us ahead in a way that Plan A didn’t. It makes that wall insignificant.

The only path to bigg success

But it doesn’t pay to spend too much time thinking about Plan B because the wall we face probably won’t be the wall we expect. So now we’re back on track with Steve Harvey.

Think about it a little, but don’t dwell on it. While you’re pursuing Plan A, keep Plan B out of your head. Because you have to if you want to succeed bigg.

Your mindset has to be, “This is my only path to bigg success.” By thinking that way, you will find bigg success. 

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Thank you for checking in with us today. Join us next time as we begin a two-part series on the ten early warnings of a business in trouble. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

 

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00347-031009.mp3

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Does Haste Still Make Waste?

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speed Do you remember this old saying, “Haste makes waste?” It certainly rolls off the tongue. But we wonder – is it still true?

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We hear all the time that we have to move fast today to gain, and maintain, a competitive advantage. So it may seem that the old saying has become outdated.

But if we move too fast, we risk making more mistakes. Now this age-old saying may not be talking about high-level mistakes, but we wondered if it could be applied in that realm. We may squander precious resources if we don’t make the right moves in the right sequence.

Speed without direction gets us nowhere fast.

It doesn’t do us any good to go fast if we don’t know where we’re trying to go. Yet we often make this mistake. In our haste, we skip a step. Instead of “Ready, Aim, Fire”, we truncate it to “Ready, Fire.”

The result? We’re in perpetual motion, but the actions we take don’t move us toward the life we want to live. We waste a lot of time but see little advancement. We get tired, frustrated, and discouraged because we feel like we’re working our butts off but still not getting anywhere.

Direction without speed is no better.

Once we’ve decided where we want to go, we do need to move fast. Because we often miss a step here too. “Ready, Aim, Aim, Aim, Aim …” doesn’t work either.

We fail to take the first step because we get scared. So we don’t get anywhere. We allow our fears to paralyze us. Then someone gets where we need to be first and we miss our bigg opportunity.

Get where you want to be when you want to be there.

Speed and direction. We often have one without the other. But to succeed bigg, we need them both congruently.

  • Speed to direction.
    We need to move quickly to determine where we want to go. While we don’t need to move as fast here as we do once our destination is determined, it’s still important not to lollygag. We only have one life to live. So we want to discover where we want to take it as quickly as possible.

  • Direction with speed.
    Once we’ve done that, we want to get there as fast as we can. GO! FAST! Now is the time to move quickly and this is where the competitive advantage comes in.

Because as we move toward our destination, we learn about the environment we’re operating in. There may be a detour we have to take. There may be road construction we can avoid. By moving quickly, we spot these things before others so we’re able to stay ahead of them.

So speed to direction with speed for bigg success in your life! 

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Get the tips and tools you need to be a BIGG success.
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Thanks so much for checking in on us today. Join us next time when we discuss the art of delivering value. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

 

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00337-022409.mp3

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One-Up Yourself for Bigg Success

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one When the phrase “one-up” is used, it’s usually referring to the competition. We had an interesting discussion after working out recently.

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marylynnI was on the treadmill and noticed that I was running slower than others around me. I’m competitive but I just can’t sustain the higher speed that other people can.

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That led to today’s show topic … one-up yourself!

Think one percent better or one percent more. Self-improvement requires patience. A little bit of improvement over time makes a bigg difference.

1% a week leads to a 50% improvement

For example, let’s say you walk two miles in thirty minutes. If you can just do one percent more the next time out, you would walk 2.02 miles in thirty minutes or you might stick with the two miles and plan to do it in 29 minutes and 40 seconds. Either way, it’s a one percent improvement. If you do that every week, over the course of the year, you would have improved over fifty percent!

It’s easy to get discouraged if we don’t see results right away. We’re bigg goal-getters so we always shoot high. However, shooting too high is a recipe for de-motivation. Take baby steps rather than a leap that you can’t sustain!

There are five steps to one-up yourself:

Find the baseline. Measure where you are now so you compete only with yourself, not others. It doesn’t matter what that point is; it’s just important to know it because it’s your starting point.

Set your initial one-up goal. You may want to go faster or longer. Are you in a sprint or a marathon? Are you trying to improve quantity or quality?

Determine the time frame. Do you want to improve one percent every time, each week or some other period? Specify a time frame for your incremental improvement.

How will achieve it? What specific activity will get you that extra 1%? Let’s look at an example, using a savings goal:

Assume you have a base line, how much you’re saving now, of $500 a month. You want to save more money in the same time (each month). In other words, you want to go “faster.” So next month, you plan to save $505 next month.

Okay, so you want to save $5 more next month. How will you do it? You decide that you’ll pack your lunch one more day.

See how easy that was!

As you do it, analyze your results. If you hit your one-up goal, congratulate yourself. But then set your next one-up goal and go get it.

If you didn’t hit your goal, analyze why. Then try, try again. Don’t get down on yourself for missing your goal one time. You’ll one-up yourself next time!

One-up leads to bigg success

There are things in our lives that are sprints; others are marathons. Set your goals accordingly and one-up yourself for bigg success!

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We thank you so much for spending your time reading our post today. New research shows that there is a fountain of youth. Join us next time when we tell you where to find it. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

 

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00283-121008.mp3

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Can We Talk You Out of Owning Your Own Business?

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questions Intuit, the makers of QuickBooks software, conducted a study of working adults [doc] not long ago. They found that 67 percent think about quitting their jobs regularly or constantly, while 72 percent said they want to start their own business. The number one reason cited for this was to be more passionate about their work.

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The participants were asked who inspired them: Donald Trump (38%) and Hugh Hefner (34%) were the top choices for men; Oprah Winfrey received 66% of the women’s vote.

That response made us think – there are misperceptions of what it means to own a business; what an entrepreneur faces day-to-day. There’s the Hollywood version, but it often doesn’t reflect the real world.

5 common myths about owning your own business


#1 – I won’t have to answer to a boss.
While technically true, it’s not accurate in practice. The reality is that, as a business owner, you answer to every customer by you and your firm. You answer to your banker if you borrow money. The government will require you to do certain things by certain times. As a business owner, you won’t have a boss; you’ll have many bosses!

#2 – I set my own hours.
You’ve probably seen or heard the ads. Just buy this business opportunity – you’ll hardly have to work and the money will just pour in. If only it worked that way! You may enjoy a great deal of flexibility as a business owner. However, you’ll probably work more than you ever imagined, especially in the early stages of your business.

#3 – I can get my employees to do the grunt work.
Many new business owners – formerly part of the corporate world – have trouble adjusting to the lack of resources that are inherent in many start-ups. They were used to having “people” who did certain things. Start-ups can’t afford extra people; many can’t afford people at all! You’ll have to get used to doing a lot of things, if not everything, yourself, even the dirty work.

#4 – I’ll make more money.
Start-ups consume money; there often isn’t much to spare. You may not get a regular paycheck at first. You’ll have to build up the business to afford that “luxury”.

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georgeWhen I was younger, I couldn’t find anyone willing to pay me what I thought I was worth. So I started my own business … I quickly realized that I couldn’t afford to pay me what I thought I was worth!

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#5 – I’ll have less stress than I do with my job.

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marylynn As a first-time entrepreneur, I’ve learned that stress hits from many angles – clients with deadlines, so much work to get done, and worries when things don’t go as planned. I’ve learned to be much tougher mentally and emotionally.

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All of this reminds us of Jackson Browne’s song, The Load Out …“They’re the first to come, and the last to leave, working for that minimum wage.”

In the song, he’s talking about roadies. But we wonder … couldn’t he be describing start-up entrepreneurs?

When your business is in the start-up phase, it’s like a newborn baby. You have to nurture it and care for it until it reaches the point where it doesn’t need you so much anymore. Prepare yourself for a five-year horizon before you start.

If starting a business doesn’t sound so good anymore, we feel like we’ve done our job. You won’t face the financial, and more importantly, the emotional turmoil that comes with a start-up.

However, if you’re now more determined than ever to start a business, you’ve passed a critical test. You can’t be talked out of it. You’ve peered beyond the popular and romantic view of business ownership. You’re starting to see it as it really is. You’re ready to become an entrepreneur!

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

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Next time, we’ll discuss the art of knowing yourself. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

 

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