“The gratification comes in the doing, not in the results.” — James Dean

If you’re familiar with the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment , then you know the power of delayed gratification and how you can learn it as a skill.

Delayed gratification shows up time and again as one of the best ways to live a better life.  It’s how we rise above the pitfalls of instant gratification.   It’s also how we focus on doing more of what’s important.

But how can we master delayed gratification?

After all, who wants to sacrifice the here and now for the promise of a better future … someday, maybe?

That is a tough pill to swallow.

You can’t just throw willpower at it.  You can’t just suck it up or dig deep, or lean in.  There’s more to it than that.

And that’s where we find the secret to delayed gratification.

We have to transform the difficult, painful, and boring, into the easy, pleasant, and fun.   The best news here is that this is a skill we can learn, practice, and eventually master.

To master delayed gratification, you also need to understand our two modes of operating:  the “Go” system and the “Know” system.   And, our success in work and life is how well we can use the right system for the job, and most importantly, how well we can master our emotions so we can rule ourselves by reason, rather than be ruled passions and by fear.

In the book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler show us how to master delayed gratification.

Let’s walk through this and learn how to master delayed gratification ….

We Operate in Two Very Different Modalities

You might have heard of right-brain thinking and left-brain thinking.  Or, you might have heard of the two systems referred to as “emotional thinking” and “rational thinking.”

In In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“Contemporary research reveals that human beings operate in in two very different modalities, depending on the circumstances.  However, as Mischel and Bandura informed us, these modalities or systems are viewed less as character traits or impulses and more as behaviors that can be regulated through skill.”

The “Go” System

You might have heard the “Go” system referred to as the “lizard brain”, or our “fight-or-flight” response.  At the end of the day, the key is to know that sometimes the lizard brain is good, and other times it’s not.

In In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“The first of these two operating modalities is referred to by contemporary theorists as our “hot” or “go” system.  It helps us survive.  We stumble upon something threatening — say a tiger — and as our “go” system takes over, our brain sends blood to our arms and legs, our heart rate and blood pressure increase, and, like it or not, we start producing cholesterol — just in case we face blunt trauma.

More intriguing still, as our ‘go’ system kicks in and blood flows out of the brain and toward our arms and legs, we start relying on a much smaller part of our brain (the amygdala) to take over the job of ‘thinking.’  When the amygdala takes control, we no longer process information in a cool, calm, and collected way.  Rather than cogitating, ruminating, and completing other high-level cognitive tasks, the amygdala or ‘reptilian brain’ is made for speed.  It’s wired for quick, emotional processing that, when activated, triggers reflexive responses, including fight or flight.  The amygdala instinctively moves us to action.  We see a tiger, and bang, we’re off and running.  This hot/go system develops very early and is most dominating in the young infant.”

The “Know” System

Our “Know” system is when we are calm, cool, and collected.

In In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“The second system, known as the ‘cool’ or ‘know’ system, serves us well during more stable times.  It’s emotionally neutral, runs off the frontal lobe, and is designed for higher-level cognitive processing.  Consequently, it helps us thrive, rather than survive.  It’s the part of the brain we’re using as we’re calmly picking blackberries while chatting with a friend.  The system is very ill suited to dealing with the tiger that is just about to appear around the corner.  Our ‘know’ system is slow and contemplative and begins to develop around age four — just about the time children are first able to delay gratification.”

The “Go” System Takes Over More Than It Should

Our “Go” system doesn’t always serve us.

In In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“This inappropriate emotional reaction is exactly the same thing that happens whenever your appetites or cravings kick in at a moment you would prefer that they remain less active.  Your ‘go’ system isn’t designed merely for fight or flight; it’s also designed to take charge whenever a quick, reflexive, survival behavior might suit you.  For example, you smell fresh donuts as you walk by the company cafeteria, and an urge from within whispers, ‘Eat now before it’s too late.’”

You Can Learn Self-Management

We can learn to switch modes more effectively, so that we can be calm, cool, and collected, even in stressful scenarios.  It’s a learnable skill.

In In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“Sometimes we switch into the wrong version of our two operating systems, and this change causes us huge problems.  That’s why in spite of the fact that we’re committed to a vital behavior, we often crumble at stressful moments.  If only we could learn to wrestle control away from the amygdala when it’s kicking in hard at the wrong time.  Then perhaps we could be ruled by reason, and not let passion take charge.  The good news is that this powerful self-management skill is learnable.  And if you want to equip yourself or others to survive the tide of opposing emotions, this skill is pivotal.”

Distract Yourself with Other Activities

One way to practice self-management and learn delayed gratification is to distract yourself with other activities or invent your own diversions.

In In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“In his original experiments, Mischel had observed that children who were able to delay gratification were better at distracting themselves from thinking about either the short- or the long-term reward.  Delayers managed their emotions by distracting themselves with other activities.  They avoided looking at the marshmallows by covering their eyes, turning their chairs away, or resting their heads on their arms.  Some even created their own diversions by talking to themselves, singing, and investing games with their hands and feet.”

Focus on the Tasks, Not the Rewards

Focus on the journey, not the destination.

In In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“When Mischel taught other children the same tactics – and thus helped them take their minds off the rewards and place them on something else – subjects routinely increased their ability to delay gratification.  In similar studies where subjects were given specific tasks that would help them earn their long-term rewards, subjects who focused on the tasks as opposed to the reward the most often were the least persistent.  Researchers also found the distracting individuals by having them focus on the cost of failure, or thinking bad thoughts, did not enhance delay.”

Sucking It Up Doesn’t Work

Throwing will power not only doesn’t work — It can backfire.

In In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“Finally, asking subjects to employ ‘willpower’ by directing their attention to tasks that were difficult, aversive, or boring didn’t work.  Despite the fact most people are convinced that individuals who show poor self-control merely need to exert a stronger will – demanding that subjects dig down, suck it up, or show strength of character – research found the opposite.  Telling people to hunker down didn’t improve performance.”

Transform the Difficult Into the Easy

The ultimate recipe for sustainable success for the long-haul is to turn those bitter pills into better pills that we actually enjoy to swallow.

In In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“The far better strategy was to transform the difficult into the easy, the aversive into the pleasant, and the boring into the interesting. … Suffice it to say that when industrial engineers began to find ways to help employees and others make their tasks easier and more pleasant, leaders learned that they didn’t have to continually harangue people to stick to their unpleasant or boring tasks.  And when leaders began to learn how to measure and focus on short-term goals, it took the pressure off having to continually motivate people into hanging on until the end.”

To put this into practice, try one thing that you know you should do more of, and ask yourself how can you make it easy, make it pleasant, and make it fun?

You Might Also Like

Change Your “Why” or Change Your “How”

Discipline vs. Motivation

Finding a Way to Do the Things You Hate

Is Will a Skill?

Make Pain Pleasurable

Image by Amy Thibodeau.

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many activities are not inherently pleasant.

Many activities don’t produce natural rewards.

How do you motivate yourself when the activity is not inherently pleasant, or not inherently motivating?

What can you do to motivate yourself and others to do the things that need to be done, or you should do, or are good for you … but you don’t want to do them, or don’t like to do them?

Luckily, there are plenty of ways to motivate yourself and others to do activities that are not inherently fun or not inherently rewarding.  That is, if you know how.

In the book, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler show us how.

These authors know their stuff, and they are great at turning insight into action.

The key is to make pain pleasurable.

The Biggest Motivators of Excellence are Intrinsic

You can pave the path of personal excellence from the inside out.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“In short, as you think about the problems you’re trying to resolve, don’t be afraid to draw on the power of intrinsic satisfiers.  As Don Berwich so aptly stated: ‘The biggest motivators of excellence are intrinsic.  They have to do with people’s accountability to themselves.  It’s wanting to do well, to be proud, to go home happy, having accomplished something.’  Berwick recognizes that people have a powerful desired to do what’s right.  Harnessing that intrinsic desire is a far more powerful influence tool than using extrinsic rewards or exacting punishment.”

We Can Transcend Our Own Nature

To motivate yourself, it helps to know that a characteristic of human nature is to transcend our own nature.

According to psychiatrist M. Scott Peck:

“Just because a desire or behavior is natural, odes not meant it is … unchangeable … it is also natural … to never brush our teeth.  Yet we teach ourselves to do the unnatural.  Another characteristic of human nature — perhaps the one that makes us more human — is our capacity to do the unnatural, to transcend and hences transform our own nature.”

Make the Activity Itself More Attractive

To motivate yourself, you need to find ways to make the activity more inherently attractive.

In In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“The promise here is significant.  If we can find a way to change the feeling associated with a vital behavior, we can make compulsive bad habits feel as disgusting as going to bed with gritty teeth.  And we can make formerly unappealing activities become as satisfying as brushing our teeth.  And if you miss this important concept, whenever you try to motivate yourself or others to change behavior, you’ll turn to perks and wisecracks rather than find ways to make the activity itself more inherently attractive.”

Create New Experiences and Create New Motives

You can change reactions to previously neutral or negative behaviors by creating new experience, or changing why people do something.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“So, if we shouldn’t poke people with sharp sticks as a way of propelling them away from their inappropriate behavior, what’s left?  Actually, there are two very powerful and ethical ways of helping humans change their reaction to a previously neutral or noxious behavior: creating new experiences and creating new motives.”

You Can’t Just Talk People Into It

While you can spend a lot of time painting a picture of the vision, and explaining the benefits, unfortunately, that alone doesn’t work.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“These arguments are easy to make but hard to sell because they involve verbal persuasion and the people you’re talking to don’t understand the language.  You’re describing activities and outcomes for which they have no frame of reference, and you’re then asking them to make enormous and immediate sacrifices (no gang, no drugs, no freedom) in order to achieve them.  It won’t work.  It can’t work.”

Try It, You’ll Like It

Get people to try it.  This is the “Try it, you’ll like it approach.”  Psychologist Daniel Gilbert taught us that we’re awful at predicting our own likes and dislikes.  We’re often wrong when we predict we won’t like a new behavior.  Try it anyway.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“So Dr. Silbert simply plods forward, demanding that residents try studying for a class, attending the opera, mentoring another student, and so forth.  Experience has taught her that if residents try  new behaviors, they end up liking many if not most of them.  Okay, perhaps few become opera fans.  Nevertheless, over 90 percent come to enjoy dozens of behaviors they never would have imagined if they’d one day enjoy.”

Vicarious Experience

If you can’t get people to try something, sometimes the best way to motivate someone is to share a story that people can relate to, and vicariously experience the impact.   The key is emotion and empathy.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“The ‘try it, you’ll like it’ strategy can be further aided by the use of models.  Many of our influencer masters have found that vicarious experience can work in situations where they can’t get people to try a vital behavior based on faith alone.  For example, as you recall from an earlier chapter, Miguel Sabido inspired hundreds of thousands of illiterate Mexicans to sign up for literacy programs by engaging them in the story of a man just like them — someone who was ‘too old to learn.’  Someone who was initially unwilling to bear the shame of sitting in a class with much younger people and admitting his ‘defect.’”

Make it a Game

Fun and feedback are a powerful way to create change.  People like to feel like they’re making progress.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“Keeping scores produces clear, frequent feedback that can transform tasks into accomplishments that, in turn, can generate intense satisfaction.  The designers of many of today’s video games have an intuitive feel for Dr. Csikszentmihalyi’s research and have used it to create games that call for highly repetitive activities that end up being amazingly addictive as individuals strive for that next level of achievement.”

Connect to a Person’s Sense of Self

Many activities are not naturally rewarding, so the ‘try it, you’ll like it strategy’ doesn’t always work.  Also, it’s difficult to turn every activity into a game through constant feedback.  In this case, you can find your motivation by investing yourself in the activity.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“Unpleasant endeavors require a whole different sort of motivation that can come only from within.  People stimulate this internal motivation by investing themselves in an activity.  That is, they make the activity an issue of personal significance.  Succeeding becomes more than the challenge of reaching the next level of a video game — it becomes a measure of who they are.  They set high standards of who they’ll be, high enough to create a worthy challenge, and then they work hard to become that very person.”

It’s the Lack of Thought that Enables Bad Behavior

Thoughtless behaviors and auto-pilot can lead to unintentional bad behaviors.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“Often humans react to their immediate environments as if they were on autopilot.  They don’t pause to consider how their immediate choices reflect their ideals, values, or moral codes.  The connections between their actions and personal standards are rarely ‘top of mind.’  Michael Davis calls this failure to connect values to action, ‘microscopic vision.’  Ellen Langer calls it ‘mindlessness.’  Patricia Werhane prefers to refer to it as a lack of ‘moral imagination.’

No matter their terms, each of the scholars was referring to the human tendency to burrow into mundane details while failing to consider how they connect to our values, morals, and personal standards.  This means that when we make horrific and costly mistakes, more often than not we’re not purposefully choosing to do bad things.  It’s almost as if we’re not choosing at all.  It’s the lack of thought, not the presence of thought, that enables our bad behavior.”

Connect Behavior to Values

If you connect behavior to your values, then you can establish connections and consequences that you might otherwise miss.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“When we inspect our actions from a moral perspective, we’re able to see consequences and connections that otherwise remain blocked from our view.  Renowned psychologist Dr. Stanton Peele reports that taking  a broader moral perspective enables humans to face and overcome some of their toughest life challenges.  In fact, Peele has been able to systematically demonstrate that this ability to connect to broader values predicts better than any other variable who will be able to give up addictive and long-lasting habits and who won’t.  Peele has found that individuals who learn how to reconnect their distant but real values to their current behavior can overcome the most addictive of habits — cocaine, heroine, pornography, gambling, you name it.”

Shine the Spotlight on Human Consequences

It’s easy to lose the human touch.  It’s easy to get desensitized with information overload, or a bunch of facts and figures in a spreadsheet.  It’s then just as easy to make bad choices despite good intentions.  The key is to rehumanize things by using real people, real examples, and having empathy for your impact.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“Now for a corporate application.  If you’re a leader attempting to break down silos, encourage collaboration, and engage teamwork across your organization, take note.  Moral disengagement always accompanies political, combative, and self-centered behavior.   You’ll see this kind of routine moral disengagement in the form of narrow labels (‘bean counters,’ ‘gear heads,’ ‘corporate,’ ‘the field,’ ‘them,’ and ‘they’) used to dehumanize other individuals or groups.  To reengage people morally — and to rehumanize targets that people readily and easily abuse — drop labels and substitute names.  Confront self-serving and judgmental descriptions of other people and groups.  Finally, demonstrate by example the need to refer to individuals by name and with respect for their needs.”

Confronting Demons Does NOT Motivate Change

Confrontation doesn’t motivate change.  In some cases, it can make it worse.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“A reigning but inaccurate assumption in counseling is that confrontation motivates change.  But despite all the hoopla about family interventions and counselor-led confrontations, William Miller learned that forcing people to face their demons along with their friends, colleagues, and therapists who hates those demons also didn’t work.  In fact, in one study, he found that confrontation actually increased alcoholic binging.  This les Miller in a different direction.  He began to explore the opposite.  What if the counselor merely helped patients figure out what they wanted rather than what their fed-up friends wanted?”

Motivational Interviewing

If getting preachy or having people confront their demons doesn’t work, then what does?  Honor choice.  Lead the horse to water.   If they find the water, and it’s their choice, they’ll drink.

In Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, the authors write:

“With the new question, Miller discovered that the best way to help individuals reconnect their existing unhealthy behaviors to their long-term values was to stop trying to control their thoughts and behaviors.  You must replace judgment with empathy, and lectures with questions.  If you do so, you gain influence.  The instant you stop trying to impose your agenda on others, you eliminate the fight for control.  You sidestep irrelevant battles over whose view of the world is correct.

The discovery led Miller to develop an influence method called motivational interviewing.  Through a skillful use of open and nondirective questions, the counselor helps others examine what is most important to them and what changes in their life might be required in order for them to live according to their values.  When you listen and they talk, they discover on their own what they must do.  Then they make the necessary changes.”

If you haven’t been effective in driving change or motivating yourself, maybe you can use one nugget from above, or one piece of insight, to change your approach and get unstuck and get real results..

Are you ready to change anything?

You Might Also Like

101 Ways to Motivate Yourself and Others

13 Motivation Techniques

13 Negative Motivation Patterns

Coercion is a Deadly Enemy of Motivation

Discipline vs. Motivation

Find Your Drive – The Keys to Motivation

Image by stevendepelo.

“A fool and his money are soon parted.” — Dr. John Bridge

Some times the best way to really know something, is to truly know it’s opposite.

I know a lot of people that make money online, either as a living on the Web or as a second income.

I also see a lot of people fail to make money online.   Time and again.  They either chase the wrong things, follow bad advice, or don’t know who to learn from.

Strategy, skills, and persistence pay off (in more ways than one.)

Maybe this post can help shed some light on the differences that make the difference?

How many ways can you not make money online? Let me count the ways …

Actually, let’s cut right to the chase and start by asking some simple questions that help us better understand what making money online is all about:

Do you have a product or service that anybody wants? Can you create a customer? Can you be profitable? Can you compete in the market you’re in? Can you sustain your pace?  Are you spending your time on profitable activities?  Are you investing in ways that create future growth?

Do you see the pattern?  Success is about creating amazing value for customers and clients by addressing their pains, needs, and desired outcomes in an economically viable way.

The Business Basics Still Apply

Just because it’s the Web, doesn’t mean that the basics of business don’t apply.  In fact, if anything, the rule of business apply even more so.  And, what you don’t now, can hurt you.

On the upside, the Web can help you take advantage of a digital economy.  You can sell your information products to a tribe of raving fans around the world, while you streamline and scale your operations, and enhance your customer experience.  You can even move the free line to bootstrap your success.

Ultra-Competition is the Name of the Game

It sound promising doesn’t it?  But it’s not so easy.

It takes real skills and abilities.  It’s a tough game.  With a low-barrier to entry, the Web is a breeding ground of ultra-competition.

Of course, the ideal scenario would be to flourish in a market where there is no competition.  Therein lies the challenge, and part of your quest.

Find your Blue Ocean.

The Golden Rule – Create Extreme Value

If you want to make real money online, you first need to generate real value.

Zig Ziglar said it best when he said, “You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.”

If you can give way more than you take, AND, capture the value, you have found sweet spot.  If you want to create more value, then solve more valuable problems, or help people achieve their greatest desired outcomes.

50 Ways to NOT Make Money Online

First learn how NOT to make money online.

If you want to make money online, or if you want to make a living on the Internet, first learn how Not to make money online.  Sometimes the best way to do something well, is to understand what NOT to do.

Here are the top ways how to NOT make money online …

1. Lack the Skills and Psychology.

Tony Robbins point out that two things will hold you back:

1. Skills
2. Psychology

According to Robbins, what holds people back is they lack the strategy or skills or the business acumen to play the game and win.   Or, if they have the strategy and skills, then they lack the psychology it takes to succeed, whether it’s limiting beliefs, or a lack of mental toughness, or failure to pay attention and make better data-driven decisions, and get emotionally wrapped up in things, or let their passion blind them.

2. Fail to Create a Customer.

A great way not to make money on the Web is to fail to create a customer.

Peter Drucker taught us that “the purpose of business is to create a customer.”

If you don’t have a customer, you don’t have a business.  If you don’t have a business, it’s unlikely you’ll make a living off the Web.

Related to this, if you don’t really know who you want to serve, then you might create customers you don’t actually want.

3.  Don’t Start a Business.

As far as not making money, this works pretty good.

A blog is not a business.

A simple check is, what do you sell?

If the answer is “nothing”, then there’s a really good chance that you don’t have a business.

Websites don’t make money.  Businesses do.

4. Dive Into a Niche without a Market.

Every market has niches, but not every niche has a market.

This is a great way not to make money online.   In fact, it might even be the best because you can spend years in a niche that has no market, and not make a dime.   On the flip side, if you end up in a niche that has a market, you might stumble into money by accident.

Did you research your niche before deciding it’s how you’ll make money online?   What products and services are people already spending money on in that niche?  Do you have a way to differentiate?   Does it play to your unique strengths and abilities?  Are there gaps that you can fill that people would pay you for?

If you’re like most people, you started your blog or site with a domain name that you thought was catchy or inspired you.   What you didn’t think about was whether it’s in a niche with a market.

The traffic you get, reveals your niche.  In this niche, are people “searching to browse” or “searching to buy?”

5.  Don’t Have a Business Model.

A great way to not make money online is to fail to have a business model, or even know what one is.  Without a business model, or a plan, you can hope that you luck into the basics like identifying who your customer is, what products or services you sell, what the price point is, what your costs are, what your revenue streams are, what channels and partners you use to sell your stuff with, etc.

Or, you could read and apply the Business Model Canvas to address many of the business components including:  Key Partners, Key Activities, Key Resources, Value Propositions, Customer Relationships, Channels, Customer Segments, Cost Structure, Revenue Streams.

6.  Don’t Know Your Customer’s Pains, Needs, and Desired Outcomes.

Zig Ziglar taught us “You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.”

Great!

But …

Do you know what your customer’s want? … what they really, really want?

Have you used any information markets or customer research to find out?

Be careful.  As Henry Ford said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

And, we know how Steve Jobs felt about customer research.

Do you have real empathy for your customer?  If not, then you probably are off to a great start in never making money online in any significant way.

If you do truly understand, in an emotionally-connected way, your customer’s pains, needs, and desired outcomes, then congratulations … you have highly valuable insight.

7.  Compete Where You Don’t Stand a Chance.

A great way to avoid making any money is to compete in a niche where you stagnate on the bottom.

Some people spend years in a niche, hoping they’ll some day catch fire and rise to the top.

On the Web, being #1 is more than important.  It’s crucial.

People don’t need a bunch of options for everything.

In fact, they usually want somebody that can provide one or more of the following:

The best service

The best quality

The best price

The most relevant

The most unique

The closest (if it’s a physical service, and location is a factor)

8.  Don’t Test Your Business Idea.

Execute your bright ideas that nobody wants.  This is another great way not to make money online.  Fail to test your business idea.

You have a concept.

In fact, you love your concept.

The problem is, nobody else does.

But, you don’t know that, because you didn’t even test your idea.   You just ran with it.   You didn’t do any simple testing on the Web to see if there’s anybody wanting to buy, what you want to sell.

Feel the sting of nobody wanting to buy your stuff?   Does it hurt to let go of ideas that don’t work.   Is your emotional attachment stronger than super glue?  This takes you right back to Tony Robbins point:  Psychology matters.  A lot.

If you want a quick way to test your business idea, simply ask a few questions about it:

Who’s the customer?  What’s the competition?  What does success look like?

9.  Build It, and They Will Come.

How will they find it?  Come to think of it, are they even looking for it?  Will they even recognize it if they bump into it?

Maybe they’ll find it if it’s because it’s in a place they frequently travel, or if they happen to Stumble Upon it.

Otherwise, it might just be like a tree that falls in the woods, that nobody is there to hear.

If you’re not a marketer, and don’t plan to learn how to be one, or partner with one, then you have a perfectly good strategy to avoid making any money.

The good news is, you’ll be in plenty of good company where many others share the same fate, because they don’t value marketing, or they don’t have the ability, or they don’t find a way to address it.

10.  Chase One Get Rich Quick Scheme After Another.

There’s a saying that goes, “If something looks to good to be true, it probably is.”

This is a timeless way and a proven practice to continuously avoid making any real money.

If you want money for nothing, and your checks for free, then a better bet might be to look for a genie in a bottle.

What’s that?   Genie’s don’t exist?   Well, neither does the “get rich quick” part of the get rich quick schemes.

If you’re going to fall for anything, then at least fall for “get rich slowly” programs.

Better yet, always go back to the basics, and ask yourself a few checkpoint questions:

Who’s the customer?

What problem is being solved and how?

What is the actual product or service that people would are paying for?

What unique value are you providing?

How does the money actually flow?

How is the person selling the get rich quick program getting rich?

Trade up from serial-sucker to serial-Entrepreneur and invest in learning business skills and strategy and learn to create amazing value if you want to make real money.

11.  Look Like a Fly-by-Night Shop.

If you don’t want to make money online, then don’t build trust.

A great way to avoid building trust, or to actually destroy trust, is to look like a Fly-by-Night shop.

And, a great way to look like a Fly-by-Night shop is to chase one get rich quick scheme after another.

12.  Avoid Building Brand.

Your brand can make or break you on the Web.  It’s how you stand out among a sea of choices.

If you want to avoid making money online, then avoid building your brand.

If you do want to make money, then be sure to build a brand that reflects customer value, integrity, and aligns with your values.

Authenticity is a powerful brand builder, and a lack of it, is a brand breaker.

13.  Don’t Learn SEO.

When you search for something, how many times do you click past the first page of the search results?

Most people don’t.

They’ll change their search and try to find something more relevant.

If you’re buried in the search results, nobody will find you, or your business, or whatever you’re selling.

There are three main patterns of messing up here:

1. Competing where you’ll never win, or it will be a perpetual uphill battle
2. Optimizing for traffic that’s browsing, not buying (so you never find “the search phrase that pays.”)
3. Gaming it in ways that penalize you big time and lay waste to your efforts

14.  Don’t Learn Social Media.

It’s hard to have raving fans without a Fan page.  It’s tough to connect with customer demand when you are Twitter-less.   You can’t effectively beat the streets if you don’t know the social ropes.

Social media is a force multiplier, and yet another way to rise from the bottom, if SEO has let you down.

But just like the Lottery, you have to be in it, to win it.

If you don’t have a social strategy, you potentially cripple or limit your money making efforts.  After all, business is a relationship thing, and social media is a tool for just that.

15.  Don’t Learn the Ways to Monetize

A great way not to make money online is to fail to learn the main monetization patterns.

The monetization models are all around you, and you can learn from people that are actually making a living on the Internet.

If you take a step back, you first realize that all making money online comes down to selling your products or services, or selling other people’s products or services.

You then realize that even when you make money from Ads or sponsors, you’re making money by selling other people’s products or services.

If you think about it, even working a job in a corporation is selling your “service.”

If you want to make money online, you need to have a working knowledge of how to monetize, whether that means Ad space, sponsors, selling your information products, selling other people’s information products, etc.

16.  Use the Wrong Mentors, Models, and Maps to Learn From

There are plenty of people with models and roadmaps that want to show you how to make money online.    And, there are plenty of gimmicks, and snake-oil, too.

Another potential pitfall is that what works for somebody else, might not be relevant to you or your situation.

Many times, making money is a personal thing, meaning that you have to find the approach that matches your lifestyle, your values, and your current situation.  For example, if you’re not an author with a big tribe of raving fans, then selling your books, might not pay for food, shelter, and your medical bills.

Or, you might get convinced to sell your time as a premium consultant.   Only later do you remind yourself that you didn’t want to sell your time in the first place.   After all, wasn’t the promise of making money online to just set it for auto-pilot and enjoy your passive income?

17.  Follow Your Passion.

Just “follow your passion” and the money will follow, right?

Sure, if there’s money in the niche and if you’re great at what you do, and if you do something that people would actually pay you for.

Cal Newport debunks the idea that “follow your passion” is good advice in his book, So Good They Can’t Ignore You. The surprise? … “Passion comes after you put in the hard work to become excellent at something valuable, not before. In other words, what you do for a living is much less important than how you do it.”

In sum, a perfectly great way not to make money is to be so bad they *can* ignore you.

18.  Follow the Money.

This sounds just like the perfect antidote to following your passion.

It can be just as effective as follow your passion to help you avoid making money.

But there’s a difference.  In this case, at least you are paying attention to where the money is, how does it flow, and who captures the value.

Follow the money can actually help you make money.  In fact, it’s a critical part of the formula when you want to make money.

But, you have to avoid the major pitfall here.

It’s the passion killer that foils people time and time again.

Follow the money works, unless you follow the money to do it for the money.

Making money is a numbers game and if you want to be in it for the long haul, you need to make it a passion play.

19.  Do It for the Money.

The more you chase it, the more elusive it becomes.

It’s like chasing happiness.

You end up focusing on the wrong things.

Instead of focusing on customers and creating great value, you end up trying to find the minimum you can do to make a buck.   Customers sniff this out.   When you don’t have their best interest, they try to find somebody else who does.

20.  Dabble In It.

A great way not to make money online is to dabble in it.   Dip your toe in the pool and try a few things like slapping some Ad Sense here and there, or recommending products on Amazon.

Or, maybe you get ambitious and create a quick eBook and hope it takes off.

21.  Don’t Love What You Do

A lack of drive will always shine through, just as much as an abundance of passion will.  If you don’t love what you do, you’ll consistently underwhelm, yourself and others.

A great way to not make money online is to do things you don’t enjoy that are “supposed” to make money.  You’ll lose your motivation to keep trying, and you won’t put in the time or energy to make any efforts actually pay off.   And, if they do pay off, it will be more like a one-hit wonder because you spend time doing what you don’t enjoy, instead of finding ways to monetize what you do enjoy.

22.  Hope Your Hobby Pays Off.

If your hobby happens to have a market, and if you happen to sell things that people are paying for, you’re in business.

On the other hand, if you’re just trying to monetize your hobby because it’s convenient, then, not only will you not make money, but you might even kill your passion for your hobby.

Sometimes we stop liking what we do when we get paid for it.

23.  Fail to Build a Tribe of Raving Fans.

Maybe your Mom, Dad, or best friend bought something from you.

Great, but that’s not very sustainable.

Maybe you even managed to turn a total stranger into a customer, and they bought something from you.  If you did, hopefully you turned them into a raving fan.

In a world of word-of-mouth marketing and social connection, a tribe of raving fans will make or break your business.   And hopefully, you found a way to grow a tribe of customers you love to serve, and you continue to grow your tribe of raving fans.

Otherwise, you’ve found another great way how not to make money on the Web.

24.  Don’t Create a Customer List.

A fantastic way not to make money is to not create a customer list.

Your customers are your business.

If you don’t have a customer list, then you don’t have an easy way to sell to your customers, or to learn what your customers want more of (or less of.)

If there’s one regret that many business owners or internet marketers say, it’s that they wish they had started a customer email list earlier.  Many say that it’s their single-most, important asset for their business.

25.  Execute without a Strategy.

A great way not to make money is to skip strategy.

Just go for it.  Whatever that is.

Strategy is that sometimes overlooked piece of the puzzle until you realize that none of your approaches are working.   And then it dawns on you.   Strategy was not a piece of the puzzle.

It’s how you put the puzzle together in the first place.

26.  Execute without a Plan.

It’s been said that, “Even the best laid schemes of mice and men, often go astray.”
But it’s also been said that “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”

Winging it is a great way not to make money.

After all, when things go wrong, you don’t know whether it’s “according to plan,” since there is none.

27.  Fail to Execute.

What a way to go.   This one is especially sad.

You might have a stellar strategy and a perfect plan, but without execution, it doesn’t matter.

A lack of execution is how many of the best and the brightest ideas fail to ever see the light of day.

As a result, you guessed it, it’s yet another great way not to make money.

It’s super easy, too.

Just don’t actually do anything.

28.  Don’t Get Educated.

If you really want to avoid making money online, then don’t spend the time and energy to learn all you can.

One of the best ways people don’t make money online is they keep trying the same old things over and over that don’t work.   Or they try to get really smart and think up ways that should work.

Most of the answers you’ll ever need to find are available, but you have to seek them, and you have to ask the right questions.

29.  Ask All the Wrong Questions.

A fundamental flaw that can help you avoid making money online is to ask the wrong questions.

Surprising, a question that usually prevents people from making money online is they ask the question, “How can I make money online?”

If they really want to make money online, then some better questions to ask might be:

“Who do I want to serve?”

“What are the relevant niches for the customers and clients that I want to serve?”

“What’ are the greatest pains, needs, and desired outcomes for those I want to serve?”

“What’s the greatest gap in the market today, that I could uniquely fill?”

“What do I like to do, that I would do all day for free, that people would pay me for?”

… etc.

30.  Fail to Create Extreme Value.

A great way to not make money is to overpromise and under deliver.

It may not catch up with your right away, but it will.

In a world of ultra-competition, if you want to make money, then you have to under-promise and over-deliver.

Set great expectations, but wildly exceed them.

Karma does pay backs, so if you want to be on the receiving end in a monetary way, then be sure to pay it forward, and flow as much value as you possible can.

31.  Don’t Capture the Value.

One of the absolute best ways to avoid making money online is never to capture the value.   You can keep doing free workshops and free guides.   People will happily capture the value.

If you don’t want to make money, then never make it possible to receive.

After all, it’s better to give than to receive, isn’t it?

But what if you do want to receive?

You need to be able to catch the metaphorical boomerang of value.

This could mean anything from accepting donations, to charging for some of the your stuff.

Play with the freeline, but if you make everything free, then there is no line.

Tip – people often value more what they pay for (and sometimes it’s like the chicken and egg.)

32.  Take More Than You Give.

This is a bold move and it still happens.  It’s surprisingly effective at not making money.  It’s one of the all time best “money limiting” moves.

If the way to make great money is to give way more than you get, then this is the perfect polar opposite to block your ability to make money for the foreseeable future.

A related strategy to not make money is to get greedy.   If you want to avoid making money, then press your luck, and get greedy.

It’s a surefire way not to make money.

Intentions come across in the words you use and the actions you take.

How does it come across when somebody doesn’t have your best interest in mind, and sees you as a walking wallet?

33.  Be Boring.

Boring used to work.  “Old reliable” was a way to stand out.  Not anymore.

Now it’s about energized differentiation.  Here’s why:

“But energy is where the action is. It reflects the consumer’s perception of motion and direction. It sustains the brand’s advantages. High-energy brands create a constant sense of interest and excitement. Consumers sense that these brands move faster, see farther, and are more experiential and more responsive to their needs.”

Play it safe, if you don’t want to make money.

Business involves risk.   Calculated risk.

Go for the bold, if you want to rise stand out in a noisy world.

34.  Be a Commodity.

If you want to race to the bottom, then forget about brand, and just compete on price.

Time is faster on the Web and shelf-lives are shorter.

The race to the bottom is a fast one.

If you want to avoid making money online, then be a commodity.

Don’t worry about differentiating, skip building your brand, and commoditize what you do.

Or, do the opposite, if you want to make a living on the Internet.

35.  Don’t Pay Attention to Awareness, Usage, and Satisfaction.

If you don’t want to make money online, then don’t pay attention to awareness, usage, or satisfaction.

Briefly, awareness is a measure of whether, and to what extent, people are aware of your goods and services.  Usage is a measure of whether people are actually using what you sell them.  Satisfaction is a measure of whether people are happy with what you’re selling them.

There are lots of ways to make things complicated when it comes to checking your success, but awareness, usage, and satisfaction are good indicators.

But they are table stakes.  They just get you in the game.

If you really want to make money, and you want to deliver amazing value, while growing your tribe of raving fans, then you should actually add another measure to the mix, for good measure

It’s Net Promoter Score.   Simply put, it’s a measure of whether somebody would recommend you to a friend.

It’s pretty cut and dry and there’s never really been a more telling measure of how raving your fans really are than the Net Promoter Score since it puts their credibility on the line.

36.  Don’t Build Trust.

Trust comes from DWYSYWD (Do What You Say You Will Do.)

When people find that you consistently say what you mean, and mean what you say, you earn their trust.

When people find that time and again, you demonstrate competence, you earn their trust as a trusted advisor.

When people find that you consistently have their best interest at heart, you earn their trust.

When people can predict what you’ll do, they start to trust you(I trust that when I give them my money, they’ll fulfill my order.)

If you don’t want to make money online, then don’t build trust.

37.  Don’t Innovate in Your Process and Product.

If you want to avoid making money, then it’s pretty easy.   Fail to evolve.  Don’t keep up.

Dr. Edwards Deming taught us that business is a game of continuous improvement.

In order to continuous improvement, you need to continuously innovate.

While innovation in your product or service is good, since that’s the part the customer sees, you also need to innovate in your product creation process.   Otherwise, eventually,  you’ll get priced out of market, or you’ll be, too expensive, or there will be better, faster, cheaper options that will attract your customers.

Innovating in your process is what allows you to keep innovating in your product.

If you want to make real money online, and if you want to be able to fund your business, then find ways to do things better, faster, and cheaper by innovating in both your process and your products or services.

Your North Star is improving value up, bringing costs down, and reducing risk along the way, while accelerating time to market.

38.  Spend More Time on Tangents and Distractions.

If you really want to avoid making money online, then fill your time with tangents and distractions and follow things down the rabbit hole.

Constantly checking your stats is a great way to both avoid making money, and to help you feel depressed.

If you want real results, then spend more time on vital behaviors that directly contribute to your bottom line.

39.  Don’t Spend Enough Time on Income Generating Activities.

If you don’t want to make money, then don’t do two things:

1. Don’t know what your income generating activities are
2. Don’t spend time in your income generating activities

If, instead, you want to make money, then by all means, do the total opposite.

40.  Get Disrupted.

If you don’t want to make money, then continuously find yourself on the receiving end of disruptive thinking.

It’s tough to get ahead, let alone catch up, if you are constantly playing catch up.

If, on the other hand, you do want to get ahead and you do want to make money, and create a competitive advantage …then be the disruptive change.

41.  Don’t Partner.

Don’t partner if you don’t want to make money.

In fact, a great way to make this strategy even more effective at not making money is to combine it with doing something you’re no good at.

If you do want to make money, then there are many ways to partner that improve your odds:

If you’re a Starter, but not a Finisher, then partner with a Finisher.

If you’re no good at doing the administrative stuff, partner with a good administrative assistant.

If you’re no good with the numbers, partner with an accountant.

If you’re a great talker, but not good at putting things down on paper, partner with a writer.

If you’re a brilliant, misunderstood genius, but have no marketing savvy, partner with a marketing maven.

If you’ve got great stuff that the world needs to know, but you have no channel to read the audience of your dreams, then partner with someone who does.

42.  Don’t Grow Your Traffic.

If you don’t want to make money, then don’t grow your traffic.

More precisely, don’t grow relevant traffic.

You might grow your traffic by putting up some funny pictures, or hit a spike with a post gone viral, or a video that’s a hoot, but that won’t sustain your living, and if the traffic isn’t relevant, it won’t help you in your monetization efforts.

It might seem like such a little difference, but it’s a world of difference online between somebody searching to browse and searching to buy.

43.  Monetize Your Traffic Before You Have Any.

This is a classic way not to make money.

Put up a site.  Sprinkle some Ads.  Try one here, there, and every where.

Where’s the money?

Oh, right … there is none, because there’s no traffic.

And, there’s no traffic because you didn’t create value for a tribe of raving fans, and you tried to take, before you give.

44.  Work Harder.

A common pattern that is pretty good for not making money is to work harder if what you’re doing isn’t working.

Hard work pays off when you’re strategy and tactics are working.  If your strategy is off, it’s better to change your strategy, than to throw more time and energy at a failed strategy.

If you want to make money online, then work smarter, not harder.

45.  Fail to Scale.

The Web is a way to scale.

A great way not to make money is to do everything manually, so that you spend more time processing and doing operations, than doing your best creative work.

If you spend more time caught up in day to day operations, you’ll gradually spend less and less time in creating customer value.

46.  Don’t Build a Platform.

If you don’t want to make money, then just build a blog or a site with some pages.

Don’t build a consistent stream of value.

Don’t build expectations around high-quality content.

Don’t build a mailing list for your tribe of raving fans.

Don’t build a YouTube channel.

Don’t do a Podcast series.

Don’t build high quality backlinks to your site.

On the other hand, if you do want to create a premium platform for marketing your work, building your brand, and selling your stuff to a tribe of raving fans, then build a platform to amplify your impact.

Michael Hyatt can show you how in his book, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World.

47.  Do the Same Thing Everybody Else Does.

Unless you’re a fast follower, this is a pretty good way to not make money.

If there is a market that everybody is competing in, then simple using a copy-cat strategy could get you lost among the herd.

48.  Don’t Diversify.

Put all your eggs in one basket.

If you want to have a lot of risk, have one stream of income.

A good example is to bet on Ad revenue with a single sponsor.

All it takes is for the market to change, or your source of income to change, and whammo … bye-bye birdie.

If you want to make money, don’t be “a has been who never was”, or who was once great.  Diversify to reduce your risk AND to experiment and find your next game changing opportunity.

49.  Do Something You’re No Good At.

How long do you like to do something you’re no good at?

Are you willing to do it day in and day out, and do your best work, at something that’s no good?

Do people want to sign up to pay you for something you’re not good at?

Remember, the Web is a big place of ultra-competition, so probably not.

If you don’t want to make money, then this is a good way to go.

50.  Lose Sight of the Customer.

Who’s watching the customer?  I thought it was your turn to look after them?

A surprisingly effective way to avoid making money online is to simply lose sight of the customer.  It can happen fast.  You can lose them right under your nose.  Just turns your focus inwards, and stop paying attention to their pains, needs, and desired outcomes.

The beauty of this approach for avoiding making money is how quiet, quick, and painless it is …until it’s too late.

I could go on, but that’s a I think that if you really internalize above, you’ll have a very good understanding of exactly how not to make money.

With that in mind, let’s switch gears, and turn our attention to how to learn how to make a living on the Internet, or a side income, in a more effective way.

Here is a good way to start …

7 People to Learn How To Make Money From

If you do want to make money online, then focus on building a business, and learn from people that do just that.    You can save a lot of time and pain, by learning from other’s mistakes, as well as their successes.  You can also find out what’s possible by exploring their strategies and poking around in their income reports, when they share them.

Here’s a short-list of some people you can model and learn from:

1. Amy Hoy (UnicornFree.com) – Amy Hoy helps other designers & developers (people like me!) do what I did — create a growing, profitable stable of products, without outside funding, on the side, to create both improved lives for their customers, and more freedom & money for themselves, too.
2. Darren Rose (ProBlogger.com) – Darren Rose helps people monetize their blog, by sharing what works and what doesn’t, and openly shares his own experiments in blogging for dollars.
3. John Chow (JohnChow.com) – John Chow helps people monetize their blog with a special emphasis on automation, minimal effort, and maximum ROI.   He’s really about efficiency and effectiveness.  Like Darren, he openly shares his own experiments in blogging for dollars.
4. Michael Hyatt (MichaelHyatt.com) – Michael Hyatt focuses on building your blog as your platform to market more effectively and to amplify your impact.
5. Pat Flynn (SmartPassiveIncome.com) – Pat Flynn focuses on personal experiments in monetization and sharing success stories from others that have been successful in making a living or significant monetization online.
6. Steve Pavlina (StevePavlina.com) – Steve Pavlina shares his approach to online success in various posts.   If you dig a bit, you can see how his story unfolded, and learn his mindset, strategies and tactics for monetizing his site over the years.
7. Yaro Starak (Entrepreneurs-Journey.com) – Yaro Starak shares business skills and techniques for being an effective online Entrepreneur, and, like Pat Flynn, regularly shares real-world success stories that you can learn from.

Key Tip –Remember to learn Bruce Lee style: “Absorb what is useful, discard what is not, add what is uniquely your own.”

10 Books to Learn How To Make Money Online

Here are some great books to help you think about online business and build your platform:

1. APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur-How to Publish a Book, by Guy Kawasaki
2. Get Known Before The Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths To Grow An Author Platform, by Christina Katz
3. How I Made My First Million on the Internet, by Ewen Chia
4. How to Write & Sell Simple Information for Fun and Profit: Your Guide to Writing and Publishing Books, E-Books, Articles, Special Reports, Audio Programs, DVDs, and Other How-To Content, by Robert W. Bly
5. Instant Income: Strategies That Bring in the Cash, by Janet Switzer
6. Make Money Online: Roadmap of a Dot Com Mogul, by John Chow and Michael Kwan
7. Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World, by Michael Hyatt
8. ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income, by Darren Rose and Chris Garrett
9. Success Secrets of the Online Marketing Superstars, by Mitch Meyerson
10. The Six Figure Second Income, by David Lindahl

Key Tip – You never know which book is going to do it for you.   What I’ve found is that while reading one book, I actually learn more about another, or that something suddenly clicks.   If you can only read one book above, I would start with The Six Figure Second Income.  It’s the one that would give you the big picture of how to think about making money in the digital economy with information products is.   It also helps you get over a lot of the resistance and hurdles you would face when you’re first starting out.

You Might Also Like

• The 8 Steps to Wealth
• The Six-Figure Second Income
• Think in Terms of an Hourly Rate

Image by CarbonNYC.

“If you are not a brand, you are a commodity.” — Philip Kotler

I was responding to a comment, about how to rebrand yourself, but then realized it’s worth sharing more broadly.

Here we go.

One of the things I do at work on a regular basis is mentor people on how to rebrand themselves, whether it’s to get a better review, build a better relationship with their manager, get a new position, or take their game to the next level.

As Marshall Goldsmith says, “What got you here, won’t get you there.”

In my experience, there are a few things that you can do to make a big difference in reshaping your brand at work.

Here is my short-list of things you can do:

1. Solve your manager’s top problems, quickly and effectively (this puts you in the inner circle of trust — if you don’t know what is top of mind, then ask, and ask often.  And, if you think you know what’s top of mind, check anyway, you’ll be surprised.)
2. Establish rapport (if no rapport, then no influence)
3. Know your manager’s key concerns and address them (what holds you back?  What are three things to work on?)
4. Know your manager’s values and connect at the values (Always connect at the value to find your rapport and build connection)
5. Set the example that your peer’s want as their leader (Do the Gandhi thing and “be the change”)  You might have all the credentials but you have to “fit in”, if you want to stand out.

If you do nothing else, then do #1.

It’s the fastest and most effective way to become the right-hand person.  It also forces you to become extremely relevant.  You have to know what the top problems really are.   This is a fast way to win over a new manager or to even win over an old one.  People like people who make their problems go away.

If you don’t know their values, then you’ll have a tough time creating rapport.

Be aware and deliberately focus and showcase on what’s actually valued.  For example, if you value “experience” but your manager values “fresh ideas”, then touting your experience might work against you.   How ironic is that?   If what they value now is “fresh ideas” and new perspectives, then give them more of what they want (focus on your blue ocean ideas, your disruptive thinking, and ask questions that would “change the business” vs. “run the business.”)

If you don’t know the their “convincer strategy” (what it takes for them to be convinced — do they need to hear something 3 times, do they need to hear it from 3 other people, etc.), then you’ll miss how to change their beliefs.

Judgment is subtle, but demonstrating great judgment is the difference that makes the difference. It’s quiet and behind the scenes, but people are always forming impressions of your judgment. It gets revealed if somebody was asked to “act like you” or “what would Bob do in this situation?”  It also gets revealed when the manager is out of office – who do they leave in charge?  Usually, it’s the one they trust to exercise better judgment.

Sometimes the best thing you can do is to “do the opposite” of what you’d normally do, to periodically surprise people and have them see you in a new light.

Like I said, I mentor people on this all the time, and I use the same strategies to continuously reinvent myself at work.  But the thing that continues to surprise me is just how super effective #1 above is at changing your effectiveness at work.  It’s often counter-intuitive especially when you want to go off and make big impact that you think is relevant.  You have to win the trust first, then the leash gets longer, until finally you break the chain (and if you mess up, you simply go back to solving the highest priority problems on your manager’s plate.)

Think of it as expanding your sphere of influence in a Stephen Covey sort of way.

You Might Also Like

How To Rebrand a Brand

Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future

StoryBranding: Creating Standout Brands Through the Power of Story

The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding

Top 5 Lessons Learned in Personal Branding

Image by notsogoodphotography.

“Home ought to be our clearinghouse, the place from which we go forth lessoned and disciplined, and ready for life.” — Kathleen Norris

How do you feel when you retreat to your humble abode?   Does your home help you feel rested and relaxed?   Do you wake up and feel ready for anything?  When you’re in the comforts of your home, do you actually feel comfortable and “at home?”

Most importantly, does your home actually reflect you?

Whether you want to re-organize and declutter your living space or simply design a more effective home office, (or avoid costly mistakes when doing any home remodeling), Kathryn Weber can show you how, in her book, Living Space: Simple Steps to Transform Your Home [Kindle Edition].

Living Space is a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) guide to re-organizing your home in ways that support your wants and needs.  Weber helps you creates better energy, the feng shui way.  But, it’s more than feng shui tips for your kitchen, bedroom, living room, and home office…

It’s a pragmatic guide to creating a home you love.

It’s truly transformational, and it includes plenty of action steps to transform your home into your personal sanctuary, a productivity palace, and a place of personal power.

It’s also worth noting that the foreword is written by Roger Hazard.  He’s the designer and producer on the international Emmy-nominated “SELL THIS HOUSE,” “SELL THIS HOUSE: EXTREME,” and “MOVE THIS HOUSE.”  Not bad for some endorsement of Weber’s work, right up front.

One thing I need to point out about this book is that you have to read it with the right mindset.   It’s a book to explore practical ideas for home improvement, and turn those ideas into action.  It really is about remodeling your home and it’s action-oriented.   It’s not a theoretical book, and it’s not a dissertation on the virtues of re-decorating your house.  It’s specific and it’s fast-paced.

With that in mind, let’s dive in and take a tour of  Living Space in more detail …

What’s In It For You?

The tips in Living Space will help you make your office more organized, kitchen brighter, your living room more inviting, and your bedroom more relaxing. In addition to visual pointers, Kathryn Weber gives you practical advice on storage ideas, DIY upgrades, basic and professional kitchen appliances, organization, and room layouts.

Here is a sampling of some of the challenges that Living Space helps you with:

• How to design and re-organize your living space to better support your scenarios
• How to feel good and ready for anything when you’re in your home
• How to remodel your home on a budget
• How to avoid incredibly expensive do-overs and hind-sight when your remodel your home
• How to spruce up your entryway
• How to design a simpler, more effective, and easier to maintain kitchen
• How to create a better dining room experience
• How to create a living room that creates and enhances great experiences
• How to create a better bedroom
• How to design a more effective home office
• How to create a laundry room you can love
• How to create a more effective personal gym and exercise with a view
• How to create a more effective media room
• How to repurpose and take advantage of unused space
• How to dress up your porch in style
• How to rethink decorating your hallways
• How to put attention and interest on your fifth wall – the ceiling
• How to renovate the basement
• How to build a better “man-cave”
• How to create a wine closet when you don’t have space for a wine cellar
• How to create a cost-effective outdoor room
• How to buy the right kind of outdoor furniture
• How to create a flexible guest house by adding on by adding out

Chapters at a Glance

• Chapter 1 – The Kitchen
• Chapter 2 – The Living Room and Family Room
• Chapter 3 – The Dining Room
• Chapter 4 – The Bedroom
• Chapter 5 – The Bathroom
• Chapter 6 – Special Spaces

Key Features

Here are some of the key features of Living Space:

• Action-packed.  It’s very action-oriented.  Every page is a blast of ideas and actions you can use to transform your home.
• Practical examples.    The examples are easy to relate to, very down to Earth, and grounded in experience.
• Scenario-Based.   Rather than a bunch of generic advice, Weber provides scenario-based guidance to make her examples more relevant.
• To the point.  Weber doesn’t beat around the bush.  She dives right in and speaks with authority.
• Visuals.  The book includes visuals that show what some ideas might look like.  You’ll see lots of ideas that you’ll want to actually do.
• Well-structured.  The book is well-structured and easy to follow.  You can read it end-to-end or flip through it like a reference and just jump to the room you care about.

Here are some of the key features of Living Space:

Who Living Space is For

It’s for anyone who wants to improve their home.

Weber writes:

”These themes run through ?Living Space: Simple Steps to Transform Your Home. This book is
for everyone who wants to create the kind of house they long to come home to. It‘s about giving you ideas and suggestions for creating the look and functionality you want in the quickest, easiest, most value-driven way.”

Why Living Space

Living Space helps you navigate the world of interior design.

In the Foreword, Richard Harzard writes:

“With an all-encompassing approach to home design — ranging from room-specific decorating
strategies to ideas for addressing common stumbling blocks like clutter and pet management —
?Living Space is a valuable resource for any homeowner who has been overwhelmed by the
prospect of tackling a redesign project. Kathryn is an able and entertaining guide, taking you
though home design room by room and step by step. Her structured approach to design will
boost any nervous do-it-yourselfer’s confidence, and she overlooks nothing, even addressing
utility rooms and outdoor spaces. This book will be an invaluable tool as you navigate through
the world of interior design; it contains the information and insights you’ll need to create more beautiful, more personalized spaces.”

Your Home Needs to Reflect Your Spirit

Your home needs to reflect your personality and motivations.

Richard Harzard writes:

“But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that most successful designers play the role of therapist
for their clients. They ask questions and listen intently to their clients’ answers. They take time to
truly understand their clients’ personalities and motivations, because they know that the finished
home needs to be more than just beautiful; it needs to be an accurate reflection of the owner’s
spirit.”

Reflect You, Not Your Friends

Your remodeling efforts should reflect you, not your friends.

Richard Harzard writes:

“It’s perfectly relevant. When undertaking a home design project, it’s easy to become distracted by
how your friends and neighbors have styled their homes, the looks pushed by magazines and
catalogues, and your preconceived notions of how your home is “supposed” to look. It’s
important to take a step back to honestly assess your needs and tastes, and remember that your
home should reflect your personality, not anyone else’s.”

Happy Home, Happy Life

A messy home creates a messy life.

Weber writes:

”Our homes need our attention because we‘re in a relationship. There‘s a saying that a parent is only as happy as his or her unhappiest child. And so it goes with our homes. When the house is a mess, we can‘t think and we feel frustrated. When our homes, like our relationships, are lovingly tended to, we‘re happy.”

Reinvigorate, Rejuvenate, and Offer Safe Harbor

Our homes need to provide intangibles beyond just shelter.

Weber writes:

“We need our homes to reinvigorate us, rejuvenate our lives, offer safe harbor and provide the kind of place worthy of the most important people and events in our lives. It‘s the sweet, tender moments that make our homes more than four walls and a roof over our heads. They‘re the repositories of our dreams, tears, laughter and love, and the places everyone wants to go back to.”

All Homes are a Work in Progress

There’s always “room” for improvement.

Weber writes:
”My house is a work in progress. I find that most homes are. Even owners whose lavish homes are featured in magazines face the same problems everyone experiences — from the dog chewing a costly oriental carpet to toys cascading through every room once little ones arrive. The only picture-perfect moment is when those pictures are taken. All homes, regardless of pedigree, need regular updates, maintenance, organization and repair.”

Boost Your Energy with Feng Shui

The feng shui of your home plays a key role in how you feel.

Weber writes:

”You could describe the way a home looks and feels as its feng shui. After all, feng shui is all about energy. What‘s heartening is that routinely investing small amounts of time to maintain our homes brings peace of mind, enjoyment, pride, comfort, relaxation — and a big energy boost.”

Simple Steps Over Slash and Burn

You can take small steps to make big changes to your home.

Weber writes:

“Maintaining a clean, beautiful, organized home is an act of love, but too often we try too hard,
adopting a slash-and-burn approach.  We think that acquiring more living space means we have to buy a new, larger house. The truth   is that with careful organization, you can create all kinds of space you never knew you had. Even tending to simple maintenance issues can inspire a whole new love for your home.
A case in point is a home being prepared for sale. Once the house is decluttered, spruced up with a fresh coat of paint and re-landscaped, it suddenly looks great again. The owners find themselves falling back in love with a home that was once too cluttered, too run down, too small, too ugly. They also feel better about themselves!

Creating big changes in your home doesn’t have to be labor-intensive or financially draining. In fact, I find some of the most rewarding improvements are the simplest and least expensive, like drawer organizers for your kitchen tools, or rearranging the furniture in conversational groupings.”

Design a Better Home Office

As more entrepreneurs work from home, Weber provides some great advice on making sure your home office improves your productivity.

Weber writes:

”Not surprisingly, then, the home office has evolved well beyond a desk in the corner of the
bedroom where you type out a few e-mails. Dedicated rooms are now required to support
breadwinners and entrepreneurs alike. When they‘re set up with an eye toward organization and
style, home offices make their users more comfortable, efficient and productive.
Too often, a home office is a mish-mash of furniture taken from other rooms in the house — a
major mistake. Although most home offices aren’t used for client meetings or even intended for
outside visitors, that doesn’t mean they should be overly casual. In fact, a home office should
look like an office, not like a spare room simply being used as an office.
One of your first considerations when designing a home office is how you work. If you‘ll be
looking at plans or preparing reports, then a wide-open workspace is critical. If you spend lots of
time on the computer, avoid the tendency to turn your desk toward the wall. While convenient
for using power outlets, this arrangement can make you feel boxed into a cubicle instead of an
office.”

Your Backsplash Should be Easy Installation, Low Cost, and Quick Cleanup

Your backsplash can be a blessing or a curse.  The worst mistake is to put up a backsplash behind the stove that is difficult to clean and maintain.

Weber writes:

“Even though adding a backsplash is a wonderful DIY project, you’ll soon regret it if you don‘t pay close attention to practical matters such as whether the backsplash can be cleaned easily. Look for surfaces that allow fast and easy cleanup, especially if you‘re adding a backsplash behind the stove. Grease splatters are next to impossible to remove from porous surfaces like unpolished marble or tile. Some of the easiest surfaces to clean are sealed tile, glass tile and stainless steel. Metal ceiling tiles with pressed designs have also gained notice for their ease of installation, low cost and quick cleanup.”

7 Ways to Create a More Interesting Ceiling

Weber shares 7 ways we can improve our ceilings of any height:

1. Add crown molding. Molding is a wonderful way to add interest and make a room look more
   finished. There‘s even a crown molding with special corner pieces that allow you to join the ends
   without cutting special angles.
2. Add beams. If you have tall ceilings, beams can be added easily. Go to websites such as
   fauxwoodbeams.com to buy artificial beams that are lightweight and easy to install. Or,
   make your own beams with rustic wood.
3. Create a scene. Low ceilings can especially benefit from this technique. You can paint a faux
   sky quickly and easily with some blue, white, and gray paint. Shaky with a brush? Buy sky
   theme wallpaper instead. Draw or cut out a branch of a limb crossing the ceiling for a look that
   reminds you of dozing under a tree. Apply inexpensive white lattice over your ceiling sky and
   you‘ll think you‘re outdoors in a gazebo.
4. Get moldy. Apply small pieces of molding on the ceiling to create a pattern, such as a simple
   strip of molding to frame the area around a chandelier. Or run molding about 12 inches in from
   the wall. This type of molding can often be applied with glue; once it‘s up, paint the inset of the
   pattern to make the design stand out, or paint the outside of the molding.
   Molding can also be added about six inches below crown molding on the wall. Painting the area
   between the small molding and the crown molding the same color will make your crown
   molding appear to be 8 or 10 inches deep. This is an inexpensive way to make crown molding
   look more substantial and expensive.
5. Light up the night. Lighting is another way to add interest from above. Install crown molding
   six inches down from the ceiling corner. Run rope lighting inside the crown molding. Have an
   electrician install a plug at the top of the wall for the rope lighting and wire this to a switch. This
   works well for tall and standard ceilings. In fact, in eight-foot ceilings, the lighting will make the
   ceilings appear taller — something really nice in an area where you‘d like more space, such as
   the dining room or living room.
6. Get sconced. Sconces are terrific additions to any room because they add wall interest and
   project light upwards. Because of this, they make standard ceilings appear taller.
7. Add paint or wallpaper. Painting your ceiling a dramatic color creates interest quickly and
   inexpensively. If your ceilings are low, paint them a dark color (such as blue, gray or green)
   because these colors appear to recede. Good choices for high ceilings are bright or vibrant hues
   such as orange, red, yellow or purple — all colors that come forward.

Get Outdoor Furniture that Lasts Longer

If you’ve ever had furniture that’s rotted on you, you’ll appreciate Weber’s advice about choosing durable outdoor furniture.

Weber writes:

”If the furniture will be on a covered porch or veranda, shielded from the elements, there are more
choices available. Seating sets are available that include sofas and side chairs. Hammocks and
sling style seats are comfortable, but don‘t hold up as well as traditional style chairs that only
need new pads every few years. Sling-style seats can also come out of the frame, rendering the
chair useless.
If swings, rockers and other wood furniture appeals to you, go with teak. This durable, long-lasting wood ages well and withstands sun and rain. Teak is expensive, however, and should be
considered an investment. Wicker is another option, and with newer styles available in resin, you
can have the wicker look without the upkeep. Resin pieces look nearly identical to the real thing
and come in a wide array of styles and colors.”

What more can I say? This book is a massive collection of insight and action. Use Living Space to make the most of the space you’ve got, and to create an arena that truly reflects you.

Get the Book

Living Space: Simple Steps to Transform Your Home, by Kathryn Weber is available on Amazon:

• Living Space: Simple Steps to Transform Your Home [Kindle Edition], by Kathryn Weber

You Might Also Like

• Disaster Proof Your Life: How To Be Ready for Any Emergency
• The Three Paths of Happiness: The Pleasant Life, The Good Life, and The Meaningful Life
• The Way of Happiness: 7 Principles for Happiness

Image by Smirnova Ksenia.

Chalene Johnson has a passion for more from life, and it’s contagious.

She is personal development on fire.

Chalene Johnson is a unique blend of entrepreneur, physical fitness expert, choreographer, author, life changer, and motivational speaker.

She walks her talk, keeps things real, and inspires us to be our best.   She comes from a place of caring and compassion.  Most importantly, Chalene is extreme when it comes to growth and greatness and she is somebody who lives and breathes her passion.

On a daily basis, she helps people learn how to balance their life, reduce stress, improve their self-image, and make the best use of their time to live according to their priorities.

Chalene is both a master and a life-long learner in the art and science of physical fitness, personal development, leadership, productivity, time management, and motivation.

Chalene is authentic, has integrity and takes a holistic approach.   I learned a lot about Chalene’s motivating style, experience, and expertise from working out with her from the comfort of my living room with her ChaLEAN Extreme Workout.   Her motivational mojo is working, and it just might work on you.

She’s especially good at helping you hold yourself accountable in a compassionate way, make better choices, and lead yourself from the inside out, wile working your mind, body, emotions, spirit, and relationships.

Here is my distillation of  Chalene Johnson’s insights and actions for work and life on personal development, time management, motivation, productivity, leadership, physical fitness, and more …

Lesson #1. Find your happy.

Do you know what makes you happy from the inside out?  If not, figure it out.  Dig deep to find what makes you genuinely happy and do more of it each day.  Chalene says:

“Find your happy pill. Fitness is MY happy pill! How do you find your “happy” each day?”

Lesson #2. Lead with your truth.

Be true to you.   Stay authentic.  It’s not about impressing other people.  It’s about impressing yourself.  Lead from the inside out and come from a place of kindness.

Chalene says:

“Lead with your truth.  That’s the past, this is who I am now.  Look what I’ve overcome.  Then you find your calling, then you find your purpose.  Then you become kind, you come from a place of heart.”

Lesson #3. Be humble.

If you want to be truly awesome, you have to stay humble.  Have an attitude of gratitude and don’t let success go to your head.

Chalene says:

“Work hard and stay humble. Your bank account, body, status, association, house, cars, and clothes don’t make you any more important as a person. Be humble.”

Lesson #4.  Work your relationships more than your physique.

No matter how buff your bod is, or how big your bankroll is, your relationships make your life richer.

Chalene says:

“I believe you should work much harder on your relationships than you do on your physique. No matter how smoking hot your body is … if your relationships are a hot mess then it’s difficult to find happiness. People make us happy. Relationships are more important than deltoids. Work on your mental wellness, then your relationships, then your physique. Date night is a time to appreciate, enjoy and rediscover each other! Never take each other for granted.”

Lesson #5. Fixate on your destination.

Chalene challenges us to fixate on our destination — our goal — and see the finish line.   Chalene reminds us that, “Where you look is where you go – it’s ‘destination fixation.’”   If you can hold a picture in your mind of the end results, then it will help you stay on path, or get back on path if you fall off.   You can use your destination to inspire you on a daily basis and to climb the toughest ladders, and to overcome your personal challenges with clarity, confidence, and conviction.

Lesson #6. Create your own definition of success.

Success is a personal thing.  Your definition of success has to make sense for you and your situation.   Paint a picture of success that inspires you and brings to life the kind of person that you want to be, living the kind of life you want to lead.

Chalene says:

“Look closely at the people whom you consider successful. Don’t just look at accomplishments, money, toys, stature… look at all areas of their life. Look at how they live and the relationships they have. Now, picture YOUR ideal life. Would you be doing the things that you want to do, on your own time, with the people you want to do them with? What does success look like for you?”

Lesson #7. Success isn’t magic, it’s a method.

Chalene says, “It’s NOT luck — it’s KNOW HOW. There is a formula for everything.”   You have to study the people that have the results that you want.   Learn from their formula.   Study what made them successful.  If you can find the proven practices and the methods that work, you’ll speed up your success, and you’ll avoid the dead-ends.   Finding a formula helps you establish and practices routines that will help you get better and better over time.

Lesson #8. Can you walk your talk?

Talk is cheap.   Practice what you preach.   Stay authentic throughout the process.   Speak from experience, and live your principles and values.    If you stay true to you, and if you say what you mean and mean what you say, you’ll have integrity and inner-strength that will support you in your journey through life.

Lesson #9. Character is defined by action.

Actions speak louder than words.   You express your character through your actions.

Chalene says:

“Strength of character is the courage to do what you know to be right, even if there is great personal cost to you. ****Character**** is not determined by what you say you stand for or what you profess to believe.  Character is defined by action, even those actions which you think others will never know. Like a muscle, strength is achieved by challenge – overcoming force.  Character is strengthened when you must over come the temptation to act on emotion, overcome the lure of doing what’s easy, and finding the courage to do what’s right … always, whether others are watching or not.”

Lesson #10. Seek progress over perfection.

It’s progress, not perfection.   Get a little better every time, and it adds up over time.

Chalene says:

“Progress over perfection. Do your best and forget the rest. It’s not you against the world or some picture of perfection. It’s you working to be better than you were! And never forget that the vast majority of your work should be to strengthen your character, trust, loyalty, integrity, and resolve because when the inside is as well developed as the outside (or maybe even more so) then YOU got it right.”

Lesson #11. Wake up strong.

For better days, exercise before you start your work day.   If you want to be more productive, and get more done per hour, then make exercise a part of how you start your day.   You’ll move faster.  You’ll think quicker.  You’ll have the extra energy to get on top of things and to deal with any setbacks.

Chalene says:

“You might not be a morning person, but the habit of waking early to exercise will benefit you in all areas of your life. Those who exercise before they start their work they will find that they have more creativity, drive, ambition, energy, patients, confidence, empathy and an overall improved self-image.”

Lesson #12. Same time, same place, same way.

Chalene says, “Your very best habits are repeated at the same times, often in the same places, and with routine and repetition.”    Build better habits in a routine way.

If you’re going to work out tomorrow, ask yourself, “What time?”   Tomorrow is generic.  7:00 A.M. is specific.  If it’s specific and if it’s on your schedule, then you will make it happen.  Rather than hoping for the time, you make the time, and you protect that time.  It’s your time to invest in yourself, and build a better you, to support you in everything else you do.

Lesson #13. MUSCLE. BURNS. FAT.

From a physical fitness perspective, if there’s on principle that Chalene lives by, it’s that.   Make no bones about it.   When Chalene says, “Muscle burns fat!”, she has conviction from experience.  She learned it through trial and error while exploring all the various ways we can shape our bodies.    It’s her source of truth when it comes to getting in shape.  Now, it’s the backbone of her approach.

Chalene doesn’t depend on diet or aerobics as her main fat burner.   She puts a special focus on building lean muscle to reach her fitness goals.  While she uses nutrition to fuel her body, and aerobics to enhance her flexibility and heart, she uses lean muscle to burn fat, and to support her body on a journey of continuous growth.

Lesson #14. Go heavy or go home.

Chalene reminds us that we have to push ourselves if we want to get the benefits.  Otherwise, we are just wasting our time.  We get out, what we put in.   We can fool others, but we can’t fool ourselves.

Lesson #15. It’s not the number, it’s the feeling you get.

Focus on the feeling.   When you’re working out, it’s not about counting the reps.  It’s about feeling the burn.  It’s about feeling the muscle find it’s limits.   If you focus on muscle awareness, you take your workouts to a new level.   You can really work your muscles in a more effective way when you are aware of how they feel when they are really being worked, versus just going along for the ride.   It’s the mind and body relationship in action.

Lesson #16. Stretch yourself.

Chalene says, “Stretch yourself physically, mentally or spiritually.”   When you really push yourself, you’ll surprise yourself.   You’re often stronger than you are.  Chalene says, “You have no idea what you’re capable of until you take it to the next level.” 

Lesson #17. Struggle makes you stronger.

Chalene says,. “We learn from our struggles.”  That is, if we use them as a learning and a growth opportunity.    The key is not to see everything as a problem, and don’t be a victim.  Instead, take every opportunity to reframe problems as challenges and to use struggles to make you stronger, whether that’s physically, emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.

Lesson #18. Break it down.

The way to reach your goals is to break them down.   If you feel overwhelmed by your goals, then chop then down to size.   Focus on mini-goals.  Use little milestones as stepping stones on the path to your success.

Chalene says:

“Set smaller milestones in reaching your goal and reward yourself when you hit them. Celebrate your successes to stay motivated.”

Lesson #19. Lift others up.

Chalene says, “Teaching is sharing. Come from a place of helping other people.”   Share what you know.  We’re all in this together.   Help people that want to help themselves, and set the example that inspires others to want to help themselves.

Lesson #20.  People must want to help themselves.

Don’t bring yourself down while trying to help others up.  People have to first want to help themselves.  Set a positive example, and they may follow your lead.

Chalene says:

“People must want to help themselves.  At some point it’s no longer fair to you.  Throw them a lifeline, reach out and offer your hand, but if you jump in with them, you’re both going to drown.  Distance yourself.  If they make it all about them and their problem, it’s a pay off for the negative person.  Redirect them.  What I do is, I share what I learned  — it’s the power of positive thinking.   When things are going well, I’m on a roll.  Try to impart whatever wisdom I’ve learned and the knowledge that has helped change my life.”

Lesson #21.  Avoid the Debbie Downers. Hang with the Growers.

Avoid the Debbie Downers.  They only bring you down.   If you want more out of life, spend your time with the Growers.  Regarding Debbie Downers, Chalene says, “A dark cloud follows them everywhere. They find a way to turn it back to how everything is wrong and how the world has conspired against them.”

On the other hand, Chalene says that Growers, “are always trying to improve themselves. They want to be better. They realize we all have room for improvement. And they are sharers – they share their knowledge, and share in your joy. They’re going someplace, they’re happy, they’re positive.”

Lesson #22.  Follow the people that empower us.

Find and follow the people that lift you in life.  Find the people that have a passion for more from life.  Find the people that work hard and play hard.   Find the people that share your values and inspire you to be the best. that you can be.

Chalene says:

“My favorite people to follow are those who offer me a reminder, inspiration, innovation, motivation.”

Lesson #23. Respond to Negative Nit-Pickers.

You can respond to negativity and naysayers in effective ways.  Chances are, on the road to your success, you’ll encounter negativity, even if people mean well by it.  Practice responding more effectively so that you can stay your course and build your inner-strength so you can carry yourself through thick and thin.

Chalene says:

“While many recommend your IGNORE negative nit-pickers, I suggest you try these methods first!

1. Respond in kindness and love in your heart.  Always keep in mind it is ‘their issue’ and not yours.
2. Respond with a smile or “thank you” as disputing, or arguing with them only heightens negativity. Remember that your reaction is the one thing you can control.
3. Decide to ‘let it go.’ Hanging on to their remarks or jabs only gives their negativity more energy.
4. And when all else fails – ignore it.”

Lesson #24. Tighten the circle.

If you’ve got negative people in your circle of friends, then Chalene recommends you tighten the circle.  It’s not your responsibility to make them happy, and you can’t take everything personally.

Chalene says:

“Negativity will only detract from your destination! It’s not your responsibility to make another person happy. Negativity comes from those who are unhappy with themselves or their own circumstances. Sometimes negativity is directed at you because YOU have triggered something in them.  In other words … a less successful friend, a spouse in poor health, a co-worker maybe nitpicking you because YOUR success has triggered negative feelings about their own unmet potential “

Lesson #25. Mind your thoughts.

Chalene says, “Don’t think or say it unless you want it to come true.”   You can train your brain for high-performance thinking.    When we’re under stress, the thoughts in our head can turn negative and everything we learned goes out the door.  High-performance people train their brains to overpower negative thoughts.  Practice finding the positives throughout the day, and focus on what you do want, not on what you don’t want.

Lesson # 26.  Communicate with Confidence.

Communicating with confidence and clarity helps us share what we learn and takes our personal development to the next level.   Chalene has a recipe for communicating with confidence.

1. Open strong – The first 60 seconds is where you create a connection.  Decide on your purpose – what’s the one thing they need to understand?  Having clarity here will help you calm your nerves and communicate with confidence.
2. Lay it out — Tell them what you’re going to tell them
3. Use numerated points – Give people numbers so they know where they are.   This way they can easily see the points you will cover, how many, and follow along.  You can always bring things back to your points, and your key points help reinforce your message.
4. Use Triangle Teaching – Deliver each message using “My Point,” “Story,” and “Action.”   Start with your point, tell a great example or story of it.  Go back to your point.   Provide an action step – how they can apply it to their own life.   You don’t have to start at your point, you can start at your story.
5. Recap it — Tell them what you just told them.    Tell them what’s next.

Lesson #27. Work smart, so you can play hard.

Rather than finding ways to work harder, find ways to work smarter.   This will amplify your efforts in everything you do.   And, if you’re efficient and effective, you can nail your priorities and create more play time.

Top 10 Chalene Johnson Quotes

Here are my top 10 favorite quotes by Chalene Johnson:

1. “After a few months of talking with people and observing them, I realized that the traits of the successful fitness enthusiasts had everything in common with those of the high achievers I had spent years studying in business.”
2. “Every one of us is born with a special gift. What’s yours? Don’t downplay it or minimize it. Say it, claim it, own it, share it!”
3. “If you want it bad enough, you have to be willing to fight for it.”
4. “If you’re seeking your best life, you have to give yourself permission to do so. One of the ways we do that is to establish our personal do’s and do nots. Holding firm to putting our love, time, and energy, into the people places and things that uplift us, helps us hold fast to our big goals.”
5. “Only exercise on the days you want to improve your mood.”
6. “Positive energy is your priceless life force. Protect it. Don’t allow people to draw from your reserves; select friends who recharge your energies.”
7. “Resolve to do the things you find to be difficult. That’s what confident people do. They tackle those things that are scary and they get addicted to doing it.”
8. “Successful people do what others know they should do but will not. To become a success, or just be more successful, you will do what average, less-motivated people will not.”
9. “The vital difference between dreamers and achievers boils down to some very basic, simple habits. People with clear, written-out goals who consistently honor their defined priorities tend to get results faster than others, and enjoy a greater level of happiness and long-term success in all areas of life. Yet most of us have never been formally taught a system of goal-setting and mastery that can be applied to health and fitness.”
10. “Treat yourself like a fat person with aches and pains and a suitcase full of excuses, and good luck–you’ll stay exactly where you are. Train like an athlete and, though you may not look like one now, you will become one.”

Chalene Johnson’s Book and Exercise Videos

Here is a roundup of Chalene Johnson’s book and workout programs:

• PUSH: 30 Days to Turbocharged Habits, a Bangin’ Body, and the Life You Deserve!
• TurboFire Workout (Exercise video series)
• ChaLEAN Extreme Workout (Exercise video series)
• TurboJam Workout (Exercise video series)
• PiYo (Exercise video series)
• TurboKick (Exercise video series)

Additional Resources for Chalene Johnson

Here are more places you can find out more about Chalene Johnson:

• Chalene Johnson Official Site
• Chalene Johnson on Wikpedia
• Chalene Johnson on Twitter
• Chalene Johnson Facebook Fan Page
• Chalene Johnson YouTube Channel

If you have a favorite lessos or insight from Chalene Johnson, or a story of how she has helped change your life in some way, please feel free to share it in the comments.

You Might Also Like

• Lessons Learned from Bruce Lee
• Lessons Learned from Seth Godin
• Lessons Learned from Tony Robbins

What do we learn about entrepreneurship when a chairman of a multibillion-dollar tech company, a few Navy SEALs, some Israeli innovators, and a branding expert come together?

We learn the power that makes people UnStoppable.

And, the power needs to be tapped, not taught – it’s already inside of us.

Whether you want to be an entrepreneur, or just act like one, Bill Schley can show you how in his book, The Unstoppables: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial Power.

This books puts lessons from the world’s greatest masters on fear, risk, failure, and innovation-on-the-fly, right at your fingertips.  And, you can use the six rule sets that make entrepreneurs succeed, whether you are a start-up or a big company … or a start-up within a big company.

It’s all the things you don’t learn in school, about how to be an entrepreneur.  As the inside of the cover says, “Entrepreneurs are the foundation of our economy — they’re making the jobs and inventing the markets of the future.  But, the essence of entrepreneurship isn’t taught in business schools or text-books.  So we went on a journey to find it.”

If you’re ready to join the journey, let’s dig in …

What’s In It For You?

Here is a sampling of some of the challenges that The UnStoppables helps you with:

• Learn what it takes to accomplish your greatest goals
• Learn the ‘No Matter What’ mindset of Navy SEALs to keep going
• How to ship your ideas with speed and agility to customers that care
• How to deal with fear, failure, and risk when starting new ventures
• How to identify and articulate your unique difference in a rapid and compelling way
• How to create simpler, but more effective business plans
• How to create high-performance teams with inspiring missions
• How to sell with precision and skill

Chapters at a Glance

• Chapter 1 – Who is an Entrepreneur and What Do They Do, Really?
• Chapter 2 – Accelerated Proficiency
• Chapter 3 – Emotional Mechanics: What Only Neuroscientists, Your Friends in the SEALs, and the Israeli Army Will Tell You
• Chapter 4 – How To Master Emotional Mechanics Like the Experts
• Chapter 5 – School of Everything You Need to Know (in an Hour)
• Chapter 6 – The Big Picture in an Hour: Ideas, People, and Execution
• Chapter 7 – Big Picture (Continued): People and Execution
• Chapter 8 – The UnStoppable Six: how to Run a Billion-Dollar Business or a Start-Up the Rackspace Way (in about an Hour)
• Chapter 9 – Everything You Need to Know about Your Unique Difference (in about an Hour)
• Chapter 10 – Everything You Need to Know about True Teams (in an Hour)
• Chapter 11 – Everything You Need to Know about Succeeding with Customers (in about an Hour)
• Chapter 12 – Everything You Need to Know about Making Yourself Famous (in about an Hour)
• Chapter 13 – Everything You Need to Know about Creating Revenue, a.k.a. Selling (in about an Hour)
• Chapter 14 – Everything You Need to Know about Perfecting Your First Product (in about an hour)
• Chapter 15 – Entrepreneur Country and the E-Companies

Key Features

Here are some of the key features of The UnStoppables:

• Concrete examples.  Schley provides plenty of concrete examples that are easy to relate to and with real names that you’ll recognize.
• Conversational.  The book is written in a very easy to follow and conversational way.  It’s as if Schley is across the table, sharing his wealth of insight with you as openly, freely, and quickly as he can.
• Deep.   The book dives deep.  By focusing on essentials and the most effective techniques, the book surfaces deep experience in an approachable way.
• Fast-paced.   The book is fast paced and covers a lot of ground quickly.   Again, by focusing on the essentials, it helps keep the book lean, while diving deep.
• Results-driven.   It’s a no-nonsense book with a heavy emphasis on driving results.

Here is a sampling of some of my favorite nuggets from the book …

A Quest for the Essence of Entrepreneurship

It’s not just a book.  It’s part of a quest to double the number of entrepreneurs.  Graham Weston (author of the Foreword), writes:

“The Unstoppables isn’t just a book.  It’s the product of a quest — a shared quest by author Bill Schley and me to discover the keys to entrepreneurship and to share them with people all over America.  Our goal is to double the number of entrepreneurs in our country — starting with you, our readers.  And if you choose the entrepreneurial path, we want to double your chances of success.  Those are the goals behind every chapter and every page of Bill’s book.”

The Entrepreneurial Way

The entrepreneurial way is to balance what customers and employees want.  Schley writes:

“That means growing cultures of learning, innovation, problem-solving, mission focus, true teams, and market savvy – as contrasted with a culture built around bureaucracy, conformity, and control by fear.  Entrepreneurial companies are dedicated to giving people first what they want most – including their own employees.  Customers want good and fair value from a trusted relationship.  Employees want to be value members of a winning team on an inspiring mission.  Striving constantly to provide both is the entrepreneurial way.”

Entrepreneur or Optimizer: Which One are You?

Given the choice, which do you prefer — “change the business” or “run the business”?   Schley writes:

“The fact is that any successful organization – especially one that scales into a big, sophisticated operation – needs the strengths, talents and skills of both Optimizers and Entrepreneurs.  Entrepreneurs get things moving; they innovate, energize, and promote change.  Optimizers bring the consistency and quality control that big companies and mass markets demand.”

The UnStoppable Six

The UnStoppable Six is a rule set for guiding your entrepreneurial success.  It consists of three strategic  items and three tactical items:

Use the the UnStoppable Six to Build Better Business Plans

The UnStoppable Six provide a framework for guiding your business plans.  Ask simple, but highly effective questions:

1. What is our unique difference?
2. Who is our team?
3. Who are our customers?
4. How do we get famous?
5. What’s our Minimum Viable Product?
6. How will we get revenue?

What Customers Teach You

Customers teach us how to be better.   Schley writes:

“Customers might as well be air and water; your business has no life without them.  Success is something you must learn from them because only they can teach it to you, through what they need, where their pain and pleasure are, how they want to be sold to, what kind of relationships they want to have with a company in your category, and so forth.  Customers hold the answers to all your most important questions about your product, service, and brand.  The Wonderful Paradox is that the secret of getting what you want is to think most about what they want.”

Don’t Be a Commodity

Your strategic advantage is how you differentiate.  Otherwise, you’re just a commodity.  Schley writes:

“Without a difference, you forfeit the big strategic advantage you should have as a nimble, creative, problem-solving entrepreneur.  You’re now a commodity and that means you no longer have customers, you have counterparties.  You’ve conceded that they can buy something of equal value from any of your competitors.  And when that happens, your only hope is to have the lowest price.  You’re like gasoline: a legal definition, not a differentiated product, and certainly not a true brand.  It’s a brutal position to be in if you want to control your own fate and rise above the pack.”

4-Line Elevator Pitches

Pitching products successfully is simple if you keep it simple and address the right questions with skill.  Schley writes:

1. What’s it called?
2. What does it do?
3. Why do I need it?
4. Why should I believe you?

Here’s an example they provide for Home ATM:

1. It’s called Home ATM;
2. It’s home banking on your computer that works just like an ATM;
3. It’s so easy to use, like an ATM, it doesn’t need a manual; and
4. Eight top banks have found they can now have an ATM in every home.

Define Your Ultimate “Why”

Remind yourself “Why” you do what you do on a daily basis through a simple two-word rallying cry.  It’s how you frame your difference that matters.  Schley writes:

“The frame, worded as a Micro-Script, helped Rackspace get famous on the outside.  But just as important, it made them feel famous on the inside.  As Graham Weston explains, ‘Once we came up with the phrase Fanatical Service, we had a rallying cry, a set of words to stand for, an identity that every teammate could be a part of.  Every Racker could tell you in two words that our mission was and why we came to work every single day: we were here to bring our customers Fanatical Support and all the good things it implied.’”

Plot Your Basic Plan

Keep your plan rooted in the basics and grounded in reality.  Schley writes:

“As an entrepreneurial founder, you’ll need to think ahead and plot your basic plan: (1) Who is going to buy from you (that is, who is your target market)? (2) How much do you need to sell them to cover your basic costs? (3) How much money, development, and time will you need to get yourself to market so selling can actually begin?”

Your Business Plan Should Fit on the Back of a Business Card

Don’t lose sight of the essence of your business plan.  Less is more, and it’s more effective, if you hone right in on what actually counts.  Schley writes:

“Don’t make your plan complicated.  Don Valentine, one of the founders of Sequoia Capital, the famous VC firm, once said, ‘Your business plan should be able to fit on the back of a business card.’  He was exaggerating slightly, but he made his point.  Don Valentine had just been pitched too many business plans that were six months in the making and took hours to present, but couldn’t clearly answer the basic questions, ‘What is it? Why do I need it? Who’s going to buy it? How much cash do we need to get started/ And how much time, money, and staff will it take for us to break even?’”

Breaking Even is the Goal Line

The authors say your mission from day one is to focus on reachingyour revenue moment.

“Breaking even is the goal line.  Crossing it is the magic moment when your business becomes a living thing.  It’s the moment the plane flies, the aspiring surfer stands up straight on the board, and the homing pigeon makes it home.  It means having enough customers buying from you to sustain a business that sells enough to cover all of its costs, including yours and your teammates’, day after day, month after month.  It is the first great milestone in any UnStoppable company’s success.”

Small, Super-Powered Teams

Small teams make big things happen.  Schley writes:

“Teams can be any size, of course, but for our purposes, we’ll be talking about a default team size of four — the primary functional unit that the SEALs and Israelis use in operations, based on decades of experience and team research that shows there is an inherent work-able balance and proficiency in this number.  A four person SEAL fire team includes a commander and three specialists.  Not coincidentally, this is a common number for many of the most successful founder teams we see in start-ups today.  It’s not a mandate, just a good solid model.  After all, the Beatles were the Fab Four.  Do you need any better or more enduring model of creative global success?”

The 30-60-90 Rule

Want a simple formula to keep execution on track?  Use the 30-60-90 rule.  Schley writes:

“The 30-60-90 Rule forces Entrepreneurs to act by imposing real, numerical deadlines for getting things out there and into customer’s hands where it belongs.”

1. By Day 30, Build It.
2. By Day 60, Validate with Customers.
3. By Day 90, Release Version 1.0 — the Public Beta.

The Secret is “Or”

Don’t kill your product through bloat or feature creep.  Schley writes:

“We also tell entrepreneurs to change their mind-set from ‘and’ to ‘or’ because choosing the big focus of your product  is usually a choice of this versus that, a series of sacrifices, not a pileup of additives that annoys most customers. We tell them, ‘And’ doesn’t scale.  The secret is ‘Or.’”

Get the Book

The UnStoppables: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial Power, by Bill Schley is available on Amazon:

• The UnStoppables: Tapping Your Entrepreneurial Power, by Bill Schley

You Might Also Like

It’s Already Inside: Nurturing Your Innate Leadership for Business and Life Success

Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imaging Your Future

The Power of Starting Something Stupid

The Undefeated Mind

Image by Queen Cleopatra.

“A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.” —Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

What does it take to be a great leader?

Bill Sims (author of Green Beans and Ice Cream) teaches a leadership course, and whenever he asks what are the core traits of a great leader, he gets a common set of answers.

People actually agree that a great leader has the following 12 leadership traits:

1. Good Communication Skills
2. Trustworthiness
3. Willingness to Listen
4. Knowledge and Experience
5. Good Attitude
6. Accountability
7. Ability to Motivate
8. Integrity
9. Courage
10. Ability to Stay Organized
11. Ability to Inspire Respect
12. Leadership that Sticks (Positive Reinforcement)

Most people usually miss #12 – Positive Reinforcement.  And, yet, according to Sims, it’s THE most important trait.

Positive Reinforcement is the trait that trumps them all.

He even provides the following clues to help remind us why Positive Reinforcement is so important:

• If every employee gave us perfect human performance, we wouldn’t need managers.
• The Measure of a Leader is what the followers do in the moment of choice when nobody is watching
• The most important ability of leaders is the ability to change the behavior of their followers.

Leadership that Sticks is your ability to deliver and sustain Positive Reinforcement to drive high performance.

What are the traits of your favorite leaders?

You Might Also Like

Top 5 Characteristics of Leaders

Top 10 Leadership Lessons

Leadership Checklist

Image by Zitona.

“Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” — Maria Robinson

Do you want to lead a happy life or a meaningful life?  Why not both?

Sometimes, happiness and meaningfulness are at odds.

Nobody sets out to lead a miserable life, but sometimes it comes with the territory.

It’s a Wonderful Life, could have been called It’s a Miserable Life.  George kept sacrificing his dream to travel the world.  George finally reached a point where he was ready to take his own life.  That is, until his angel showed him how he made a difference in the lives of others.  Suddenly, not only was everything OK … it was wonderful.

That’s what making meaning can do, when we stitch together the past, the present, and the future.

Roy Baumeister (author of WillPower), Kathleen Vohs, Jennifer Aaker (author of The Dragonfly Effect), and Emily Garbinsky teamed up to bring us Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life.

Let’s dive in.

Happiness Defined

What is happiness?   In Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, the authors write:

“Happiness is generally defined as subjective well-being, which is to say, an experiential state that contains a globally positive affective tone. It may be narrowly or broadly focused: A person may claim to be happy to have found a lost shoe, happy that the war is over, or happy to be having a good life. Researchers have conceptualized and measured happiness in at least two quite different ways. One is affect balance, indicating having more pleasant than unpleasant emotional states, and is thus essentially an aggregate of how one feels at different moments. The other, life satisfaction, goes beyond momentary feelings to invoke an integrative, evaluative assessment of one’s life as a whole.”

Meaningful Defined

What is meaningful?  In Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, the authors write:

“Meaning can be a purely symbolic or linguistic reality, as in the meaning of a word. The question of life’s meaning thus applies symbolic ideas to a biological reality. Meaningfulness is presumably both a cognitive and an emotional assessment of whether one’s life has purpose and value. People may feel that life is meaningful if they find it consistently rewarding in some way, even if they cannot articulate just what it all means. Our focus is on meaningfulness and the meaning of life.”

Happy vs. Meaningful (Related, But Different)

While there’s overlap between happiness and meaningfulness, there are some key differences.  In Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, the authors write:

“Our findings suggest that happiness is mainly about getting what one wants and needs, including from other people or even just by using money. In contrast, meaningfulness was linked to doing things that express and reflect the self, and in particular to doing positive things for others. Meaningful involvements increase one’s stress, worries, arguments, and anxiety, which reduce happiness. (Spending money to get things went with happiness, but managing money was linked to meaningfulness.) Happiness went with being a taker more than a giver, while meaningfulness was associated with being a giver more than a taker. Whereas happiness was focused on feeling good in the present, meaningfulness integrated past, present, and future, and it sometimes meant feeling bad.
Past misfortunes reduce present happiness, but they are linked to higher meaningfulness — perhaps because people cope with them by finding meaning.”

Argue Your Way to Misery and Meaning

Arguing takes on new meaning when it reflects your values.   That helps explain why some people get so attached to their ideas and ideals, or take an argument personally, while others do not.  In Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, the authors write:

“The more that people regarded arguing as something that reflects them, the more meaningful but the less happy their lives were. Thus, perhaps surprisingly, the effects of arguing were similar to those of helping others. We propose that meaningfulness comes in part from being involved in things one  regards as important (see next section), and sometimes one has to argue for these. But the unpleasantness of arguing may contribute to the lower happiness. Happy people may prefer not to argue and may certainly think that arguing is something they do only reluctantly rather than as a frequent expression of their inner self and values.”

People with Meaningful Lives Worry More and Stress More

If you want to combine happiness with meaningfulness, don’t expect it to be happy-go-lucky.  In Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, the authors write:

“Stress can be simply a matter of external misfortune visited on the self, but it can also stem from being involved in meaningful yet difficult undertakings. .. Much stress is future oriented, and one clear fact about stress (dating back to the classic executive monkey studies by Brady, 1958) is that one can be under considerable stress even if nothing bad ever happens. Stress has more to do with the anticipation of possible bad events (i.e., threats) than with actually enduring misfortune. Meaningfulness connects present to future, and the link between stress and meaningfulness is consistent with that conclusion. … Worrying showed the same pattern. Consistent with intuitions, more worrying was linked to  lower happiness. However, perhaps surprisingly, greater frequency of worrying was associated with higher levels of meaningfulness. People with very meaningful lives worry more and have more stress than people with less meaningful lives.”

Wise, Creative, and Anxious

Wise, creative, and anxious are linked to meaningfulness, but not happiness.  In fact, they might work against you.  In Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, the authors write:

“Thus, the self is apparently more about meaning than happiness. The self integrates across time, insofar as one is the same person day after day, year after year. Caring about personal identity, doing things that reflect and express the self, and seeing oneself as wise, creative, and anxious all were linked to a meaningful life, but they had negligible or negative relations to happiness.”

A Meaningful Life

If you’re a giver on a mission, and your actions and thoughts reflect you, you’re on path for a meaningful life. In Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, the authors write:

“High meaningfulness despite low happiness was associated with being a giver rather than a taker. These people were likely to say that taking care of children reflected them, as did buying gifts for others. Such people may self-regulate well, as indicated by their reflecting on past struggles and imagining the future, and also in their tendency to reward themselves.”

A Happy Life

If you’re a taker, and you live in the now, you’re on path for a happy life.  In Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, the authors write:

“One can also use our findings to depict the highly happy but relatively meaningless life.  People with such lives seem rather carefree, lacking in worries and anxieties. If they argue, they do not feel that arguing reflects them. Interpersonally, they are takers rather than givers, and they give little thought to past and future. These patterns suggest that happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided.”

People Will Pursuit Meaningfulness at the Expense of Happiness

Maybe money can’t buy you happiness, but meaningfulness can help you offset any losses.  In Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, the authors write:

“These findings illuminate the so-called “parenthood paradox,” which is that most people want to be happy and want to become parents, but those two goals are in conflict insofar as becoming a parent often reduces happiness (e.g., Twenge, Campbell, & Foster, 2003; cf. Nelson et al., in press)  Baumeister (1991) proposed that the parenthood paradox can be resolved by proposing that people seek not just happiness but also meaning, and so they become parents because the gains in meaningfulness offset any losses in happiness. The present findings are consistent with that conclusion, which has broader implications for positive  psychology, because they suggest that people will pursue meaningfulness even at the expense of happiness.”

The choice is yours.  Know the trade-offs.  Personally, I’m a fan of seeking both happiness and meaning.   I look for the AND, and  find the 3rd alternatives.   Where there’s conflict, I balance it out in a polarity framework sort of way.

You Might Also Like

Happiness is a Skill

The Three Paths of Happiness: The Good Life, The Pleasant Life, and The Meaningful Life

The Way of Happiness: 7 Principles for Happiness

Whiteboard Notes on Happiness

Editor’s note: Did you know that in some school systems, it’s “OK” for 20% of students to fail?

For some people, that is NOT OK.

This is a very special guest post by Joanne McEachen of The Learner First, and author of 8 Must-Ask Questions to Get the Best Education for YOUR child – and How to Evaluate the Answers.

This is also a special opportunity to potentially replicate some of the outstanding results that Joanne produced for more than 400 schools in New Zealand.

If you are a parent of a struggling student, this can open up new possibilities for the future of your child.  If you are a teacher, this might be a way to lead a significant and powerful change in your school, starting with your own classroom.  If you are a leader in the education system, this might be a way to transform the education system in profound ways with amazing results.  If you’re just curious what we can do to change our education system and help more students succeed, read on.

Without further ado, here’s Joanne …

Something wasn’t working for Eddie.

I was called yet again to come down to collect him from his room as the teacher was not able to control him. I found him in the boys bathroom sprawled on the floor crying. I picked him up in my arms and we sat on the floor and he cried for about an hour with his arms wrapped tightly about me. He told me how much school ‘sucked’ and how his teachers hated him and no one cared about him. That everything he learned was boring and he hated school.

He was seven years old.

That was a life defining moment for us both. I was the new principal to the school and he was one of my students and I was determined I was never going to hear that again.

Eddie was an underprivileged child with big hopes and aspirations. Eddie wanted to be a scientist.  Sadly, with the education he had received for the first 2 years of his life things were not looking to good.

The education system had been underserving the children in that school for years. Something had to change. Something that was out of the box and dramatic enough to shake the teachers thinking, my thinking, the children’s thinking, and the parents thinking.

The curriculum that was being taught did not relate to the children and the teachers did connect to the children enough to know what is what they needed for their learning. But possibly worse than that Eddie was bored as what he was learning had no meaning or relevance to him so he was getting into trouble.

So we asked Eddie for his help. We asked him what he wanted to learn about. Then we asked his family what where their education aspirations for Eddie. He wanted to go to university but no in his family had been before so they didn’t know how to go about that. We found out that he knew all about electricity and was fascinated by electrons and how they moved. So we started off slowly by getting him to share his knowledge of what he was passionate about within his cultural context.

Eddie could see finally see himself – his identity, his language, and culture – reflected in what he was learning, how he was learning, and who he was learning with.

By working with Eddie’s teacher, we established a routine where Eddie could go to the local university once every three months to sit in on a science lecture so he could get used to attending a university.  Next thing you know, Eddie was passionate about learning and his grades reflected it.

Eddie is now a high school graduate heading to a university.

We Have a Problem: It’s “OK” for Students to Fail!

Let’s take a school with 1,000 children in it. If that school is performing at what seems to be about the average expectation, then 60% -70% of their children are successfully achieving the academic goals. This means that 300-400 students are failing. That equates to 300-400 children every year cannot, and will not, be able to contribute to society when they leave as effectively as they could with a suitable education.

Multiply that across the country and that is a lot of kids, then start to look at who those kids are then we have a problem.

What If Students Did NOT “Fail” Anymore?

Imagine: a third of failing students changing direction and achieving in 6-8 months … Then the year after, another third. And then the year after that, another third, continuing until all children are achieving.

Using the example of 1,000 students above, what if we turned the tide and within 6-8 months we could 100-125 of the failing students to be engaged and achieving? And then in the next 6-8 months another 100-125 and then another 6-8 months until ALL children are achieving at their potential?

What difference could that make to our education system?

I Believe …

I believe every child is a jewel.

I believe that people come first, and that parents are partners, communities count, and teachers and leaders matter. Without them we don’t have our children or our schools. Prioritizing and building trust between all these groups and the wider business community is first and foremost.

My personal vision is that ALL children who enter ANY school can leave at the end of their education being able to make a choice about how they want to live their life, and to be able to contribute to better humanity, and have the skills, knowledge and confidence to be able to effectively do so.

My Background

I know what’s possible.

I’ve been there and I’ve done it.

I’ve been in the educational arena all my life, and I’ve seen some amazing things.

For example, I’ve had the chance to be a part of some powerful transformation at the national level.  Specifically, I’ve helped get great outcomes for kids in the New Zealand education system with some outstanding results. We have seen kids and parents get the education they want and need, to be able to make a choice about what it is they want to do with their life.

I’d like to do the same for the U.S.A.

In my earlier days at the Ministry of Education in New Zealand, I was the equivalent of a Superintendent, in two different districts. I was responsible for monitoring the performance of over 450 schools and 400 early childhood education centers.

My next role was the National Manager of Parent and Families where I had the opportunity to develop planning and reporting resources for schools, engage parents and families nationally to ensure that they had a say about how to gain information about student progress and achievement to support student outcomes. Parents and families are an integral part of the education system and their input needs to be highly valued as educationally powerful partners.

As my career evolved, I took on the role as the National Manager of Student Achievement Function and simultaneously, Professional Learning and Development. While I was there, I initiated, launched and implemented the Student Achievement Function which contracted 50 top educators (mostly current and past school principals and administrators’) in New Zealand to work in schools to raise student achievement using a newly developed methodology based on current worldwide best evidence and practice.

The focus of the team is on raising student achievement of students who have traditionally been underserved, by the education system. I led the redesign of the Professional Learning and Development budget and content to focus on targeting students with the greatest educational need rather than a universal policy setting.

During these years I managed and directed teams of up to 200+ educators and policy makers.

The Problem: It’s OK for 20% to Fail

It seems that there is numbness or an acceptance that it is ok for kids to be going through the school system and coming out the other end without the education they require to make choices in their life. To look at the goals for many schools and districts and to see them aspire to 80 percent success by 2020, turns my stomach, because they are condemning 20 percent of kids to fail before they even walk in the school gates.

That is not okay, because what if one of those children is your child?

The traditional school has to change and is changing. No longer do we need to see children being grouped by ‘age and stage’ and learning in subject areas that don’t seem to relate to life and its meaning. What we want to see is how children learn to interact with the world around them and how they find their place in it. How do they learn to be critical thinkers and creative problem solvers to find solutions for issues that are challenging our world of today and tomorrow?

It is not by sitting still in a classroom and learning from textbooks and a static curriculum that is contextually irrelevant to children.

5 Root Causes that Hold Education Systems Back

The traditional approach to lifting achievement, schools and districts tend to focus improvement efforts on improving teacher effectiveness and subject matter competence. Kids have been given supplementary programs when extra help is needed. Yet progress is too slow.

The root causes of the problem show up at every level in the system and with every stakeholder of the school community:

1. Learners don’t see themselves – their identities, languages, and cultures – reflected in what they learn, how they learn, or who they learn with.
2. Parents and families’ expertise and support are not leveraged.
3. Teachers don’t know how to effectively teach particular learner groups.
4. Schools aren’t able to see clearly what they most need to change first and fast.
5. Leaders buy solutions instead of leading systemic change that delivers equitable outcomes for all learners.

The Solution: The Learner Comes First – No Excuses and Zero Failure

The Learner First approach is to work with the districts and schools to create a really clear vision and set of priorities for accelerating the achievement of the kids who most need it. We will ensure that within the 6-8 months students are reaching their potential. No excuses and zero failure.

The Learner-First Approach

In order to effectively help schools to accelerate exactly the learners that have been left behind, there is a need for an approach that encompasses the following elements.

1. The right focus: What is needed here is a simple but powerful way of identifying the core issues; one that cuts through the “noise” and focuses attention on what really matters.
2. High involvement: Critical to buy-in is the use of a high-involvement process that leverages the expertise, energy, and commitment of teachers, leaders, specialists, parents, and students.
3. Building capability for continued performance lifts: Rather than a “solution buying” or “consultant assistance” model, there is a need for a school-based, parent-inclusive change team approach that leaves diagnostic and change management capability in the hands of schools.
4. Clear tracking of results: To ensure that all parties can be brought along with the change process and energized by its successes, the process will need to include an integrated, no-fuss way to capture and share concrete and credible evidence of change as it emerges.

The Seven Principles of The Learner First School

1. The learner comes first
2. All learners are successful here
3. Everyone who is here chooses to be here and is acknowledged and accepted for who they are
4. Parents are valued and active learning partners in the learning journey
5. There are no learning boundaries or limits for our learners
6. Teachers know and connect with their learners
7. Leaders are unashamedly focused on learner acceleration

5 Capabilities Required for a Great School System

The methodology used is based on the inquiry cycle and articulates the five capabilities that schools need for every student to succeed. These capabilities are:

1. Understanding the real problem. Using real, incisive evaluation and root-cause diagnosis to understand where the most important needs are, what needs to be done first and fast, what’s working for whom, and why
2. Parents as real partners: Partnering with parents, families, and communities to understand who the kids are and help them achieve their dreams
3. Leadership for accelerated change. School leaders (not just principals, but all who are in influential roles) who focus on learner acceleration, drive improvement, and get the most out of professional learning and development, etc.
4. Teaching for zero failure: Teaching that genuinely connects with learners, their contexts, and what they need
5. Culture of belonging and high expectations for all: A school culture that reflects and welcomes learners and believes they can all succeed

Our expectations are high and so they should be. Every child has the right to an education that is personalized to them and in our country we can do this and we will do this. The time for complacency and acceptance of failure is over.

How The Learner First Works

We can deliver a proven approach to dramatically lifting the performance of schools and districts within the U.S. and beyond, to accelerate exactly the learners that have been left behind by education systems all over the world. We do this by:

1. Aligning the whole system so that it’s intentional around those groups of kids
2. Run sessions to help people understand what it’s all about – training, strategic planning, prioritizing around the kids in need and the 5 key areas
3. Work out the professional learning and development structure & resourcing that will be needed to lift achievement seriously across the system
4. Think through a needs-based approach to professional learning and development & support for students
5. Identify providers who can do the kind of work needed in schools
6. Support to monitor & evaluate what’s working across the system

We start with specific groups of underachieving kids, who they are (identities, languages, cultures), and what’s stopping them from succeeding.

We drill down from high-level learner needs to identify specific capability requirements for teachers, leaders, and schools as a whole. We prioritize such that the most important needs are addressed first and fast.

We produce whole school change, targeting behaviors, attitudes, and practices. And we leave schools with the capability to do their own strengths and needs assessments, enact the change, and self-review the impact.

We simultaneously apply this breakthrough thinking at the district level. This helps ensure a crystal clear shared understanding about what really matters and what it’s going to take to achieve it right across the system.

Stories of Changing Schools

I had discovered that by putting the learner first and focusing on who the child is where they are from and finding out what they need first made more of a difference than anything else. Teachers can be absolute specialists but without the connection to the child, who they are, where they are from and the relationship with what they need there is little point in even beginning the teaching and learning experience.

Taking this thinking and scaling it up to a system-wide level relies on getting all parts of the system aligned and everyone working together. By getting clear on what the real issues are in our education system and using real, incisive evaluation and root-cause diagnosis to understand where the most important needs are, what needs to be done first and fast, what’s working for whom, and why, we can identify who are our children most at risk and prioritize them.

Having the courage to name the groups of children that we were underserving makes a difference too.

By partnering with parents, families, and communities to understand who the kids are and help them achieve their dreams we found an unending source of inspiration and help. School leaders (not just principals, but all who are in influential roles) who can focus on learner acceleration, drive improvement, and get the most out of professional learning and development, are able to see rapid changes. Teaching for zero failure, teaching that genuinely connects with learners, their contexts, and what they need is the only acceptable expectation. Having a culture of belonging and high expectations for all children is a must. A school culture that reflects and welcomes learners and believes they can all succeed.

One School’s Journey

No school purposefully chooses to fail its children. Everyone wants to do the best for their children so when a school finds itself in a place where children are failing the questions have to be asked. Why are so many children not succeeding? Is it the children or the system? Once a school starts to ask these questions then they begin the journey of change. One of my favorite schools was undergoing a big change in its direction.  It wanted to provide an education that was relevant for ALL their children.  When I first met the principal, they asked me point blank, “What can you do for us?”

We had our work cut out for us, but there was a teacher — let’s call him “Bill”, that was excited by the potential of this different way of thinking about teaching and learning, and immediately began to think differently about ‘who’ he was teaching and then ‘what’ he was teaching .   Next thing you know, the momentum was contagious.  Soon, let’s call her “Sherry” was running her class in a way that each student was able to have their learning program meeting their needs. For most of the class there were some minor tweaks to but for the children who had not been passing their programs changed dramatically because it became about them learning and not just receiving the curriculum.

The school shifted its focus to prioritize children who developing programs for children who were failing, because let’s face it, those who are not failing the system is working for them-right? Once they did that they were able to drill down and find out what was stopping the children from learning and find out how they need to change what they were doing. They reorganized their resources to focus on these children, they stopped programs that were not getting the results they needed, they provided professional development once the teachers knew what they needed to learn to teach the children they had in their classrooms right here and right now, so these children could be successful and they were relentless and did not give up on any child. They believed that every child could and would be successful.

How YOU Can Get Involved

Dramatic acceleration and true educational success can be a reality, including exciting results for minority and indigenous learners and those with special education needs.

We do not have to accept the inevitability of 20 percent, 30 percent, 40 percent, or even more of any group of learners failing in the system. It can be made to work for them; it must be made to work; and the time to take action is now, before one more jewel is lost to our world.

As adults we get to make choices each day about how we live our lives. Children don’t. They have to go to the school. Therefore it is up to the adults to make school relevant, real, and a place where ALL kids want to be and want to learn. The future of our country depends on it, our economy depends on it. We must act now before any more children hemorrhage from the education system without the world class education that our system can provide should we choose to be brave enough to provide it.

If you are an educator and want to be involved in changing your school so that the learner comes first then the first step to take it to identify who are the learners who are at risk of failing and target designing programs for them.

Think about five capabilities required for a great system, and remember it is about the system changing and not the kids.

Parents can start by ensuring that they are confident that the school recognises the importance of their children’s identity, language and culture in their learning and that the curriculum reflects this. Make sure they are involved in decisions about their children’s education and are informed of what they can do to help their children’s learning. Parents can also read 8 Must-Ask Questions to Get the Best Education for YOUR child – and How to Evaluate the Answers you can use to start a learner-focused conversation with your local school.

Wrap Up

Dramatic acceleration and sustained educational success can be a reality, including exciting results for minority and indigenous learners and those with special education needs.

We do not have to accept the inevitability of learners failing in the system. It can be made to work for them; it must be made to work; and the time to take action is now, before one more child’s potential is wasted.

To make the changes we need to make, it starts today. We need to create a system where each child counts, and is challenged to become the best person they can be, to think about their place in the world and how they will eventually be able to contribute to it.

We need to create a system in which students are not allowed to wait until the school day is over before their life and learning can begin.

Joanne McEachen is president of The Learner First.   Check out her book 8 Must-Ask Questions to Get the Best Education for YOUR child – and How to Evaluate the Answers on Amazon.