THINKING THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE.

Leadership and Culture

2014-05-23T12:02:00.000-04:00

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How To Plan Your Actions

2014-05-01T13:36:00.001-04:00

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Fun with Lights

2014-03-01T19:27:00.001-05:00

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Productivity

2014-02-13T14:48:00.001-05:00

A teacher walks to the front of his class one day and sets a large bucket and a box of rocks on the table.

The teacher silently transfers the rocks from the box to the bucket while his curious students look on. When the bucket is filled to the brim with rocks, he asks the class, “Is the bucket full?”

They respond with a collective “Yes.”

The teacher then reaches under his desk and pulls out a bowl of marbles and proceeds to pour the marbles into the bucket until they reach the top.

The teacher asks again, “Is the bucket full?”

The students are a little more apprehensive this time and hesitate to answer. A few brave souls speak up and say, “No.”

“Good,” the teacher says. He reaches under his desk yet again and pulls out a bag of sand and fills the bucket, followed by a pitcher of water which he dumps over the sand, marbles, and rocks.

The teacher then motions to the bucket and addresses the class once again: “What’s the point of all this?”

The Lesson:

The “rocks” are metaphors for the most important things in your life: family, health, faith, love, education, life goals, etc.

If you don’t put the rocks in your bucket first, you won’t fit them all in. In other words, if you focus too much on the little things (the marbles, sand, and water), you’ll lose sight of what matters most in your life.

We waste so much time on things that don’t matter.

The average American will spend 137,904 hours of their life watching television.

That’s 5,746 days.

15 years.

If you’d rather spend your time doing something that offers a return—whether financial or emotional—on your investment, make sure you focus on taking care of the big rocks in your life first.

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The joy-per-dollar efficiency.

2014-02-07T11:58:00.001-05:00

Money is permanent. You have it until you trade it for something, and then that trade is permanent — you are thereafter permanently without that money. It’s gone and belongs to someone else now. Therefore it’s important to consider the permanence of whatever benefit you traded it for.

Think about it: when you die, you will have earned and spent a specific, finite number of dollars. For you the number might be 2,193,003, or maybe it’s 8,806,550, or even 217,101,992. Whatever it is, at the moment you die, it is a real and actual number. Even if you never wrote any of your purchases down, there’s an actual list of things these dollars were traded for, and each of these trades contributed to (or maybe detracted from) the overall amount of pleasure and fulfillment you experienced in your life.

There’s an enormous range of possible things to trade these finite dollars for, but ultimately there’s only one thing you’re trying to get for your money, which is quality of life. Universally, we want the feelings in our lives to be good, and there’s really nothing else we value. If you could see your “final balance sheet” and look back on how things went, you’d intuitively know which of those transactions contributed significantly to your overall happiness and which did not.

This trading can be done extremely well or extremely badly. The joy-per-dollar efficiency between different trades can vary by factors of thousands or millions. So, what are you trading your money for? Do you invest in people or things? Do you invest in yourself? What makes you happy?

Remember, it's not how much you earn that is important. The important thing is paying attention to how much is needed so that you can trade it to have the quality of life that is important to you.

A $4 cup of coffee could buy you 15 mins of happiness. $1 could also buy you a game online that could give you countless hours of fun and happiness. Do you trade for short term happiness or long term happiness? Remember to trade wisely.

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Before it's too late...

2014-02-03T20:58:00.001-05:00

Here are ten things you need to know, before it’s too late:

This moment is your life. – Your life is not between the moments of your birth and death. Your life is between now and your next breath. The present – the here and now – is all the life you ever get. So live each moment in full, in kindness and peace, without fear and regret. And do the best you can with what you have in this moment; because that is all you can ever expect of anyone, including yourself. Read The Power of Now.
A lifetime is not very long. – This is your life, and you have to fight for it. Fight for what’s right. Fight for what you believe in. Fight for what’s important to you. Fight for the people you love, and never forget to tell them how much they mean to you. Realize that right now you’re lucky because you still have a chance. So stop for a moment and think. Whatever you still need to do, start doing it today. There are only so many tomorrows.
The sacrifices you make today will pay dividends in the future. – When it comes to working hard to achieve a dream – earning a degree, building a business, or any other personal achievement that takes time and commitment – one thing you have to ask yourself is: “Am I willing to live a few years of my life like many people won’t, so I can spend the rest of my life like many people can’t?”
When you procrastinate, you become a slave to yesterday. – But when you are proactive, it’s as if yesterday is a kind friend that helps take a load off your back. So do something right now that your future self will thank you for. Trust me, tomorrow you’ll be happy you started today. Read The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
Failures are only lessons. – Good things come to those who still hope even though they have been disappointed, to those who still believe even though they have tasted failure, to those who still love even though they have been hurt. So never regret anything that has happened in your life; it cannot be changed, undone. Take it all as lessons learned and move on with grace.
You are your most important relationship. – Happiness is when you feel good about yourself without feeling the need for anyone else’s approval. You must first have a healthy relationship with yourself before you can have a healthy relationship with others. You have to feel worthwhile and acceptable in your own eyes, so that you’ll be able to look confidently into the eyes of the people around you and connect with them.
A person’s actions speak the truth. – You’re going to come across people in your life who will say all the right words at all the right times; but in the end, it’s always their actions you should judge them by. So pay attention to what people do. Their actions will tell you everything you need to know.
Small acts of kindness can make the world a better place. – Smile at people who look like they are having a rough day. Be kind to them. Kindness is the only investment that never fails. Wherever there is a human being, there’s an opportunity for kindness. Learn to give, even if it’s just a smile, not because you have too much, but because you understand there are so many others who feel like they have nothing at all. Read Way of the Peaceful Warrior.
Behind every beautiful life, there has been some kind of pain. – You trip and you fall, you make mistakes and you fail, but you stand strong through it all – you live and you learn. You have been wounded, not defeated. Think of what a priceless gift it is to grow through these experiences – to breathe, to think, to struggle, and to overcome challenges in the pursuit of the things you love. Yes, sometimes you will encounter heartache along the way, but that’s a small price to pay for immeasurable moments of love and joy. Which is why you must keep stepping forward even when it hurts, because you know the inner strength that has carried you this far can carry you the rest of the way.
Time and experience heals pain. – Look at the circles below. The black circles represent our relative life experiences. Mine is larger because I am older and have experienced more in my lifetime. The smaller red circles represent a negative event in our lives. Assume we both experienced the same exact event, whatever the nature. Notice that the negative event circles are the same size for each of us; but also notice what percentage of the area they occupy in each of the black circles. Your negative event seems much larger to you because it is a greater percentage of your total life experiences. I am not diminishing the importance of these events; I simply have a different perspective on it. What you need to understand is that an overwhelmingly painful event in your life right now will one day be part of your much larger past and not nearly as significant as it seems right now.

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5 Tips to Increasing Productivity by training your Brain

2014-01-22T00:52:00.001-05:00

The hard truth about the world is that we all have just 24 hours in which to accomplish everything we want to do. But while it’s true that some people use those hours more effectively than others, you aren’t set at some baseline productivity level that can never change. Just like you can train yourself to run a race with daily jogs, you can train your brain for maximum productivity with the following techniques:

Tip #1 – Try a brain training game

Though the idea of brain training might sound rigorous and dull, there are plenty of fun ways to challenge your mind with games and apps. A few fun options include:

Lumosity

Brain Age for Nintendo

Brain Challenge for iOS devices

Candy Crush....That's right!

Don’t want to pay a ton for a digital program? Pick up a cheap book of crossword puzzles, Sudoku games or logic puzzles from your local drugstore. Though they’re static alternatives, they’re just as valuable to your mind.

Tip #2 – Learn something new

If you want your brain to be as productive as possible, you’ve got to train it to get used to processing new stimuli and filing away new thoughts effectively. And one of the best ways to do this is to learn something new.

That something new could be anything from a new language to a new sport. Hell, even picking up a book on a subject you aren’t familiar with can be a great way to start building new neural pathways and to get your mind used to properly managing new input. Both of these benefits can contribute tremendously to your ability to work productively in the future. My personal favorite is working on my Magic Skills!

Tip #3 – Do your hardest work first

Though most of us tend to start off with our easiest tasks, this isn’t a good habit to get into based on how our brains operate. Because our minds require a certain amount of processing power in order to think creatively and be productive, every task that we undertake depletes these resources.

According to David Rock, co-founder of the NeuroLeadership Institute and author of Your Brain at Work:

“An hour into doing your work, you’ve got a lot less capacity than (at the beginning). Every decision we make tires the brain.”

If you want your mind to work as productively as possible, train yourself to work on your most challenging tasks first, as well as those that require an abundance of energy. It may be hard to think about diving into something serious when you’re first sitting down to work, but forming this habit will ensure that you have the mental faculties needed to get through all of your scheduled activities.

Tip #4 – Change your routines

Often times, we get into habits that prevent the brain from having to work too hard. Take a second and put your hand up to your mouth as if you were about to start brushing your teeth. Odds are, your hand moved automatically to the same spot it does every morning – without you having to think about it.

In some way, these routines are helpful, as they free up mental processing power to focus on more important tasks. But they certainly aren’t challenging your brain in any way!

To train your brain to be more flexible and creative, make it a point to uncover any subconscious routines you’re currently engaging in and change them. If you always take the same route to work, try a different path next time. Or if you always write with your right hand, try to improve your penmanship with your left.

Changing your routines may be frustrating at first, but doing so is a powerful way to strengthen the synapses in your brain – leading to better mental processing all around.

Tip #5 – Give yourself ample processing time

In addition, recognize that periods of rest are crucial when it comes to training your brain. While you rest or sleep, your mind is hard at work processing and assimilating all of the new information you’ve taken in. As a result, if you don’t give yourself enough downtime, your brain training attempts may actually backfire by overloading your brain’s capacity.

So if you’re ever feeling like your mind is too full to concentrate, there’s a good chance that it is. Take a break and give your mind time to recharge so that you can return to your activities with a fresh start and a clear head in the future.

Finally, keep in mind that brain training shouldn’t be a “one off” occurrence. If you really want these changes to stick and to become as productive as you can, challenge your mind on a regular basis. The results of this continued effort may be subtle, but – trust me – they’ll be powerful as well!

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Do Great Work

2014-01-16T20:42:00.000-05:00

We’re all way too busy with more to do than time allows. We become distracted and find ourselves trapped in mundane tasks and the routine of life. What can we do to break this cycle? How can we refocus on our great work? Unless we stop and refocus we run a risk, the risk is that we remain trapped, we neglect our dreams and fail to accomplish our great work. It’s not long and we find our time filled with other people’s needs, chasing someone else’s vision, spending time fire fighting with little left for that which really matters.

Until we stop, pause and review our work we’ll remain distracted and drift through life having spent our precious time and energy on the mundane and routine. It’s time to take a step back and examine our lives and re-engaging with our great work, that is work which has meaning, impact and significance.

How to Identify Great Work

What we need is a way of thinking about the kind of work we do and identify work that matters – our great work. To do this I suggest we explore the two main elements of work – value and energy that I define as follows:

Value is the personal meaning we get from our work and the impact that our work makes in the life of others. It’s not about the quality of our work, rather its about the personal meaning and impact of our work.

Energy is the physical, mental and emotional commitment that required from us to do the work we do. Energy is the commitment of our life, our spiritual, emotional and mental resources towards our work. It’s price we pay to get the our work done.

The impact of these two element on the various kinds of work we find ourselves doing is illustrated below.

The labels and ideas behind the kinds of work in the above matrix were inspired by the work of Michael Bungay Stanier from his book “Do More Great Work: Stop the Busywork” which talks about how we can find and do more of our great work. Let’s examine the four types of work as illustrated by the matrix in more detail.

Wasted Work

Wasted work is the work that takes very little energy from you and has little meaning or impact. While this work is easy to do and does not require much energy it makes very little impact. This work is the time we spend working as the result of inefficient process and systems. It’s work that should be stopped, but that’s they way we’ve always don it!

Bad Work

Bad work is work that has little personal meaning and makes little impact and yet consumes a lot your personal resources of time and energy. It sucks the life out of you. This works requires your to exert conscious effort to get it done. This kind of work drains your emotional, mental and physical resources. Usually this work takes the form of pointless meetings, ridged procedures and heaps of paperwork. This work literally sucks the life out of you.

Good Work

Good work** is your work that provides you a lot of personal meaning and impacts the organisation and people around you. Good work is not about the quality of your work, rather it’s about the meaning the work has for you and others. This work does not require large amounts of spiritual, emotional and mental commitment from you. As it’s work that you enjoy and that you’re skilled at doing. Good work is important work, it keeps things moving and gets the right things done. Good work it the work you do that keeps you in business and that you know how to do well.

Great Work

Great work is the work that has great personal meaning and makes a significant impact on the enterprise. It’s work that is both meaningful and challenging. Great work challenging as it demands huge amount personal and organisational commitment. Great work requires personal and organisation transformation as it’s work that you’re not skilled at, it’s work that requires you to take risk and stretch. Great work involves risk, it demands you step outside of your comfort zone, to develop new skills and capabilities. Great work is an investment in making a significant impact and sets you and the enterprise up for long term success.

Where Are You Investing Your Time?

Reflecting on the above four kinds of work, take our a piece of paper or fire up your word processor and place your current work tasks and activities in each of the four categories. Now ask yourself:

Where are you investing the majority of your time and effort?

What is your great work?

Will your Great Work stretch and challenge you?

Are you spending enough time on your great work?

What work activities do you need to stop?

What work activities do you need to refocus?

What work activities do you need to delegate?

If you’re like a lot of others – as illustrated by the matrix below – you’re probably spending too much time and energy on your good work and not sufficient time and energy on your great work.

Whilst there is nothing wrong with good work, it’s comfortable and does not stretch or challenge you to grow and change. The problem with good work is that it’s safe and comfortable.

Choose to Strive for Your Great Work

As we are reminded by Steve Jobs we all have a limited amount of time on this planet in which to make an impact. You can invest your time doing more good work or you can invest your time to accomplish great work.

So how do we ensure that we don’t die with our great work still inside? Well it comes down to the choices we make. It starts with a simple choice. A choice to live our lives continuously striving towards doing more and more great work and not to settle.

How we invest our life is the result of the choices we make. Choose today to invest your life in striving for your great work. Lastly, encourage others to strive for their great work. We all need one another to choose to do the great work they’re called to do.

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Barry Dillah

5 simple steps to be Accountable and Achieve better results.

2014-01-14T15:13:00.000-05:00

5 simple steps to be Accountable and Achieve better results.

You will get better results if you follow these 5 simple steps.

You must first know what task you need to perform on a daily basis in order to be effective in your business. Tasks can be usually broken down to 3 to 5 things you need to do daily to get results in any business.

Most people fail because they fail to do the things that needs to be done on a daily basis. Remember, do first things first and second things never!

1. Make a list of TASKS that needs to be done daily.

2. Rate your performance for each task daily using a number system (1-10). Notice that this is a NUMBER rating system. We are not using excuses or stories as to why you didn't perform the task at a higher level. Rate yourself using a number.

3. Have a reminder system setup so that you follow up daily on your progress.

4. Have a mentor rate your performance and give you feedback weekly.

5. Adjust your activity to increase your performance level for each task daily.

If you don't know what you need to do or you need help staying on the right track, then I suggest that you contact me and get the help you need. Your results will be even greater when you have someone inspect that you are DOING on a daily basis.

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The Only Leads That Count

2014-01-09T11:59:00.000-05:00

Selling is the best job in the world. We solve problems for our clients, become instrumental in their success, expand their thinking, and build amazing, lasting relationships. No other job gives us the opportunity to truly connect with people and to plug into the pulse of businesses around the globe.

Picture a sales world where you only meet with clients who want to meet with you—a world in which you never again have to cold call, send cold prospecting emails, or entice prospects with special offers. Enter the world of referral selling and blow your quota out of the water.

The Only Leads That Count

If you love sales, stop the time-wasting, irrelevant, unproductive, frustrating prospecting activities you think you should be doing. Stop sorting leads into cold, warm, and hot. There's only one kind of lead that should be in your pipeline. Only one kind of lead that counts. Only one kind of lead that management cares about. Only one kind of lead you should care about.

That's hot leads—the kind you source through referrals from trusted allies.

The ROI of Referrals

Every seller agrees that referral selling is, hands down, the most effective prospecting strategy. When you prospect through referrals:

You bypass the gatekeeper and score meetings with decision-makers every time.

Your prospects are pre-sold on your ability to deliver results.

You've already earned trust and credibility with your prospects.

You convert prospects into clients at least 50 percent of the time (usually more than 70 percent).

You land clients who become ideal referral sources for new business.

You score more new clients from fewer leads (because all of your leads are qualified).

You ace out your competition.

A Referral Without an Introduction is Ice Cold

A referral means you receive a personal introduction (not just a name and contact information) to your prospect. You are introduced to exactly the person you want to meet—someone who expects your call and who actually wants to hear from you. You create a business opportunity that is yours to win. You meet with a potential client, or with someone who may become your advocate within their organization. Either way, you start with someone on your side.

Wouldn’t it be great if all of your business came from referrals? Wouldn’t you rather take a sales call than make a sales call? You'd save time, work with people you like, source only HOT prospects, and close deals faster.

You can. But most sales organizations don’t.

Referral Selling is Common Sense, but Not Common Practice

The business case for referrals is loud and clear:

Decision makers will always meet with a referral from someone they know and trust.

If your competition gets to the decision-maker first, you’re out of the game.

When you get the referral introduction, you win.

No other sales or marketing strategy delivers such powerful, predictable results. Yet, referrals are the missing link in every company's business-development strategy. Ninety-five percent of companies do not have a written referral-selling strategy, written weekly referral goals, referral-selling skills, accountability for results, or a system to track and measure referrals.

It's time to make referrals the way you sell. Fill your pipeline with only HOT referral prospects, and you’ll never have to worry about hitting your numbers again.

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How to Magically Increase Production and Results

2014-01-07T14:15:00.002-05:00

Most organizations live and die by quota. Quotas are derived from financial projections which are created and necessary for companies to operate. We rely on quotas as a method for measuring sales rep performance. They need to have a number to shoot for and we need to know whether they are performing as expected.

In many ways, it’s easy to understand why we focus so intently on quota. It’s how we measure the health of our organizations. However, by relying on quota attainment to tell you whether you’re generating enough revenue, you’re doing what magician’s refer to as “following the other hand.”

In essence, magicians know if they can direct your attention to one hand, they can use the other to conceal the quarter. The more elaborate “magical” tricks make use of smoke and mirrors not unlike how some people construct forecasts. The real magic to driving radical revenue growth resides in understanding sales productivity and how our reps spend their limited sales capacity. You lose sight of that when you focus on “hitting the numbers.”

If I were to ask you to think about how much revenue you’ll bring in this year your mental mathematical exercise would look something like this:

So far, we’ve booked x amount ytd

Remaining quota is y

Our forecast is Z.

Therefore, we’re [above, below, or right] on target.

You’ve got a pretty good idea what to expect in terms of revenue and the reason you do is because you have a quota number that helps you calibrate your answer. Let me direct your attention to the other hand for a moment and ask a different question.

Are your reps generating as much revenue as they could be?

There’s no way to calculate that answer based on quota attainment analysis. Quota attainment only tells how your team is doing compared to what’s expected of them. It tells you what they should be selling. It doesn’t tell you whether they’re selling as much as they could be.

Are your reps generating as much revenue as they could be? The answer to that question will most certainly be “no.” Understanding why the answer is no— or more precisely, what’s keeping your team from selling as much as they could be selling—is the key to radically increasing revenue in the future.

You can start by asking yourself these questions:

- Why aren’t we talking with a higher number of qualified prospects?

- Why are we talking to too many poor-quality prospects?

- Why aren’t reps able to hold more effective, relevant conversations?

- Why aren’t we consistently getting great call results?

- What’s keeping us from moving deals down the pipeline?

- What’s keeping us from moving deals down the pipeline faster?

These are sales productivity issues. Instead of sales productivity issues, managers often spend their time looking at: what’s in the pipeline, what are we forecasting and what is the likelihood those deals will close. While those are good questions to ask, they will not uncover barriers to sales productivity that depress revenue. You can’t increase sales productivity (and revenue) without assessing (and doing something about) how salespeople use their time spent.

Most salespeople have 215 selling days or 1720 hours a year to sell. That’s their total available sales capacity. This doesn’t tell the full story however. Studies of B2B sellers have shown that on average only 35% of this time is spent communicating with prospects. That is the equivalent of a mere 602 hours per year (50 hrs/month).This 35% statistic is an important metric because it puts an upper boundary on how much revenue you can generate. If 35% of a salesperson’s time is spent communicating with prospects, their revenue will be limited to the deals they get from the people you communicate with during that amount of time.

What would happen if you could increase the time salespeople spent communicating with prospects from 35% to 50%? Their available selling time goes from 50 hours a month to 71.6 hours a month. Salespeople can use that additional time in two ways. The first is to talk with more people. The second is to better plan and prepare for each conversation so they convert more deals to the next stage in the pipeline.

What do salespeople do with 65% of their time?

Why don't we increase selling days?

To free up 21 hours a month you’ll need to look at where that time is being used today. If reps spend only 35% of their time communicating with prospects, what are they doing with the remaining 65% of their time? You’ll need to determine which of all of their tasks represent the biggest unproductive consumptions of time. Fortunately, this is often an easy task. You just have to pay attention and take notice.

The story of UPS drivers making only right hand turns is now legendary. Apparently, making left hand turns consumes more time and fuel than making right hand turns. You may have even wondered about this yourself when sitting idle at a traffic light waiting for the left-turn arrow to turn green. Someone at UPS decided to test the theory that avoiding left turns altogether would lessen the over-all time of each route. Could it be that an act of noticing and questioning a common daily occurrence led to a right-turn only policy? Seems almost too simple, yet the company says its package flow technology combined with right-turn routes saved nearly 29 million miles, and three million gallons of fuel.

There are similar examples to be found in the world of sales. And likewise, you can eliminate wasted sales time by examining the root cause and applying technology and process.

For example, how much time do your salespeople spend looking for the most relevant sales content to present to prospects? What percentage of the time are they successful in their search? How much time do salespeople spend trying to quantify the ROI and value their solutions will bring to prospects? What percent of the time are they successful? How much time do salespeople spend trying to navigate through accounts and determining the most appropriate sales strategies? What percent of that time do they end up with the best action plan?

You can help your salespeople get more from their limited time when you understand how it’s being used today.

Think like UPS did. Find out what tasks or processes are consuming too much time. Uncover what’s keeping your reps from spending more time with real prospects. Conduct what we call Sales Energy Audits. Start with a frank conversation with your salespeople and ask them where the time drains are.

Then take what they say seriously. It’s tempting to wave off complaints and to discount their comments. The important thing is to make sales productivity a management imperative now that you know how small changes can lead to big returns.

The truth of the matter is this. You have the power in you to help your company generate a great deal more revenue than it is today without hiring new reps, and without introducing new products or entering new markets.

All you have to do is commit now. Commit to not letting another month go by without launching your investigation into barriers to sales productivity and to finding the right tools and processes to free up more time for communicating with prospects.

Quota is important but it doesn’t hold the key to explosive revenue growth. If you want to pull the rabbit out of your hat, you’ll need to follow the other hand. The one where the real magic is taking place. And that’s all about Sales Productivity.

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Growth Tip: Ask Questions!

2014-01-05T20:51:00.002-05:00

In order to be in a constant state of growth, it is important to know that you don’t know! What I mean by this is that while an individual sales person can knock themselves out to improve their technique, put in countless hours, and chase down every possible hint of a lead, unless they expand their knowledge by way of those around them, they will still remain limited in their success.

The mantra to keep in mind in regard to being better at what you do is this: always ask questions!

Asking Questions ? Growth = Success

There is a wealth of knowledge to be gained from the people around you. Understanding the sales process from the perspective of your co-workers will enrich your understanding of your piece of the process and enable you to be better at it.

Think about the details and nuances of your own work that you know for a fact people aren’t aware of. Remember that every person knows such things about their own job. When you know these things about the work others do, that information will make you better at your own work!

When you need help in a sales process, you most likely think of going to your sales manager. While this is appropriate, instead of just asking for help, take opportunities with your sales manager to ask things like “What are some of the frustrations in your job.” And, don’t stop at your sales manager when asking questions. What questions could you ask your division president, your department head, or your lender?

APPLICATION IDEA: Stop right here and think about whom you might practice your curiosity skills on and what you might ask that person. Then schedule it. Now!

Asking appropriate questions at appropriate times does not communicate ignorance. A timely and thoughtful question communicates a desire to grow and an interest in those around you. When done well, asking questions makes the people around you feel respected, which is a bonus to increasing your own knowledge!

Get curious about how other people in your industry do their jobs and what challenges they face. When you are bold enough to ask questions, your world will change!

SUMMARY: Top sales professionals have this in common: they always want to be better. The best and easiest tool to use in an effort to get better is this: Ask questions!

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Barry Dillah

What Culture do You promote?

2014-01-04T12:51:00.001-05:00

Culture is what takes over when leadership and management isn’t around.

Culture is what takes over in those moments of truth, when a decision makes a difference–for good or for ill.

Culture is what happens when the organizations real values are brought to life in the actions and behaviors individuals take when they are challenged and aren’t directed to do something.

Culture is what the company belives about itself–individually and collectively. Culture is identity.

A leader creates, nurture, and protects a healthy culture. A healthy cultures is built on caring.

A leader may also create, nuture, and protect an unhealthy, diseased culture. Unhealthy cultures are built on fear.

When a leader doesn’t create, nuture, and protect a healthy culture, an unhealthy culture can take root and grow on its own. A leader has to pull out by its roots any threat to the culture.

When a culture is strong and healthy, a leader doesn’t need to removes the threats. Culture is self-policing. A strong, healthy culture rejects anyone and anything that undermines their positive values and sense of identity. But a weak, diseased culture destroys anything that tries to change or improve it–especially when it means giving up a diseased mindset.

Establishing culture is the leader’s duty. Culture is purpose; it’s meaning. And its the area where a leader can make the biggest difference to company’s results–it determines who the organization is, what it stands for, and breathes life into its purpose.

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Barry Dillah

How to get rich in 2014

2014-01-02T12:14:00.002-05:00

How to get rich in 2014.

You’d think gratitude would increase alongside advantage and privilege. If you have more to be grateful for, you become more grateful. But clearly this isn’t true.

We’ve all heard stories of tycoons who couldn’t be happy, or lottery winners that end up ruined a few years later, wishing it had never happened. I can understand the possibility that having amounts of money that seem copious to you and me might bring certain problems we’re ignorant about. But I still always find myself thinking that these people must be particularly foolish or naive not to be able to make millions of dollars work for them.

But this kind of thinking is what’s naive. We do the same thing. Almost all of us are in an extremely high percentile of material and social wealth, even if you only consider the people who are alive today.

If our standards for wealth are where we sit on that spectrum — and what other standard could we have? — then we’re certainly rich, but how often do we feel rich?

That’s a totally different question. And clearly there is no real value in being rich by any material standard, if we don’t feel rich — if we don’t feel like we have more to be grateful for than most — and of course we do. That feeling of abundance, the opposite of the feeling of lack, is what makes riches attractive to anybody.

I think it’s important to reiterate that point. No matter what material things we pursue, we’re only ever looking for certain feelings. Money is attractive to us because we believe it will come with the feelings we want: abundance, security, power. That’s all the good it can do. Stuck on a desert island with a billion in hard currency is a terrible place to be, because you’re poor in all the things that matter.

How rich we’re able to feel does depend a little on what we do have in terms of privilege and material wealth. It’s hard to achieve feelings of autonomy if you have no clothes or no home. Yet it seems to depend more on what we feel entitled to, what our peers have relative to us — and most importantly — whether we think more about what we do have than what we don’t have.

The Manhattan investment banker who only grosses $96,000 a year probably feels like a have-not when he goes out to lunch with the big dogs. But he probably feels differently about his level of wealth and privilege when he’s being asked for change outside the train station.

How rich he is depends on how rich he experiences himself to be, which is quite independent of his financial bottom line. It’s dependent on how he values what he has and how he values what he doesn’t have, which changes from moment to moment, day to day, year to year. Depending on his perspective, there is a huge range of possible levels of happiness within his means, and that’s every bit as true for you. The influence of our material holdings on our ability to experience wealth is actually quite small.

“Rich” is clearly a relative, emotional state, and your life almost certainly contains far more material (and social) advantages at your disposal than a random human life picked out of a hat. So for most of us, what we need to get rich is not more money, it’s to cultivate a shift in perspective. More money would still leave that necessary perspective shift ahead of you. Chances are you do have the makings of being rich.

If we break it down, the makings of being rich are:

1) Enough stuff to survive in relative comfort. I’m talking about the bottom of Maslow’s pyramid here: food, shelter, water, and decent health.

2) Some extra stuff, beyond the essentials of survival. Some toys, some technology, some art, some tools you could survive without. Most of us have way more than some of this.

3) Some friends. I don’t think this is optional, if you want to feel rich. Humans are highly social and I expect there are few people who can exist in a generally grateful state if they are alone in life. Luckily it is easier than ever to meet other people with like interests. Facebook.com. Meetup.com. Millions of forums worldwide. Use your superpowers here.

4) Some freedoms. Chiefly, to speak your mind and to do your own thing. This varies hugely across modern societies, but if you’re reading this you are probably near the better end of the stick. By the same token, everyone does live under some measure of political constraint, but most of us are still left with an amount of room to pursue happiness that would make most of history’s people envious. People have made rich and worthwhile lives with much worse.

5) The capacity to keep perspective when it comes to assessing a) the value of what you do have, and b) the value of what you don’t have. This is a skill and it can be developed.

Those are the makings, as far as I can see it, and for most people reading this it’s just a matter of working with the last one.

Here are a couple of ways to get better at that:

“Caveman gratitude” – Whenever you use a material possession, think of how valuable it would be to someone who didn’t live in a highly technological world. Remember that you are still only a naked animal, surrounded by a lot of stuff, and even the crappiest of that stuff confers powers that most of the past’s humans would find extraordinarily valuable. What would medieval serfs make of my “crappy” Panasonic point-and-shoot? Yet I have a mid-level Nikon DSLR, and I still salivate over the top-of-the-line stuff. Whenever you feel like a have-not, mentally drop your home and your stuff into an iron-age village and realize again that you live like a monarch with magic powers, right here in the far future.

Own fewer things, but better things – Respect your possessions. Get rid of low quality possessions. Get rid of any possession you don’t respect or use. Have a home for everything in your home, or get rid of it. If you don’t respect your lot in life materially, then you can’t feel like you have a lot worth having, and that’s what being rich amounts to.

Picture losing what’s important to you – This is one of the most worthwhile things I’ve ever learned to do. We just cannot have the necessary perspective to appreciate what we have until we understand what it would mean to lose those things. Do it with your possessions, your rights, and most powerfully, do it with the people you love. Those links will explain how.

Make 2014 your year to get rich!

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What Successful People Know

2014-01-01T11:45:00.001-05:00

New Year Resolutions won't work!

They fail because they are grounded in the mindset that “I’m going to start this year differently” or “this year I’m going to do things better.” That line of thinking is inherently faulty compared to the psychology of the people who are actually successful at implementing lasting change.

Resolutions, diets, and 90-day programs have one major flaw that flies in the face of instilling lasting change…they imply a finite amount of time. It dooms the well-meaning aspirer because they enter into the commitment under the auspices that they are going to make some sacrifice for a pre-defined amount of time. But that leaves them completely vulnerable to returning back to the way they’ve always done things as soon as that season is over or as soon as they get off track of the pace they’ve laid out for themselves.

Successful people think differently.

Successful people decide that the choice and change that they are about to make is not a temporary one; but a permanent one. Successful people know that success is never owned; it is only rented – and the rent is due everyday.

They don’t try to “gear up”, “hunker down”, or simply “endure the pain” for a while only to someday celebrate their victory by returning to their former state of indulgence. Rather, they get serious that something needs to change about their life forever. They aren’t going to go on a diet; they’re going to permanently change their diet. They don’t make a resolution to go to the gym “a little more often this year”; they decide that exercise is going to be a part of their daily life until they die. They don’t convince themselves to get control of their spending for a few months; they radically commit to the idea that they will never get into debt ever again.

A person who is on the path to creating real results isn’t interested in following a seasonal fad or tagging along on some popular trend. Quite the contrary; they legitimately acknowledge that something in their life needs to be altered and then they commit that they’re going to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to make it happen.

The irony is that even a timeframe as short as 90 days can be nearly impossible to motivate ourselves for when we’re trying to change our habits. But when you are fighting the battle for just one day, then you ask yourself the question “can I do this just for today?” And the answer is almost always “yes!”

You pay the rent for that day and you don’t worry about tomorrow until it comes. Then when the next day comes you again ask yourself “can I do this just for today?” to which you know the answer is yes because you’ve done it once before. Even if you get off track for a day or two, you quickly get back to asking yourself “can I pay the rent just for today?” and you’re always – at most – only one day away from the next victory.

You repeat the pattern over and over but you never convince yourself of some invisible finish line and your commitment always supersedes artificial deadlines.

So, ditch the diets. Rebuke the resolutions. And instead just get real on what part of your life is broken that you are going to fix. It’s fine to start on January 1st but it’s no better, worse, or different than any other day. It’s not about the date at all. It’s about the decision to do something better. To be someone better.

And it’s the perspective of knowing that:

No matter who you are

No matter what the date is

No matter what happened yesterday

And no matter what might happen tomorrow…

Today is just one more day that I’ll pay the rent. And tomorrow I’ll do it again because….

Success is never owned; it is only rented – and the rent is due every day.

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What's your number?

2013-12-06T17:44:00.001-05:00

You have to be odd to be number one. You have to be willing to do what number two is unwilling or unable to do. You have to be odd to be number one. You have to persist when everyone else is satisfied. You have to be odd to be number one.

You have to grow and learn daily while others think they know it all. You have to be odd to be number one. You have to record and reflect and be willing to change your daily habits while others just make the same mistakes over and over again.

You have to be odd to be number one. You have to focus on getting results while others settle for excuses. You have to be odd to be number one. You know that being number one is hard work and you are willing to do what it takes to be number one while others just think it's too hard and decide to be average. You have to be odd to be number one. Number ones like being the best while others like being like all the rest. You have to be odd to be number one. What's your number? - Barry Dillah

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Focus on Habits not Results.

2013-11-08T13:34:00.003-05:00

Your current results are not a true reflection of your ability or potential. Results will increase and decrease daily. The key is to work on improving and changing your daily habits to improve your results over time. In time, your results will be better today than it was last year, last month, last week because you focused on changing what you needed to change in order to improve. Make the decision today to focus on changing and improving your daily habits and you will get better results in time. A coach and mentor can help you see and find what it is you need to change. Remember, the mind that creates the problem cannot fix the problem. The wise always seek counsel. A wise man will hear and increase in learning and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel. (Proverbs 1:5)

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Barry Dillah

What are you waiting for?

2013-08-12T10:11:00.001-04:00

Are you waiting for some special deal from the home office at the end of a month... or at the end of a quarter... or at the end of some calendar date? If so, why? There is a far better way:

Accept personal responsibility for your own life...

Accept personal responsibility for your own failure...

Accept personal responsibility for your own success.

The way out of the dependency on expecting someone else to motivate you to take action with some special deal is to accept responsibility for your own daily activity in your business!

This means YOU initiating action...

It means being personally responsible for your actions each day:

Making “x” number of calls a day... do it now!

Making so many presentations a day... do it now!

Getting in on some three-way calls for recruiting each day... do it now!

Getting leads for prospects from each person you sell... do it now!

Have a goal to do some activity every day in your business.

Then the local meetings, the regional meetings, and the national meetings are not the cake itself. Rather, they become the frosting on the cake. These events will then help you get twice as much... or five times as much... benefit if you have been responsible for doing all you could have done on a daily basis.

In other words, stop waiting and take action now!

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Barry Dillah

Fill Yourself with the right stuff.

2013-08-08T10:03:00.003-04:00

Focus on your own Happiness.
When you focus on someone else's Happiness you rob yourself of your own Happiness.
Remember, YOU will be filled with whatever consumes you.

Fill yourself with the right STUFF!
Fill yourself with Love, Happiness, and Joy!

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Barry Dillah

The Thinking Guru

2013-07-10T16:07:00.001-04:00

Click here to see Acrobatic Cards Trick

Click here for YouTube Video

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Barry Dillah

How to Earn Income While You Sleep.

2013-05-21T13:23:00.000-04:00

Have you ever wondered, how is it possible, for some people to have so much free time and still be able to earn lot's of money.

I hope this video help's you with your thinking. >> Click Here for Video.
If You want to learn more, feel free to contact me for lessons on building your dream lifestyle.
As a Business and Life Coach, I can help YOU!

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Barry Dillah

Enjoy your gifts.

2013-05-06T20:28:00.001-04:00

Junior high school students in Chicago were studying the Seven Wonders of the World. At the end of the lesson, the students were asked to list what they considered to be the Seven Wonders of the World. Though there was some disagreement, the following received the most votes:

1. Egypt's Great Pyramids
2. The Taj Mahal in India
3. The Grand Canyon in Arizona
4. The Panama Canal
5. The Empire State Building
6. St. Peter's Basilica
7. China's Great Wall

While gathering the votes, the teacher noted that one student, a quiet girl, hadn't turned in her paper yet. So she asked the girl if she was having trouble with her list. The quiet girl replied, "Yes, a little. I couldn't quite make up my mind because there were so many." The teacher said, "Well, tell us what you have, and maybe we can help."

The girl hesitated, then read, "I think the Seven Wonders of the World are:

1. to touch...
2. to taste...
3. to see...
4. to hear... (She hesitated a little, and then added...)
5. to feel...
6. to laugh...
7. and to love.

The room was so quiet, you could have heard a pin drop.

May this story serve as a gentle reminder to all of us that the things we overlook as simple and ordinary are often the most wonderful - and we don't have to travel anywhere special to experience them.

Enjoy your gifts!

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10 Key thoughts on how to grow your business.

2013-04-29T11:52:00.000-04:00

Are you in business for yourself?
You may think that you are in business for yourself but the fact is that you are really in business with many people.

No one person can be in business on their own.
Being in business means that you have something of value to offer to someone else.
In order to have increase in your business you must have:

1. An increase supply of things of value to share with others.
2. More people in your network to help you share your thing of value.

That's business in a nutshell.

You may have a product, a service, or an idea to share.
However, the only way to really make a difference is to have more people in your network sharing what you want to share.

So, to grow your business, you must grow your network.
You must recruit people to help you share your thing of value.

In order to grow your network you must first grow yourself.
The team will grow when you grow.
If you are not growing, your team will not grow because the team is always limited by your level of thinking.

The key to major growth in any business is to recruit the right people to help you share your product, service or idea.

There will always be a price to pay for growth.
The price is paid with money, time, effort, persistence, commitment, desire and your attention.
When you stop paying the price you stop growing.
It's that simple.

Do you want to grow your business?
Here are 10 Key thoughts you must know if you want to grow your business:

1. You need help to understand and learn what steps must be taken to grow your business.
2. You must recruit the right people to build your network.
3. You must agree to pay the price all the time.
4. You must always work on growing yourself and improving your thinking.
5. You must surround yourself with people who are smarter than you.
6. You must read to grow.
7. You must teach to learn.
8. You must delegate, so you can focus on your strengths.
9. You must take care of the weeds.
10. Understand that businesses don't fail, people fail.

Remember, #1 on the list is #1 for a reason.
You cannot grow if you don't know how to grow.
A smart business leader will always use a business coach or mentor, to help improve current results and grow their business.

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Barry Dillah

How to Improve your Results

2013-04-17T11:00:00.003-04:00

Would you like to improve your results?
If you really want to get better results, you need to learn how to focus your attention on key areas of your life that would get you the results you seek.

Take a look at the chart.

KK relates to everything that you know that you know.
KD relates to everything that you know that you don't know.
DD relates to everything you don't know that you don't know.
DK relates to everything you don't know that you know.

Are you confused?
Allow me to explain.

You don't need to invest time learning anything in the KK box. These you already know and you are aware that you know these things. For example, you know that you know you can read these words.

You don't need to invest time worrying about anything in the DD box. This box contains everything that you are not even aware about and you are not aware that you have no clue. For example, you don't know that you don't know about the movie The Man from Earth. If you never heard about this movie you would not know that it exist.

You need to invest some time in the KD area of your life. This relates to things that you know that you don't know but you could improve your life if you invested time learning anything in this area that could improve your results. For example, you are a sales person and you know that you don't know how to use a PowerPoint presentation. Learning about PowerPoint could improve your sales. It would be wise to get yourself a coach, teacher, or mentor to help you improve in the areas that you lack knowledge. Your mentor will help direct you on what is important to focus on. For example, you are in sales and you know that you don't know how to do Calculus. Your mentor would explain to you that investing time in learning Calculus is not as important to you as investing your time on learning your sales presentation or making sales calls. You are a sales person and Calculus will not get you better results in your line of work. Too many people invest time on things that cannot improve their results with respect to the business that they are invested in.

The DK box relates to everything you do well but you are not even aware that you possess a great skill. Some people just seem NATURAL at performing certain duties and make it seem effortless while getting superior results. They don't seem to know why they get better results. What if you could find out what makes them tick? Here is where I get the best information to help others improve.
I invest time with winners and people that get results. I find out exactly what they do and how they do it. I then implement what works best. You should invest time and learn what you don't know that you know. This again sounds confusing. This is why a mentor and coach is needed to help you improve.
When you know what you need to know your results will improve.
Remember, you cannot get better results if you don't know what to do.
That's the bottom line.

So, pay attention to the chart and start your list.
Get help in the areas that you need to improve.

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20 thoughts that could change your life

2013-04-09T10:17:00.001-04:00

Click on this link to see the video>>> 20 Thoughts that could change your life.