The Economy That Network Marketing Loves.

There is an old saying "When the going gets tough, the tough get going.", and if the news is right, then this is a very tough economy and the tough are getting going. Are you hiding in the house or jumping on a new Harley and getting to work? So, what are you really doing? There are places like California whose governments are really looking at the entire economy all wrong. When the tough stand up to take on the challenge, the best thing the government can do is move out of the way. Increasing business taxes and adding burdens to businesses will only shrink the economy in the long run.

Payroll taxes, business taxes, permits and anything else the city or state can charge for will act as a deterrent to growth. This creates an opportunity for a very specific market segment, network marketing. Personally as a network marketing participant I have never been what anyone would call successful. The reason is simple, I have never found a network marketing program that I liked so much I wanted to quit my business and dedicate all of my time to it. Several of my friends have and they do quite well.  What I have found is a network marketing program that supports my business, and that of my clients. 

Is a Prompt Response Really Required?

One of the nice things about my life is I have no clue what day of the week it is or the date is most of the time.  Unless I have a client meeting, I don’t have a clue, nor do I need one.  There is a really funny side effect in that I am really behind on lesser current events and articles.

Just this week I had a couple of thoughts on an article that I read in the back of a limo.  I looked at the date of the magazine and it was 2002.  Can you imagine that?  A magazine in a limo in good shape from 2002?  It was bazaar.  I was catching up on my magazine reading, and read a pretty good article in Fortune Magazine.  It was the November 1^st 2010 issue.  The article was “Work less do more.”  I really liked the article, but at the end there was a comment that really threw me off.

Do You Know How to Buy Time? I Do.

It is really funny how many times I hear somebody say “You can't buy time.”   I don't agree with this idea at all.  If you are anybody who is a business owner or wants to succeed in life you have to learn to buy time.  In fact I will make the statement that you have to go beyond buying time and learn how to leverage the time that you buy.

One of the great mistakes that many budding entrepreneurs make is spending too much money too soon and they run out of cash. At the other end of the spectrum is the guy who wants to do it all himself and save every penny he can. The guy that wants to do it all himself and save every penny he can is the guy that needs to learn how to buy time first and leverage time second.  Otherwise he will just struggle and never get ahead. 

Fly First Class – Buy Time

After all isn't somebody buying time when they buy a first-class airline ticket and get to go to the premium security line? Aren't they buying time when they get to arrive at the flight anytime they want? Isn't a first-class customer buying time because he can get on the airplane first and continue to work while everybody else is boarding and trying to find a place for their bags?

Do You Have A Story, Or Are You Just Living?

What Is Your Headline?

This week, I was researching the title of my next book.  I know now that the title of the first book, So, Now What? was not the headline to make the book fly off the shelves.  I know this because my royalty checks haven’t paid for the new Aston Martin or X5d just yet.   Most people that read So, Now What? only admitted to understanding the title after reading more than half the book.  With the help of Imal Wagner, I realized that a title of a book is nothing more than the headline for the story.  As I looked at all of the books that were on my shelf, one title stood out.  The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris.  All I could think was “What a great headline, what is mine going to be?”

Why Strategy Matters

Yesterday I had the pleasure of watching somebody have an epiphany and understand completely what I do for a living. I had been out house shopping with my wife. We looked at a couple of homes with the exact same floor plan, and with very different selling conditions. The first house was a short sale where the people had already moved out. The second home was priced 22% higher and the homeowner was very clear that she was not going to budge on price. She also said she was going to stay for quite some time if necessary.

We decided to discuss the two houses with the real estate agent at the local Starbucks. In doing so the agent asked what I did for a living. When I told her that I was a Business Strategy and Marketing Coach the puzzled look on her face gave me the opening to continue. I said "I help people narrow their niche and find their business strategy so they can become better at what they do, make more money and work less."

Determination

This is been a very cool week for me, I was able to do something I never expected to do. Well I shouldn't say I never expected do it, I should say that nobody else expected that I could do it, or really no one expected that I would do it.  Up until a few years ago I was one of those people who was always letting myself down.  I would say that I would to something big, and never get to it.  I just made excuses.

Now that it's been over a year since the book So Now What?  has been on the market, I was starting to get a little frustrated. I have been grinding and pushing to get anybody of any value to look at the book. Finally, a couple of months ago, Jim Pawlak agreed that he would look at it clearly stating that it only had a 1 in 40 chance of him even reading it and much less of it getting reviewed.  After Mr. Pawlak, two more people agreed to "consider it".

Almost one year to the day after the book was published, the San Jose Business Journal online was the first to publish Jim Pawlak's review. I had no idea that he read it and wrote a review, so getting the google alert was very exiting.  If you don't know what a google alert is, stay tuned.  I will tell you how to use them and why they are so important.

The Success Practice of Giving Thanks

I want to start by saying happy Thanksgiving and safe travels anyone reading this on Thanksgiving day, and I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving for those who are reading it later.

This month my wife tried a new technique, really a new angle on a technique that we learned a long time ago. Every day she posted something she was thankful for on Facebook, something that she could share with all of her friends. Being thankful for what you have is strangely one of the keys to getting more and living a better life. I can't tell you why it works, but it does.  At least no one has ever said it doesn't.

Maybe this is why most religions have you give thanks at meals or before going to bed. It simply works. Personally I try to think of the things that I am thankful for each day before I start my day. Sitting on the deck getting ready to write or walking the dogs in the forest, is a great way for me to give thanks and let the appreciation really set in.

Jeff Walker posted an interesting angle in his blog this morning, he suggested that we each say out loud what we are thankful for today. I think this is a great idea since it lets everyone around us hear  what we are thankful for, and helps them to gain a better appreciation of what today is all about. So why not give it a try.

Happy Thanksgiving

The 366 Method of Daily Planning

Today is one of those days where I really enjoy being in a business that helps other people. The entire reason that I went into business was to help other people avoid the mistakes in business I made. The more businesses that I can help and the more people that I can help, the better we all do. The mistakes I made are way too common in business and way too expensive to ignore.

I got an e-mail this morning with a great question. It was from a guy that I met in Scottsdale Arizona at a marketing conference. His question was this: "I have a problem staying focused on my daily tasks and I'm wondering if you have any tips to help me get work on things done."

How can thinking like a marksman help your business?

The entrepreneur’s paradox affects all of us. Have you ever said yes to doing something you probably shouldn't have and regretted it later? I've never met a business owner that had not, so just nod your head yes, then we can move on. We all see it in every business every day. Even the best businesses venture outside of their zone on occasion. If you are doing it to save a customer, that may be acceptable however you should try to avoid it because it isn't going to be cheap.

I like to pick on attorneys a little bit because I have a lot of great friends that are attorneys. If you crack open the Yellow Pages to the attorney section I bet you can find at least one attorney's office that has more than 10 fields or specialties of law listed. And yet all of them can tell you that the attorneys that make the most money practice one specialty. I have a friend that has a personal injury law firm, and at one time they ventured out of the bubble and brought in an attorney who was a specialist in a different area. That relationship lasted through one major case and the outside specialist moved on.

Resrtict Bandwidth To Be More Productive?

Yesterday I was reading the paper, and there was an article about Lockheed Corp in Dallas having to restrict social networking sites because they used too much bandwidth. The comment from a senior manager was almost funny. He said “unlike other countries, bandwidth in the US isn’t cheap.” That’s funny because cheap bandwidth should have nothing to do with the decision.

What if everyone is using Facebook as a group work tool to post ideas? What if they are using YouTube to post training videos? I know I do, so why can’t Lockheed employees. If the manager was being completely honest he would have said something like “We are restricting the websites because we think the employees are engaged in non-work related activities on company time.”

In a previous life I worked for Apple Computer when they had Friday keg parties, pinball machines, pool tables and ping pong tables. All of these “non work related activities” were meant to keep people at work longer and to stimulate creativity. Apple realized that the most successful people would not ever separate work and play. When you have the right people in the right jobs, work and play become one.

Are You Focused And Still Not Getting There? A Lesson From Grandma.

My grandmother was a committed lady. I don't mean committed as in institutionalized,  I mean  committed as someone that has achieved success. The reason I'm talking about this is because today is a bittersweet day.   I bring up my Grandmother, because today is my grandmother's funeral. Maybe it's really a memorial because her body won't be there. I don't really know and I don't think it is important. Whatever it is, the family is getting together to pay respects, remember and celebrate a rather long and well lived life of the family matriarch. As a kid I think about my grandmother's house growing up.  Her home was the central focus for the entire family. Whenever anything happened good or bad, we went to my grandmother's house.  She is the last of her generation in my family, and we could learn a little from that generation.

My grandmothers house wasn't a very big house,  but it was big enough for everyone to have a seat and a smile. Most holidays were spent at my grandmother's house with the entire family there. When fireworks were still legal in Los Angeles, we would have 20 people or more in a very small backyard running around with fireworks. Oddly enough no one ever got hurt. It was always safe, nobody could insult you or hurt you while you were there. If someone started picking on you, my grandmother could always fix it with chocolate milk. If a fight broke out, it could be ended with  cake. She had so many activities for every kid you never really had time to bicker or fight anyway. TV was out, my granddad only allowed golf on TV.  If you said something negative about another family member or someone outside the house she would just laugh it off and say "don't be ridiculous." She would say it with a smile that somehow let you know what you were doing or saying was wrong.

Which Widget Should You Use?

Among the top ten questions I get, something always comes up about office tools.  Everyone wants to know what I use.  They know I am picky and will return anything and everything that doesn't work.

I went ahead and put up a quick website with shortcuts to all the essential business tools we use for our business.  If you walk into my office, you will find it, or a newer version on our Amazon Affiliate Store.  Check it out at www.kuhltoys.com.  Everything is there, our speech recognition software, our desktops, all of it.  About the only things we couldn't get on there were the iPhone, iPad and Blackberry Torch.

If there is a category or something I missed, let me know please.  I am trying to make this as easy as possible.

Business and Economic Burdens

Growing up I used to hear people make fun of the "laugher curve".  I thought everyone was laughing at President Reagan and his economic policies.  Going through business school I learned that the "Laffer Curve" was some real economic theory by a real professor.

Here is a copy of the basic laffer-curve:

The big problems with the interpretation are pretty easy to spot.  Given this image it would appear that 50% tax is the ideal percentage for the Government.  That is no where near the case, The Horowitz freedom center noted that many thought the tax cuts President Reagan asked for were incorrectly thought of as only for the rich.  They were tax cuts for everyone, the popular media slanted the view.

Business and Friendship don't mix...

For most of my adult life I have owned businesses and been pretty happy with them.  Admittedly until the last few years, my businesses were based on stuff I was "pretty good at".  As long as you can figure out how things work you can always build a business, it might not be the right business, but you can still build it.

One of the things I hear over and over is "You can't do business with your friends." or "Don't mix business and Friendship".  This is a very strange concept to me.  If you trust your friends and they trust you, why can't you do business?  Most of our waking hours are at work, why not work with your friends.  Yes I have had a couple of deals go south and partnerships fall apart that started as friendships.  The real friendships survived the unraveling of the business involvement.  The people that just be-friended me for a "deal" went by the wayside and I am not that much worse off for it.

Building a killer business.

George Foreman is someone that most people think of as a "lucky" guy.  He made it as a boxer, and spent it all, then he made it again as a boxer and spent it all.  By his own admission he never liked boxing, he liked helping people.  George Foreman was also a minister, and it was during his time as a minister that he spent his boxing fortunes.

When George was approached with the Lean Mean Grilling Machine, he took that to the mat. It is an excellent lesson in rebuilding for both people and business.  If you missed the CNBC Bizography special there are some clips here worth watching if you are thinking of starting a business or own a business.

Are you a mile wide and an inch deep?

Every day you get out of bed, you have choices to make whether you realize it or not. The funny thing is how many choices we make subconsciously without even realizing we are doing it. We are always heading in some direction with every choice. As the old saw goes, “If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there.”

I had an excellent conversation a few days ago with Robert Menard. An industry expert in purchasing negotiations and systems for over a decade, Mr. Menard has a depth of experience that few posses. He has spoken to Congress about better ways to purchase. Mr. Menard and I talked at length about how he built his business to be one inch wide and a mile deep. I asked him about buying a car, and he referred me to someone else. He isn't a buying expert, he is a purchasing expert.

After the conversation I walked by a repair on our family house that I had made 10 years ago. The previous owners had a large dog and right at the front of the house was a dog door big enough for most 5 year old children to walk through. One day someone walked in and helped themselves to a bunch of my stuff, and now the dog door is gone.

Living with the iPhone 4 Day 68

When the first sliding windows touchscreen phones arrived I have to say I was almost giddy. I had been carrying a Motorola Razor (that I still keep as my back up phone) and a huge laptop. The new windows phone was going to solve my problems. I traded my sleek little Razor for a phone that by comparison was a small laptop.

The first windows phone I picked up was from HTC and as a phone it worked pretty well. The internet features and speed left a lot to be desired. It turned out for the next year I was carrying a bigger phone and the laptop. When my first HTC windows phone quit working due to “water damage”, I waited and got the “tilt”. I have beard from many people that the “tilt” was a significant improvement over the original Windows slider phones.

Living with the iPhone 4 day 57

Living with the iPhone 4 has been a challenge for me. Having been spoiled by the first two windows phones and then completely ruined by the BlackBerry curve, the iPhone has been an adjustment.

Last week or maybe even the week before, I had an AT&t employee and an Apple store employee suggest that I would be happier going back to the BlackBerry and getting the new Torch. Not being one to give up that easy, I continued to try and solve the issues I was having with the iPhone.

Using the iPhone as a business tool

I was on the computer in the early hours of the morning waiting to pre-order my iPhone 4. After the two hours of frustration getting all the way through the order process to click "Buy", only to get an error screen and start over, I gave up and headed to the ATT store.

When I arrived at the AT&T store, I found the computer system was down there too. My wife and I wandered next door for a great burrito at Mission Burrito, it was already noon. By two pm I got my name on the mystical pre-order list and was told that I was lucky since they just sold out, I was one of the last to make the list.

Are You Too Busy To Make Money?

It is amazing how busy we are and how little we really get done. There are just so many things to do, laundry, house keeping, get gas in the car, buy dog food and the list goes on and on. It is a wonder any of us have any time for our work. We start our morning with the shave-shower-shine routine and for those with long hair, there is some coiffing to do.

Next there is the whole breakfast ritual with coffee or tea, and some quick bite because there just isn't time for breakfast any more. How did people ever survive before cars sped us off to work, and cell phones brought the office right to our pockets? By the time most of us get to work, at least a couple hours of the day are already gone. The start of the office day is usually slowed down by clearing out all of the spam in our inbox that made it past the filters and reading a couple of jokes from our friends so we start the day with a smile.

Jeeez, where has the time gone, now it is already time to start planning the lunch run to squeeze in a couple of errands while grabbing a sandwich and a soda. We just have to much to do. Have you ever heard anyone say something like “I am just too busy to make any money.”

They are probably right, and probably blaming the wrong person. If you truly wanted to be hyper successful, it is your choice. All of this “busyness” is due to a lack of focus and preparedness. People are confusing “busy” activities with “achievement” activities. There is only one way to get things done, and that as the Nike slogan says is to “Just do it.”

I meet people that are managers and business owners who are stuck in a rut and can't figure out why. The why is clear to everyone around them. The why should be very clear to them and it isn't until someone just puts it right in front of them. The why is a simple problem of setting priorities.

When people have a clear set of “achievement” goals for every day, every week and every month they are more likely to actually achieve something. When the choice is write the article that is due or stop and dry cleaners, the choice becomes simple. When the choice is call three clients or go to the ball game, the choice is simple. When you set your goals and stick to them your priorities stay in the right order automatically. Only you can change them.

Achievement, no matter how small leads to success of an equal magnitude. Like investing, if you only achieve 7% more each year than your peers, in 10 years you will have achieved twice as much due to the effects of compounding growth. Before you go to bed to night, write out a list of 3-5 goals for tomorrow, two or three slightly larger goals for the rest of the week. Then tomorrow, get started on your goals first. Skip the water cooler chatter and facebook time, get your goals done and see how much better you feel at the end of the day.

Real achievements give you energy and focus to achieve more. Start small and work bigger a little each day. The sky is the limit if you just put your mind to it.

Buying A Home In Todays Market, Crisis or Opportunity?

It has been said many times that the Chinese have one word that means both opportunity and crisis. Since I don't speak Chinese, I don't have any idea if this is true. Having read about the balance of the yin and the yan, it makes sense that the Chinese would think this way.
The current economic climate is really both an opportunity and a crisis.

If you are in the market to buy a business, commercial real estate, rental properties or just a great deal on a house, there are plenty of deals out there. I found it funny just yesterday when I ran into a guy who wasn't at all happy with his “deal”. He bought a foreclosure house and had no idea how the process worked or what he was getting into, and thought he got ripped off.

In some cases, when a family is experiencing a crisis and is losing their home, they will “strip” the house. A home that was recently foreclosed in my area had a very interesting yard sale the week before the homeowners were escorted out by the sheriff. I later found out they had no where to go and that is why they didn't “walk away” as some homeowners did in the same area.

Attach Rewards to Your Goals And Achieve Higher Success

As the old saying goes, “physician heal thyself”. Business and life coaching isn't any different. It is funny that sometimes we forget to look in the mirror and judge ourselves. While talking with a client today I realized something I have been overlooking in my own life for some time now.

I had been confusing goals and rewards. Actually, I was skipping the goals and listing the rewards. Years ago when I first started creating goal sheets with my wife, the sheets listed real goals. Recently my wife and I had a discussion about our goals in the previous year and for the next year. She had accomplished significantly more of her goals than I had. I chalked my lack of accomplishment up to the fact that I was focused on a different area and obviously the goals were not as important as I had thought a year before when we created the goal sheets.

Use The Nine Hit Method To Relieve Stress

There are a couple of rules of success which all high achievers will consider universal. One of those is simply you cannot do it yourself, and another is we all need a sounding board. Sometimes we get lucky and find someone who is both our sounding board and a person who helps us move towards our goals. We need a sounding board to bounce off ideas, think through problems and confess our mistakes.

Recently I was having lunch with a friend of mine. He is someone I trust completely, and therefore one of my sounding boards and confidants for confessions. Since I value his opinion we talk about some things that I don't talk about with other people. He is one of those people to which I can confess my mistakes and not worry about it coming back to me in a month. A couple of weeks prior to our lunch, I had made a very inappropriate comment to a flight attendant regarding some military people on the flight. Since I am a retired military officer, it made the comments even worse in my mind.

Find The Key To Unlock Your Golden Handcuffs.

Reading statistics makes you really wonder what drives people to get out of bed in the morning.  I recently read that 80% of all Americans are unhappy in their job.  If this is true, why are they there? It is a free country isn't it?  I also read that 95% of all Americans that hit retirement age this year will not have any savings to speak of and will depend on retirements and social security to survive, not live.

The more I talk to people about these two issues the more I find out how many people feel restrained by “golden handcuffs”.  A friend of mine uses this term for his employees.  He pays them well for the industry he is in and then he works them to the bone.  He knows they won't quit because no one else will pay them what he is paying them.

Are You Too Busy To Make Money?

It amazes me to see how many business owners and sales people are “too busy” to make money.  Are you too busy to make money?  Most of them know and can clearly spell out what they need to do to get ahead and yet they don't do it.  Why is that?  Do you know anyone like that?  Are you that person?

The path to high achievement and success isn't a secret.  If you are a sales person or a baseball player, your path is a path of practice and numbers.  The more you practice the better you get and the more you swing at the ball the more you will get the hits.  What stops most people from achieving more is they hit their personal limit for the strikes or the “no” responses people give them.  Many others hit their goal and settle into a comfort zone.  Either way progress stops.

Is There A Secret To Success?

As a business owner, and trainer/coach to other business owners, I have figured out the one step that is absolutely required for success.  I have taken all kinds of classes from other success coaches and trainers, I have even read their books.  Every one of them has a slightly different take on the issue.

Most recently I was listening to an audio program where the speaker listed 42 different elements of success that he had discovered.  He said a business plan was absolutely essential.  Funny I know a few multimillionaires with good businesses that never had a real plan.  He also said that written goals were required.  I know a few guys that don't have any written goals.  In fact, I know a couple of guys who got rich, are still getting rich and by most peoples thinking continue to become more successful every day and yet they have neither a business plan or a written set of goals.

Use The Four D's To DeClutter And Get Productive

I grew up in the house of a “neat freak” and immediately rebelled when I left home.  I would let laundry pile up in college until I ran out of clothes, and if I had money, I would buy new clothes before doing laundry.  Sadly I think this was a rather normal college lifestyle choice.

As time went on I discovered that much of my “college” stress was due to my messy lifestyle.  I discovered this when I spent to much money and had to sell everything to pay the bills.  I rented a room from a friend and didn't have much to make a mess other than laundry.  Somehow I became relaxed and energized all at once.  I built a business, bought more stuff, moved to an apartment and began to clutter my life again.

Is Now A Good Time To Start a Business?

Some people might think that starting a business in today's economy is absolute craziness. The truth is for some people, in fact most people they are right. However, those people who select the right business now might be the best time ever to start a business. The key here is making sure you pick the right business to start.

With all the craziness in the current economy there are all kinds of great deals for budding business owners. For instance if you are starting a store that requires a brick and mortar location you can probably rent a location for half of what it would have cost you just three years ago. Vendors are also making all kinds of great deals to help businesses get started and fill the gaps left by other businesses which have gone out of business.

The Chinese have one word that means both crisis and opportunity. While many people see this as a crisis, a select few will see this as an opportunity. If you are one of those people and see this as an opportunity, then now is the time to find in the right business for you to start. The type of business does not matter, what matters is that you select and start the right business for you.

We all have hobbies that could be turned into businesses, the problem is we only enjoy them because they are a hobby. When the hobby becomes a business is no longer fun. If your business is not fun, your chances of success are diminished. What you're looking for is a business that you truly love. It might be something you don't think you can even do. I have met landlords that needed to be artists, and artists that needed to be landlords.

To illustrate the difference, the landlord that needed to be an artist was the kind of guy who like to do everything himself. He would spend hundreds of hours on this buildings personally making changes, all the while ignoring his tenants. The artist that needed to be the landlord was exactly the opposite, he has great vision and could very easily in the challenge to other people. He really didn't like doing the work himself. The difference might appear subtle, yet it is critical to both of their success.

So in this time a fantastic opportunity start by investing in yourself and making sure you pick the right opportunity and give yourself the best chance to succeed.  If you are not sure how to pick the right business to start, pick up a copy of So, Now What?

Blaze New Trails to Success

The most successful people in life are those that have decided to blaze their own trail.  The further into uncharted territory they go, the more likely they are to make it into the history books if they reach their goal.  A post office employee blazed new trails into a discipline of physics most of us still can't understand, and everyone know his name, Albert Einstein.

Some people blaze trails in territory everyone thought they already knew.  Michael Dell if famous for his trail in the PC business.  The PC wasn't anything new, Mr. Dell just focused on a target of delivering it better and cheaper than anyone else.  After he hit that target, he kept adjusting the target and today the Dell website is filled with technology offerings.

Recession Success Tips for Small Business

Recently I was eating at a sushi bar with one of my partners .  The Sushi chef noticed our Rustic Creek logo shirts and asked how business had been.  When I responded “great”, all conversations stopped and everyone stared at me.  I felt like I just rained on everyone’s parade.  It turned out we had joined a group of builders commiserating on the state of the economy and the housing market.

On the way back to the job site, my partner asked why I thought we were so busy and getting busier every day while everyone else seemed to be struggling or going out of business.  I didn’t have a simple answer for him.  What I had was a 30 minute version of a full semester course I took in college.  I didn’t realize how much I remembered and was able to use until that point.

Stay Focused for Success

Some time ago, Chris Anderson of Wired magazine wrote the now infamous article about "the long tail". He argued that the music industry needed to have broad based "hits" and serve narrow "niches". How does this apply to staying focused for success or Internet marketing for an attorney in Fresno, California or an Aston-Martin dealer in Scottsdale (or Scotsdale as I have been known to spell it) Arizona?

The long tail theory applies to smaller businesses and Internet marketing in a very direct way. Successful Internet marketing only happens when you know exactly how people are looking for you. The search engines are smart, but if they were perfect, they would match the right website to the right person every time and Internet advertising would die along with their key source of revenue (and mine).

Take A Little Media System on The Road.

Technology gets smaller every day.  I just looked at a pocket projector that uses a laser and LED with a DLP chip.  This little projector had only a USB input and power input.  The battery ran for the entire 30 minute demo making it clearly good enough for most sales calls.

Here is where I was blown away.  The guy plugged in his iPhone with a USB cable and put on bluetooth stereo headphones.  Here this guy is with really good sound and a pretty good 30” picture on the wall.  What a great option for hotel living road warriors  You can watch all kinds of On Demand Video or ODV over the Internet and not get stuck on the little iPhone screen.

What Can You Do To Make It Easy?

For the last year and a half I have been in and out of Doctors offices and MRI centers trying to determine what is wrong with my ankle. Every time I go I am supposed to use a Debit card for my FSA or Flexible Spending Account. Even though I have this ankle issue, I don't like to carry the card with me. In my “make it easy” approach to life, less junk in my pockets is better.

Since last March I haven't been able to find the card, so the receipts have just been piling up on my desk. Those receipts have been clogging up the “Accumu-later” in my mind, so today I went to my wifes office to clear the clutter.

Flip Flop time, and a time to reflect on Freedom.

Flip flop season is officially back for the year.  For me this means it is a great time to reflect on what it means to live in the greatest country in the world.  After 20 years in the Air Force Reserves serving all over the world, and reading the newspapers of the other countries, I still believe we live in the land of the greatest opportunity in the world.

So what does this have to do with flip flops?  No, this isn't going to be an essay on politicians who can't make a decision, Rod Blagojevich gave us plenty of that last night on “The Apprentice”.  This has to do with reminding ourselves what freedom really means.

Find success by blazing your own trail through life

The most successful people in life are those that have decided to blaze their own trail.  The further into uncharted territory they go, the more likely they are to make it into the history books if they reach their goal.  A post office employee blazed new trails into a discipline of physics most of us can't understand, and everyone know his name, Albert Einstein.

Some people blaze trails in territory everyone thought they already knew.  Michael Dell if famous for his trail in the PC business.  The PC wasn't anything new, Mr. Dell just focused on a target of delivering it better and cheaper than anyone else.  After he hit that target, he kept adjusting the target and today the Dell website is filled with technology offerings.

Starting a business needs to start with looking in the mirror.

So you are thinking of starting a business?  Before you do make sure you are ready.  Starting a business is a very exciting time and people get caught up in the romance of the idea every day.  Most people see something that looks like a good idea and they go for it.  Most business failures start here.

There is a funny dichotomy of people that start a side business in addition to their income and people that start a business to replace their income.  You would hope that the people looking to replace their job would spend the time to make sure they are doing something they will enjoy.  The funny thing is the people with the “hobby” business tend to have fun and do well because they only do things they want to do and getting a little extra money is a bonus.

Want to know an easy way to get other people to stop overloading your schedule?

Every day that you get out of bed you are faced with a growing number of events all begging for your time.  Each day there seems to be just one more thing to take care of.  Your life is cluttered with things that society, your family and friends think are “important” so you added them to your “to do” list.  Have you ever asked yourself why you do this to yourself?  Would you like to find a better way?

As humans, when we accumulate all of these things that we need to do “later” our minds become a mush of these events.  One day we wake up and wonder where the time went.  I call this process filling your “accumu-later”.  Each of us has an accumu-later that has at least a few tasks in it.  The more you have stuffed into your accumu-later the less effective you feel.

Reach Your Goals By Hitting Your Targets.

Receiving one of the most important lessons on focus very early in my military career turned out to be a very lucky break. When I enlisted in the military I asked for the shortest technical school available, and that turned out to be security police. I was assigned to a very small base and my primary job was to guard airplanes at night by myself in the middle of nowhere.  After doing this for a month where I was so cold, the outside of my uniform literally frosted over, I realized I needed to find something else. You could squeeze the arms of my outer jacket and watch the frost crack.

Are you really good at what you do? Why aren't you great?

This week a friend was reading my book and sent me a text.  The text said “I think I am a pretty good real estate agent”.  Which he is.  Given his previous comments he was at the point in the book asking him to determine what he does best.  I sent back a couple of “tests” that I use which didn't make the book.  Being good at something, even really good may not be your path to happiness and healthiness.  When you find your perfect occupation, it will be something you truly love to do, so it is no longer work.

Because I don't really “work” in the traditional sense any more I really don't like to use the word.  I gave up work after finishing my book and taking my own advice.  Yes in the short term income went down as my life adjusted, my stress went down even further so the income cut was well worth it.  I have heard the term “plorking” meaning to play and work at the same time.  Plorking just doesn't roll off the tongue the way my life description should.  Some time ago I went to a seminar featuring Kevin Carrol, the guy that invented those little silicone bracelets.  The very first one said simply “play”.  I don't wear it, it hangs over my watch box with my goal sheet so I am reminded every day.

Multiple Streams of Income from the internet, is it really possible?

The internet is a funny place.  All of us get to say or do whatever we want.  We really don't know who most of the people out there writing all this stuff are.  Do you know me?  You might have been a passenger on an Airliner or Military Jet I flew.  You might have read my book.

Robert Allen, John Chow and others have made a nice living selling information and links on the internet.  Recently I ran across a blogger talking about his "three figure" income.   I couldn't help but laugh.  Does anyone really want to be happy sitting in front of a computer all day for $124 a day?  My painters, my landscaper and my techs all make way more than that.

Success Tip: Communicate, Communicate, Celebrate

When you walk into work in the morning, are you ready?  Do you have a plan?  If not get your goals for the day done right away.  With your goals in hand, does everybody above you and everybody below you know exactly what you plan to do? One of the truths in life is that we cannot do everything ourselves. We must depend on other people to do some of the work. In fact the bigger your life becomes the more you depend on other people to accomplish things for you.  You can teach anybody to do just about anything if you have enough time, patience and money. If you only have two of the three requirements for training someone your chances of success begin to approach zero rapidly.

If you are not a practiced teacher, time and patience may not be on your side. More often than not, it is a shortsighted view of money and the investment in training that prevents us from training other people to do their job to the best of their ability. So many times I hear people say things like "I just have to get them working". or "I have to get them producing, I have too much work to train them." Instead of taking the time to train them to be successful you throw them into the fire headfirst.

Keep your goals in view, don't let your telescope become a kaleidescope

Yesterday I got a phone call from a guy that I have known for 15 years.  For whatever reason our work lives really never came up.  He knew I did something in technology and I knew he did something in business with a shop.  Through a third party he got my name, so he gave me a call.

He called because his business was not doing well and he needed help getting some new customers.  It was difficult at first for him to talk since we had a social relationship already.  After listening to him for over an hour, I could see that he had no focus at all in his business or personal life, he was just running scared.  Listening to him was like picking up a telescope and looking through it to see a kaleidoscope.  All the little bits of color swirling around with very little rhyme, reason or connection.

Success Secret: Figure Out What You Really Do.

Every time I sit down with a business owner they are asking me to bring in more business through the Internet. My first question is always the same, "What kind of business do you want?" This meets with generally puzzled stares, and many times it's followed by the statement "why all of it of course!"

Bankruptcy attorneys tell me that people come to them for one simple reason. They don't know what to do or what they're doing. Because they have no guidance they get in trouble and can't figure out any other way to solve the problem than seeking help from a bankruptcy attorney. Most of the time a business owner is introduced to me it is a similar situation, they are bleeding cash or a very stressed and frustrated and can't figure out why. Their solution is to go get more business. The problem with this solution is very simple, if the business loses money performing its tasks why do you want to get more of those tasks? If business is frustrated by performing those tasks why do you want to get more business to perform more of those tasks?

Finally a Bluetooth headset that works!

One of the key aspects of success is being able to communicate effectively. Bluetooth has always looked like a great idea.  Execution on the other hand has been a little iffy.  A great headset should work with two phones and a computer with ease.  It should be clear and you should be able to walk from your car to a store in a light breeze without blowing out your own eardrums.

In business and life, one of the most difficult things to do is to catch a fleeting thought. Just about every cellular phone today and most laptops have the ability to connect with Bluetooth, and ideally a quick button press and you should be recording or calling someone.  Many cars nowadays have built-in Bluetooth speakerphones, which are a fantastic tool.  You can think of something while you're driving, say "call office" and if nothing else leave yourself a voicemail message so you don't forget what you wanted to do.

Essential tools of Business - The short version

http://www.sendoutcards.com/scottbourquin
     I am clearly a little bit of a tech geek.  My entire business life is wrapped around helping people find a way to manage and use technology well.   I find there are lots of tech tools an EBOS (Executive, Business Owner or Salesperson) should never be without and even more they should never be allowed to have.  Many of these tools are free, or relatively inexpensive.  Some things are really clear and obvious such as a car or truck depending on the business you're in.  In the book The Millionaire Next Door , Ford F150s were listed as the most common vehicle of the millionaire class.  Since I've been driving an F150 for almost 15 years now, this one is obvious to me.

     The first F150 was a crew cab, three door 2 Wheel drive, typical contractor white.  My current F150 is a super crew with a carpeted bed and shell.  It is a “Lariat” edition fully loaded leather, six disc CD changer, overall a pretty nice truck.  As I read the book the millionaire next door, the F150 just seemed like the obvious choice and I kind of found a strange that it even made the book.  By the time I finished the book, I realized the whole point was not to teach me or other small-business owners, rather is was to teach people that wanted to become small-business owners.

Remember your customers.

As Valentines Day quickly approaches, I realize I missed a few days last year like Fathers Day. I though it would be a good time to remind ourselves that besides saying I Love You to our significant others on Valentines Day and Thank You to our Dads on the third Sunday in June, we also needed to remember to thank our customers.

In today's economic climate, many people are cutting back on sales gifts and thank you cards as a cost saving measure. This is the wrong place to start cutting costs. Our customers are the people that pay us and therefore feed us. We need to remember them, and remember to thank them for their support and business.

May The Best Car Win.

If you have been watching anything on the news, you know that Chrysler and GM are still in deep trouble.  Ford has been buoyed by the fact that they didn't take any government money and they picked a great CEO.  A comment that I didn't think made sense during the congressional hearings came from a GM exec that is no longer at GM because President Obama had him removed.  He said something to the effect of “Our problem isn't that we don't build good cars, it is that we build cars to good.”

Customer Service on the Web, Be clear and easy.

While on the face of it customer service on the web may seem like a ridiculous concept.  If you think about it from a different perspective you might realize just how important customer service over the web is.  Just like an automated sales force, your web presence represents your company.  Much like direct selling, one slip up and there are 30 more vendors in line waiting for your customer.

Even ultra high end retailers like Tiffany’s have at least a dozen strong web competitors.  I bring up Tiffany’s for many reasons.  Years ago a friend gave me some great advice saying “You can’t go wrong with a blue box” when I asked what I should get my wife for her birthday.  How right she has been.  While overseas on an extended military tour, my wife had all the burdens of our business, home, pets and all the other things that we take for granted in our lives.  I decided for our anniversary to surprise her with a small grouping of gifts.

Want to get organized? Start with your keys.

Getting organized is one of the most difficult tasks to get started and easiest to finish.  Our ability to organize and maintain organization is a key component in maintaining high-performance productivity.  It only takes one minute to put your keys in the same place everyday.  If you misplace your keys and spend 20 minutes finding them just once a week, you are 13 minutes ahead every week.

Think about saving 13 minutes a week just for organizing keys. That is nearly one work week a year spent finding keys.  So let's look at this a different way.  For those of you that lose your keys on a fairly regular basis, just organizing your keys give you a week off from work.  With that week saved you could take a vacation and not lose any of the work or income for an entire year.  Imagine that, a week off every year just because you organized your keys.  Or on the other hand, you could get one week better productivity with 50 work weeks the year, just organizing your keys could increase your income 2%.

Don't hide, ask.

When you aren't happy with a product or a service, what do you do?  Are you a screamer?  Do you yell at the desk clerk for a discount because your room didn't have enough soap?  Do you think the world is full of idiots?  Are you like me and just walk away vowing never to come back?  I have on rare occasion blogged about my issues with other business and only once did I ever hear about it.  Intuit had a rep track me down to help fix my Quickbooks issues.

Are you choosing success today?

This holiday season has been different for everyone.  New home construction in our area has come to an almost standstill in the new economy.  Two years ago, the builders that we worked with were closing a house a week or better, in 2009 it bottomed at one a month with one builder closing his doors and retiring.  Right now we have three new home construction projects on the board for the next two quarters.  Two years ago, that would have been a weeks worth of work on the big board.

How do you call?

Are you still answering a phone with a cord at home or is your cellular your primary means of communications?  We live in the age of the virtual phone.  You can live anywhere in the country and have any area code for your phone number with just a few clicks of the mouse.  In our office we have a mix of everything, my house almost as much.

We use a couple of standard VoIP lines to give us some flexibility in our calls and on our toll free numbers.  We have 4 Skype(tm) numbers connected to a Vosky server, and finally a real copper wired phone line as a back up.  We haven't used it in a year.

Don't Let Flat Be Your New Up.

It seems like you can't open a magazine or newspaper that has a business related topic without seeing “flat is the new up”.  It seems like the catchphrase of the current economy.  The first time I heard it last year I was saddened to think this is the new standard.  Our business grew 8% in an industry that was shrinking over 70%.  How did you do.  

Small Business Accounting Made Easy

Tax time is near and that pile of receipts in your shoe box is only going to fade a little more every day.  Now is the time to use a simple system and get your home and business accounting in order.  You need to clean up that box before April 15th anyway, so as the saying goes, it is time to swallow the big frog first.

As with all successful ventures in life, a little bit of work each day or each week makes the work a lot easier.  The hard part is creating the habit every day or every week in order to get the job done.  You eat a roast one bite at a time, so why do you try and handle a years worth of receipts on April 14th while you are hold with the Turbo Tax support line trying to figure out why the installation didn't work.  Lets start by eating last years roast now, and get started on our 2010 roast also.

Two Lessons on Life

Lesson 1, it is your fault.  The economy, my employees, my landlord and my banker are not at fault I am.  No matter what is happening in your business life right now, there is a series of decisions you made some time ago to get you where you are now.  What they are I can’t tell you, and if you look and think hard enough you’ll figure it out.

Lesson 2. Success and Wealth are two totally different things.  We may make them related in our minds however they are not unless you make one a part of the other.

Personal success can bring happiness and inner peace.  These are the “I did it moments” of our lives.  Many times they don’t bring money.  In second grade I beat Jeff Vasil in a 50 yard dash.  I didn’t get any money and man was I a success that day.  Success really is an internal event. If you don’t feel it, it isn’t success.  We can look at someone and call him successful, but is he?  How do we really know?  It could all be a shell and the person is miserable and broke.

Car Rental Ratings 2009 (The cars, not the companies)

 Now that 2009 is behind me, I took a minute to think about every car I rented, and boy has this been quite a travel year for me.  As businesses start to look around and ask the question, “So, Now What?”, I have been on the road more than planned.  A big part of being a road warrior is knowing how to get from the airport to your real destination.   Trains, buses, taxi's, limos and rental cars all can meet the need depending on where you are going.

As an airline pilot twice a month, there isn't a lot of wiggle room.  You stand there and wait for whatever the airline told you is your form of travel.  If that company doesn't show up, you can take a cab and hope the airline pays you back.  As a business adviser and owner the rest of the month, the cost of transportation is part of the fee I charge my clients.  Since I own the company I have a lot more flexibility in what I do as long as my wife sees the price after we get paid.  My basic plan is easy.  If I have more than 8 hours of time to kill or my wife goes with me, then I rent a car.  Sadly that is most of the time I travel.  I also carry my own portable GPS since I can pre-program the routes or places I want to go before I start the trip.

The Star of the Sierra's

Most of my Christmas breaks are spent in Truckee California with my family. We have friends all around the Reno and Lake Tahoe Areas. In the winter time there is plenty to do, ski, snowboard, snowmobile and eat like a champ. It really is a great place to take a week or two out of the office. Everyone tells me I need to “recharge” once in a while. With all the pain from skiing, I don't know how anyone can call this a “recharge” but OK, it is still better working here in the Tahoe area than the office. Of course there are shows and casino action if you some how have any energy left after beating up your knees on the moguls or handling a snow mobile for the day.

Clean and Green are we ready?

For years I have confused people, recycling and badmouthing electric cars at the same time. As a fan of diesels and the idea of a positive energy fuel such as bio-diesel, I have never liked the idea of all the hazardous waste produced by the electric car.

Every electric car is filled with plastics which are difficult to recycle, heavy metals in the batteries do all kinds of wierd things to the environment and I still don’t believe that brushless motors are 100% ozone free. You can smell the car running and it smells like an electric motor.

I would maybe settle for a diesel hybrid but fuel is still so cheap in the US, all of our hybrids are gasoline powered. Of course our newest vehicle in my personal fleet is a TDI diesel. You could say I became a diesel fanatic when I bought my first German Golf Diesel in 1987. 50 MPG in 1987 was an amazing thing, especially when you consider I ran that car flat out at 84 MPH everywhere I went until my insurance threatened to drop because of all the speeding tickets.

Are you ready for LED Lights?

If you have been following my blog, you know that I have gone to the fringes on saving energy.  As humans we are clearly smart enough to do better.  Over the last two years I have finally found a dimmable Compact Florescent Light or CFL that works like a champ.  The only thing we haven't found is one that is in a daylight or natural color.  The bulbs that we found in the daylight range reacted very poorly to dimmers.

For the sections of my house without dimmers, we found that the Lights of American PAR 38 bulbs with 60 LED's worked nicely and provided a semi-focused spot light.  Every other LED bulb that we tried failed within a couple of days.  This week I installed three Four Seasons 120 LED 8 watt bulbs next to the 3 60LED 5 Watt bulbs in my car port.  The Four Seasons 120 LED lights put off a very nice slightly blue daylight color light.  Additionally they have a fluted lens so they have a smoother transition of light closer to a flood light instead of a semi-focused spot.


We have just started testing these, and so far they are working great.  Keep up and I will let you know how they do over the next three or four weeks.  Past history has shown that LED either fails quickly or doesn't fail for a long time.

I also noted that LOA now has a candelabra base LED that is just 3 watts.  Since all of my candelabra fixtures dim, I will wait for a CFL to fail before we try these.  There are two lights in my bedroom that don't dim I may try them in.

Race Time ReVisit

This is a repost from my old blog, and is fitting since we just lost two drivers for the Race February 20-21, if you know anyone, send them to www.rustbucketracers.org for more.

This weekend was a nearly perfect ending to four months of work and preparation.  You see, nearly four months ago we were accepted as a team in the 24 hours of LeMons Houston race.  When I found out about the race, it looked like a fun way to race cars like I had in high school and college.  The premise is simple, buy a car for $500 and make it safe to race.  That's it, then you go race.

Since the event is so long and fatiguing, a minimum of four drivers and up to six per team are allowed.  I came up with a theme, game plan and car plan.  I decided to attempt to race a $500 diesel and after 5 weeks of looking only found one Mercedes 300SD.    The idea of a turbo diesel running on WVO or waste vegetable oil seemed like a great way to start out in this race.

Who you calling a "Tree Hugger"?

Over the years I have been accused of being a “tree hugger” more that once. Personally I associate the term tree hugger with the nuts that spike trees and hurt loggers, stage sit ins to save some worm or sit up on billboards fasting until some developer stops bulldozing land. Being called a tree hugger seemed like my friends were calling me crazy or something.

When I was growing up in Southern California, I remember smog alerts and days where the sky was so brown we couldn't see the valley from our home in Tarzana Hills. The area I lived in has a little pull off area that is featured in movies like “Valley Girl” They must have filmed right after a Santa Ana wind blew all the smog to Lancaster. I can't remember ever seeing stars at home in Tarzana. Surfing at the beaches of California meant coming home with tar spots all over your feet from the oil wells off the coast and scrubbing off the oily layers off goop that would stick to the Zog's Sex Wax on your surfboard. When my parents couldn't take it any more we would get on the Catalina ferry boat or drive up to see our family friends, the Bushnell's, in Bass Lake California which is just outside Yosemite.