Can You Change Everything?

In a knowledge based economy, one in which knowledge is key to success, not strength or length of time, it is critical to accumulate knowledge at a much faster and more effective rate than before. This means that learning cannot end after college or you will get downsized or outsized.

Every morning I spend an hour a day reading various newspapers, articles and blogs in an effort to learn and to ultimately think differently to produce superior results. One of the great marketers and bloggers is Seth Godin. He had a great post yesterday about changing your situation and gave 45 suggestions of things you can do to jump start your business and/or life. Enjoy!

Can you change everything?

You might not be as permanently stuck in a rut as you think. The rut you're in isn't permanent, nor is it perfect. There are certainly less perfect ruts, but there may be better ones as well. The certain thing is that you can change everything...

1. Buy a competitor
2. Sell to a competitor
3. Publish your best work for free online
4. Close your worst-performing locations
5. Open a new branch in a high-traffic location
6. Hire the best salesperson away from the competition
7. Join the competition
8. Host a conference for your competitors
9. Connect your best customers and organize a tribe
10. Fire the 80% of your customers that account for 20% of your sales
11. Start a blog
12. Start a digital bootstrap business on the weekends
13. While looking for a job, spend 40 hours a week volunteering and freelancing for good causes
14. Go on tour and visit your best customers in person
15. Answer the customer service line for a day
16. Learn to be a killer presenter
17. Let the most junior person in the organization run things for a day
18. Delete your website and start over with the simplest possible site
19. Call former employees and ask for advice
20. Move to Thailand
21. Listen to audio books in your car instead of the radio
22. Sell your cash cow division to the competition and invest everything in the new thing
23. Find more products for your existing customers to buy
24. Become a gadfly and tell the truth about your industry
25. Quit your job
26. Move your operations to another city
27. Become a vegan
28. Have all meetings in a room with no chairs, and everyone wears a bathrobe over their clothes
29. Open your offices only four hours a day
30. Open your offices 24 hours a day for a week
31. Find every project that is near the danger zone (in terms of p&l or deadlines) and cancel it, no appeals
32. Go for a walk during lunch
33. Get an RSS reader and read a lot more blogs
34. Go offline for longer than you thought possible
35. Write five thank you notes every day
36. Stop sending spam
37. Do your work somewhere else. Set up your chiropractic table at the mall
38. Have everyone at work switch offices
39. Give your most valuable possessions to a stranger
40. Go see live music
41. Start a company scrapbook and take daily notes
42. Hire a firm to make a documentary about your organization
43. Buy some art
44. Make some art.
45. Do the work.

What the Fish Can't See

I have spent the last few days reflecting on a conversation I had with my mom the other night who just returned from China. She came back with a renewed enthusiasm about the opportunity that surrounds us. She reported that with the recent lift of communism, the Chinese citizens are seeing opportunity everywhere. She commented on the positive energy and vibe in Beijing. They recognize the freedom they have to create the lives they desire. They control their own future.

It is easy to get complacent when we have had it so good for so long. Just as the fish can't see or appreciate the water he swims in, we can't see or appreciate the opportunity that we have. With freedom to work where we want to work, study what and where we want to study, and spend our money how we want to spend it, it is laughable that we whine about our circumstances when we only have ourselves to blame.

We are a sum of our thinking, decisions and actions.

Take that fish out of water for about 10 seconds and I can guarantee that water is all it will think about. Maybe it is time for us to take a quick trip to a third world country to enable us to see the opportunity we are swimming in.

Is it a coincidence that the Russian ancestry group ranks first in the highest percentage of millionaire households per capita? Although the Russian ancestry group accounts for only about 1.1 percent of all households in America, it accounts for 6.4 percent of all millionaire households. It is estimated that approximately 22 of every 100 households headed by someone of Russian ancestry has a net worth of $1 million or more. 

James Allen said it best in As a Man Thinketh, "As a being of Power, Intelligence and Love, and the lord of his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which may make himself what he wills.”

Money as a Symbol

A friend of mine owns a coaching company, Sensible Coaching, focused on helping people with money. Her unique talent is helping people and their relationship with money.

She wrote a great article titled “Money as a Symbol” that has some very thought provoking observations.

“We assign meaning and significance to money that is purely arbitrary. We act as if money has will and volition on its own. We blame things on money, and, even more amazingly, we assign responsibility to money. Money seems to be responsible for ideas like “Rich people aren’t as nice as poor people” or “I always struggle with money”. The way these concepts are expressed makes it seem like money itself is the responsible party, and not the humans involved in the process.”

She then goes on to point out that many words in our culture simultaneously hold sway over both money and our sense of who we are. A few examples are:

Worth and worthy. No mistake here. Notice how often we seem to tie our worthiness to our worth. We even speak of “self worth”

Credit. We use the word “credit” to imply validity and trustworthiness, even to give praise. And then there is that whole issue of your credit when it comes to how much you can borrow. Have credit cards changed the way we think of the word “credit”?

Broke. Here’s the big one, if you are broke, are you broken? Many people feel a direct connection here, as if being broke truly does make you a broken human being.

I have had thoughts such as these at times in my life. With reflection, I have learned that money cannot buy me happiness or make me a good or likable person, just as it cannot make my unhappy or unlikable. I look at money as fuel I need to live the life I desire, and like any other fuel, it can run out at times and you can certainly get more.

I grew up with a phrase from a wise mother that was oft repeated, usually after I broke something or wrecked a car… “It is only money, let’s go make more.”

She understood what money was and what it was not. Money is the easiest of life’s problems to fix. 

It Is Not the Critic That Counts

"It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt, Paris - April 23, 1910

I have this quote hanging on the wall of my office and hope you find it as inspiring as I do.

What Is Your EVE Ratio?

EVE is an acronym for education versus entertainment. I was tipped off to a company called iLearningGlobal that talks about this EVE ratio.

They suggest that your future “destiny” depends greatly on your EVE ratio. I am not sure I agree with the word choice "destiny" but maybe destination. 

Most people spend far more hours and money on entertainment than they do on education and yet remain perplexed at how unsatisfied they are with the results or destination they have reached.

Did you know that the average U.S. household watched TV for 8 hours and 18 minutes a day from September 2007 to September 2008, which is a record high since the days Nielsen Co. started measuring television in the 1950s.

What is your EVE ratio? Take one week and add up the hours of each. 

Are you shocked at how little time and money you spend on improving yourself and your ability to build the life you desire?

The great Zig Ziglar said, “You don’t have to be great to start, but you do have to start to be great.”

Impact of Attitude on Life

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the past...we cannot change that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes." -   Charles Swindoll

This is a quote that my mother had hung on our fridge growing up. For years I was forced to look at it every time I was hungry. It was a mantra that she lived and in turn we learned from. What a blessing a positive, intentional mother is. What a better life I live for having been exposed to this philosophy.

Are They Scaring You?

I thought it would be important to take a step back for a moment and quickly analyze who is footing the bill for those that are acting as alarmists. Primarily journalists and politicians.

Journalists are paid by advertisers. Advertisers pay for high traffic and big viewership/readership. The more people the journalists can get to pay attention to what they are saying the more ads they can sell and the more money they make. They know that they are in the entertainment business. If they can trigger a mood of worry, we will keep coming back for more.

Politicians are paid by the American people. The masses. If everything is great, then we will feel like we do not need their help. So it is in their best interest to dramatize a situation with scary language so that we feel vulnerable and afraid, and they can come to the rescue like a knight in shining armor. Here to save the day and give everyone money.

Walking around in a state of worry and fear will never allow you to think clearly which is exactly what is needed in a changing environment. Just as past expansions inevitably set up future contractions, the present contraction is setting up our future expansion. Of course the ones who will be poised to take advantage of it will be the ones thinking clearly now.

Opportunities abound. In a year or two the stories will start to come out about the visionary, courageous people who thought clearly and created powerful business offers in the midst of the firestorm. Why can’t you be one of them? You can bet I am working on mine.

Don't Have Time for the Super Bowl?

Commuting from one appointment to another yesterday I tuned in to the Dan Patrick Show in an attempt to catch some March Madness talk. Roy Williams, head coach of number one seeded North Carolina and one of the all time winningest coaches in NCAA basketball history, was being interviewed.

He was asked the poll question of the day which had something to do with "if you would miss the Super Bowl or not". He answered by saying yes he would, but that it may not mean much coming from him as last year was the first year in many, many years that he has watched the entire game. I was shocked as I thought the Super Bowl was the one sporting event that attracted even non-sports fans.

When pressed by Dan Patrick, Roy Williams explained that four hours is a huge block of time and that he cannot justify spending that much time watching a game when he has so many things he could be doing that time of year.

What became apparent to me is that Roy Williams is so busy pursuing his own dreams and goals, that he doesn’t have time to watch others pursuing theirs. No wonder some people are wildly successful and most aren’t even close.

I was reminded of a quote I keep on my desk:

“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.” – Steve Prefontaine 

To Me Boxing is Like Ballet

“To me boxing is like a ballet, except there is no music, no choreography and the dancers hit each other.” Jack Handy, Deep Thoughts from SNL

Like the eloquent Jack Handy, I have learned to appreciate brutal spectacles like our current economy. It is like a good economy, except many are losing their jobs, people are hoarding their money and no one is happy.

At the same time, we need to be grateful for the actions it forces upon us. Americans are saving their money like we have not seen in years and years as the personal savings rate climbed to 3.2% in Q4 of ‘08, up from 1.3% in Q3 of ‘o8.

Home prices are dropping and making homes more affordable. As a real estate investor, even 12 months ago, it was impossible to buy a rental property and get it to cash flow with 20% down. There is a very generic rule of thumb for investing in real estate called the “1% Rule”.

In simple terms the gross monthly rent of a property should be at least 1% of the purchase price. A friend of mine is buying a duplex at around $300,000 and so the rents should be around $3000 a month, which they now are and wouldn’t have been without this market correction.

I love boxing, more than ballet if you can imagine a guy saying that…and I am learning to love corrections too!

Everything's Amazing, Nobody's Happy

A good friend of mine sent me one of the funniest videos I have seen in quite some time. What a difference a slight paradigm shift makes. 

"What we see depends mainly on what we look for." - John Lubbock

Share this with others you know that could use a different perspective.

Thank Your Lucky Stars It Ain't 1950

I ran across a great post by Todd Ballenger of Borrow Smart Retire Rich. His post on Lifestyle Inflation today is very insightful. It breaks down how much we have to work at the average wage to buy typical household goods and compared today’s hours versus 1950’s. Pretty fascinating, check out the chart on the blog. Here is a little of what he said:

“Isn't it amazing, that we feel like we are working so hard for less.  Yet, we've said before that the richest man in the world couldn't afford air conditioning.  Who was that?  It was Getty, and air conditioning wasn't invented in his life time.  We take it for granted now don't we?  It would take us almost 8 months of work to afford the same material goods in 1950, versus less than 2 months today.  You would think we would be awash in 'free time', but our lifestyle inflates to absorb the new efficiencies.”

When things are not going the way we like, it is easy to get caught up in the trap of focusing on what isn’t going well instead of looking for what is going well. We really live at an amazing time in the world’s history and have so much to be grateful for.

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.” – Dennis Waitley

“The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.” – Eric Hoffer

Should I Follow Charlie Brown?

Charlie Brown once declared, “No problem is too big or complicated that it can’t be run away from.”

That certainly seems like the most sensible thing to do right now as the bad news appears to be stalking us in a majority of conversations, radio shows, newspapers, and news programs.

I am afraid we are not fast enough to run, so we might as well stand up and fight. We must look for the silver lining. There is great change in our world today and it is through this change that doors are opened.

It is change that creates the opportunity for new offers of help, new businesses and services.

My brother is in the high-end construction business and you can imagine how lucrative that is right now. Instead of spending all day lamenting over the old business model he had that has so cruelly been jerked out from under him, he started meeting with the influential people he knew to get their interpretation of what is to come. In one of these conversations, he was tipped off to an opportunity coming in the commercial real estate markets. Due to a mass exodus of businesses, shopping malls and office complexes are going to have vacancies like never before. In order to lease the space out again, the landlords gut them out, taking them back down to the shell to make them a blank canvas for the prospective tenants. 

Without the change we are experiencing, that opportunity would not be there. What opportunities are around you that you may not have previously seen?

My Wife Was Right... Again

As is true to the relationship my wife and I have, she was right, but I wouldn’t accept it until someone else told me.

I had tried to get her to read more business and personal growth books for a number of years as she read a bunch of stuff that would surely never make anybody any money. She reads a wide variety of literature including the classics and poetry.

Wise old me had spent the last decade reading the business bestsellers along with every financial book I could find. Although I have learned a lot over the years, it was not the secret formula.

It was then that I was introduced to an article in the New York Times titled C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success.

Michael Moritz, venture capitalist and owner of a huge library, says he can’t discard books.

The article is summed up best by a line in it that declares, “Serious leaders who are serious readers build personal libraries dedicated to how to think, not how to compete.”

To be really wealthy I cannot copy or mimic what others are doing and expect to get top 1% results. In other words, if I spend my time attempting to do what others have done I will always be one step behind. I must learn to think for myself.

What do the best thinkers in our country read?

Read the article and see for yourself, but don’t tell your wife that this is where you learned it!

Seems So Obvious

In every choice there are two elements of the equation, pain and pleasure. In this lies one of the great secrets of life: we have the free agency to choose which one comes first with the great caveat, the element not selected will always come second and last longer. Let me say it another way, the element we choose first has a short duration and the second element will last far longer.

Here is what I mean; not long after I was introduced to this principle I was driving home from Seattle to Portland with a few colleagues. A short distance into the drive I pulled over to get some gas. I broke from the lively discussion on this very topic to go into the quickie mart and proceeded to buy a 44 ounce soda and a 3-packer of cupcakes. You know the really healthy Hostess type. Back in the car and two and half cupcakes down it dawned on me that I had just scheduled pleasure (sugar high) first with the pain (gut ache and life of flab if continued) to follow. What was just as eye opening was that it did not matter whether I was aware of the principle or not. It is a mechanism or principle that functions just the same.

What if I had scheduled pain first by way of water and a Power Bar? Consequently I would have benefitted from long lasting energy and a show stopping six-pack, pleasure! Far better decision.

This principle is highly active and visible in personal finance. I can schedule the pleasure (new outfit from Nordstrom’s) now and the pain (lack of savings for retirement and/or college fund for children) will most certainly follow and last well beyond the awe inspiring confidence of some new digs.

Where in your life are you ignorantly scheduling pleasure first, unaware that a long period of pain is waiting to pounce?

Take an inventory of your personal finances and identify at least one change you could make today by reversing the order of pleasure and pain.

From experience, the short term pain of saying “no” results in long lasting pleasure in the form of great peace and possibility.

Lifetime Winner

“When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens—and when it happens it lasts.”

- John Wooden

This quote is coming from arguably the best college basketball coach of all time. He won the National Championship 10 out of 12 years at UCLA! What a philosophy to live by.

I don’t know about you, but the “get rich quick” or “buy now, pay later” messages of the day are sure seductive. They certainly offer an easier road to travel. (That LypoDissolve pill that makes all of your fat magically disappear with no change in diet or without ever working out is tempting, but come on, really?) No hard work, self discipline, or persistence required.

After years of reflecting on these two varying philosophies I am reminded of a statement from a business course I took:

All interpretations are valid; however, they are not equally powerful.

As I reflect on all of the people I most admire, none of them were a one hit wonder. They were people who persevered. They kept after it, never giving up. It is through the very un-sexy work of discipline and persistence where the most valuable attributes are developed. It is these very attributes that build a foundation for future success. This cycle, if repeated over the years produces lasting success.

Don’t shirk the hard work if you really want to be a lifetime winner!

A Cheesy Sweater?

Years ago when asking my mother what she wanted for Christmas I was perplexed at her request. She said she wanted us three kids to memorize a quote on attitude by Charles Swindoll. It was a quote that I had read a number of times over the years by virtue of seeing it every time I went to the fridge.

In my infinite wisdom, I concluded that memorizing a quote was not a good gift, what she really would enjoy was a nice sweater from the Gap. I never spoke to my younger brother or sister about this and had frankly forgotten the original request.

Christmas morning rolled around and I of course watched her open a cheesy sweater that she would not be caught dead in now. She faked her satisfaction, gave me hug and we were on to the next gift. As we went around the circle it was time for my brother and sister to give their gifts to mom. In unison they recited the cherished quote,

"The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, than education, than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company...a church...a home.

The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change the past...we cannot change that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude.

I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And so it is with you...we are in charge of our attitudes."

With tears running down her face she thanked them for their effort. Looking back, it is now crystal clear that the emotion she was feeling was her ability to foresee the lasting impact on my siblings of memorizing those words. What a valuable lesson from a loving mother.

With so much going on around us that we cannot control, the empowering words of Charles Swindoll ring in my ears almost daily. We are in charge of our attitudes!

A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste

“A crisis is a terrible thing to waste”, said the CEO of Merck, Richard Clark recently.

What a refreshing statement to hear! 

In Chinese philosophy, the concept of yin and yang is used to describe how seemingly opposing forces are bound together, intertwined, and interdependent in the natural world, giving rise to each other in turn.

I believe this to be true. At a time of great danger and fear lies one of the greatest opportunities to build wealth we have seen in decades.

Are you looking for opportunities or hiding under your kitchen table? Is it possible this is the break you have been waiting for?

Did you know that there were more millionaires created per capita during the Great Depression than at any other time in our country's history?

Maybe it is time to adjust your belief systems to a more powerful way of thinking. You will find exactly what you are looking for. Are you looking for opportunities or looking for danger and despair?

Did you cause Alzheimers?

It seems that with each day comes a barrage of negative news. The Dow finished down 411 points or 4.7% yesterday at 8282. Initial Jobless Claims, a good leading indicator on the health of the job market, showed 516,000 new claims, far worse than expectations of 479,000.  Additionally, the Continuing Jobless Claims reached 3.89 million, their highest level in 25 years. GM’s stock price slid to $3.08, teetering on the edge of the abyss, when just 8 years ago it was worth over $90 share and the end of 2007 it was over $40 share.

How important is it to control your emotions and mood?

Did you cause Alzheimers?

Epidemiologist David Snowdon did a study of 678 nuns in the School of Sisters of Notre Dame Congregation. Snowdon set out to study the factors that differentiate nuns who eventually got Alzheimer’s disease from those who did not. All of the nuns he studied were required to write a personal essay when they came into the order in their early twenties. Upon analysis, Snowdon discovered that those nuns whose writing expressed a preponderance of positive emotions tended to live longer and more productive lives. Nuns with the highest number of positive-emotion sentences had half the risk of death at any age as those with the lowest number of such sentences. This is consistent with the findings from several other studies suggesting that a history of depression – the most insidious of all negative emotions – increases twofold the likelihood of eventually developing Alzheimer’s. These findings deeply influenced Snowdon not just professionally, but also personally. “I now make a conscious effort to regain my physiological balance quickly after an upset,” he explains. “I try not to stay stuck in negativity. My goal is to return to its normal, healthier state as soon as possible.”

What can you do about it?

Some simple suggestions are: Do an inventory of your influences. Who are you spending your time with and what is their mood? What are you listening to and what are they saying? What are you reading? What are you watching and what is there message and motive?

Surround yourself with people who are positive. Not people who are blindly optimistic, but people who are realists looking for the opportunity in all they see. Read uplifting material. Turn off the TV. Listen to books and programs that will increase your capacity to think and act. Work out.

The great James Allen wrote in his bestseller, As a Man Thinketh, “As a being of power, intelligence and the lord over his own thoughts, man holds the key to every situation, and contains within himself that transforming and regenerative agency by which may make himself what he wills.”