The Motivation Manifesto Part 2

     

             Last month we introduced the Motivation Manifesto. This month we will talk about the first 5 Declarations.  

            So, what does Brendon Burchard’s first Declaration of Meeting Life with Full Presence and Power mean? Well, it means a lot of things like a better future can be imagined in segments of time, but it is only in this time that a better future can be built. We have to ask ourselves what kind of person and what kind of experience do we want to choose to manifest right now? Those that have such presence of mind get to live a life that is connected (united), real and positive. In the end, the sunshine of enlightenment spreads to those who understand that the moments in our lives must not go unnoticed and unlived.

            How about Declaration 2 of Reclaiming Our Agenda? Sadly, many people get stuck in life because they never rise above their timid desires to please others. We must learn to artfully deal with anyone who tries to derail our mission, even if they are family. Let’s take back our day tomorrow by scribing our dreams tonight. Let’s create our own Manifesto, our own Declaration! After all, let’s not forget that human nature naturally steers us toward self-reliance and freedom… Let ring the freedom bell and Declare our own Freedom!

            In discussing Brendon Burchard’s Declaration 3, Defeating our Demons we must remember that our own thoughts defeat us more than circumstances do. We are all plagued by doubt, but the great ones somehow find faith and begin anyways. Once again, these few are not lucky; they simply are more intentional and more practiced at defeating their internal demons.

            Now let’s look at the bright side of this, Enlightenment comes to those who free themselves from self-oppression. And in contrast, if you choose to look at the dark side of all of this and want to think about what doubt does to us… think about this… because of doubt, not only do we fail to do what we could have done, but even worse; we fail to become what we could have become.

            Now onto Declaration 4, Advance with Abandon. Our destiny hinges on a mindset for bold action. Courageous people see circumstances as temporary. They know reality is bendable to their iron will.

            However, it’s important to remember though that in Declaration 4, once again, the most common sticking point is that we desire to gain permission from those we trust and love. We’re going to have to deal with this seeking permission thing if we truly want to be free and successful. In addition, we must also remember that hardships are good because only in hardships can our weaknesses be exposed and then finally expelled…

            Declaration 5 of Practicing Joy and Gratitude reminds us that life is a journey, a trying and exciting adventure whose destination matters less than the passions and freedoms felt along the way. After all, what is our life’s purpose if it’s not to live? And by living, we all need to be reminded of that miraculous life energy that brought us into existence.

            Where is that miraculous life energy today? It’s still there if we know where to look. And while we’re looking, we should not focus on the shadows in the corner of the room and be so foolish to miss the fact that the shadow only exist because the room is illuminated. Find that illumination in the dark among the shadows and we’ll find our life energy that will just so happen coincide with joy and gratitude.

           Next month we'll talk about the last 4 Declarations of the Motivation Manifesto.

Dan Blanchard is an award-winning author, speaker, educator; a parenting expert and a certified life-coach!

www.GranddaddysSecrets.com

Get Ready,Get Set-Don't Go - Go 80/20

It feels like there are a million things coming at you, and they all have to be taken care of by you. They could be work related, family related, or some other kind of related, but now there are so many that you’re having trouble sleeping. You toss and turn in your bed while all the things you have to get done toss and turn in your head. You wake up tired, wondering for one fleeting second what it might feel like to start the day feeling good, but as you climb out of bed, the demands of the day take over.
And what will you do tomorrow? My guess is that you’ll wash, rinse, and repeat. 
I want to fill you in on a secret too many people learn to appreciate way too late in life. A vast majority of what you do is an absolute waste of time—your most precious and valuable resource. Time is not a commodity. Once it’s gone, there’s no buying or selling strategy that can replace it. There is no amount of money, fame, social status, or recognition that can suddenly produce an extra hour, day, or week.
On some level, we understand this and yet we still do things we know aren’t going to get us anywhere in the long run; like trying to impress the boss with how great we are, or getting the boss to openly acknowledge that we’re doing good work simply because we feel the need for a pat on the back.
Maybe promises have been made and now we’re in so deep that the idea of changing course is too frightening to seriously consider. Instead, we dig in deeper while trying to convince ourselves that everything will work out, and “It will all be worth it in the end.” I’m sure those were somebody’s famous last words.
The solution? Remind yourself of the 80/20 principle:

80% of your outcomes come from 20% of your inputs

That means:
20% of your relationships provide you with 80% of your joy. Decide which of your relationships comprise the 20% and start the process of stepping away from the rest. The difference between the two groups of people is easy to discern. The 20% lift you up while the 80% bring you down.
20% of your efforts at work will account for 80% of your results. Skip the meetings, reports, and customers that interfere with the 20% of your work that produces efficient and tangible results. You might be challenged at first, but if you’re truly narrowing your business down to the top 20, the results of your actions should speak for themselves.
20% of your investments give you 80% of your return. Is there a way to be more proactive with the less than stellar remaining 80%?
I could go on and on about all the ways applying this principle could change your life for the better, but I’d rather stop while this post still falls in the top 20%. So, the next time you’re starting to feel the stress of all those “things” coming at you, put aside a few minutes to take a good look at them and decide if they fit within your 80/20 profile. It shouldn’t take you anywhere near as long as it would if you were trying to do it while you’re sleeping.

Alan Luoma: I am a Sales Coach with extensive experience in industrial sales, sales management, new product development, sales and product training. I work with a great national sustainable packaging company and their distributors to increase sales. I have become an expert on seeking out and on eliminating behaviors that prevent sales people from being successful. I enjoy uncovering sales prevention departments that hinder a companies success. I am a member of the Hartford Springfield Speakers Network, The National Speakers Association and New England Speakers Association. You can view my profile on LinkedIn, or contact me at Luoma@snet.net

Make MUCH More Money in MUCH Less Time with a Product and Service Funnel

If you are a coach, consultant, speaker, or another type of "expert" entrepreneur, and all you offer are big-ticket products and services, such as keynote speeches or large $1,000+ coaching and consulting packages, then you are missing out on a HUGE market of customers and clients and multiple income streams.  You also are working a lot harder for your money than you have to.

First you MUST MUST MUST have something of GREAT VALUE that is FREE in EXCHANGE for an email address.  Your email list is your pot of gold. Your give-away must be something that is so juicy and urgent for your target customers and clients, that it can't be passed up.  Sorry, a "newsletter" doesn't cut it anymore. Yawn. You have to be more creative.

Then, you want to have at least one product or service at each layer of the funnel, so that you can meet people at their respective price points and work them down your funnel into higher ticket items.

Some people may only ever buy the $25-$100 item, but if you didn't have one, you'd miss out on that revenue completely.  And the people who bought your lower-priced products and services are more likely to eventually buy the higher ticket ones, because they got to know, like, and trust you first.

It's much harder to sell a $5,000 product or service to a stranger than someone who has been a customer before.

So what kinds of things can you sell in your funnel?  Here are some examples.

Note: Product and service pricing is different for every business.  Some webinars might be $25 and others might be $100-$200 or more. It depends on your content, your customers, your brand and expert status, demonstrative results, and other factors. 

FREE

• e-Book
• short report
• audio or video series
• daily/weekly tips
• first chapter of a longer book 
  

$25-$100

• book or workbook
• a paid teleseminar or webinar
• a ticket to a live 1-2 hour presentation
• a subscription to a magazine or membership website

$100-$500

• a system or toolkit (a set of templates)
• a 4 to 6-week webinar/teleclass
• a consultation or coaching session
• a 1-2 day workshop

$500-$1,000

• a speaking fee
• a smaller coaching/consulting package
• an action plan
• a higher-level conference/workshop

$1,000-$5,000

• a speaking fee
• a retreat
• a "done for you" product/service (like a website) 

$5,000+ ($10K-$25K-$100K)

• a keynote address
• longer-term coaching program
• corporate/executive consulting

Again each business is different.  A health coach offering a nutrition plan may only charge $100.  While a corporate consultant may do a business plan for $50,000. So the price points of the funnel may be different too.

Ideally, you will be trying different things at different levels of your funnel and see what sells the best.  It's a process to get the right mix, but even while you test and refine, you'll be making much more money along the way and well into the future.

If you are a coach, consultant, speaker or other kind of "expert" service-driven entrepreneur, leveraging the power of groups is the key to growing a 6 and 7-figure business. To learn more, go to www.MoreClientsLessTime.com.

Michelle Demers
More Clients in Less Time

Michelle Demers has worked with hundreds of coaches, consultants, and speakers over the past 15 years on sales, branding, online and offline marketing, and product and service development. She is the Founder and Principal of “More Clients in Less Time” specifically helping coaches, consultants, and speakers to get out of the exhausting grind of one-on-one clients and into the limitless financial potential of group coaching and training programs.  

 Michelle lives and works just outside of Boston and can be reached at michelle (@) resonateinc.net and 203.623.1564. She works with clients anywhere and everywhere across the world.

10 Things to do with Every Business Email You Receive

CHECK OUT THEIR PROFILE ON LINKEDIN to learn more about them. Do this to determine if there is something you can do to help them first, then determine if they can help you.

SEND THEM A CONNECTION REQUEST if you're not already connected. At the very least they could possibly see your WHAT'S HAPPENING updates.

ASK THEM FOR A RECOMMENDATION on Linkedin. Use their experience with you and what you do to give something to your prospects to see.

WRITE THEM A RECOMMEND ON LINKEDIN if you're familiar with their work and you feel comfortable endorsing them.

INVITE THEM to your Facebook, Youtube and/or Pinterest business page if you have one. It plugs them even further into your network.

ADD THEM TO A GOOGLE+ CIRCLE and/or find and follow them on Twitter. If you don't have a Twitter account, open one today.

INVITE THEM TO JOIN A LINKEDIN DISCUSSION GROUP you moderate or are active in. If you don't moderate a discussion group, consider starting one now based on your subject matter expertise.

CONNECT THEM WITH SOMEONE IN YOUR NETWORK who may be able to help them in some aspect of growing their business, and do it via email.

ASK FOR THEIR PERMISSION TO ADD THEIR NAME TO YOUR MAILING LIST. Doing it without asking them is bad business.

SEND THE ORIGINAL EMAIL TO YOURSELF MARKED AS AN ACTION ITEM if something further is needed before you delete it.

Bill Corbett is the founder and organizer of the HARTFORD SPRINGFIELD SPEAKER'S NETWORK and an award winning professional speaker who has been speaking since 1995. He has been on stages across the U.S. for everything from brief lectures to keynote speeches to multi-day training events, and will be the featured speaker at a conference in The Netherlands this Fall. He is a regular contributor to network television affiliates and provides one-on-one speaker coaching for business professionals. Learn more about him and his top-selling Amazon books.

WHAM!! It Hits You Hard, Straight Out of Left Field

Ever had one of those uncomfortable experiences when a relationship with someone in your network suddenly goes bad without warning? What about the incidents that catch you totally off guard when you receive an email, phone call or letter, informing you that they are ending the relationship because of something they claim you did or did not do? How about when they won't tell you what it was?

What about the incidents in which the person doesn't return your calls or emails, or you detect something's wrong in their voice or tone. Worse yet, they just stop communicating with you altogether, for some reason that is unknown to you. Even others in your network are aware of some sort of problem but won't or can't tell you?

So you try and reach out to them to make amends, even though you're not really sure what it was you did. What if it WAS something you said or did that was unintentional or misinterpreted completely wrong? And of course, there are those incidents in which you make an honest mistake and see that they took your action or words so hurtful that it seems that the damage may be irreversible.

If you're a mover and a shaker in your industry, one of these situations has likely happened to you and it was probably painful, especially if you're the sensitive type. Your network has so many "moving parts" (relationships) that your chances of experiencing one of these bristly events is high. It may have even involved family members.

Initial feelings in the aftermath might be, anger, fear, disappointment (in you OR the other person), and more. You may experience some or all of these uncomfortable emotions, all within a short time period. Eventually, it may hit you in your most vulnerable thoughts and feelings; your self-doubt about who you are and what you are capable of. Your self-esteem may even take a hit. Every flaw you feared you had is now throbbing.

In order to recover quickly, it's important to keep in mind that it may not really have anything to do with you, you just became the object of something that is going on with them. This concept is hard to grasp when you're feeling the hurt. If the other person won't reveal what happened or even if they do, it may be hard to see their point of view. It is best to make any repairs that you may be responsible for, remain open to learning from the experience, and allow yourself to heal.

Have you experienced this yourself? Add a comment to tell your story and describe what you did to heal from the incident. Share with us how you recovered and what, if anything, you learned from the incident. Offer any tips you've learned along the way on how not to take something like this so personal.

Bill Corbett is a professional speaker in the field of behavior and has a degree in clinical psychology from the University of Phoenix. He has been selected to deliver the keynote at a national Dutch conference for teachers and families in September of 2015. Learn more about him at http://StartaSpeakingBusiness.com.

Bill organizes and facilitates the Hartford Springfield Speakers Network in Southern New England so that he can hang out with like-minded professionals. He's the author of 8 books, including the Amazon top selling Kindle book, HOW TO BECOME A CONFERENCE SPEAKER.

What to do When No One Signs up for Your Workshop

Conducting public seminars, either free or for a fee, use to be a lucrative means for experts to bring in some extra income, increase their customer base, build their brand, sell their products, and up sell clients to more advanced training and coaching. But lately it seems that getting folks to register for anything is becoming more and more difficult. 

I’ve been asking professionals who I meet, why they think this problem exists. Some of the reasons I’ve hear are: there are too many out there vying for everyone’s attention, they have limited time or money to spend on attending these types of events, and they've attended too many that focused too much on the up sell toward the end and not enough on delivering what was promised. This last one has left a bad taste in their mouths for registering for future events.

The Best Bluetooth Speaker for Your Next Workshop

Instead of renting a hotel room, creating social media buzz, and hoping enough people register, an alternative route may be to go through an organization that manages an existing community. It is highly likely that your prospects all belong to an organization that connects people by employment, skill, education, interests, beliefs, or fellowship.

One alternative way of reaching your potential customer is through an organization they belong to and finding a creative way to engage that organization to allow you to conduct seminars for their members. Imagine your classic prospect in your mind and write down everything you know about them. What are the common interests that they share with others like them and investigate to see if an organization exists that pulls like individuals together.




As a behavior specialist, a classic prospect for me is a school principal who hires trainers and speakers for staff professional development days, and most principals belong to a principal association. Taking action, I sent my press kit to this association and included a proposal for a short presentation I could do for them free of charge, at their next association meeting. The annual meeting organizer eventually contacted me and invited me to speak at their meeting. From that free presentation came numerous RFPs for future training opportunities at individual schools.

So… what groups do YOUR prospects belong to?

Bill Corbett is a professional speaker who delivers keynote speeches and training seminars across the United States, and helps his clients leverage 2.0 strategies in order to grow top line revenues. Bill has built several successful businesses from the ground up using top-notch entrepreneurial techniques to implement inbound marketing campaigns. He is a much sought after business consultant, trainer and mentor, is a regular contributor to major network television affiliates, and currently produces two television shows as part of his own unique marketing plan. You can visit his website http://The20Entrepreneur.com or email him at bill@billcorbett.com.

5 Ways to Boost Your Book Or Business With a Podcast

I often get asked whether creating a podcast is worth the time and effort. My experience both as a podcaster and helping speakers, authors and coaches create podcasts is that it is worth the effort, but you have to be strategic and know what you're doing. Here are 5 ways to boost your book or business with a podcast:

1) Expand Your Reach Through Interviews: If you do an interview based podcast you can reach out to leaders in your field. What I recommend is to make a list of 5-10 thought leaders in your field, as well as influencers who can connect you with the people who most need to hear what you have to say.

2) Increase Your Credibility and Visibility: Whether you are doing interviews or a solo podcast (where it's you speaking without a guest) podcasts help position you as an authority. When you are the authority in your field, it helps you enroll people in your programs and services, and paves the way for people to read your books and other content. 

3. Create a Journey for Your Listeners: Many people will start podcasts, but few will stay with them, because they won't see results from their efforts. An important part of successful podcasting is creating a "journey" for listeners. Invite your listeners to join you on a teleseminar, or email you, or sign up for a free gift. It's not enough to create a podcast. You have to create engagement and an conversation, and invite and inspire your listeners to join you. Figure out what your "journey" is and give listeners a way to work and connect with you in a deeper way.

4. Get Listed on Industry Websites: A great way to boost your visibility and get the word out about what you do is to get listed on industry websites. A powerful way to do this is to interview leaders of organizations that are related to what you do. If you are not doing an interview based podcast, you can still get the word out by using a "curation" strategy. Mention the organizations website or events and put the links to their website on your show page. Then send the podcast to the organization. There is a very good chance that they will send your podcast out to their list and put it on their website. After all, it's an endorsement of them. 

5. Be consistent: A big part of what makes podcast so powerful is that it allows you to project yourself and your message to people all over the world. Make sure to release your podcast at a regularly scheduled day and time to build trust with your audience. Soon, your ideal listeners will be excited and looking forward to your new episodes. Those are the people who will be hungry to read your new books and buy your programs, products and services. 

Want to learn more about how podcasting can help you expand your reach and get your message out in a big way? Call me at 413-883-5518 for a free 30 minute consultation, or reach out at www.dougforesta.net