Blogs

Please find a range of blogs below:

How to make a New Year's Resolution

1. Make it easy. 2. Only pick one thing. 3. Then, avoid goals, charts, and discipline. (Remember, we used them last year and they didn’t work. Hint.) Instead, create easy habits that will move us toward our “one thing” in our New Year’s resolution. For example, our “one thing” is to lose weight. We can create a habit of a tasty, healthy breakfast we enjoy. This will prevent us from donut overload mid-morning. We can create a habit of “quiet personal time” where we can listen to our favourite music. We can... Read full article

Get more presentations with as little as five words.

​ Anyone can grab a prospect’s interest by using the correct words. The bad news is that we don’t know the words for each of our 14 skills. But the good news is that we can learn them. Now, to get someone to anxiously await your presentation, simply start with these five words: "Guess what happened to client ?" Magic.  Prospects lean forward. Humans can’t resist listening to stories. That is why we love gossip, books, and movies. We can’t go on in life unless we know how the story ends. Stories attract interested... Read full article

Silencing my critics.

​ When I started as a coach and speaker, everyone was a critic. Why give a career in the Royal Air Force? its solid, you get a pension. I wanted to silence my critics with my success. Unfortunately, it took a lot longer than I expected. I started my career with incompetence, and when that didn’t work, I worked even harder doing more incompetent things. Yes, I doubled my daily output of stupid activity. How did that work out? Not well. My results only improved when I learned new things to say. It was a humbling lesson. I couldn’t just use... Read full article

Afraid of selling?

Maybe we've seen too many movies of sleazy salesmen from the 1970s. Here is how selling should work. Step #1. Listen to our prospects to see if they have a problem that we could fix. (If we listen, they will like us.) Step #2. Ask our prospects if they want to fix their problems. (Yes, some people want to keep their problems. It makes them happy.) Step #3. Find out when our prospects want to fix their problems; now, or sometime in the future. (Timing is everything. They may have bigger issues at the moment. We will respect that.) Step #4. If they... Read full article

This is easy to do.

Out of the many hours of television we watched last week, how much of it do we remember? Not much. And how many of those hours were useful for our business? Probably none. But we rationalize watching this television as unwinding from a job we hate. Good excuse. However, what if we used some of those hours to learn something new? Something that could help our fun part-time business become our fun full-time business? Then we wouldn’t have to unwind. Why go through life with a job we don’t like? Does this apply to everyone? No. But if it applies to us,... Read full article

What do we remember?

Brain science confirms that we don’t remember details, for many different reasons. But now we know that studying for history tests and memorizing names and dates was way too hard. Now we have Google. We can just look up that stuff. But wait. What about our prospects? If they don’t remember facts, what do they remember? Our brains remember concepts and feelings. And as presenters, we don’t even get our concepts and feelings past their attention filters. Sad. What should we do? We want an audience for our message. First, we must get past... Read full article

From “hi” to keen prospect in a minute.

​ Accepted social conversation sequence: #1. What is your name? #2. Where do you live? #3. What do you do for a living? At networking events. #1. Let me tell you what I do. (Data dump.) #2. What do you do? Problems are 10x the power of solutions. “I show people/companies/salesmen how to ______ .” Technically correct, but no rapport enhancement. “Well, you know how … problem … solution.” (Declarative.) “Have you ever noticed this situation? I solve that situation.” (Question. Longer... Read full article

I blame my astrologer.

If my astrologer, John, was any good, last year he would have seen the 2020 "virus asteroid" passing through the rare alignment of Saturn and Pluto. Guess his Nintendo addiction is decaying his mind. Or it could be his six-pack-of-beer-before-noon addiction. Anyway, John didn’t warn me that communication with prospects was going to get harder! Maybe I should switch to John’s mom, who is a fortune teller. Yeah, maybe I’ll plan my marketing based upon fortune tellers. Sounds like an equally moronic plan ... I’d better stop with the... Read full article

Make things simple.

What does this mean? Here was a company’s description: "We design, build, and run in-house, bespoke Leadership Development Collaborative spaces, creating a unique digital Community of Practice for organizations." Do you know what they do? I don’t. But maybe their target audiences are people that talk like this and understand their language. But this could be how we sound to our prospects when we get excited and talk about our business. It is not what we say that counts, it is what they understand and remember that counts. So how do we... Read full article

What to say to complainers.

When a team member complains about something, simply say, "And what solution would you propose if you were a leader?" This teaches team members to solve their own problems and take personal responsibility for their business success. What holds us back. The only thing between where we are now and where we want to be is ... what we don’t know yet. Don’t let others tell us that we are not motivated, that our goals are too weak, or that we don’t care. That isn’t the problem. As we learn what we don’t know now, we will get... Read full article

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