There are two ways to create wealth – we’ll share both the well-known and the less-known ways with you today.
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When we think talk about capital for a business, we usually think about money. One timeless wealth-building secret is to use other people’s money, commonly referred to as OPM.
This is the final show in our 10-show series on lifelong learning. Today we’ll discuss five activities that will make you healthy, wealthy and wise all at the same time.
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Now we’ll warn you – these activities we are recommending today require some multi-tasking. We usually suggest less multi-tasking, but these are things ideally suited for doing more than one thing at a time.
Let’s pull out the Professor’s whiteboard for: 5 activities to grow healthier, wealthier, and wiser.
Today, we continue our discussion with John Tantillo, The Marketing Doctor. John is a behavioral research psychologist with over twenty years of marketing experience. He is the President of the Marketing Department of America and regularly appears on Fox News and Fox Business News. Last time, we discussed the difference between a makeover and a brand-over. Let’s get back to the conversation …
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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.
Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00475-090409.mp3
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Today on The Bigg Success Show, we continued chatting with Jim Bouchard. Jim is a speaker, coach, author and Martial Arts Hall of Famer who helps people Think Like a Black Belt! Last time we talked about branding like a black belt. Now let’s get to the conversation …
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The first word that comes to mind is that people talk about the black belt as a symbol of excellence. We’ve talked about this before. We can couch “excellence” in the term “perfection”. Perfection isn’t a destination; it’s a never ending process. Excellence isn’t something where you get to some level of attainment and then that’s it. Excellence is an ongoing process. It’s harder to keep a black belt than it is to earn one. It’s harder to keep success in business than it is to get there. They always say your first million is the hardest. And then your second million is the hardest, right?
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The next million is the hardest.
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It’s a constant process – making sure you’re staying current, making sure you’re staying relevant and making sure you’re still servicing the people that you want to service. That’s really at the heart of it. The idea of excellence. Excellence implies action; it’s a constant process of self-perfection. The way you get there is through discipline and focus. As far as I’m concerned, discipline is the key to all of this. Discipline means doing whatever it takes to get where you want to go. You want bigg success, right? It’s a series of small steps done on a daily basis when things are going well or when they’re not. That’s discipline. Motivation is an easy one. Everyone who starts a new business, everyone you guys coach, aren’t they really motivated? They’re happy and passionate.
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Yeah, it’s exciting. It’s a new adventure.
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Then about three or four years later, when they’re taking a second on the house to keep the business going, the motivation starts to crumble a little bit.
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We were talking with a gentleman who works with a lot of small business owners. He said that he notices they start to wear down about sixteen months in.
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Yeah, that makes sense because, all of a sudden, the reality is staring them in the face.
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You’re working so hard. You’re always working. You know this as a business owner, Jim. Sometimes it just seems that there isn’t time for yourself. You do start wearing down.
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Exactly. That’s where the discipline part has to kick in. And focus. Let’s talk about focus. If focus is unchecked, it becomes an obsession. We have to take care of our entire life. Three key areas of life to me are emotional, material and spiritual. We may let the emotional and spiritual sides deteriorate because we’re focusing on the material. Sometimes that happens – you need to focus a little more on one area than the other. Let’s say there’s an illness or one of your loved ones needs attention. Then you’re going to focus a little more on the emotional side. That’s okay. You just have to remember that in the greater scheme of things, there has to be a relative balance. If you find yourself hyper-focused in one area, you have to catch yourself and make sure you’re planning to correct it. People ask about exercises to develop discipline and focus. The first thing I say is this, “It ain’t that hard. Make a decision and then go forward.” You have to decide you’re going to be a disciplined person. Then you just take something that you want or need to do, create a series of steps and go for it. Now, we can create exercises around that. That’s fun sometimes. But really that’s what it boils down to. Sometimes, like we talked about with the branding, we make it too complicated.
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Yeah, I was going to create an exercise to make myself be more disciplined, Jim. I just couldn’t get around to it!
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I’d be glad to help you, George. We’ve got to get you into martial arts class!
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Ah, George is always goofing around! It seems to me, as I’m listening to you talk, Jim, that when you are studying for a black belt, it’s a lot of physical discipline – you’re learning this move or that move, when to use it or when
not to – but is mental discipline harder than physical discipline?
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They go together. So, all joking aside, when people ask me how to have more discipline, I tell them to pick a thing that has a logical goal – or logical conclusion – to it. Not to say that the black belt or anything is the end, but some measurable achievement.
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Let’s say I want to keep my desk more organized. Something simple like that.
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Good, that’s a great goal. To systemize this a little bit, I might walk you through belt ranks. Let’s say we’re going to get to black belt in desk organization! We’re going to turn you into a Master Desk Organizer!
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Hye-yah!
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That’s good! Take ten levels – white, yellow, orange, purple. For the sake of time, I won’t go through the whole thing. You get the idea. You go up through brown and then black belt. At each level, just outline a couple of steps. What’s the simplest thing you can do to start the process of getting your desk organized? It might be just taking an inventory. What’s on my desk? There’s your white belt step. The yellow belt step might be deciding what to do with some of the stuff you don’t want. Or I’m going to choose what I want and what I don’t want on my desk. So on and so forth. You just create a set of levels. It’s very simple.
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I like that!
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Sometimes people do tasking without mindfully being aware of that end goal. We can task ourselves into busy work. That’s not very effective. That’s why the idea of a goal – a black belt level in some sense – is really important to us.
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Thanks so much for reading our post today.
Learn more about Jim, his book, speaking and coaching. Next time, Jim will share how the Black Belt Mindset can help us avoid plateaus as we reach for our bigg goals. Please join us. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!
Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00459-081309.mp3
Bigg success is life on your own terms. The five elements of bigg success are money, time, growth, work and play. Today we’ll focus on money.
You may have noticed that the market is up year-to-date. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we’re still off quite a bit from the top.
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The main market indicator, the S&P 500, hit its highest level in history on October 9, 2007. The good old day, we guess you could call that.
It hit its most recent low on March 9, 2009, off 57% (excluding dividends) from that high nearly one-and-a-half years earlier. Of course, now we’re up over 49% from that March low but we’re still off about 35% from the high if we factor out dividends.
The bottom line is that our portfolios have still taken quite a hit. It made us wonder …
Are there investments that don’t lose value?
It depends on your goal.
Why do you invest? Obviously, you want more money. Why?
For some people, it’s the end. However, the end is pretty empty. For most of us, it’s a means to an end. Instead of financial returns, we really want emotional returns.
We want to be happier!
If that’s the case, research shows there may be a more direct path to happiness, assuming that basic needs — food, shelter and clothing – have been met.
We tend to follow an indirect path to happiness. For example, many people strive to build a portfolio that allows them to retire when they want.
One direct path to happiness is to do the work you love. Bea Arthur, the late-great actress, said:
“Actors don’t retire. People who work in jobs they don’t like retire.”
Invest time to find the work you love. Invest time doing the work you love. It’s an investment with returns beyond your wildest dreams.
Some people want more money so they can buy things. There is a more proven path to happiness.
Invest your time in relationships. Research shows this delivers higher returns on the happiness scale than having more money.
Bigg success is life on your own terms. The bigg idea behind bigg success is synergy. One place to search for synergy is between the five elements of bigg success.
Let’s look at two of the five elements of bigg success – money and work. You don’t need as much money to be happy if you’re doing work you love.
The funny thing, though, is that research shows that doing the work you love often leads to more money. If you put first things first, you end up better off all the way around. That’s synergy!
Now let’s look at money and play. Research shows that strong relationships lead to greater happiness than more possessions. You can save money by having friends.
It’s also interesting that, in our interconnected world, those relationships may very well lead to more money if you don’t force the issue. Put the relationship first and let the money follow.
Invest directly in happiness by investing time doing what you love with people you love. That’s bigg success!
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Thank you so much for checking in with us today. Please join us next time when we discuss mixing business with pleasure. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!
Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00456-081009.mp3
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(Image in today's post by svilen001)
