From a different perspective...

I have one of the toughest jobs in the organization. Some think it's fluffy. They think I have to be a airy-fairy, free-feeling, pot-smoking hippy to get results. I'm the opposite of that. I'm all about results. And the reality is everything is cyclical. There are good times when I can do no wrong and there are lean times when I'm bored out of my mind because my competition has figured out a new strategy to pull customers toward them.

When I first took this job, I used to run around and try to convince others that my product was the best. I would try to pull them away from my competitors. Then I realized that I can't force people to do something they don't want to do anyways. They want to try the competition because their offering seems more appealing. The more they try it, the more they think they like it. Even though they don't. But I'm too busy to waste my time on people who don't want to hear from me. I only work with those who like what I offer. So I stick with them until someone calls me.

I have one rule.
I don't call on customers. They call on me.

I can't convince them to want my services. They have to convince themselves.

I wasn't on the job very long when I realized the cyclical nature of this business. I work my hardest after turmoil and strife. Negative emotions worked long enough on a person become tiring. It's all consuming.  As anger consumes people, it gets so heavy that people give up.

It's when they give up the anger, hate and fear, that I do my best work.

I haven't been working very hard these days. There's an air of fear throughout the world. People are angry. Politicians are fuelling it a bit. People have hate in their hearts. It's sad. But I'm waiting. I'm running a couple of miles a day in my spare time. I need to stay in shape. I've seen this movie before. It's gonna get a lot slower for me. But then, look out. I'll have to work overtime 7 days a week.

As time moves on, there's no way I can do the job by myself. Right now, it's no problem. The boss knows that dark days are ahead so he isn't pushing me hard. He's asked me to come up with a plan to satisfy the objectives when needed.

Some think I have to hire help. Hiring doesn't help. I can't teach someone to care who doesn't already understand it. They have to have it within them.

I need help but the right talent isn't available.

Wanna know what I do?

I grow them! I plant them, nurture them, and water them. I talk to them everyday in my garden. Some call them clones. Some call them cupids.

Call them what you want, they are the future missionaries of my life's work. I will die one day but there will be another who will take my place at the heart of my business.

Business isn't that good right now. But it soon will be. People have no choice but to love. It's in them. I know because I put a seed in every single one of them when they were born. They are confused right now but they soon won't be.

-From the perspective of Love

All the good ideas are taken

If Apple thought all the good ideas were taken, they would never have invented the iPad.
If Elon Musk thought all the good ideas were taken, he wouldn't be revolutionalizing the car industry.

Most of us don't work for Apple or Elon Musk. But we all need good ideas in our lives.

Do you want to come up with some good ideas for your job or your business?

Yesterday we did a 10 minute brainstorming session for a yoga studio. The question was what could the company do to become more remarkable. There was one rule. No one could say that an idea was bad.

Here were some of the answers:
Do a cleanse as a value add.
Have a juicer and sell juices.
Have a Facebook page...

And the list went on, boring as hell.

Then one guy said: Offer yoga to lumbersexuals!

It made no sense but we weren't allowed to comment on the idea. A bunch of people giggled imagining grown men with full beards in yoga pants.

Then a couple more boring ideas hit the table, until someone said offer yoga dating.

Then another person said offer yoga glow in the dark sessions.

Then another person said beat the Guiness Book of World Records for the most people at once doing Yoga on the beach.

Every time someone laughed at an idea, we knew we were on to something. It might truly be a bad idea. At least it got our attention, we laughed and we wanted to know more. Wanting more, lowering inhibitions gave permission to others to be ridiculous.

It is in the ridiculous that the great ideas will emerge.

If the yoga girls are serious about opening this business, they have some work to do. But the worst thing they can do is be like every other yoga studio in the world. It's too hard to stand out. It's too hard to get noticed. It's too costly in time and money to wait for customers to figure out how good you are (if you are good).

These ideas are just ideas. The real work is in the execution.

The exercise demonstrated what can happen when people aren't limited by their inhibitions, their ridiculousness and negativity.

Be ridiculous. The answers are waiting for you there.

Source energy

I had coffee yesterday with a man who I've always respected from a far.  He told me he wanted to talk. He detailed his plan in moving forward in his business.  I sat there with great humility listening to this wonderful man asking me for advice.

As I watched and listened, a feeling came over me that it was not me providing advice to him.  He was providing guidance to me.  This great man is is a king among kings.  He's not rich nor is he royalty.

It's his energy. He has a magnetic personality. His smile is pure love. Despite his business accomplishments I respect this man for who he is not what he has done.

I read a great quote this week that said in order to be great one must first be good.

Despite his greatness, he showed me that we are all fragile children looking and desiring to achieve our purpose.

This great man stood before me in humility and described his fears and dreams.

At an early age I was taught that emotion (mostly crying) demonstrated weakness and fragility.  We learn to suppress those emotions over time.The hardening of time gives us the illusion that we become stronger. When in fact we are still scared fragile children.

Science has proven that color does not exist. Color is nothing more  then a series of wavelengths. The length of the wave determines the color human eyes perceives. Sound does not exist. Sound is nothing more than vibration.  When the vibration changes so does the sound a human ear perceives. Smell is an illusion. Smell is perceived by humans based on the reaction of different chemicals combining together.

Physics has proven that life is nothing but energy.  No one has to be a quantum physicist to know that. When I apply energy to my woodstove I get heat. A live human has heat. When we die the heat gets removed. In the absence of heat, energy is no longer contained.

And all energy has a source. When I turn on the lights in my home, a nuclear reactor generates energy 400 miles away to make that happen. I don't understand nuclear energy. I've never seen the plant. But I know it exists when I turn on my lights.

People are bowls of energy. We didn't happen by accident. We were created.  We are connected with translucent wires to each other. All of us independent but depend on each other. All of us connected to a power plant source.

The man I met yesterday was looking for advice for me yet he was the one who taught me an extremely valuable lesson.

We are not people. We are all just bowls of energy filled with fear, hope and desire...

Limiting beliefs

I'm too old. It's too risky at my age.
I'm too young. No one will take me serious.
My business is slow in the summer because everyone is on vacation.
My business is declining because the economy isn't very good.
I'm too fat to be attractive to someone.
I'm too skinny to be attractive to someone.
I don't have enough money to start a business.
I have too much money to risk on a business.

I could go on. I hear them everyday. Excuses that limit our ability to be successful. The excuses get engrained into our belief system and as long as we believe these statements to be true, they are.

It's called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What if we talked differently to ourselves?
What if we positioned these statements in a positive frame of mind?

Instead of saying what we can't do, what would happen if we asked ourselves the question, "How can we do it?".

It would mean that we have to take responsibility for our actions. It would mean that we are in control of our results.

And that may be scary for some of us.

Because the only reason we don't succeed is because we don't give ourselves permission.

Covalent bonds

Water molecules are created from the bonding of electrons from an oxygen molecule to electrons of two hydrogen molecules (H2O).

Oxygen wants hydrogen to make water.
Hydrogen wants and needs oxygen to make water.
If the bond is done in one way, it creates water.
If the bond is done differently, it creates hydrogen peroxide.
Humans need water to survive.
Hydrogen peroxide can be poison.

Bonds require interdependence.

Customers need products.
Businesses fulfills needs of the customers.
If the bond is formed properly under the right conditions, a loyal customer will be the result.
If there is no bond, the customer bounces around until she finds another business to bond to.
Businesses need loyal customers to survive.
Disloyal customers are the hardest to please and the most expensive to market to.

Poor attempts at bonding creates poison.
Done the right way, a bond will create magic.

Enterprises existence is based on creating the right covalent bonds.

Marketing 101

There are two ways to deliver marketing.

The first way is to scream from the mountaintops, hoping someone, anyone will hear you. If enough people are looking for that product at that exact time, they may come to see you. You may get a sale out of it.

If you want attention, all you need to do is interact with lots of people. Someone is bound to be in the market at that particular time. But screaming isn't always the best way to get attention. I learned with my kids that whispering can have the exact same effect.

The second way is to deliver such a memorable story that potential customers think about you long after they hear the message. They don't have to be "in-market" to buy. But one day when they are, the message will still resonate enough for them to check you out. You'll get traffic and maybe even a sale.

Mass Media talks to everyone. If the message is poorly crafted, you will only talk AT customers who are "in-market" to buy when they hear the commercial. If the message is clear and remarkable, you talk WITH all customers who will someday be "in-market" to buy.

Talking AT people will be effective if you time it right. Talking WITH people will be always be effective.

The media doesn't matter as much as the message. Have a clear message and business will take care of itself.

The same thing works with dating. If you want a date, get a girl to laugh. She'll remember you for weeks.

You're so smart you have two brains

The brain is made of two hemispheres. In fact, they are very much two separate brains.

The left hemisphere is responsible for analytics, and logic. It breaks problems down into component parts. We learn and understand science, mathematics and reasoning in this part of the brain.

The right hemisphere is responsible for creativity. It's where we learn how to dance, sing, play a musical instrument, draw, paint and create stories. This area of our brain takes illogical pieces and puts them together to create.

In grade one, we all loved to draw and paint. Research has proved that all children at this age think of themselves as creative.

By grade ten, less than ten percent of them still feel creative.

What happens in nine short years?

Puberty probably plays a role as children try to conform. Creativity requires people to be a bit weird. Weird is not cool in high school.

I believe the suppression of our creativity has a lot to do with the educational system. As children progress through the system, creative classes which require right brain processes are replaced with logical, left brain analysis.

Art and music classes are reduced to one day per week, replaced with mathematics, sciences, history and social studies. By the time our children get into high school, these creative classes are abolished entirely.

Imagine a child quitting school in grade three. Her reading would be basic. Her ability to calculate simple math problems would be slow. She would know nothing about history or science unless she went out on her own to discover it.

That's what the system has done to the creative learning of our children. It has stunted it. It's still there. Unexercised, fat, and unhealthy, the right brain has gotten lazy.

The only way out of this rut is to exercise the brain to be creative again.

If you haven't tapped into your creativity lately, you're only using one of your brains. What a shame to have your other brain taking up so much space and not paying rent.

Women tap into the creative right brain more often than men. Intuition is the ability to see patterns in illogical events to know the logical result.

Don't mess with a woman's intuition.