Do you have a decision to make? Are you unable to make decisions? Here’s a tactic we heard on the To the Lost episode of Boardwalk Empire:

Flip a coin.

Whether it comes up heads or tails barely matters. What does matter is how you feel when it’s in the air. What are you hoping for?

It’s your intuition at work. And ultimately, it can be an important decision-making tool. If you prefer, you can use a Magic 8 ball to make your next decision.

(Unless you usually get it wrong. Then you may want to use
George Costanza’s technique.)

Whatever you do, there’s an important concept underlying these methods. It’s a systematic way to apply your intuition. Once you grasp it, it will help you make decisions in life.

Frame your options as a binary choice: heads or tails, yes or no, this or that, either or.

For example, let’s say you want to start a business. One question you may ask is when.

So get out your coin. Heads you’ll go into business now. Tails you’ll wait.

Flip the coin in the air. Do you feel a knot in your stomach? Which side do you want to come up?

More importantly, don’t stop there. Take the hoped-for answer and expand on it. Create a series of choices:

Part-time or full-time? Online or off? Start or buy? Independent or franchise?

Of course, the choices will be determined in part by the type of business you want to own. Step-by-step, you’re creating a decision tree.

By getting it on paper, you’ll be able to quickly see how choices now affect options later. You can weigh what you’re giving up against what you’re getting. Then you’ll be able to make a decision that leads to BIGG success!

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We’re always looking at models here at BIGG success. Recently, we’ve been thinking about our prehistoric ancestors.

Here’s the progression: BIGG success is life on your own terms. You own your life. You’re the entrepreneur in charge.

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Our ancestors had well-defined roles for their family business.

The men largely hunted. The women gathered. The children didn’t just play; they helped. They contributed. They learned about their future jobs.

Everyone was involved in the family business. And there was a genius to its organization.

Hunting

Hunting was a risky activity. If the right thing went wrong, you could pay the ultimate price – your life.

The returns were intermittent. Some days, there was a BIGG payoff. On other occasions, there was none.

But make no mistake – the payoffs had to come frequently enough for the family unit to survive.

When they came, the family feasted. When they didn’t, the family survived on the gathered items.

Gathering

Gathering was a low-risk activity. You may get hurt, but you weren’t likely to lose your life from it.

It yielded steady returns. These returns were a nice addition to the family feast when the hunt was successful. On days when there was no kill, the family could subsist for a period of time on what had been gathered.

Two types of income

Modern finance theory works much the same way. It suggests that investors should allocate a portion of their portfolio to riskless assets (i.e. treasuries).

For the rest of it, hold risky assets (e.g. stocks).

Like the family unit of the past, modern investors use this hunting-gathering mindset. Risky assets hunt for intermittent, high returns while the risk-free assets steadily gather income.

The rationale for this is to optimize your money stream. You earn more money given the risk by balancing your portfolio between the two types of assets.

It’s also a clue to optimize your money stream now.

4 strategies to optimize your money stream now

As we said before, BIGG success is about entrepreneuring your life. As the person in charge, you can use the hunter-gatherer model to optimize your money stream now.

Here are four ways you can do it:

• Keep your job and start a part-time business
  

  While holding down a job is not risk-free these days, it provides a steady money stream. It’s gathering. You do the work. You gather the income.
  

  In your spare time, start a business. It’s the hunting side. The income you make may be intermittent until you get established. But it will allow you to feast once it takes off!
  

• Build a portfolio career as a business
  

  This is a ramped-up version of the first one. It seems to work particularly well for people in mid-career and beyond.
  

  Instead of trading time for money as you would with a job, turn your expertise or talent into a business.
  

  Instead of only having one customer (your employer), build a business with multiple clients.
  

  Just be sure to not just sell time for money. Sure, it’s a career but why not think BIGG and build a business, too!
  

• Start a business full-time while your spouse holds down a down
  

  Another alternative if you have a supportive spouse is to start a business full-time now. Your spouse can provide the steady income from his or her job.
  

  This is how many couples get started in business. Once the business takes off, the other spouse can work in the business too or start their own.
  

• Do one of the above and invest in businesses
  

  This is the BIGG play. Combine this strategy with one of the others to put your progress on steroids.
  

  Money and time are two of the five elements of BIGG success. They are your two resources.
  

  You only have so much time. You can leverage your time with money.
  

  Instead of working a business yourself, invest in one with someone who does the work. Get your money working as hard as you do. That’s BIGG success.
  

Want to optimize your money stream but aren’t sure where to start?
Maybe we can help!

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00779-020812.mp3

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A friend of ours recently said something you may have heard before. If you want something done right, get a lazy person do it.

BIGG success is life on your own terms. The first part to reaching that dream is to make sure you’re working on the right things.

But the second part is making sure you’re doing things right. That’s where the lazy factor comes into play.

We often suggest that hard work is a key to reaching BIGG success. It’s a characteristic which the public admires.

But is hard work overrated?

Work is one of the five elements of BIGG success. But so is play.

Life on your own terms may mean more leisure for you. If that’s the case, you better learn all you can from lazy people!

Procrastinate

We’ve all heard the old quote, “Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”

But lazy people have a different version: Why do it today if you can put it off until tomorrow? And you know what, they’re at least partially right!

If it truly isn’t important, don’t do it. Focus on the few things that will move you forward to BIGG success.

Eliminate

Are there things on your things-to-do list that you roll forward day after day? Why?

Cross them off your list once and for all. If you’ve gone this long without doing them, do they really need to be done at all?

Prevent

We know that prevention is the best cure when it comes to our health. The saying holds true if you want to take the lazy way to success.

When you find yourself in reactive mode, don’t settle for just resolving the issue at hand. Think about how you can prevent it from happening again.

Invest

What you do is part of the equation. But how you do it is important as well.

Lazy people can’t stand wasting precious resources. Invest time, effort, and energy upfront. Figure out how to do the tasks you need to do most efficiently.

Audit

We’ve written this post somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But lazy comes with a stigma which may cause you to miss an opportunity.

We value hard work. We believe that BIGG success comes with a price. However, underlying the points above is a larger point:

Periodically audit your to-do list.

Question everything. Question why you’re doing something. Question how you’re doing it. You may find that playing more leads to BIGG success!

We saw a great post on BNET a while back. It was by Margaret Heffernan, author of a great book Women on Top. She talked about entrepreneurs and risk.

When writing her book, she conducted a study and found:

• women generally start their businesses with less money
  
• they have a higher success rate
  
• their firms are more profitable
  
• they create more jobs
  

What is their secret?

She notes that “the most successful had taken huge risks.”

What did they have on the line?
Savings? Check.
Houses? Check.
Retirement accounts? Check.

Did they have a product? No.
Customers? No.

Most importantly, she points out that they had no safety net.

This reminds us of something one of our friends once told us.

He started out in the corporate world. He was receiving promotions and pay increases.

So his employer was disappointed when he told them he was going to leave to start his own business. They told him he could come back at any time.

That’s where the story gets interesting. He told us that whenever things got tough, he always remembered what they said.

And it almost kept him from succeeding!

So he mentally threw their offer away. He told himself he had no other options. He had to make it. He had to win. He had to be a BIGG success.

Now he’s a millionaire many times over, in part, because he wouldn’t turn back. He wouldn’t lose. Because he couldn’t afford to.

A safety net can keep you from reaching BIGG success. Do you have a safety net?

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With the Super Bowl coming up this weekend, we’re thinking about winners and losers.

We talked with a two-time Super Bowl champ, Howard Griffith, on the show a while back. You can hear what it takes to be a winner straight from the source!

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We’ve all seen them.
They seem destined to succeed.
They look the part.
They have people who believe in them.
People who say they are the next BIGG thing.

But success never comes.
Why do they fail to be a success?
How can you increase your odds of being a BIGG success?

You have to have to will the win.
Almost everyone thinks they have it.
But let’s dive into this a little further.

Do you have a hunger for BIGG success that can’t be satiated?
It’s a force inside you.
It constantly drives you.
It presses you to boldly go to places you’ve never gone before.
It pushes you out on a ledge without a safety net.
Then you’re a winner!

Are you consumed by this desire to succeed in a BIGG way?
You think about it all day, every day – from the minute you wake up because you have to get going, to the time you can’t get to sleep because there’s still so much you want to accomplish.
Then you’re a winner!

Do you have to do it, do you just have to be a BIGG success?
You cannot accept not winning.
You cannot accept some modicum of success.
You need BIGG success!
You need to stand out in the crowd.
You need to get through the noise.
You need to win BIGG!
Nothing less is acceptable.

How do you know if you have this winner’s mindset? Ask yourself two questions.

How do you handle adversity?

When things don’t go your way, when you appear to be losing, what do you do?

Because you have a choice to make.

• Option 1: Beat yourself up
  

  Start a dialog inside your head, or even out loud, about what you don’t know, who you don’t know.
  

  Tell yourself you’re not good enough, you don’t have what it takes to be a success.
  

  Watch the conversation quickly spiral downward. Look at people you know who have succeeded. Get jealous. Tell yourself how easy they have it.
  

  People like them; they don’t like you.
  

  And then just give up. Stop trying. Quit. This is one way you could go. It’s the loser’s way.
  

• Option 2: Double down
  

  But you’re a winner! So when you run into an obstacle, you will double down. You will reach deep within yourself to find a reserve of strength you didn’t even know you had.
  

  You will use this strength to get back up. You will huddle up with key people in your life. You will talk to your coach to see how to adapt.
  

  Then you will run another play. You will keep pushing for the end zone. Play after play, you’ll seek to find your best self. You’ll give everything you have to compete for the BIGG win.
  

The 2^nd question to ask to know if you have the winner’s mind is the second side of the coin.

How do you handle success?

When momentum swings your way, what do you do?

Again you have a choice to make.

• Option 1: Playing not to lose
  

  You can start playing to not lose. This isn’t a conscious decision; it’s a sub-conscious reaction.
  

  You start playing it safe. You stop making the aggressive plays it took to get momentum on your side.
  

  You let fear drive you.
  

  “Oh-my-gosh, I’m doing it! I’m winning! Wow! I had hoped for this, but I wasn’t really expecting it.”
  

  And guess what happens?
  

  Before you know it, you’ve lost the momentum you worked so hard to gain. It’s even harder to get back. You end up losing the game.
  

• Push even harder
  

  But you’re a winner! When success comes your way, you will push even harder.
  

  You have the eye of the tiger, that killer instinct.
  

  You will keep playing aggressively because you know you will win. It’s only a matter a time before you win the game. That’s BIGG success!
  

If you were inspired by today’s show, please share it with your friends and followers.

Thanks so much! Until next time, here’s to your BIGG success!

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file | podcast:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/biggsuccess/00778-020212.mp3

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