You Have To Give A Damn.

Period.

When it comes to achieving your ultimate goals, changing a bad habit you have to give a damn, you must care that you aren't at the level you want to be, or your business isn't performing at its ultimate level. When it comes down to it nothing much matters but the internal burn inside of you to give a damn enough to throw caution to the wind and say enough is enough I am going to be a force.

So, how do you create this burn if you can't find it within yourself right now and how long do you have to go before you have enough pain that you must stand up and take action. Ultimately only you can answer this questions, but here a few pointers on how to at least get some hunger.

Think about all the things you are missing out on because you won't get a rocket up your ass, it may be the opportunities to meet new and exciting people or the business opportunities passing you by, the opportunity to reach a new level of income or chance to change someone's situation for the better. These things aren't meant to depress you or think that it's too late to chnage they are to get you so pumped up that you are determined to not live without them for another moment.

Write a list of all the things you wish you could have, dont stop and judge anything that comes into your head just start writing all the things you wish you could do and wish you had done, make a list of a minimum of 100 items and see if you can go for 500, do not stop, nothing is out of the question, after all they are just words at this stage.

Once you have completed the list visualise yourself already doing these things think about the joy and happiness you will have from achieving and working towards these things, block out the negative emotions and simply concentrate on the good times. Imagine how exciting it would be if you woke up every morning and the first thing you did was to read through your list of dreams, you think that would get you pumped for the day?

You have to give a damn about your family and your life and make a change immediately, I believe that we all need external motivators of some kind to get us to move, however they will only take you so far, ultimately it is up to you to do the work and trust me it is going to be work, but remember as Mahatma Ghandi said " satisfaction is in the efforts, not in the attainment, full satisfaction is full effort", remember to enjoy the ride, its your life and only you decide what it will be like.

As always i will give you an example of a tool I have used (and still am) to get me to break from a bad habit and into a new positive and fulfilling habit. I use the 21 Challenge to great effect, it begins by determining something that you want to change, set yourself a challenge of doing something that will build a new positive habit and forcing yourself to stick to it and if you dont do what you have determined to do you must start again from day 1.

In my situation, I had developed a bad habit of intentionally missing calls, especially private numbers, so I set myself the challenge to never intentionally miss a call again and to call back as soon as I possibly could if I did miss a call. Is this something you could do?

Tips to get started.

Write a goals list
Set a 21 challenge and stick to it
Plan, prepare and execute
Model yourself on someone you aspire to (see "Get A Mentor!" Feb 1)
Never Give Up
Think Positive, write a personal mantra that you can recite (20-30 words)
Communicate what you are doing to others, how would that increase your motivatuon?
Give A Damn and Take Action

Good Luck
AP

How Evernote Changed My Life!

s we all continue to find new and innovate ways to fit all of life's little joys and necessities into our busy schedule the need for organisation is paramount, as is the need to recognise your strengths and weaknesses. A weakness I have always had is my memory I know that if something comes through my head it had better be down on paper or told to someone asap or its gone.

Some of the best ideas have gone by the wayside due to not accepting this weakness and doing something about it, luckily for me Evernote has worked it all out for me, if you haven't seen this great little program I highly recommend jumping on their site (www.evernote.com) now dont get me wrong I wasn't completely smitten with the program the first time i used it in October last year, but after I updated to my Macbook in January I took another look at the system and have found out why this little program is raved about all across the world.

I can now mind dump any idea I have easily through my blackberry or desktop whether that be a a business idea, personal reminder, article clipping, web page or even a blog entry idea (such as this one). The little machine with store the information , categorise it and allow me to never forget another note or idea again. I can ever leave a voice note over my Blackberry, or take an image for a design idea and send it straight through to my Evernote Desktop.

Evernote has truly changed my life and I recommend it as a fantastic business tool for any budding entrepreneur.

If you have any other programs that you use, please either leave a comment or throw me a line as i am always interesting in trying to organise my life even more

AP

Get A Mentor!

Recently I have been looking into people who are and have had fantastic impacts on the world and looked into what makes them do the extraordinary things they do.

Which bring me to my blog post tonight, Get A Mentor, a common theme i have discovered amongst all the people I have been researching including Donald Trump, Kaleil Tuzman, Brian Tracy, Anthony Robbins and more is the fact that they learnt and asked questions of at least one person who was achieving at or near a level they wanted to achieve in their own lives.

Napoleon Hill in his book think and grow rich talks about getting a mastermind group, a group of people that you can focus you attention towards achieving great things and your individual ultimate goals.

If you haven't got a mentor yet you should think very hard on a person you would most like to model yourself on ir you believe can teach and help you develop your own unique skills. The person may be someone from your past that you remember was an influence on you in some kind, a strong voice of impact for you, a business or professional that you aspire to at work, or a businessesman or author that you may feel demonstarted the qualities you wish to possess.

We all need help and guidance from time to time, thats what our friends and family have been our entire life, and considering you will likely spend as much time at work and developing yourself than any other single thing in the course of the rest of your life its important that this part of your life gets the attention its deserves.

To give you an example of some mentors from my own life, my first mentor was Jim Shapcott who was my first boss who started my affinity to learning and reading, fast tracked my negotiation and sales skills and toughened me up at a point when i needed it.

Another mentor for me continues to be Kaleil Tuzman, a businessman, enteprenuer, venture capitalist and genuine business heavy weight (see his blog at www.kaleil.com), ever since I first saw Kaleil in Startup.com, a documentary about the creation of his first online business Govworks, I have attempted to model the things that he does including his ability to communicate objective, willingness to go after a big project, handling meetings, sales and work ethic.

Its important to note that you must select a mentor that you believe aligns to your similar values and you can see your self modeling, however the most important part of the process to ask questions, of yourself, of your mentor, of your decision, keep asking questions for questions will be your line to success, dont hesitate in your decision, jump in, splash around and learn to swim as fast as possible.

Work Hard, Work With Passion, Work To A Purpose.

AP

Keep a Journal for Success

I'm currently re-reading The Blair Years - extracts from the Alastair Campbell diaries and most noteworthy, beyond the great insight into how a political machine operates, is the great benefits that Alastair Campbell must have gained from the constant retrospect of the emotions he was felling in key situations in his life.

A major key to understanding yourself and why you react in certain situations is understanding the emotions you felt in situations in your past and taking note to either reconstruct those emotions or ensure you do not react in the same way, but working out why you had that reaction in the first place.

Journals are a fantastic way to take note of your emotions and the events that make up your life, giving you a better chance of adjusting your reactions to those that are suited more to your values.

Sales - Relationships

How do you like to be treated when a salespeople comes to see you?
Why this isn't the number one question in sales programs around the country i don't know, how do we expect prospects to return to us on an ongoing basis if we aren't making the necessary effort to communicate with them and the necessary time to create the right relationship, sure we want the prospect to purchase our product, but our focus should be on them to "buy" from us, not on us to"sell" to them.

Why is it important to build relationships with clients? mainly because we must see the client as someone we will be doing business with for years, whether or not that is with the current company your with or not, because you will always want a full rolodex of people to call on at anytime to discuss your product.

Another reason is that how many people does this prospect know, what is this person going to say about you to other businesses people that they know? (trust me they know some), what would they say about you if asked? If by finding more ways to help this person would they be willing to open more doors for? the answer is ultimately yes, so what can you do to build relationships?

• Get to know the person - find out things about there family, there interests, there charities
  
• Call upon that person to ask how they are going without being prompted - why not call and ask if there is anything you may be able to do better? dont wait until there is a problem for them to call
• Ask there advice - people like to be seen as an expert, so let people tell you about how much they know - you may find something out
• Send them things of interest - emails relating to their interests, a card on their birthday etc.

Don't forget the prospect will be in your life for a very long time, so you may as well get used to liking him/her, because if there is a problem its a much easier fix if you are friendly.

Tasks

1. Call everyone on your list & find out how business is going, don't forget check the website to see if there are things going on
2. Make a list of what you know about your clients and find something to send them relating to their interests
3. Ask some advice from your clients about ways to improve your product you should be able to make 5 calls per day