This feels wrong, because the people who gave praise really had no idea of how productive I was during those hours. They only knew that I billed the hours.

This kind of makes sense if you’re running a services business, where clients are billed by the hour, but lets forget about all predispositions for a moment and just think logically… how ridiculous!

Is units of time the only metric we have for measuring performance of human resources? Should we not reward more greatly a person who works smartest, and not hardest or longest?

Should we not give praise to those who are driven not by blind grunt effort, but by results?

(Note: I really did need to work those hours, but the praise-givers had no idea what I was doing, just that I was doing something)

Problem is your customer doesn’t know this. To them, you’re a risk. You’re an unknown, and you’re going to take their money. They don’t know if they’ll like what they get.

By reducing or removing the initial barrier of money, or by extending way beyond your regular duty as a service or product provider, your customer can feel safer in the engagement.

Why does your eBook need to be $40? Who said your online service is worth more than the next guy? Why should people trust you?

How will you mitigate this risk for your audience?

This will give it purpose, and will give you drive. When you hit a rough patch and think why? – you’ll already know.

You will always be moving forward.

The quicker you start, the quicker you’ll reach prosperity at the end.

Start now, or procrastinate forever. What’ll it be?

When you’ve gotta get something done, and you really can’t be bothered…

Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about other things you could be doing. Stop putting it off until tomorrow.

Just do it now.

A concept I’ve been pondering, which is most definitely not original, but I don’t know it by any other name.

How do you get one awesome brand to flow into another venture? Do you have to start all over again and hope that people will make the same connection?

Consider a hierarchical approach; one parent brand, from which child brands are spawned. An umbrella brand, if you will. Develop one or more child brands in an awesome way, and make the ‘family’ connection obvious.

When a new project kicks off, your audience will recognise the family name, and the brand effect will automatically kick in.

Careful though, mischievous children can easily destroy the family name!

It is easy to be a strong and good willed person when life is good, and everything is going smoothly.

Being a strong person, holding on to morals, and being true to yourself during the tough times; this is what defines us.

It’s not always what people see when they look at us, but, given time, it is what they will feel when they interact with us.

This is the same with business. When you operate with the utmost passion and integrity, people can feel it. They can sense your belief.

They become drawn to it. Loyal to it. They become inspired by it, and they will follow your belief.

Failing isn’t a bad thing. Each failure is a lesson, and we need to learn to accept the failure, and use it to improve the chance of success next time.

Kids who are sheltered from failure do not learn these valuable lessons, thus decreasing their chance of overall success in life. Instinct pulls us toward defensive action, but maybe we need to let the young ones fall, and allow them to pick themselves up again.

The old and wise Rocky Balboa once said “It ain’t about how hard you hit, it is about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much can you take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”

They would prefer to literally burn potential profit, just for the sake of their brand integrity. Preserving the exclusivity of their brand is more important to them than making another sale.

Sales and profit is just a by-product of branding and marketing.