Entrepreneurs, myself included, love to tell themselves a lie about hard work. You convince yourself that today you must wake up and crush that to do list. You have to, you’ve been putting stuff off. Get productive, goddamnit!

Hard work is an essential part of any business success story, but if you look back on the big turning points in your career you’ll probably realize that, like me, it was “luck” or some kind of X Factor that really made the difference.

Bear with me, because if you’ve defined your life with a narrative of Blood, Sweat and Tears this idea isn’t going to feel good… initially. But when you find out how the most successful entrepreneurs create their lucky breaks, you might just un-furrow that brow.  

My career has been a series of nexus points – moments in time when everything suddenly changed and I rocketed to the next level. The change always came from outside me, felt an awful lot like serendipitous synchronicity and involved other people.

It began when, as a clueless young adult, I was researching NLP. I had tapped my local library dry and was looking for more. More than anything, I wanted community. So I reached out to the editor of NLP Weekly magazine in a simple email asking “Have you ever considered creating a community, online, to accompany your popular website?”

His reply: “Would you like to build it for us?”

I had never had contact with this guy. Ever. He had no clue who I was or whether I could be trusted. And he threw down that offer. Just like that.

Over the next few months we created the NLPWeekly Forums, which grew into the largest community of NLP Practitioners in the world. I would link you, but this is ancient history – the site was sold (and subsequently shut down) a long time ago.

At it’s peak, we had thousands of active members and became the number one website in the world for all things NLP – providing advice to practitioners all over. Our casual reviews of various NLP Trainings would make or break those training companies!

My volunteer position at NLP Weekly (this was back in the old days, where the internet was entirely “Free love for all!”) resulted in me writing over 4000 posts in the forum. It polished my rhetoric, forced me to master (and lead) my field and so, so much more.

It also gave me direct access to the most influential people in the field. I was invited to sit on the executive committee of the Australian Board of NLP. I corresponded with luminaries around the globe.

Because I emailed a guy and asked him if he had thought of creating a forum.

That one email opened up a gateway to my entire career and defined my life in the process. If I hadn’t sent it, this website wouldn’t exist and you wouldn’t be reading this article.

This is just one story. I’m blessed, because my career has consisted of a whole string of them – that I won’t go into now. I’ve actually hesitated to publish this article, because I wasn’t sure that my experience would mirror yours. However, after years of interviewing clients and chatting with some of my crazy-smart friends, I’ve discovered that it’s everyone’s little secret.

We all get lucky. You work hard for six months on some project, then one phone call happens about something totally different… and your business and life changes massively (for the better) for the next five years!

So if it’s luck, how on earth can you manufacture it?

Good question. The whole point of lucky breaks is that you can’t work your way toward them. There’s no to-do list that’ll directly result in something miraculous. Understanding why is the point: Having plans that are too fixed actually hurts your luck.

When you lock in a business plan and reject any deviation from it, forcing yourself to focus on nothing else, you prevent luck from unfolding. If I had relentlessly committed to my plans back then, I’d probably be working with addicts back in New Zealand, instead of entrepreneurs in New York.

So the first pseudo-step in manufacturing your own luck is to not take plans (and yourself) so damn seriously. In practice, this really means remaining curious about alternatives. A truly laser focused entrepreneur wouldn’t let himself send that email, because it wasn’t an action that supported by “business plan” at the time. My lack of focus and insatiable curiosity made room for a lucky break of epic proportions.

Don’t be too quick to dismiss this advice. A lot of people believe they’re already doing this; that they’re staying curious and open to the possibilities. It’s much harder to do than it sounds, especially as you become psychologically invested in upholding your businesses “status quo” and sticking to the plan.

This tendency to get less and less curious over time is an epidemic in business culture. At the highest levels of the corporate world, it’s The Innovator’s Dilemma; the lack of lateral thinking that results in every big business eventually falling behind when some agile non-competitor comes out of nowhere to destroy them. Think Microsoft, focusing on PC market share and never getting curious about cell phones.

So take this seriously. The smartest minds in the world’s most innovative companies still struggle with this, so don’t underestimate the challenge.

Stay curious. Be open to the peripheries, where people and ideas can spring out of nowhere and change the game. Reach out, engage, send emails and more. Give yourself permission to not always begin every action with an end in mind.

Most of all, allow your curiosity to connect you with smart people. The good kind. People are lighting rods for lucky breaks; the smarter and more karmically enlightened, the better.

Notice that I didn’t say, “Successful People”. The goal isn’t to be a social climber making a bee line to the richest person in the room. Rich isn’t always an indicator for smarts or karma. Beside, you’ll find more lucky breaks with the current generation of up-and-comers than the already-made-it folks.

So stay curious. And say “yes” to whatever someone offers you, when you’re 100% sure you can deliver and you know you’ll learn something. Eventually you may run into the first world problem of saying “yes” a few times too many. However if you re-read the bolded sentence you’ll see that it, as a rule, contains all the safety values you need.

There are only two types of entrepreneur: Those who create their own luck and those who don’t. The latter group are obsessed with fundamentalist commitment to well laid plans, with zero room for serendipitous and lateral progress. It doesn’t mean they won’t be successful, but they’ll sure as hell work five times harder for it.

Lucky entrepreneurs live in a world where we (the masses) look back at their history and say “luck has nothing to do with it” – we judge them self made, street smart and savvy. But they know, deep down, that it was being in the right place at the right time.

The place’s name is Curiosity and the time is always Now. Can you get yourself there?

Everyone talks about transmuting failure into feedback. It’s the holy grail of entrepreneurial acceleration: You recover from set backs faster, get smarter and rocket up the learning curve to the milk and honey on the other side.

If only it was easier done than said!

When you’re deep in the trenches, up to your elbows in a real-world business ass kicking, it’s kinda hard to relax into the lotus position and remind yourself to think positively.

Until now, because today I’m breaking down five street-tested tactics that snap you out of failure just as fast as they push you into learning and growth. Let’s do it.

 1. Change your State

This one tops the list because it’s a mandatory first step. When your business knocks you down a peg, you’ll want to “figure things out” and “brainstorm”. Problem solving is what entrepreneurs were made for, but you’ll just be spinning your wheels if you don’t change your state first.

Failure or Rejection will leave your brain marinating in a bath of nasty chemicals. These chemicals were originally designed to keep our monkey ancestors safe in the jungle, so they’re mainly about survival, rapid escape and tunnel vision. Not exactly the secret sauce for problem solving.

So you’ve got to change your state and flush that mental marinade out for a fresh one. Even if it’s only a temporary change, it’ll give you the opportunity you need to think clearly and take intelligent, inspired action.

Changing state is simpler than you think and simple is good – when you’re deep in failure the way out needs to be easy to find. Start by changing up your environment. This won’t solve big problems, but relocating your physical self will create a temporary gap between dark emotions.

Use music as a weapon – you’ve spent years creating powerful emotional anchors to certain songs, so treat them like a drug and inject some optimism! Food works the same (be careful with this one though – it’s a double sided sword).

Best of all, use your physiology: Moving your body will flush out that nasty brain-sauce. Getting a massage works too. Sex? Even better. The more you move, the better you feel. Wink wink etc.

2. Find a way to have a little victory

Use this tactic to show your unconscious monkey brain that you’re a winner who wins. You can condition yourself to be “on a roll” by making little victories stack up, making your failures seem insignificant.

You may have mess up that big sales opportunity, but you sure as hell can show your housework what’s up. Or get yourself down to a shooting range and metaphor the shit out of that cardboard target. I like to write, because getting words on the page counts as a small victory – so if my day isn’t going great I’ll turn the tide mentally this way.

What you consider victorious will be very personal, but every client I’ve worked with has had a ton of small ways they can “win”. A few small wins will get you back into a winning streak again.

3. Get Philosophical

Once you’ve changed your state and lined up a few micro victories, it’s time to plot your big bounce back. You need to do some thoughtful beard scratching here and pose yourself some deep and meaningful questions.

Questions are great – our unconscious mind has a handy habit of answering any question we pose of it. In some way or another. These questions are taken straight from my therapist swipe file. They’ve been designed to hone in on the fastest way to bounce you back.

Ask: What is it precisely that I’m feeling? 

Understanding what this failure really means to you is essential. Name the emotion and it has less power of you, because once you identify precisely what you’re feeling you can start to work with it. Name the tiger and it’s on it’s way to becoming your pet.

Ask: What do I want to feel INSTEAD of that feeling?

Stop and think about this one. So few people ask this of themselves. When you’re feeling like a failure… or afraid, stuck and worthless… you need to get clear about what you want to feel instead of that shitty feeling.

Ask: What would I have to believe about myself in order to have that ideal feeling? 

This question cuts through months of wasted psychoanalysis and delivers laser guided radar right into your hands. The answer will lead you to straight to a limiting belief you’ve been unconsciously wrestling with, or some kind of capability gap you need to fill. Therapy rarely gets this good and almost never this easy.

 4. Get old-school philosophical

Next up, don your toga because it’s time to go Greek. The teachings of the Stoics are a mandatory part of your entrepreneurial education. There’s a reason why Tim Ferris, amongst other entrepreneur powerhouses, is nuts for this school of philosophy.

Stoicism offers the perspective that we don’t control anything in this chaotic world… and… that’s okay. In fact, Stoics believe that even our bodies are not “our own” – which is why the philosophy is taught to elite special forces units.

When you embrace Stoicism, even torture doesn’t faze you. You realize that everything you believe you “own” or “control” (things other people take for granted) are just transient gifts the universe has kinda given you. It’s not even important why. Your body isn’t “yours”, your health isn’t yours and certainly that sale you were hoping to close wasn’t yours.

Stoicism is the antithesis of entitlement. It’s a surrender to the forces of nature in the universe that we can’t control – or really, just a letting go of the illusion that we ever had control in the beginning!

Stoicism says we control one thing only: Our beliefs. And no one and nothing can take that power away from us, no matter what shit the universe throws our way. Therein lies all your power. Soldiers being tortured let go of attachment to the physical self and strengthen the bastion of their beliefs and resolve.

When you embrace Stoic thinking, you let go of the misguided belief that you “deserved” victory or a win of some kind. This frees you up to assess the reality of the situation and plot your next move forward, neatly bypassing the whole phase of “ooo I wish that had worked out!” that most people go through. Stoicism offers a lens to view life and business through, giving you clarity to focus on what matters.

5. Get Gratitude

I know I harp on and on about this, but it’s the most essential step of all. Especially if you dip heavily into Stoicism, which is the most macho of all philosophies. It can kinda leave you feeling jaded about the world.

Gratitude is important right after you’ve surrendered to the fact that you can’t really control anything. Because your life is damn awesome. Look around you and realize how good you’ve got it.

Overzealous stoics focus only on lack of attachments, glossing over the incredible gifts they’ve been born with. If you’re reading this, you are one helluva lucky human. As entrepreneurs, we can get caught up chasing some objective and eventually convince ourselves that IT’S ALL OVER if we don’t win.

It isn’t. It never is. Plus, that kind of thinking marinates you brain in a stinking sludge of scarcity – a vileness so pungent that sales prospects, business partners and everyone else can smell it from miles away.

You can never bounce back from failure without gratitude, because you’ll always feel like you needed something and missed out.

When you *get* gratitude, you’ll realize that every rejection is perfect – because it makes room for more of what you want to unfold. That sentence won’t make any sense at all if you’re not already part way there. Get in touch if you want help figuring it out.

There’s no excuse for letting Failure and Rejection slow you down. Master these fives steps and every set back will make you smarter and more nimble. One day, you’ll look forward to hearing the word “no” in a business context; the whole meaning of the word will have been transformed.

Or maybe it was you who transformed.  

Rant post warning. There’s an alarming trend amongst the most vocal segment of the entrepreneur community: Get into coaching or consulting.

For the online, location independent set it’s a no brainer. Build an audience, sell advice. Freedom will be yours!

Yet this business model is chewing up and spitting out coaches and clients alike. As the guy who’s been in this game full time for the last seven years, I think it’s time to be honest about what’s really going on here. 

As cynical as I want to be, I have to confess I’m pro coaching industry.

The smartest, highest yielding investments I’ve ever made have been in personal development. The mastermind group I’ve been attending for the past two years not only delivered such indirect benefits as my US residency visa, it also created massive commercial ROI.

That said, I’m a connoisseur. I’m massively blessed by having access to the smartest minds in the psychology, NLP and business world.

The top 1% of the “helping people” industry is held up as the holy grail by endless hordes of me-too self help zombies – all of whom are opening up shop, consulting sessions and mastermind groups in the hopes of enjoying wealth and freedom.

Sounds good right? I can’t argue – I did exactly that and wouldn’t change a thing.

My journey has been a relentless hike up the steepest of learning curves, through three iterations of the business model (psychotherapy practice, corporate consultancy and finally entrepreneur specialist).

I’ve been schooled in more ways than I care to mention. If businesses are human-growing machines, a helping-people business is like bolting a (volatile, unpredictable) jet engine to the whole thing.

All of this is to say: It breaks my heart to see this explosion of half-baked consulting businesses. There is so much potential for good, that it’s particularly painful to witness the vast majority of people creating these wince-worthy practices.

These wannabes don’t survive the curve to enjoy any kind of end-of-rainbow reward. Worse, they leave behind a trail of disillusioned customers whose foray into personal development creates more problems than it solves.

People hire these consultants, who share enough of their naivety to pursue magic bullet fantasies. When things don’t work out, the client will often abandon the whole notion of self improvement. It’s a serious tragedy, born out of the intense bitterness only terrible coaching can create.

There are only two reasons why this industry is screwing the lives of coaches and clients alike:

Reason 1 – No one really knows how to consult/coach

The big mistake people make is believing that being good at something means you’ll be good at teaching it. Bzzzz. Try again. Last I checked, whizkid stockbrokers don’t teach economics classes.

Being good at something certainly helps, especially in the entrepreneur world where real life experience is a trump card. But good coaching is about more than that.

Your coaching business will not pan out if you’re trying to win on experience alone. Why? Because there’s always someone more experienced than you. And chances are, they’ve written a book about it.

Consulting on experience alone means you’ll default to simply handing out instructions to your clients. You’ll find yourself starting a lot of sentences with the words “You should…”

No one actually benefits from receiving high priced instructions. When was the last time you were genuinely stuck because you didn’t know what to do next? Exactly.

It’s the actual doing part that people need help with. Plus figuring out why the doing isn’t happening easily.

Coaches who just deliver instructions quickly find their clients saying things like “I need time to implement all this, let me get back to you in a few months”. The coaching business falls apart because you’re now officially serving the same function as the cliff-notes version of the latest business book.

If you pair your real world experience with a kick ass education in cutting edge coaching modalities (email me for recommendations), you’ll be really cooking. Be warned though, a weekend seminar doth not a fantastic coach make.

Reason 2 – No one has figured out a predictable customer acquisition funnel

This is hands down the biggest reason why no one really lasts in this game. The science of achievement is seldom understood by consultants and coaches enough that they can create sustainable, profitable and lasting businesses.

It hurts the customers too, because there is massive scarcity in the mind of the hungry coach. Prospective buyers get preyed on with sleazy tactics, because needy consultants know they need to do whatever it takes to get the customer in the door.

At it’s worst, this can mean a sliding scale of “I charge what I think I can get away with” -  Common practice in the victimless world of corporate consulting, but seriously icky if you’re coaching civilians.

All business models must answer the question: How will strangers find out about your business and decide to become customers? 

Most coaches fail so bad at doing this, they never manage to sell to strangers. They have no choice but to sign up their own social community, creating an endless circle jerk of mastermind pyramid groups.

Thing is, there ARE rock solid customer acquisition strategies that top consultants are using. They exist. However, most of them require enormous hard work and commitment to a long term vision. On top of a sophisticated understanding of marketing, PR, networking and more.

It’s not exactly the gold rush most wannabe consultants sign up for.

… Which is why such people don’t figure these dynamics out, ultimately leading them to give up and be consigned to the heap of fly-by-nighters who’ve lightened people’s pockets before leaving the industry behind them.

So, now you know why no one really lasts in the consulting business. If you’re on this path, it’s up to you to be different.

Over and out. All thoughts welcome.

It’s not about what you know or even what you sell. Who you know is still the variable that separates astronomical success from the projects that fizzle out.

In what may be the biggest ever case of Easier-Said-Than-Done, almost every entrepreneur wonders: How do I go about the getting to know them part?

If you can’t rely on the silver spoon, alumni club or any other convenient leg ups then you need to study the art of connection. This article will show you how create rapid, powerful and lasting relationships with total strangers. 

The step before step one: Get talking

Rather than condescend to my readers, I’m going to assume a baseline of conversation starting ability. For more tips, check out my guide to networking – the key is to have an interesting project to discuss.

Once you’re talking, the connection building can begin in earnest. There’s only one principal you need to understand…

People like people who are like them

Rapport building was once the realm of pop-psychology alone but recent studies, many of them popularized by authors like Dan Pink and Robert Cialdini, have eliminated the guesswork and reliance on anecdotal evidence.

We now know, thanks to papers like the one titled “Chameleons Bake Bigger pies and Take Bigger Pieces” (boring link) that humans are hard wired to accelerate trust building when they meet the familiar.

The accepted theory boils down to our need figure out who, beyond our closest family, we can rely on for survival. As prehistoric social groups swelled in size, humans began developing more sophisticated acuity – tools to identify the subtle and unconscious behaviors that betray a stranger as “one of us” or “not to be trusted”.

When you meet a stranger, their unconscious mind immediately queries: Is this person like me? Is he a member of the group I identify with? 

Few cocktail parties offer the opportunity to discuss the meaning of life within seconds, so the unconscious mind gauges body language and tonality in lieu of a deeper assessment. Here lies the opportunity for you to instantly create a charismatic connection. 

Sophisticated mimicry is key. The wizards behind Neuro Linguistic Programming call it “mirroring” and deplore obvious aping or parroting.

You can start by mirroring the following behaviors:

• Eye contact
• Hand gestures
• Posture of lower body (stance/leg position)
• Curvature of the spine (this is critical when sitting)
• Breathing tempo
• Verbal pace
• Length of pauses between words

If that sounds impossible, you need to know that this is a dance. Mirroring hand gestures doesn’t mean you should punctuate their conversational points with jazz hands at the precise moment they do. That would be idiotic. Instead, listen and subtly move your head and neck when they wave their arms. Then when it’s your turn to talk, move your hands in a similar way.

In other words, make them feel you’re the same kind of person as they are. 

Each opportunity is doable when you frame it as a dance. Mirror the amount of eye contact, don’t match their every glance. Legs are easy – most people abandon all consciousness of their lower body posture when in conversation. Breathing seems impossible until you realize people breath out when they talk and in when they don’t.

You might feel this detailed deconstruction of a conversation is bordering on sleazy. You could be correct, but only if your goals themselves are sleazy.

Creating connection is merely a means to an end. Learning this stuff just makes you an effective communicator, not some kind of dark Jedi.

The weirdest thing is that doing this stuff increases empathy whether you like it or not. 

I’ve taught these techniques to hundreds of my clients and thousands of corporate sales people and managers. The vast majority of them report that consciously using rapport techniques makes them feel more intimately connected to their conversational partner. The more they connect, the more they care.

This is because most of us aren’t sociopaths and these techniques are double-edged. People like people who are like them. And, as you morph yourself to be like someone you meet, you’ll find yourself starting to LIKE them!

The advanced mind control techniques begin here

As conversations progress and relationships extend over time, the significance of body language diminishes (note: It never quite goes away), to be replaced by values and beliefs.

Our closest friends, colleagues and confidants are those whom we share a similar view of the world. People who see as we see and hold as important that which we value.

To connect at this level you need to develop powerful flexibility. To get along with anyone, you’ve got to be able to step into their shoes and consider the world from their perspective.

Presenting a bullet pointed how-to guide on this topic would be an injustice. The secret, at this stage, is to let the “techniques” fade into the background and focus on opening your heart while considering theirs. The requirement is to suspend your own concerns, fears and needs and wholeheartedly meditate on their perspective.

A great friend of mine repeats the mantra “I want nothing from you but everything for you”, as a way of grounding herself before key social interactions. As a philosophy, it sets the stage for you to peel back the layers to connect with people’s true selves.

Overwhelmed? Here’s a tangible first step: When you’ve built initial rapport using the techniques in this article, make it your mission to simply identify your conversational partner’s beliefs and values. Just ask.

Find out what matters to the people you want to know better. Then care about it.

This is a post I didn’t think I’d have to write. For a long time, I lapped up business advice from everyone who was smarter, more successful or better looking than me.

Most entrepreneurs do the same. They never have a problem doing so, because business advice is always good. More is better than less. Until it isn’t.

For a minority – truly successful business owners (like you), business advice can start to become dangerous. 

For newbie entrepreneurs, buckets of advice is always good. The brain opens up and advice is poured in. The wisdom of mentors, colleagues, friends, family, bloggers and gurus churns and froths. Some sticks and a lot is washed away.

As a newbie entrepreneur faces the learning curve of a new business, specific advice doesn’t matter much. Moving forward, hitting obstacles and learning from firsthand experience is what counts. The actual direction and strategy (which most “advice” revolves around) is a secondary concern.

Once you’ve built something, everything changes.

You arrive at a place where you’ve created a “real business”. You know, a business that has a predictable (note: that doesn’t mean guaranteed) customer acquisition funnel: A business where you plug effort, time or money in one end and get customers out the other. A business where you start getting referrals, your brand is recognized and there’s a feeling of momentum behind it all.

The vast majority of you, readers of this blog, are in this place. Or at least, the people who I’m conscious of – those who write in to me, comment or tweet.

When you’ve created a real business, good advice starts to really matter.

You’re in a place where you have “first world problems”. You have success, but you don’t feel it anymore. Now you want to scale. You want to extricate yourself from being an irreplaceable cog. Maybe you just want to bust through the financial plateau you’ve been stuck at for years.

If you could do it on your own, you would have already done it. So you turn to someone for advice.

Here are the three ways this goes horribly, horribly wrong:

1. The “Do what I did” trap

Other entrepreneurs have a bad habit of giving advice that follows the “If it worked for me, it’ll work for you” formula. This is one of biggest traps imaginable.

Replicating someone else’s strategy, at an idealistic level, will only produce the same results they’ve already produced. Not a smart game plan if you consider yourself an “innovator”.

Even forgetting the notion of perfectly following their model, you’ll still run into trouble. People have a habit of distorting their past, forgetting the tough parts and the hard work. So when an entrepreneur advises you to do what they did, remember that they’re probably not thinking about the two years they spent “finding themselves” and eating instant noodles.

People simply aren’t honest about what’s worked for them and where it’s really got them.

Best case scenario replicating someone else’s path gets you a copycat business. Worst case, you end up discovering the world of pain they’ve been hiding from you (and maybe themselves).

2. The “Outsource all your weaknesses” myth 

This is all the more seductive because a ton of business gurus have been pushing this as The Thing To Do.

The idea is to take the icky parts of business you’d rather not dirty your hands with and offload them to staff. Freelance virtual assistants make this easier and more tempting than ever.

The danger is that this advice started with smart ideas like outsourcing product distribution (yay for drop-shipping) and customer service call centers. Then small business owners started extending the idea to things like “Accounting” and even “Sales”. Yes, I’ve heard it.

Horrifyingly, solo-entrepreneurs are now considering it clever to outsource their sales and marketing, then handing off finances to a book keeper or assistant!

Learning how to sell or understand the numbers behind your business are essential learning curves in the development of your entrepreneur’s mind. Trying to skip it, via outsourcing, robs you of the opportunity to learn what makes business work.

If you’re “weak” at the fundamental building blocks of business, your company is the school that will teach you to be strong. Don’t try to skip the lesson.

3. The “Keep doing what you’re doing, it’ll work out eventually” disaster

This one is tempting to fall for simply because, in the past, it was true. When newbie entrepreneurs start out, a certain amount of bullish tenacity is a very good thing.

Just keep trying and pushing – it’ll all work out!

That stops being true once you hit a certain level of success. You’ll know you’re there when you begin to encounter sophisticated problems. Problems where it’s obvious that keeping on trying will invite disaster. Continuing to carry out the same behaviors while hoping for different results is the definition of insanity, after all.

Twist: Sometimes the person giving you this advice is yourself. This is a sure sign it’s time to search for real advice from an external source.

Behavioral flexibility amongst entrepreneurs is the winning gene. And, in this world of accelerating technology, someone is probably inventing smart solutions to sidestep the problems you’re trying to slug through. Even as you slug away. So stop.

If you or someone else says “Just keep trying”, it’s time to stop. Step back, get perspective and come back to the problem with fresh eyes if nothing else.

If you hear any of these pieces of advice, it’s time to get new advisors. You can start here (best part: It’s free).

What other dodgy advice should entrepreneurs watch out for? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

The title of this article is a lie and a trick. This article is really about the dangers of marketing to the lowest common denominator.

This is a rant post. The headline I just used to ensnare your attention (thank you for it, by the way, and please bear with me) is just one trademark example of a whole school of sleazy marketing.

That it’s sleazy isn’t news. What you may not know is just how lethally dangerous this type of marketing can be to your business.

Sleazy marketing has always been around. It used to arrive in the form of fliers in our mailbox and horrible billboards. Then the internet came along and changed everything. Funny that.

Suddenly, there were millions of people tentatively exploring this new medium. People started paying attention to this thing called email. Reading these newfangled websites became a thing.

The wizards of sleaze quickly figured out that you could get good mileage out of tactics based on fear, scarcity and hype. 

Articles started getting titled like this one. Emails would read “Read this immediately or miss out!”. The internet began to prey on our hopes that this was a new and wonderful online world – full of magic bullets and the Free Lunch we’ve been waiting for.

These tactics worked well. In fact they still do. They work so well that it’s tempting. It’s very, very tempting to use sleazy tactics to get your emails opened, or have your PR releases get picked up. Hell, I’ve even done it myself.

When the internet was very new and shiny, we all wanted to believe that the Nigerian prince really was going to share his fortune with us. Or, we chuckled and confidently dismissed spam email and then signed up for thousands of dollars of “how to make money online” courses.

The internet is no longer new and shiny. Plus, people are getting smarter.

A whole generation has grown up with the internet. This generation knew what email spam was before laying eyes on a can of the dubious meat stuff.

Slowly the uninformed “masses” (those who respond to sleazy offers) is shrinking as a group.

Some baby boomers are still desperate to believe that the internet is the magic bullet that’ll make their Multi-Level-Make-Passive-Money-Online dreams come true. But faster and faster, people are getting clued up.

They’re also getting fed up with bullshit headlines, email subjects and advertising campaigns. The growing trend in every industry, to embrace transparency/fair-trade/whatever, seems to indicate consumers want to do business with companies with heart.

That much is obvious but it’s really much, much simpler than that.

If you use artificial hype, fear and scarcity to market your business you are targeting to a shrinking audience: The foolish.

By shooting for the lowest common denominator, not only do you simultaneously target a demographic with very little disposable income (consumer debt is a bitch), you’re also in a race against education.

As people become more informed, headlines like the one I used today will start to become less and less effective. Eventually they’ll just be seen as universal red flags indicating “Here be scumbags!” – like the effect the word Nigeria has on your spam filter.

The point of this article is to urge you to market to the most intelligent version of your customer you can imagine.

When your customer is smart, she’s likely to be wealthy. She’s likely to be more discerning. She’s naturally likely to be more loyal to the vendors she does choose to do business with. Don’t be afraid of that, just step up and be one of them.

The stupid, despite breeding like crazy, tend to get smarter as a whole. You can argue education is broken, but do you really want to build a business on the hope that your customers never get the education they deserve?

It doesn’t matter, because those who lack formal education get a huge dosage of street-smarts.

So please, just target the intelligent. It’s a growing market segment.

Sadly, there are still plenty of people who would’ve preferred I not publish this.

I’ve spent my adult life doing personal development. Hobbies have come and gone but that one thing never changed. I’ve relentlessly worked on my self via books, seminars, the internet and the rest.

So far so good. Personal development has changed my life for the better, but what if I’m one of the lucky ones?

There’s a dark side to personal development. It ruins the lives of those who encounter it.  I fought it. Today is the day to expose it. 

Every personal development system begins with an opportunity to self diagnose.

Do you feel like you don’t trust yourself?

How else is that showing up for you? 

Do you want to know the things you don’t know about yourself?

Most personal development is built on a foundation of inadequacy. It’s the job of the book, workshop or guru to have you look critically into the mirror.

Why? Because until there is something wrong with you, there isn’t anything to be fixed. This is a problem. In personal development, happy and satisfied customers are bad for sales.

The reason personal development works, is that so many of us really do have things to improve. We need to work on ourselves. We have capability gaps worth closing.

You enter the dark side when you forget to push pause on the ceaseless diagnosing. You enter the dark side when you forget to be discriminating – allowing any and every expert to hold up the mirror of inadequacy.

You feed the demons of personal development when existing aptitude and gratitude is forgotten and “room for improvement” is all you see. 

In the early days of my career, I started noticing self help junkies at the workshops and trainings I was attending. These people invested years and untold thousands attending seminar after seminar, always hoping the next one would finally complete them.

Of course, each workshop just offered yet another lens to look through. A new microscope for studying the brokenness of one’s psyche.

This kind of personal development promises a better future, tapping into one of our most powerful psychological tendencies: Optimism bias.

It allows you to believe that, with the help of some new fangled technique, you can identify all the ways you’re screwed up now… so that the future will be exponentially better.

This belief in a brighter future (we’re all just temporarily inconvenienced millionaires right?) gives us permission to accept the present as being, well, totally shit.

Even worse, it opens the door to believing you are totally shit.

But it’s okay, right? Because you’re figuring out why even as we speak and it’ll get better soon! Just as soon as you completely implement these new learnings, right? Right?!

Wrong.

Distrust any system or guru that offers nothing but a reflection of your vast inadequacies in the present, dangling a brighter enlightened future in front of you.  

True personal growth is about making today better, so that you’re already more powerful when tomorrow comes.

It’s extremely difficult for me to write this article. Rather, it was difficult. The reason you’re reading this now is that it just became easy. I just “got” it, so now I can articulate it.

I can share this thing that has been brewing for quite some time.

One of the biggest blockages that gets between an entrepreneur and her sales (that fickle conversion ratio of Strangers into Customers) is a lack of hugs, rainbows, fluffy unicorns and other good vibes.

Allow me to explain… 

For about three months, I was totally cursed. And blessed.

Blessed because I have a business where qualified prospects show up on my virtual doorstep on a daily basis. Blessed because my clients find me.

I was cursed, because I couldn’t help them. I was suffering from a severe case of lost-mojo-itis.

Each morning, I would wake up to see the pile of “Clarity Couch” Questionnaires my assistant had scheduled me to complete that day. This is the free, ask-me-anything therapy test drive that I use to determine the appropriateness of a client/me relationship.

It’s my sales funnel and it was broken. I was broken.

Each morning, I would wake up and see a pile of chores. Obligation. Work.

I had started to see prospective enquiries the same way that I, as a small boy, saw the pile of firewood my mother once asked me to stack. One giant prickly smelly bug-infested piece at a time.

I hated it.

The feeling started bleeding over into other things. I looked at my website’s analytics and thought: Low. These should be higher. What’s wrong? This time last year I had more traffic. What’s my biggest referral source? What’s happening? 

I did the same as I checked my list statistics. I worried over opt-in rates and click throughs.

I looked at pie charts. I stressed about ratios. I dreaded the ceaseless flow of inbound email – characters on a screen asking me for help.

I invented a new disease and diagnosed myself with it:

Entrepreneurial Apathy. Symptoms include: A lack of caring or empathy for one’s fellow man, low desire to communicate with others, extended periods of distraction-seeking behavior (video games, TV etc), morbidly muddling over statistics and reduced social contact. 

I’m lucky enough to be the beneficiary of years of (deep!) conditioning that mean that when I start a client consult, I switch into another “mode”. I find my mojo within that hour without even trying.

That was still happening, but everywhere else Entrepreneurial Apathy crept in. I was procrastinating and beating myself up. When I did do work it never “flowed”. It was always a struggle.

It got worse before it got better. I’m sure you can imagine.

The change came when I started working on me. I identified that I had strayed far, far away from the place where I get inspired and do my best work. At times, it almost felt like I had forgotten why I started my business. I wasn’t taking care of myself and I was cut off from meaning and purpose.

The first step that turned the tide was reconnecting with gratitude. Maybe it’s egotistical, but I reconnected with pride in myself. I watched the film Steve made with my clients for the first time in months. I emailed old clients to check in on how they were doing (delightful results, thank you for asking – never better, because of our work!) and I started paying attention to the amazing things users were saying about their coaches at Commit Action.

Slowly, I remembered why I’m here.

The revolution began the night that I sat down with a stack of client enquires and felt the familiar feeling of “ugh”. It was very familiar, but this time something caught my eye.

At the top right corner of the software we use to manage in-bound enquiries, I spotted the date and time stamp. A little piece of irrelevant data I never bothered looking at.

Turns out this one person had written to me at 4:36am. I knew they weren’t in Australia on a bright sunny morning, because they mentioned where they were based. This was for real. Someone was asking for my help at 4:36am.

I read their name, not because I needed to say it in my recorded mp3 response. I read it because I wanted to know who they were. I tried to imagine what this person looked like, what they felt like, when they sat down to fill out my questionnaire at 4:36am. I wondered what they did that evening, where they were a few hours earlier and what had transpired that day.

In other words, I humanized them.

For the first time in three months, I saw a prospective enquiry for what it really is:

Another human, somewhere on this planet, looking for help with their business. One of the most important things in their life.

The problem is that I can sort these humans, in groups of 50 per screen, to display by:  Date-submitted, alphabetical order or whichever way I please. I can export them in a spreadsheet. I can cross check them against my blog’s email database. I can sort them by the demographic data they provide.

If you think for a second that internet marketers are alone in dehumanizing their customers this way, you’re wrong.

Every business does it.

You do it whenever you talk about closing ratios, end of month and quarterly profit. “Revenue” is the word you use to transform the act of strangers giving you their trust and money, into a statistic.

As entrepreneurs, we do need these things. There are wizards who can take data and make it do amazing tricks – it can teach us things we don’t know about our businesses. And ourselves.

This comes at a price. When we see people as numbers, we lose the connection. We lose the good vibes. The fluffy warmth. The cuddles. The humanity.

When we see people as numbers alone, we lose the meaning in what we do. The only thing left to lose is ourselves. Inevitably that happens too.

My mojo returned tenfold when I found that fluffy, warm and cuddly feeling. It’s been here ever since. Love and rainbows – I swear by the stuff. Sales are up, business is accelerating and opportunities are unfolding into results at an enigmatic pace.

When I open up the Clarity Couch database and ask “Who’ve we got today?” I linger for a second over the names, the times the entries were submitted and the spelling errors that reveal passion and haste.

I hold the inquiry in my heart. I see through the screen to the human on the other side. I smile and thank my lucky stars I have the opportunity to assist this person.

How do you do it?

A great network is the foundation of every successful entrepreneurial career.

As tempting as it sounds (especially for introverts) big business wins don’t happen from years of slaving alone in your basement. A bit of that is always required but as always, it’s about who you know.

To cut the preamble short: This quick-and-dirty article breaks down the seven most deadly networking mistakes I see all sorts of (otherwise smart) entrepreneurs making.

Since you know who’s blog you’re reading, I barely need to tell you that these are so counter intuitive you might actually hear other “experts” giving contradictory advice.

Only amateurs do the following… 

1. Go to “Networking Events”

Don’t do it.

Something so counter-intuitive has never been so true. Networking events are usually full of desperate newbies who’ve been told they need to network to grow their business.

Everyone in the room is looking for sales leads. By default, they’re not looking to buy. Or help. You see the problem?

2. Network for Direct Sales

Yuck.

If your business model requires you to personally go fishing for prospects, we need to have a chat about “scale” and your business model. Hint: It’s broken. It’s also icky.

Chances are you’re rocking a model that will reward success with increasing hard work, which can only ever result in a burn out. There are a tiny few exceptions to this rule, especially in cases where the entrepreneur is networking with extraordinarily wealthy people to sell extremely high margin products. In other words, if it’s worth it and you can do it with integrity you’re in the 1% of people who can violate this rule quite successfully.

3. Network without a clear outcome in mind.

Huge mistake.

Networking is for these purposes: Forging powerful partnerships, finding amazing staff, raising capital, connecting with mentors, whatever. Not Sales (see #2).

Having a clear idea of what you’re after is key to finding it. Psychologically, metaphysically and conversationally. If you’re lucky enough to connect with someone who digs your vibe and really wants to help you, being able to articulate what you’re looking for is critical.

Know your ideal outcome before you engage in your networking experience (conference, party, meet up) and then dive in and forget about it. The forgetting is to avoid mistake #4

4. Cling to your goal like a needy loser

You’re networking, which means that you’re making friends with business people.

If you are focused only on your own needs, you are going to come across as a total asshole. In fact, you are being a total asshole. 

Having clarity about what you want is important but once you engage in conversation, just relax. Go with the flow and focus on the other person. What can you do for them?

#5 details more of this mistake in action…

5. Treat networking as anything other than making friends

Too many people screw this up.

Real networking, with the real mega successful people, is just hanging out. It’s chilling.  It’s certainly not some kind of speed dating “what-can-you-do-for-me?” type game.

Networking is making friends. High level entrepreneurs find hanging out with like minded people to be both a rare and very rewarding experience. So do that. Just hang.

Most entrepreneurial friendships won’t turn into business relationships without multiple points of contact. In other words, you need to make friends for real. To do that, you need to avoid mistake number six…

6. Be boring

Nobody is born boring but quite a few people grow into it.

Here’s a secret to “making friends with successful entrepreneurs” as described above: Get a hobby.

Mega successful entrepreneurs don’t really spend all day talking about marketing tactics and staff management. They’re passionate people, and that passion bleeds over into other spheres of life.

If you cultivate a passion for something, the mega successful will recognize your winning enthusiasm. Plus, you have something refreshing to talk about. Plus, you’ll get invited on trips/experiences to do your hobby with some extraordinary people.

Just don’t get too caught up in your hobby that you screw up #7…

7. Be uninterested in your own work

Do not engage in networking when you’re not interested in your own work. It’s biggest disaster of them all.

Always be working on an interesting project. You don’t have to have completed it yet or hit a home run. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be directly related to your core business model. Just be working on something. It gives you a reason to talk, ask questions and pick the brains of smart people (which they love). It’ll give you something in common with other entrepreneurs who’ve worked in related fields.

At the highest level networking event I’ve ever attended, I dined with a couple of household name entrepreneurs who were all captivated by a 22 year old kid at the table. He had done nothing but spend the last year interviewing the world’s top neuroscientists. He stole the evening and everyone’s attention. Collected a few business cards too.

Have an interesting project to talk about.

Final thought: 

Networking is vastly misunderstood by most entrepreneurs.

It’s really about forming strong friendships with like minded business owners. It’s about building an exponentially vast network of trusted relationships that can be counted on to provide advice and key partnerships when needed.

Everything works in both directions.

Even if you feel like you have nothing to offer and desperately want something from everyone you meet, you must find a way to help others. Helping people to succeed is all that matters. This isn’t a numbered piece of advice, because it should be as obvious as a slap to the face.

The more people you aid and elevate through the network you create, the more successful you’ll be.

Got a question or know of another mistake that you’ve seen people make? Leave a comment and let other readers and I know!

You’re reading this because you’re curious. You’re an entrepreneur and some Shrink on the internet is offering to explain why you signed up for the life you did.

You’re curious because sometimes you don’t even know. Your entrepreneurial friends all make the same joke: “Sometimes I miss being an employee.” But it’s only ever a joke.

You’re committed. Even when things get really tough, you don’t think seriously about giving up and signing up for a cubical. Even if the thought crosses your mind.

I wrote this article for one reason. Knowing why you signed up for this life will give you the power to focus on what’s most important. Understanding the reason, beyond the promise of riches and freedom, will make you truly rich and free.

Seriously considering doing something else is… unthinkable. Let me tell you why. When the entrepreneur life chooses you, you can look forward to some delightful experiences. These will start to show up with alarming regularity.

Uncertainty

You’ll get real familiar with this guy. It’s such a big deal that Jonathan Fields wrote a book titled just that. As an entrepreneur, uncertainty will heap upon you and it’s your job to learn to cope with it. Or in fact, flourish under it.

Leadership/Power

Next up, you’ll need to learn to lead. A vacuum of power, as you start to do bigger and badder things will require someone to take the captain’s seat. Even the smallest, most stay-at-home internet entrepreneur has to lead in some capacity.

Leadership can be about inspiring hundreds of people, or just yourself. It’s mainly about making decisions that no one else can make

Infinite Possibilities

Get ready to drown in options. When you put Uncertainty and Leadership in a blender, the resulting smoothie tastes like infinite possibilities. This is a good thing until you realize that the freedom to do anything means it’s very hard to much at all.

You feel the Uncertainty, Leadership and Infinite Possibility settle onto your shoulders every morning when you sit down at your desk and ask yourself “What do I do next?”

Suddenly entrepreneurship isn’t sounding very sexy, so it’s time to reveal the reason you do this to yourself.

Entrepreneurship is for growing humans. 

As business owners, we really just go to school. It’s a special school – we take the classroom with us wherever we go and there is always a pop quiz.

Entrepreneurship forces you to grow. Specifically, it requires that you become a self soothing, self actualized, self assured individual.

It’s all about you. Your business is a finishing academy that takes the hot mess that your family and schooling created, and polishes the shit out of it. Sometimes with an angle grinder.

The result is a fully transformed, self actualized human. Someone who has found Victor Frankl’s search for meaning. Who’s rocketing through Professor Clare Graves spiral of human development. Who’s summiting Maslow’s pyramid.

If constraints inspire creativity, then your market is the ultimate constraint. You brainstorm and scheme, hitting up against all the walls until you find a way to bust through them. Or you turn into such a Jedi that you will those walls out of existence.

When I moved away from clinical psychotherapy with depressed and anxious civilians, I wondered why entrepreneurs were so much fun to work with. The answer is clear to me now, after several years in the game: It’s because they grow faster than anyone else. 

Entrepreneurialism is personal development.

You could read a Tony Robbins book and grow. You could attend a weekend seminar and grow even more.

Or, imagine if you could attend a camp where you were forced to work on yourself for almost every waking hour. Where countless challenges (never the same twice) are lined up in front of you, daily. Instead of Tony Robbins, you can compile your own dream team of authors, coaches, gurus, friends and family to give you advice.

Imagine what people would pay to attend a camp like that, just for a week.

My offer to you is this: You can attend, for free. It’ll cost you your life but you won’t lose it, you’ll merely spend it.

Your self is what you get in return.