It’s Back-to-School time and we’re in the middle of a ten-part series on lifelong learning. We started by talking about the 3 R’s from our school days – reading, writing and arithmetic. Now we’re talking about the 3 R’s of BIGG success.
So far we’ve discussed two of them – responsibility and resiliency. Today we’ll chat about the 3rd R of BIGG success – relationships.
Today’s episode is made possible by Linq, digital business cards for modern networking. Make a lasting impression by sharing your contact information, and more — straight to someone’s phone or inbox.
We are living in the age of interdependence. It’s amazing how much can be accomplished by working together.
Relationships have always been important, and now it’s possible for any of us to build a worldwide network of relationships for work and play!
[haiku url=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00753-111511.mp3″ title=”The BIGG Success Show #753″] Your definition of BIGG success
Our definition of BIGG success doesn’t make judgments.
It’s not up to us. It’s up to you.
It’s not up to others. It’s up to you.
However, it is BIGG success. And you’re a BIGG goal-getter. You won’t be content with ordinary success. You’re special. You’re a winner.
And you’re independent. You think for yourself. You don’t worry what others think or say. You’re going to do BIGG things.
You’ll show them. You will reach BIGG success. And when you do, you’ll be able to say that you’re a self-made man or woman.
It’s part of your definition of BIGG success. You have to make it on your own.
But you won’t. We know. You’re shocked to here us say that. But stick with us.
Losing advantage
Picture a person who is looking for a new job. The perfect opportunity presents itself. It’s the right job in the right career in the right company in the right industry. She knows an influential person at the company. But she doesn’t contact them. So she doesn’t get the job. She never even got an interview.
We’ve witnessed this type of situation a number of times. There are a variety of reasons why people lose advantage by a poor definition of BIGG success.
Today we’ll talk about three of them:
They lack assertiveness
They don’t want to be a bother. They’re too shy. They worry too much about what other people think.
You have to get over it. People want to help you. It’s in our nature. But nobody can read your mind. So you have to let us know what’s on your mind so we can lend a hand.
They’re insecure
They think asking for help will make them look weak. It doesn’t. When you ask for help, you show how strong you are. You’re confident enough to admit you need assistance from others.
They’re too proud
We learn from the Bible that “pride comes before the fall.” We think it just applies to being too proud of your accomplishments and not showing the proper gratitude.
But sometimes the fall is imperceptible. You’ve fallen and you don’t even realize it. You fall short of reaching your full potential. Or you waste time and don’t reach it as fast as you could. So you don’t fully live up to your reason for being.
So don’t be afraid to reach out to others. Interdependence, not independence, leads to BIGG success!
When we spend money on advertising or office supplies, it shows up on our Income Statement rather than our Balance Sheet.
But we’re still spending money. It’s an investment for the purpose of increasing our sales.
The financial statement on which it shows up on is based on accounting rules. We have to understand that we are spending the money with the purpose of increasing sales.
Interdependence of business and personal finances
While we say business owners, this concept applies to our personal finances as well.
As a business owner, particularly a business owner who owns 100% of your firm, your business finances and personal finances are completely linked.
Not in a legal sense – you’ll want to talk with your attorney to select the right entity for your company – but in a philosophical sense.
Your business has to do well or it will affect your personal finances. We all get that.
What a lot of people forget is that their standard of living may affect their business. If you spend too much personally, you put more of a burden on your business to produce more income for you to take out of the business. It can really add to the pressure, particularly for a start-up business.
In our personal lives, every penny we spend should add to our happiness. If it doesn’t, it’s not a worthwhile expenditure.
Start from scratch
There’s a technique that helps you decide if the returns you’re getting are sufficient. It’s called zero-based budgeting.
For every line item on your Income Statement, you assume you don’t need to spend any money. Then you add to it for the outlays you determine will give you the return you desire.
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I do this in my businesses every three years. Costs can creep in. You commit to this service or that program. It all adds up. Instead of doing it all every three years, you may pick a few line items every year for review. Just make sure you cycle through all of them every few years or so.
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Let’s take an example that applies to our businesses and our personal lives – our cell phone. I might ask myself: Do I need the package I currently have or could I cut back? Do I need unlimited texting?
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You’ll also consider alternatives. If you weren’t spending this amount of money on your cell phone, what might you spend it on? You might find you could increase sales faster or be a lot happier if you spent this money on another thing.
You might decide to increase your long-term happiness and invest this newfound money. That may make you happier now and then.
By justifying the expense all over again, away from the emotional point of purchase, you’ll spend your money on what you really want. You’ll get the returns you seek. That’s bigg success.
I said that we should make something clear about life on your own terms. I could be going through a mid-life crisis. Does life on my own terms mean getting a fancy new sports car, spending money like crazy, going clubbing, shirking my responsibilities, and walking away from relationships, all in an attempt to get my youth back?
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Life on your own terms is not a license for poor behavior
In fact, it’s quite the opposite. It should be an ideal that we strive to live up to. It’s about finding our purpose for being here and then deploying all of our resources to live up to that promise.
Because of that, it’s not a selfish thing. We can’t reach bigg success without the help of others. In this age of interdependence, we are able to live our lives on our own terms by helping others live their lives on their own terms.
Life on your own terms is also not a passing fancy
It’s a direction, not a point. It’s very emotional because it is so personal, but it’s not based on one’s feelings at this moment.
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I may feel depressed right now. Does that mean life on my own terms means being depressed? Of course not.
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Feeling down from time to time is something we all experience, but we have to respond to it, not just accept it or give in to it. Going to the mid-life crisis example, maybe I’m not feeling as young as I used to. Is the answer really to blow a bunch of money and waste a lot of time?
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Bigg goal-getters accept that there are some things that we can’t change. No amount of money is going to make me any younger physically. We recognize the realities of our situation and respond positively to keep moving toward our bigg goals – where we want to go, what we want to achieve, who we want to be known as.
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Each day we write another page of our autobiography. We show the world who we are by how we live our lives.
Life on your own terms is dynamic, not static
While it’s not a passing fancy, it does evolve over time as we discover more about ourselves and the world around us.
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I remember when I was in my early twenties – life on my own terms then meant being in the Forbes 400. I wanted to get rich in my own business. Then I heard Donald Trump asked about the difference between $70 million and $700 million. He said, “A bigger boat.” I realized then that I didn’t need a bigger boat!
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So how did that change your terms?
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I decided it wasn’t worth my time to work that hard to make the extra money. If all I was going to get out of it was a bigger boat, I wasn’t interested. Don’t get me wrong; money still helps! But life on my own terms evolved to building quality relationships and sharing experiences.
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Your desire to own your own business didn’t change?
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Oh no, that desire definitely stayed the same.
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So life on your own terms changed as a result of this new information. You realized there were more important things to you than the money you thought you wanted. But you still wanted to be in business for yourself.
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You may decide that less is more like I did. Or you may realize that you’ve been selling yourself short and you want more.
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It’s life on your own terms. It’s not a license for poor behavior. It’s not a passing fancy. But it is dynamic; it may change over time as you gain knowledge about yourself and your environment.
How has your definition of life on your own terms changed over time?
Share that with us by leaving a comment below, calling us at 877.988.BIGG or sending us an e-mail at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com.
We saw an opinion recently that “synergy” is an outdated word. We disagree. When synergy exists, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
1 + 1 = 3. It doesn’t work in mathematics, but it does happen in our lives. With the right elements in place, a tiny spark can turn into a full-blown fire.
The BIGG idea
That’s the BIGG idea behind BIGG Success – finding ways to sync the five elements to achieve life on our own terms, faster than we could otherwise.
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Here’s a very simple example of how these five elements come together. I want to take a course on CSS to improve my web design skills. That’s growth. It’s going to cost me a little bit of money. It’s also going to cost me quite a bit of time. But this new knowledge will allow me to get more work, which will help me make more money so I can travel more. That’s play! In the short term, it will cost me time but in the long term, it will me save time because I’ll be able to work more efficiently. That’s synergy!
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By thinking about the whole – all five elements together – and working on them all at once, we find solutions that we couldn’t, or at least didn’t, see before.
It empowers you
When you have a choice to make, you can use these five elements holistically to weigh how that choice impacts your vision of BIGG success, of life on your own terms.
It empowers you as the entrepreneur of your life.
You can say “No” without guilt! If it’s not moving you closer to the BIGG success you dream of, just say no.
You can say “Yes” when you clearly see that it is taking you down the path you want to follow.
Don’t balance, blend your work and life
Our idea goes beyond work – life balance. The old way of thinking was to draw a line in the sand. That was how we tried to separate our personal and professional lives.
It’s great if it works for you. Most people have found this nearly impossible to do in the 21st century. We use technology prodigiously and that technology is live 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We have responded in kind which has placed stress on the idea of work – life balance.
So we moved to integration. Don’t separate the personal and the professional. Keep them both live simultaneously and move seamlessly between the two worlds.
We found this concept helpful, but it doesn’t go far enough. There is little benefit to integration other than giving ourselves permission to not feel guilty if we’re working when we should be playing or playing when we should be working.
So the BIGG idea is synergy:
Our two worlds should not only blend, but benefit one another.
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I spoke with an inventor recently about how he discovered his latest idea. He said that he was reading a book for pleasure one weekend. This book sparked a thought that became his BIGG invention. He wasn’t reading the book for any reason other than enjoyment, but he also kept his whole being, his whole mind, live. By not turning off his professional side as he read for personal reasons, he discovered his BIGG opportunity.
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So as you can see, you don’t have to be in work mode to find something that can help you professionally and you don’t have to be in play mode to find something you might enjoy personally. Keeping our whole person live all the time leads to BIGG success.
The age of interdependence
There’s a final element to this synergy, to what’s running throughout the five elements. Synergy goes beyond just ourselves. The 21st century is the age of interdependence.
We can’t succeed BIGG by ourselves. We must build relationships that build value. We add value by doing what we do best while working with others doing what they do best.
There’s the synergy; we create value together through interdependence. When we build together, we reach bigg success faster!
Let’s build BIGG success together
So what does life on your own terms mean to you?
What challenges are you facing right now in your quest for BIGG success?
How are you using synergy to reach it even faster?
We’ll take the most common challenges and do a show about them. We hope you will share your solutions to these challenges as well. Working together, we can all reach BIGG success even faster!
We’ll also highlight how people are living life on their own terms. In these stories are lessons for all of us. So share your story and get in on the fun!
Thank you for reading our post today. Until next time, here’s to your BIGG success!
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Here’s a concept that business owners often struggle to really understand: Every penny you spend is an investment. 
I do this in my businesses every three years. Costs can creep in. You commit to this service or that program. It all adds up. Instead of doing it all every three years, you may pick a few line items every year for review. Just make sure you cycle through all of them every few years or so. 
Let’s take an example that applies to our businesses and our personal lives – our cell phone. I might ask myself: Do I need the package I currently have or could I cut back? Do I need unlimited texting? 
Bigg success is 
I said that we should make something clear about life on your own terms. I could be going through a mid-life crisis. Does life on my own terms mean getting a fancy new sports car, spending money like crazy, going clubbing, shirking my responsibilities, and walking away from relationships, all in an attempt to get my youth back? 
I may feel depressed right now. Does that mean life on my own terms means being depressed? Of course not. 
