If You Only Do One Thing Let It Be This....

I have in past years started several other businesses. I met with varying levels of success on each. One I sold, one I closed down (it was before the Internet and channels for publicity were expensive and tough to get to) and the third I almost sold but in the end it did not go through. No big losses.No big wins. Good tax deductions all. Most of all...lots of fun.

In all this the one thing that was missing was the ability to grow from a single operator to higher levels of success. And the secret ingredient that lets one grow is....drum roll....a sales person(s). You can have a great idea for a product. You actually prototype a great product. You find customers who would like to buy your product. But in the end, you need to be able to roll it out. And that requires a team of people dedicated to selling your product. Let this be the one thing that you plan for if you come up with a great new product idea. Investigate the sales channel in detail and if possible get committments to support your sales efforts in advance of creating the product. The best product in the world will go nowhere if nobody knows it is out there. Lesson learned. I have a great team of sales people for the new line and it seems to be working. It is amazing to have a team of people dedicated to selling your line. How quickly you can move forward. Create a plan dedicated to how you are going to get the product or service in front of the people who might buy it. Make that as important as the original idea.

Set Backs

Interesting that this morning I had a major set back on the business. My off shore supplier can only supply a product colour slightly off from the one I had requested. I am working towards a sales launch that is already in motion and the timing is very tight. There is no time to negotiate the improved colour match.

Being strangely positive this morning despite the setback, I outlined the options. I can proceed with my off shore supplier, taking a colour of product slightly off from my desired alternative OR I can move to US production, get the exact product, a shorter timeline but at double the cost. I looked at these two options very clinically this morning and surprised myself with how easily I moved from disaster mode to problem solving mode. It is a choice of this or that. Simple. When you remove the emotion it becomes a decision just like the ones I made when I worked for a major corporation in product development. This or that. Choose and go forward.

W. Clement Stone says "Everyone who achieves success in a great venture, solves each problem as they came to it. They helped themselves...they keep going regardless of the obstacles they met."

I was in a trade show this past weekend that was not necessarily my ideal sales channel but strangely it provided an unexpected gift. As consumers all the retailers who came through gave me outstandingly positive feedback on the product itself. The show was very well attended and the attention was 100% positive. My money's worth in unexpected ways.

I know the product is excellent; I have a sales force across the country already in motion and providing very positive early feedback. I need to solve this issue and move on. Short term I will stay with the off shore supplier but anticipate moving to the North American supplier as the product gets rolling. Cash flow is king right now and the off shore option frees up my cash flow even as it presents problems that may not exist with a North American manufacturer.

From last year when I had a set back and packed it all up and put it away, to this year as I steadily plough through the issues required to get to market. I like the personal growth that comes with these challenges.

Affirmations and Visualizations: Help or Hype?

Never been a huge fan of visualization and affirmations. They always seemed a little trite to me. Like the little engine that could repeating "I think I Can...I think I Can..." and then he does. Cute but not powerful. The question is can you convince yourself and leap past your doubts by thinking over and over that you can do it. It strikes me that there needs to be a little more to it than that. So I was skeptical.

It seems though that there is some science behind this in that our Reticular Activating System, the RAS, acts as a filter, reducing the impact of repeated stimuli such as loud noises, helping to prevent our senses from being constantly overloaded. It lets us focus on only those things that we need to keep on functioning. It makes it so that we do not need to respond to all the stimuli that come by our senses. That means that an incredible amount of stimuli that happen in our environment are simply ignored by our brain and processed briefly by the RAS. We simply do not notice them.

Those pieces of information going by could contain information that we need but we never process. Herein lies the connection to visualizations and affirmations. If our brain assumes we only need a fixed group of information, then that is what we see. When we introduce our future as if it is now through visualization, our brain passes different information to us based on what happens around us.

Have you ever bought a car and then afterwards notice that there are many of the same car on the road that until now you had not noticed. Your brain moving relevant information into your consciousness. Amazing.

So do I believe in visualization and affirmations? I believe in the RAS and how it functions so I believe that visualized experiences make us see different inputs from our environment. The RAS is also relatively active during REM sleep which is our dream state and quiet outside the REM sleep. Smart stuff. Worth a try.

Paradox

Sometimes when life gets really overwhelming I want to return to my safe place. The demands of a full time job and trying to get the new business off the ground along with caring for my two teenage sons. Too many lists. Too many sticky notes with reminders hanging on mirrors, on daytimers, on the car dashboard. Phone calls forgotten. Appointments missed. I want to return to the place where I used to be. I tell myself it would not be so bad to do this job until retirement. Then I realize that is my protective centre trying to lull me back to the safety of what was. That place that I know well and feel competent in what needs to be done. The paradox is that the place where I am safe fails to stimulate me.

Funny little roller coaster this is. When I go to that safe place, I seek stimulation and new frontiers. When I am on the new frontier, I seek safety and familiarity. How complicated is this push and pull between safety and adventure.

Truthfully if given the chance to go back, I would choose to go forward. I am now so far into the project that there is no going back. It is feasible that this point of no return committment will be exactly what I needed to stop me from packing it in and going home, so to speak. This is just anxiety about the new frontier that makes me look back at where I was and deem it to be a desireable place.

I feel brave and competent about the new project. Things are actually going very well. Some of the challenges ahead look scary but often challenges get smaller as you approach them. Usually because you are smarter than when you viewed them from far away. I will just look one step ahead at a time so as not to intimidate myself with the size of my goal.

Baby Tactics

Success can be defined as persisting until you reach your goals. It may come to us in a different format than we thought it would. The best quote on this is from T. Harvey Eker and he says to "just get into the corridor". Get out there and try things and your success will come in ways you could never imagine when you were hidden away in your room dreaming! I use that thought all the time. I get into the corridor...it encourages me to try a solution when I am not sure what the next step could be.

Failure is to stop working on your goals as soon as you meet up with a challenge. This statement gives us amazing control over our success and failure. If we keep moving toward our goal in new ways we will eventually arrive at the goal. That is success! If we quit moving towards our goals then that is failure! Simple and Powerful! Step by step. That did not work? Okay what else can I try. Over and over until you eventually get to the goal. And you will reach that goal if you do this. Guaranteed!

Sometimes having a powerful goal beyond the initial goal can give you the gift of persistence that lets you continue to move towards your powerful goal. So here is an example of a goal beyond a goal. I would like to work for myself and be free to spend my time according to my preferences. That is my main goal. I need to have some income to pursue that goal. So I created a product and put it out to the market. That is my active goal. To make the product successful. So this is my goal within the goal. I am motivated to achieve my product goal because it is my pass to achieve my bigger goal. My lifestyle goal.

I am no different than those who have achieved these goals for themselves. Financial goals, goals about freedom, authenticity. People are making their way to these goals every day. I am not any different than these people except that they have done the hard work of getting there.

We are all born risk takers. It is how we learn. A baby learns to walk by falling and getting up and trying again. He navigates tall stairs by turning around and going down backwards without being able to always see where he is going. Let us do what babies do and challenge our world. Let us use baby tactics to accomplish our goals. Like a baby, be fearless and focused to accomplish the task you desire.

Just Go A Little Bit Further!

This is a blog post from Millionaire Moms and it really spoke to me today. So here it is! Thanks to Joyce at Millionaire Moms!

"I had an experience the other day that felt like a metaphor for my life. I was driving down a road I often get confused on. There are twists and turns that make it a challenge to remember which way to go. I started feeling like I had made a wrong turn. I thought, “I’ll just go a little further and see.” Which I did. Ultimately though I doubted myself & turned around in favor of the “safe way” I was familiar with.

The safe way meant I added extra time, travel & aggravation to my day. The funny thing is I realized the very spot I turned around at was a mere 100 yards away from landmarks I would have recognized as having been the right way to go. If I had only gone just a little bit longer…

This felt like a metaphor for my business. I had been feeling discouraged that day. I was driving thinking about all the work that needed doing. Overwhelm set in & I started questioning if I was making the right decisions purusing this dream? I have made tremendous strides over the year but it didn’t feel like enough. I have been working really hard. I was tired and felt very alone in my journey.

These thoughts came to an abrupt halt once I figured out I had been so close to successfully nagivating the road I was traveling. I had quit moments before I experienced the breakthrough. We have all heard the saying, “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” I decided right there & then I wouldn’t quit my business no matter how tired or hopeless I felt. I would soldier on. Victory goes to the decided heart! I would work smarter not harder.

A few days later I was presented with an opportunity that could really take my business to the next level. What if I had quit that day? I would never have known. I want to encourage you in your business journey to have a decided heart. You never know when you are just around the corner of success!"

Pushing Your Limits

I rode my bicycle 75 km today. I didn't plan to ride 75 km or to take 5 hours but the destination I chose took 5 hours instead of the planned 3 hours. At the 3 hour point I spoke to another cyclist stopped at a store and he asked me if I was alright. My response...yes I am fine...I am a my limit but fine. I went back to my map to figure out how much longer my route would take. I concluded that I had another hour or so. I could push through that. I was feeling tapped out. No energy to spare. I got back on my bike, determined to make my goal. Then I hit the big hills on the route. Nice timing. It was here that my mind took over. I had nothing left physically but was determined to make the destination. I hit my limits and kept on going. It turned out the route was two more hours so I really had to push.

So here's the conumdrum. My limits existed well beyond what I had assumed they were. I made the whole distance that I had planned, going well beyond what I had originally thought. I set limits that were seemingly difficult but when pushed I was able to achieve far more than I had originally thought.

I need to take this lesson learned and apply it to how I live my life. Am I setting goals that don't stretch my limits? Without stretching we do not grow and learn. With moderate goals we achieve moderate results. Need to stretch a little more and create some '5 hour' goals for my life. Neat learning.