Life Unsettled

The comfort zone sounds so obvious, but personal development is much more involved. If you want to grow, succeed or do anything new, you need to go outside it. The comfort zone is in a situation where a person is familiar, at ease and in control. Outside of the comfort zone there is increased anxiety and stress. So, the further out a person gets the greater the level of stress. The easiest definition I have found is from Wikipedia . The most comfortable place in usually not the best for learning or working. If a person repeatedly leaves the comfort zone and has a successful outcome, they will actually decrease the stress of being outside the zone next time. While that may sound so easy, why do so few really leave the comfort of their familiar surroundings. The very fact that so few venture out into new paths during their life, is interesting. The very reason this topic seems easy is that everyone thinks they understand it and do know it is crucial. If you ask people, most will say they do venture outside their comfort zone. So many say they go out of their comfort zone, then why do so many stay in home towns that have no future or jobs they dislike? Why do so many follow the same path as their parents or neighbors? It is the most comfortable of places. Success, by its very nature, means you have accomplished something. Therefore, success is always outside of the comfort zone. In order to have success, you need to do something new or different. Continual learning means that at least minimally, you constantly feel uncomfortable. Meanwhile, the further out the greater the stress, anxiety and fear which can hold you back. Repeated success outside the comfort zone will increase confidence. As you increase experience, confidence increases, and these new experiences become part of your larger comfort zone. Over time, you will grow accustomed to being uncomfortable and continually making progress. It all becomes easier. So, learning begets more learning. Success begets more success. The key is how to get to this point and to recognize the pitfalls and negative pressure from many around you. Going outside may appear crazy. On a humorous note, you might say that success is based you intentionally making yourself uncomfortable. You are intentionally outside your comfort zone. So, seemingly this is an almost masochistic behavior subjecting yourself to discomfort. Yet, this is a basic and key ingredient to success. So, if you truly are extremely successful, maybe you have to be a little crazy too. The concept of the comfort zone is a very useful psychological tool. You can only grow if you step outside your comfort zone. You must be willing to learn new things and skills through new experiences to grow and be successful. From time to time, you must re-assess and step out to new or revised goals. The process would only stop when you decide you don't want to go any further or want a break on the way your goals. With greater skills and knowledge opportunities will increase. When your knowledge increases, your ability and opportunities broaden. You will also find it easier to make educated guesses and other ideas that come to mind will also become better. You will be better at evaluation. It is very common to notice the success of so many immigrants. One of the reasons that many migrants succeed is that they are more willing to make additional trips far outside comfort zone. They already made some of the biggest changes, new country, new language and friends (see Immigrant Mentality). Moving to a new country is also a reason that many of the educated immigrants assimilate more and are not just be entirely surrounded by people from their previous country. While they do have friends from their country they are more likely to have a broader diversity than people born here. Why is it hard to leave your comfort zone? Inside your zone is where you find enjoyment and find expected outcom...

Why you should be looking at your future career as an ongoing process. You will have change, probably many times, a career is either planned or decided by others for you. Career Change and paths to new jobs or professions are confusing and don't always go where expected. Why now is one of the best times ever for career change and career development. It may last 2-4 years, but you’ll need every one of those years to make the most progress. Largely I am setting a framework for thinking about careers in this episode. It will be followed by more action-oriented episodes and hopefully ideas to motivate thoughts. You should always be planning on changing careers. On average people have 10-15 jobs during their lifetime. Some of these jobs are completely new careers. If you aren’t ready for a career change, it will happen by default. Now, sometimes that may be an unexpected promotion. Most often, if by default, you are in a situation that is less than you wanted. So, if you want to grow and progress over time, you don’t want to let a change affecting you to be a default change. That is, a new job where you might not have a good choice or at a time of desperation. Start your research and include social media to gain contacts, but be cautious of what you say. Think about it. You will see many changes, do you want to plan and figure out how to maximize the results, or even just see progress, or do you want to leave it to luck. Also, if others around you are working toward positive change, it may be like musical chairs and you were not ready when the music stopped. Yes, the music may stop because companies are not living as long as they did fifty years ago. Now for some great news. Record Opportunity for Career Advancement According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are about 7.6 million job openings and only about 6.5 million unemployed. This is a remarkable time in history. There is such a huge shortage that companies are more willing to train career changers and even are hiring felons that seem to have true potential. This will not last forever. It is a rare job market in history and caused by the strong growth in the economy and in both new and reinvigorated industries. Simultaneously, so many people left the work force by the end of 2016 that while unemployment appeared low, there was discouraged workers that gave up searching for good jobs. Companies that were looking for workers were trying to keep the hours below 30 per week to avoid large health care cost of the Affordable Care Act. Enough of that issue, we only are concerned with how to take advantage of today’s work environment and why we shouldn’t wait. Over the next few years, many people will be retraining for new jobs and many are already returning into the workforce. You need to look at both what skills you have and what additional ones you may need. You probably have transferable skills that while not exactly requested, enhance your appeal and others you get through part time school or work. In any case, it is not a time that anyone needs to feel stuck in their position or status in the marketplace. Both those that are returning as well as those are changing careers will make a transformation to target their skills and experience to new careers. It is truly a time you can breakthrough to completely new career paths. I say paths because as learn and gain experience more opportunities open up and you may shift your focus. The government will start increasing the H1 and other work visas to accommodate corporations who need employees with certain skills. It is important at the least to start thinking and researching new career paths now. The increase in work visas granted and others who return to the workforce finding new careers will lessen the opportunities. Most Interview Problems are Just Social Skills In spite of all these positive developments,

Goal setting for your personal growth is one of the most rewarding tasks people can do. Do you know what you want to be in five years? Do you know where you want to be in 3 - 5 years? Your goals should be distant at the start of your journey. You want to develop your own big picture of your future life. Success is personal. Are you on the correct path to reach your goal? Do you know what you want to accomplish this year, within 6 months and today? While some might feel they don’t like to set goals, it is important for everything from health and family to wealth. This encompasses all factors for personal growth. A goal should be thought of as similar to a map and directions to some long destination. The wrong decisions lead to wrong or unfavorable direction and can make the trip much longer or even impossible. You want your GPS to be accurate. Goal setting process Your goals are your personal goals. If you have a business or career you may be trying to use it for the wealth and financial freedom you desire or just something that makes you happy. However, all of these are the means to an end in your own personal goals. They should be measurable goals, but I argue against smart goals. Smart goals are good and important for short term accomplishment. Do not use or set them until you have long term goals and a plan in place. In the longer term, you need to allow flexibility. As you learn and gain experience revision is often useful and sometimes necessary. Big Goals and Life Change can Take Time If you are after some big personal goals over the next 5 – 10 years, you are working toward something that you don’t already know well. That is, if as you work towards it, you will find attributes of the new career or business that you may not like or just don’t want to do. That is, just like you had ideas and dreams of a future career in high school, college and later, you changed your mind. Either your likes and dislikes changed, or your understanding of the career changed. Decide a reasonable time frame for your goals. In some careers, 5 years is more appropriate while other careers may only take 6 - 9 months. Choose according to the career or goals you are setting, either 5, 7 or 10 years. Anything shorter than 5 probably indicates you are aiming too low for a real life change. This complete change might include a new career, getting out of debt, i.e. debt free, owning a home in a location you want to be. Let's say you use 5 years for your goal endpoint and you have a big picture of what you want your life to look like. Review your likes and dislikes. This should be a list just like a list of pros and cons for something you might decide to do. Big Goals are the Ultimate Satisfaction The ultimate objective or long term goal if a true breakthrough, will not be easy. You will almost certainly need to develop new skills and become familiar with new technology. If you didn't need new skills, you could step into the new career almost immediately. I'll get more into that in the episode on comfort zone and how to do it. The steps for a goal will have many very satisfying parts. You may go through a series of positions or promotions that give you knowledge, experience and credibility. If planned well, your financial position and wealth will greatly improve. A goal that is broken down in small pieces also will be easier to accomplish. However, if an end or final goal is easy, the competition will probably be extremely high. Competition will also be the highest for the most glamorous goals. There are some things you do not like to do but will be necessary to achieve your goals. If you are aware of them up front, you can understand the importance and weigh them as part of overcoming obstacles. Some of the most attractive are the hardest businesses as the competition is much higher. Owning a business, think of a restaurant, people imagine greeting people or being a chef.

Welcome to another episode of Life Unsettled New Path, Better Future. You've all heard things like, "Everybody makes mistakes. Learning from mistakes. Don't worry about your mistakes. It's just part of the process of growing and learning." I'm going to as usual disagree with many of the gurus out there that tell you to just continue to make mistakes as you progress. This episode is extremely important but maybe a little bit more complex. As I understand the general logic that people have, you learn from your mistakes so you should expect them and you just keep on making them as part of the learning process. The more mistakes you make, the better off you are because you learn from those. Well that sounds good, but what are some of the keys to making those mistakes and why and what circumstances is that a bad idea? First of course the good. Yes, by not worrying too much about mistakes and realizing you can correct them and learn from them, you have less fear, less hesitation. You move forward and take on new things and do new things. That's really, really important, and that's where most of the stress or emphasis is. But that's also just in part. It is good in many situations, but when is it bad and how do you learn? Well when do you have to make a mistake? The idea is that first there's two types of learning. One is from actually making mistake, another is actually looking, researching, understanding, thinking through something logically. You have the two differences. I refer to one as wisdom and one as knowledge. Knowledge is something that you can acquire, somebody can pass it on to you. Wisdom is something for some reason you just can't logically deduce it. It's why over thousands of years we tend to make as human beings some of the same mistakes over and over again. I have a chapter in my book, "The Mechanics for Breakthrough Success", on that. You can find it on Amazon.  Hopefully when they refer to mistakes, they are referring to wisdom, because otherwise you should be able to get it and learn from somebody else, something logically and then make progress a lot faster. That's going to be a key thing and that is the speed and time. If they're referring to wisdom, what's wrong with learning from other people's mistakes instead of just your own? I have an episode there where we learn from other's mistakes, OPM. That's not other people's money. It's learning from other people's mistakes. That is when you see something else, observe it, think of the why, think of what happened, learn from that. Or if you have somebody who's a mentor or somebody that you truly trust in certain situations, in those situations should you take their idea over your own? One could say they already have the wisdom that you don't. So if you disagree, should you take your own idea or somebody else's? I've explained that in another place where I actually was in that situation. As I thought it through, here was this some respected person. He was a professor at Hofstra University. He had an idea. He couldn't really convince me or logically explain to me why his idea was better. Nor could I explain to him why my idea was better. So which one should I take? Well it turns out that almost everybody will take their own idea. What's wrong with that? Well, it makes think like the two of us staking our ideas like a game on it. Now imagine the Las Vegas odds makers are taking the bets and laying down the odds. What do you think is going to be the biggest odds on favorite? He will be of course. So why don't I take his? Either way I'll learn, but I might be on the right path. And it becomes even more important to be on the right path if it is time dependent. What do I mean by that? What happens if you only get one shot? What if it's going into an interview? What if it's going to present something? Or what if it's for your retirement? You only have one opportunity to live your life for your retirement. So why should I care?

Today I'm talking about sales, sales process and the sales environment and the business environment. Do we all think of it in certain ways as we've always experienced walking into stores, online even, walking into a car dealership? Things are changing very rapidly now and in the near future. I want to go over a couple of the things that are changing, and have changed, recently. Really to my entire surprise is how fast those changes are about to take place. Now, it's important, of course, that we understand and adapt to the changes that are already taking place. The changes that are in the near future are even more awesome. The average consumer today researches his information to make a purchase. Over 50% of them do this before they even have any interaction with any sales associate. Now, think of that. That's a whole lot of difference between what it was in the past, but it also means that the sales associate has a very different purpose today than in the past. In a couple of years, it's expected to be over 80%. Are you ready? The biggest thing this means is that the salespeople really need to be interacting with potential consumers before they ever become the consumer for your product or your company. That is, doing things on social media. In fact, even if it's not the exact same customer, the understanding and what's going on plus the idea that they may be captured within the sales research process, along with that more mobile devices today are used than desktops, and it's expected to be 80% in the very near future. 93% of people doing research on mobile make a purchase. Think of that in terms of how important it is then to be on mobile, given it's the dominant search criteria today, and that 93% of those people are going to make a purchase after doing that research. How do you become aware of their search and use it? First, how do you make sure that everything you have, your web site and everything else, is mobile-friendly? It's a lot different than just making slight changes in the size and positioning of the interface. Now, one key point to make is what should you do if you have sales associates, particularly if you're in a store? You've got a store or storefront. For your sales associate, one of the best things you can do, make sure they have mobile devices with them. They can facilitate. Help the customer do research. Obviously, if you hand the customer something to do research with and talk to them about it, you have a much better chance of making that sale in your store than a competitor, providing you have a good story or a good store. Now, with all the information, cloud-based and now we see artificial intelligence being used. Yes, today, artificial intelligence is already being used in many of the apps that you have on your phone. What does that mean? It means they're adapting to your decisions and your process, the way you click and the things you do, such as your location. Yet, with all the data that's being gathered right now, and tons of information and data being gathered, from everything that you visit, everything that you click, the searches you do, et cetera. How far will it go? Today, companies are using approximately 12% of that data so far. This is a huge set of business opportunities. Now, you might think they are using so little because the data's so overwhelming, but it's not that. Some of the things that basically the technology is catching up with the data, but it's catching up incredibly fast. I went just this past couple of days, to the Digital Summit in Philadelphia, and it was amazing, some of the things that were discussed there. They also had one of the sponsors was IBM's Watson, and it was interesting to see that and how it's related and how it's actually being used by individual companies. There were a whole bunch of other companies there too, to help and facilitate everything from marketing to social media. Now, sales is going to be very, very personal,

The future marketing like everything else today is impacted by technology. Most people today have no idea how much information on them is changing marketing to them. In the future marketing, companies will use AI. VR and augmented reality to build marketing for them specifically based on what they do and did. Today, we’re going to continue from a previous episode where we talk more about what was going on with sales and the sales process. Let's talk a little bit more now about the technology and the future that’s coming up as well as what is existing today and what we have to look for. Now, to carry on a little bit from last week, we talked about social media, sort of the final part, the final cut. With social media, you can, today, build relationships and build relationship with people who are influencers in your area or your field, as well as people who may potentially be influencers within the sales process of your business, of your product, but relationships can’t be abused. There are some approaches that are really weird and they reek of the time when people thought that they could do it with business cards. There was actually even some car dealer or something or a used car salesman. He used to talk about and teach people how to just buy tons of business cards and leave them all over the place. Throw them places, et cetera, and it’s almost like we have some of those people out there. As you’ll notice in social media whether it be Facebook, LinkedIn, et cetera, you go and make a contact and somebody sends you back an immediate message saying, “Oh, here’s what I do and here’s what I’m selling. Are you interested?” Well, that’s today considered very obnoxious. It's annoying and while it might work once in a while and will cause stories to be told about how I did this. Some will say I generated sales without thinking. It’s the without thinking part that really is troublesome because it’s not going to build a good business. What will build a business today, and future marketing? Of course, more and more so, it’s customer service. Customer service now is always on. Think of not just like your instant TV but it’s always on. Customers have access today to more information from other customers, as well as ratings, et cetera, some of it false. You have to monitor things for that reason. It’s why you often hear that buyers are right now considered to be 65%, two-thirds of the way through the sales process because of research before they even reach out to the sales person in your company or any of the company for your product or competitive product. That number is expected and will probably grow easily to 85 plus percent. How do you get ready? That tells us two things. Sales is rapidly removing the salesperson. What is it replaced by? Customer service, information, the things that make your company and your product more attractive and how comfortable that person is. Get back to building that relationship with existing, as well as potential customers. Today, you can already geotarget to such an extent. You are, say, a real estate agent in a particular area, you don’t need to blast in advertisement into the newspaper. A car dealer doesn’t have to blast an advertisement into the newspaper. They can actually target people who are interested in cars and thinking about buying a car based on social media characteristics that already exist within their very targeted market area. Technology is changing even more and those changes are going to accelerate quite a few things. Before I talk about what they will accelerate, keep in mind why you need to be interested in this tech that’s coming out. Don’t say, “Well, I’m having trouble keeping up,” because quite frankly, this technological change that’s occurring gives you or your competitors the opportunity to substantially increase market share, become closer to the customer, and possibly step in front of you in the line of information that the customer’s seeking. Now,

Today is the episode on marketing today. Marketing, I'm gonna break it all down into two parts. Originally I thought this was going be one piece, but it turns out that it's just too big. And one of the things, and reason that I want to separate it is, there's not just what's going on today. As I've mentioned many times, technology is moving just so fast that we really have to plan, or at least be aware, of what's happening towards the future. So, we will be taking a look at a second part next week, and this week we're talking about what's going on today, what you can do. Now, marketing is different than it has been years ago, not in the sense that the customer has changed at all, not at all. However, everybody is able to focus so much better, and refine their marketing to such a degree, because of all the information available today, and the new ways of marketing that are available today. So you have to really know your customer better, and that's where, really, marketing today starts, and begins very much with customer service, customer satisfaction, and learning from those experiences and those customers. This will all give you the ideas, of course, on how to attract many new customers and expand your market greatly, but the idea is to first understand them well through those means. Now, that means leveraging your community, networking with the customers, whether you have groups or information or whatever, run competitions. That is, if there's any way you can put together some sort of competition, or experience, or something that the customer can have with your product or with you, that can be a great way to both build loyalty and gain information. Starting off today, YouTube, webinars, et cetera, you don't want to waste time, or other people's time, but you see so much about how you can turn around and learn just about anything on YouTube today, or eHow, et cetera. So one of the ideas is, of course, to put some out on your own. Yes, there may be others out there. Can you do it better? Can you do it well? Can you do it in such a way to demonstrate your product and how to use it; not selling at all, just engaging with the customer so that you become an authority. If you become an authority, or at least thought of as an authority, particularly if you're in a local area, you become more attractive. If you're worldwide, it's the same thing. So the idea is to give it away for free; that is a free class, free seminar related to your product, doing a demo. You could be a local hardware store. Recently, interestingly, and that's why I mention it, I was asked how could they survive. They were talking about, you know, there's Lowe's and Home Depot, and how are they gonna survive. Well, first of all, keep in mind, they probably can't survive on price. So what do they do? They have to have other dimensions; know and understand your customer well, maybe you can survive or do better, or at least lengthen your lifespan, by turning around and being more informative. That is, teaching, more involvement with the customer, more involvement with the person walking through your store. Now, also look at who's coming in, or who is arriving as a customer, who's been thinking about you. Learn from other businesses; what are they doing? Competitive analysis, again, is a great way to learn a great deal. What do they do, what do they present, how are they doing? Just because they advertise a certain way it doesn't mean that it's working, but it does give you some ideas. It does not have to be your industry, for some things. For example, when I was doing a lot of work with the automotive industry, what I used to keep, really files and files of, are the top advertisements for major hotels and luxury items. Why? Because what they were selling was style, luxury, et cetera. So that gave me some great insights and ideas also, that you just relate over to another industry. Today the big thing of course is using videos to market your busin...

The second episode of eight in comprehensive business strategy, target marketing, in the overview of building or expanding a strong business. This episode addresses the following topics and questions. Who are your customers and targeting your prospects? Use the attributes of your product or service and describe well what it will do for them They only care about the benefit to them Watch and survey with customer satisfaction to either learn possible expansions or to at least find who they are and what they like and don’t like. It is the customers' perspective that is crucial, not yours or your friends. What do they do? Where do they live? How do they use your product or service? They may id something that you didn’t think was in your marketing. In an earlier episode, I discussed how to increase the probability of success in business. Does the picture you had of customers before you started match your real customers Why do they buy your product? Why from you? What excites them? What is valuable to them in your product? If you can answer and reexamine these questions you wil be ready to market you product and will later be ready for expansion and growth!

So now is the first step in looking at business strategy, your product line strategy. What is your product line strategy or business line strategy? How are you going to expand your product line over time? Now this doesn't matter whether you're just starting out, whether you're about to start, or you've been going for a little while. Even at the very beginning as you're planning your business, you say you only have one product or one service. It doesn't matter. You have to think of expansion in the future and start it from the beginning, and I'll explain why right now. There's an old adage in business; grow or die. I heard that for the first time from my accountant many, many years ago, 25 or so years ago. It really is true. But, let's take a look at how you might grow. If you're going to grow, most likely you're going to have to either expand your products and that could be to related products, or it could be variations of versions of the current product you have. Now why do I say related products? A lot of products are complimentary in that you buy one, and you will probably have a large percentage of people who buy another. It reminds me of two different scenarios. One was when we studied early about complimentary products if you ever noticed in the ads in supermarket magazines, you'll see things like a sale on bacon or there might be a sale on eggs. Why is there a sale on one and not the other? Because the one draws you in but then you will buy the other more than likely. The same thing with peanut butter and jelly. A lot of different things go together, i.e. complementary. I saw a commercial oh probably about 10 years ago that really made a point that I had been trying to make so many times and had made, but it was a lengthy thing. Now I could just point to the commercial. You might remember it but if not, I'll replay the idea. There was a guy who worked in the store. This is a supermarket. He's over in the vegetable area, and he picks up a bag of those little bitty carrots and he says loudly, "Why are we selling these carrots?" Now all of a sudden a voice from overhead comes loudly and says, "Because the same people who buy those carrots are the ones who buy those expensive cheeses that we have in the cheese section." Now another story was I went to a supermarket and they had ... it was a relatively small supermarket, but it was the one that was close ... nearby to us. They stopped selling whole milk. Now I went up to them and said, "What are you doing this for? How come you seem to have run out?" They said, "No, no we don't sell that anymore. There's not enough people buying it." I had to teach them a little bit of economics. You guessed it. I said, "Well, the problem is if you don't have whole milk and I want it, it is considered a staple, not just in my house but in many other homes. Even those few people who want to buy whole milk, if you don't have it, we have to go to another store. Now, are we going to come here and then go to another store just for milk or are we just going to go there and buy everything?" Needless to say, within two weeks they had reengaged and had started selling whole milk again. Now this is just a quick lesson in how products are related. Now let's get back to your business. As I said, you have to plan ahead of time right at the beginning to sell more products and services to your existing customers but also to perform market segmentation analysis to understand what your customers want and how you might sell variations of products or other related products to them. Start by focusing on the products that you're about to sell or the product that you're about to sell or service or are doing right now and understand much more about your customer and that will not only decrease the marketing efforts but it will open doors to give you an idea of what other products might be related or relatable. Now how do you do this? Well of course you target your new customer market or mar...

Business strategy is often overlooked in small businesses. Too often a small business while a way to pick up some extra money or to gain financial freedom, neglects a comprehensive business strategy. There are over 40 million people in the United States with side gigs. Now, these don’t even include people that have separated from there job and set up their own business. I wonder how many of those 40 million would be able to have a complete business if they looked a more closely at strategy. There are an additional 500,000 people per month starting new businesses. This episode is meant to touch on the eight points that everyone, regardless of the size of their business, should be familiar. The detail and motivation of each is contained in the audio of the episode. However, here is a brief overview of what they mean. Listen to the episode to understand why it’s important to anyone and any business. The eight categories are: 1. Product line - this not only includes what you’re selling now, but what you might want to sell in the future. 2. Targeting your market – while current trends and recommendations say concentrate on one person as you target your product or service, you may have to at least be aware of more segments. 3. Marketing - while much has changed because of technology today, much has also stayed the same. 4. Sales - there are diverse sales methods today because of online skills and techniques. However, each of these tend to attract different types of people and must be used differently. 5. Distribution – whether you have a product or service, distribution channels have expanded and your market potential depends on your distribution method and size of your channel. 6. Production - how is your product or service created? With today’s technology, however it is done, will probably be changed within the next couple of years 7. Labor - this is not only about the people you have, but how efficiently and how well skilled they are. It concerns the training. If you are one man shop with a limited time, then you need better time management, no matter how good you think you are. 8. Finance - probably the most important was saved for last. I’ve been told by my former accountant and read that 70% a business failures are caused by financial mismanagement. So, while it may be boring for some, this is a crucial area for any business. There are a wealth of opportunities to start businesses today. However, you not only want to own a business you want to increase the probability of a successful entrepreneurial venture with sound ongoing business strategy. Now, as I said this episode is to help understand the motivation and the reasoning why each of these is important to everyone in business. Over the next several episodes, each of these Will be gone into greater depth. This episode was motivated by several questions I received and the observation of so many failures for lack of understanding of business strategy and for ignoring one or more of these areas. You certainly don't have to be an expert in all these business strategy fields. That would be ludicrous as you would never get to do your business. But, you must understand an overview and be able to evaluate what kinds of advice you are getting and from whom.

Startups, whether you’re expanding a business, starting a new business, there’s so many opportunities out there, probably more than there ever. I keep on hearing people saying that they’re looking or they’re trying to think of something to do as a startup. Don’t think necessarily of just what you’re doing. Instead, think of problems that you, your neighbors, or other people that you see have. Solving a problem is what makes a business. I want to give you a ton of examples here just really to generate thoughts, generate ideas, and start thinking about things. Some of them are very simple, some of them are a little bit harder in the sense that you have to make something or do something with it. If you have an expertise, yes, you can teach it online now. This is just taking advantage of the technology along with your knowledge. Remember what I’ve said in earlier episodes: Master what you know. Gain your authority by being the expert; not just by being recognized, but by being solidly known that you are an expert. How many times have you heard: “Oh, there’s no new ideas”? I keep on hearing that from people, I don’t know whether they want to fund things or what they’re doing, or they want to just convince you to have their help to do it, but there are ideas every day. Sometimes when you’re watching TV and looking at the advertisements, look and see: “Wow, I never thought of that. Gee, that’s interesting.” Example, this weird thing that climbs stairs. It’s basically three wheels that rolls and rotates, and it gives you the ability to climb up the stairs more easily with whatever you’re dragging behind you, a package, etc., some heavy weight. It greatly reduces the ability. Somebody thought that up. Even dash cams. What were they? They were nothing more – we already had cameras, phones, and everything. Somebody took that camera and the recording capability and put it up as a dash cam. Simple things like: Do you like crawling along the floor and wiping the baseboards? Somebody said: “Okay, I’m going to put a funny-looking cloth on a stick,” and it’s actually sort of a sponge, but it’s something that very simply you can walk along the area and clean your baseboards around your house without ever bending down. You may remember, maybe about a year or so ago, I mentioned that there was somebody with cerebral palsy that interviewed me for her podcast, and she was the first woman or first person that had an exoskeleton, that is that support around the body to help her walk, and she was the first one this is a little over a year ago. Now they are taking AI (artificial intelligence) to modify the way that the brain is thinking that the person will walk or wants to walk because of how we learn to walk in the first place when we’re younger, it basically takes, responds, and helps and adjusts to your behavior. Somebody came up with a problem, kids don’t like to carry around or they don’t have with them their bike helmet, they leave it behind, they do whatever. So what did they do? They created a folding bike helmet, and therefore it easily fits into someone’s backpack or anything that the kid has. They don’t have to have it under their arm. Solar panels have been ugly. A lot of people won’t buy them or don’t want anything to do with them because they really make the outside of the house, at least in my opinion and a lot of others that I hear about, ugly. Somebody has modified the solar panels so that they fit much like an ordinary roof and you don’t see them, you don’t notice that they’re there. These are all examples of there was a problem that somebody just solved. Isn’t that what inventions are all about? Some of them can be very simple, and you can get funded by GoFundMe or the Kickstarter campaigns, and find out ways to take your business and your creativity to the business world. Example: This is the time, and what would you think about it? You think about right now this is the time for allergies; everybody is s...

Let’s talk about branding and positioning your strategy. I truly mean your strategy. This can be your business or yourself. If you’re dating, you must have a brand to position yourself. You must be appealing to someone else. It doesn’t matter what you’re talking about. This is crucial. I’m going to get to products very quickly and very soon, but first I want to talk a little bit about the positioning, and the scope and breadth of a brand or a strategy. If you have it too narrow a scope, you may have difficulty broadening your appeal. We’re always hearing about find your niche. Find your niche. If you define it so narrow you will not be able to branch out very easily. You’ll have to create a new brand or a different brand, it becomes very, very difficult. However, if you can position it in such a way that it implies something more even though you’re selling. Can it easily adapt to something more, that can be very different? It depends on how you position it, how you sell it. What you do with that brand as you’re marketing it, as you’re selling it. Even Big Brands make Branding Mistakes or Over Reach Look at some of the big brands that really stand out. As soon as you mention them you immediately know what they are and what they stand for. Colgate, Heinz, Harley Davidson, Xerox. All of them have very strong brands, and you know what it means as soon as you hear the name. Wasn’t always that way. Yes, Colgate always was toothpaste, but they decided they had something else and they actually introduced lasagna. Can you imagine Colgate lasagna? Just the thought of it doesn’t seem realistic. Harley Davidson came out with a cologne. Maybe that might work for some limited group of people who like the smell of Harleys, but for most people cologne and Harley Davidson just don’t match very well. Heinz came out with another sauce. They were so good with the Heinz-57, the Heinz Ketchup, they came out with a green sauce. The green sauce for Heinz was at first attractive to a bunch of little kids. The kids thought it cool or fun, but they of course aren’t going to be the ones that are going to stay interested in something like that for a long period of time. It wouldn’t matter what the flavor and other things were. It just was not consistent with their brand image. It’s not appealing. Branding even relates to your own image You may have a very good product, but if the image of your company or your own image is very different… Relating to yourself, think in terms of social media. I’ve helped and guided several people and companies on social media habits, etc. I’ve tried to help others, but they just know better for themselves. What happens? Something like 30% of people are rejected in job interviews because of their social media content. They have branded themselves with social media. I have some people who I know who would like to expand and up-level their careers, but they’re so infatuated with the responses they get from their friends, they think: “Wow, that’s neat, that’s cool,” or whatever they say today. It fits into a narrative that may not mesh with places they’re trying to get into. While you’re branding your product or yourself you have to maintain that capability. You have to be able to have it so that you can transfer and move yourself, make progress. Success necessitates Product Positioning Regardless of the Product Success is usually includes moving from one place to the next with a different group of people. You can’t eliminate or become a distraction. On the other hand, you could have a bad product and there are ways to actually increase and develop good sales strategy even with a bad product. How do you do this? You match it. I did this with Chrysler. If you remember the Chrysler Advantage campaign, they had horrible cars at the same. As a matter of fact, when I brought this campaign idea to them, they said: “We don’t have any advantages. We don’t have anything.” At that time they were in the depths of depravi...

Best to listen to the 8 minute episode. In the meantime though, how is hiring of employees as well as contractors and advisors influencing customer satisfaction. Why do some companies have great customer satisfaction and others seem to be never able to attain it? I go through some of the thoughts and observations from wondering about this topic. Comparison of Companies I first noticed some of the great attitudes between companies and others where the customer experience is not so good. It raised many questions and I discuss those in the episode and then my conversations both about the hiring and training practices. Those around you and Others When you have some bad employees they infect your organization. Training doesn't help that may be attitudes people have carried for years. Remember your income determined by those close to you from the earlier episode (click here for more detail and understanding). Training or Hiring Correctly You might not be able to train good attitudes with the wrong people. How do you hire properly to raise customer satisfaction? Hiring employees is more important than trying the wrong employees. I discussed this topic with some good companies and found some interesting information. It seems rather clear that you should hire people with certain attitudes and experiences. In fact, it may be better to hire people without skills that can be taught but the desire.

Let’s talk about short term goals versus long-term goals and the accompanied planning. I know that sounds dry, but: What do you think about it? You see people changing their minds all the time and doing things. It is imperative that you have those long term goals and dreams. Imagine that you have your life’s goal or your business goals for the longer term, and by the longer term then you’re able to turn around and see what you can do in the short term. That is whatever you’re doing, as long as it’s within those broader, wider, long-term parameters, you can continue on. You might change, technology might change. Be careful as most systems that use SMART goals (see Smart Goals - Really? Get Real!), almost always forget the long term. It's alright only if your a minor worker and not involved in any strategic planning. Without a Vision on the Long Term, You Miss Opportunity Remember in 1986 and ’87 I said a lot, in both speeches and on radio, that we were about to go through a technological revolution that was going to make the Industrial Revolution look small. People thought that was crazy, absolutely crazy. In ’96 when Microsoft first got into the internet, etc. and I started going around, we were talking about how that was going to disrupt and hurt the bigger companies while everybody was trying to say: “No, no, no. They’ll drown out the small companies.” You have to take a look at how technology is affecting it and looking towards that longer term. I’ve heard recently people thought about some of the things, and the slowdown in many ways of certain areas of technology: “What are we doing? How much more can we do?” Let me say, we’re just starting. It is incredible what’s happening and what’s about to happen. Some of it is actually quite dangerous, but that’s for another time or for your questions. Watson was a Long Term Goal with Short Term Goals and Projects So often we get bad examples of people really screwing up one way or the other, but here’s a great example of something that IBM did starting out with what you see now on TV: Watson. You see these little ads where Watson is out by an airplane or something, and they’re asking questions or asking Watson what do or what they should do. When that all started, think way back to 1997 when Watson first beat Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion (details at Wikipedia). Sure, that was a demo. They certainly didn’t get any money or weren’t expecting to make any money off of that. Even a few years later when Watson played Jeopardy against two others and won “a lot of money,” really, the money wasn’t there, it really didn’t do anything. It might have even been donated to charity, I don’t know, but that’s not important. They started to realize what they could do with artificial intelligence and decision-making. Keep in mind this started well before ’97. They built it and started to play with it, and started to do things. It wasn’t until 2014 that IBM was actually able to (and did) create a business unit around Watson. Think of it: 2011, they won Jeopardy. They also started to look at clinical treatment in 2011 because of the massive amount of technical details and data within the cancer oncology area. Actually in 2013, ’16 and ’17 they signed different agreements with different places, including Sloan Kettering, for oncology diagnostics. They created a chatterbot for children’s toys so that the children would have better interactions with their toys, better conversation. As I say, it wasn’t until 2014 that they actually created the business unit, and that’s when it took off. The first real business use was about 2011, and here we are in 2017, only six years. Keep in mind that I don’t expect you to create a new computer, world’s renowned computer operator or something, but I do say: If you’re looking at something business-wise, six years isn’t very much time, and look at what IBM is doing in the six years since they built it.

“Statistics and Bias - Which one of these are better for you, nutrition?” This may start out sounding a little bland, but I want to blow your socks off. It is also not about politics except as an example. You need to be aware because biased statistics has you following bad medicine; eating the wrong things and making bad decisions for your business or life. I may be talking about biased statistics, statistical bias, etc., but what are we really talking about? We’re talking about the information you get and hear about every single day from the media, from teachers, from other people. If you’ve ever seen some of those movies or listen to some of the songs from the 60s, one of the big themes was: Question Authority. Question Authority Question authority is important for lots of different reasons, but what causes bias? Some of it is biased in the sample the way they choose people. Who do they choose to ask about a certain question? Some of it is actually that they don’t know any better, but many times what people are doing is they’re trying to influence you and give you some reason to believe in what they believe. Now, they may be thinking that they’re doing well, but they’re giving you bad information to base your decision on and trying to convince you or tell you what is the case. I’m going to give you a lot of different examples of this, a lot of background, and a lot of things for you to think about, some of which you probably believe – but they’ve been proven wrong or certainly have not been proven that you should listen to them. It’s one of my favorite topics anyway, but it came up because I was sitting there watching some things on TV, and they were talking about the popularity of Trump. I don’t really care whether you like him or dislike him. I’m trying to talk about the statistics. Both sides might do it, all kinds of people, I don’t really care about that. What I care about is you getting good information. Politics only as a Statistics Bias Example The reason I’m talking about it is not because of Trump or politics, but because if you’re doing a business, starting up a business, or trying to grow your business. You have to be able to discern and listen to true authority (how to establish authority), and understand a little bit about what may happen in statistics. People might be doing to convince you, convince you of their product, their company, or whatever. For example, what should you be investing in? What should you be joining or starting up? There are different reasons that people have. Some of it is just bad information; they don’t know any better, they’ve just never really understood statistics enough to know what’s good or bad. I’ll give you an example of that, too, when I go into some of this. First of all, what about that political example? Just recently Rasmussen and John McLaughlin of the McLaughlin Group came out, and they both have Trump’s favorability ratings at about 50%, and John McLaughlin was being interviewed because it differs so much from some of the results that you’re hearing about from the others. They are the Quinnipiac, Gallup, and Pew polls, which all had Trump down in the 30s someplace, low 30s to low 40. What was the difference? This has got to be not ignorance but actually deliberate because it is so bad—in the Quinnipiac poll only 23% of the sample were Republicans, Gallup – 26%, and then in the Pew poll they sampled 51% Democrat. Now, in the last election only a few months ago the people that identified and voted as Republicans were 33%. They should have been polling something that was a reasonable sample of people who had voted or likely voters. You can only wonder whether this was deliberate in order to tell a story, and to sell their samples and to sell their polling. Again, forget about Trump and all that other stuff. First thing, though, this was pointed out and then in the case of Fox News they continued to talk about the polls as if they were legitima...

Age for an entrepreneur, how old are startup entrepreneurs? Are you too old or too young? A constant question always seems to be: “How old should I be? Am I too old?” I have a few surprises for you, both with examples, and some survey material. Many Famous Startup Entrepreneurs began Later in Life First, let me give you a few examples. Ray Kroc, Founder of McDonald’s franchise, you may have heard, he didn’t start. Actually, he met the McDonald’s brothers when he was 52 years of age and that’s when he literally started with the idea. Wally Blume. You may not have heard of Moose Tracks Ice Cream, but age 57 was his starting time. Even though you may not know it, they are making 80 million dollars a year. The co-founder of LinkedIn was 35, that’s sort of on the young side actually. The founder of Curves was 40 years of age. It goes on and on. Remember from Episode 01, an introduction to entrepreneurship and lifestyle success, the economic and technological change is a major reason to get a side gig or your own business. Do you know that Martha Stewart was nearly 50 before she moved from the catering business into Martha Stewart Living and became that big magnet? There are even some people. If you remember the old TV show that had Justin Bateman on it, you’d think she wasn’t very bright. At age 48 she realized that some of the things that she wanted to do, she had to go back and she had to learn programming. She went back and learned how to program at 48. Vera Wang, she didn’t do her first dress design or any design until she was 39 years of age. It goes on and on. Surprising Facts about the Age of Startup Entrepreneurs Let me give you a few facts that you probably haven’t even thought of and that are really crucial for you to feel a little more confidence if you’re older and thinking: “Gee, what am I going to do now?” Remember the whole concept behind Life Unsettled is that if you’re a 50-year-old person then you have more years ahead of you than your entire adult life. Yes, living past 90 is greater than the 32 years you’ve been an adult, so plan on your next journey, plan on your next adventure. A couple of little facts to help you out, too. What is the average age of an entrepreneur? It depends on where you are a little bit. It turns out in the United Kingdom it’s 47. For US, there was some research done by the Kauffman Foundation finding that the average age of a successful startup in the high-tech industry was actually 40. Yes, not 19, 20, 25, and all those years you heard, but the average age was 40. Gee, I thought they were supposed to be over the hill already for tech. It turns out that high-growth startups are twice as likely to be launched by people over 55 than by people 20 to 34. Wasn’t it just a few years ago we were constantly hearing that it was the young people who were starting up all these neat, new companies? Yes, they may have started up Facebook and a few others, but a lot of the high-tech companies of today need a lot more breadth and a lot more in some other industry than a Facebook or something like that. Twice as likely to be over 55 than 20 to 34. I bet you didn’t know that. Why Older Folks are Good Startup Entrepreneurs Part of the reason I’m doing this is for you to think in terms of all the things that you have as your own experience, and in many cases how to meld technology. It doesn’t have to be technology. Vera Wing, that was designer. It can be technology melded with what you already know. The internet and technology have changed the world and they’re changing it very rapidly and continuing to change. Henry Kaiser of Kaiser Permanente, he linked together with a physician to form Kaiser Permanente when he was 63. Colonel Sanders was Driven to Success at 'Retirement' Harland David Sanders, yes, Colonel Sanders, you’ve probably heard that over and over again, he was 65 years old when he started his first little business. Actually, not a store.

We’ve discussed many different topics. Here is a great real life example of overcoming adversity, which bring many topics together. This particular episode and its example brings in many different pieces that we’ve had in the past and shows a great example of goals, ensuring the drive to succeed; hitting a plateau, striving and obtaining super success – all of the things that most of us want to do. This also is why and where we stop. Aaron Curry, one of the top linebackers entering NFL ever. You need to know why he failed and how he rebounded for your life lessons Let me get on with it by first saying and introducing a football player, Aaron Curry. He was a tremendous athlete, one of the top prospects as linebacker for a long, long time. As an example, linebackers in general are not taken early on in the draft; there’s just so many of them. I think there’s only been four times, that somebody has been drafted as a linebacker in the top 10. He was taken number four overall. Let’s look at a little bit of history. It has nothing to do with football, except for the story which is really tremendous. His goal was to get an NFL contract and take care of his family. He defined well his major life goal. (click here about setting goals) His Start - Overcoming Adversity Here was somebody, started out, he grew up extremely poor. In order to reach the NFL, he would need to overcome adversity. His family basically didn’t even have quite enough to feed themselves. He got his breakfast and lunch at school, he was very underweight, etc. but he trained hard and he played football very hard. But he was very underweight. What happened was East Carolina was the only school looking at him. At the last minute, Wake Forest came in, liked him. Wake Forest came in, offered him a scholarship, and he was able to go. At Wake Forest he was able to gain the weight that he never had before. Why? Because of the training and the meal programs that they had. Finally he was able to eat like a football player in training. He was able to put on the pounds, gain the weight, etc. What drove him so hard to do all of this? That dream of being able to get an NFL contract and of supporting his family, of overcoming adversity for his entire family. He had a “why” that was extremely strong and extremely driven. If you think back to one of the earlier episodes, that’s developing that overarching “why,” but you need more than that. How do you ensure goal success (this episode explains how to build your own drive to succeed)? He knew that if he did not succeed, he and his family would end up back in that situation. That image, that motivation is what kept on driving him to get into that contract where he’d be able to absorb and bring home the money to support his family. Reaching His Big Goal With the goals and with that drive, he exceeded and excelled. He was well-regarded across the nation, and was drafted number four by the Seattle Seahawks. That was in 2009. By 2013, he dropped out of football, he couldn’t succeed in the NFL. What happened? He got his great, large contract. He got the contract that took care of his family. His goals were reached, so he really did change the financial position of his family. They were now in a much different situation and well-situated with a huge contract. He was also far from home. Seattle from Carolina is a huge difference. Plateauing Remember I’ve talked before about hitting a plateau? What has happened, and what really is a plateau? Did that mean when he hit the NFL he reached his limit and was beyond his ability? No, not at all. What happened was he had realized his goals, he slowed down. He satisfied his goals that had driven him so far. The biggest enemy of success is success and losing motivation. The NFL, which changes the dynamics tremendously has more demands and nobody can just step in and do well. You may be a rookie, you may be slotted to be a superstar because of potential,

Leadership comes in styles for varied groups and purposes! I want to talk about leadership. Often you hear and you see a lot of things for leadership training or how to be a leader, etc. Just like everything else, just like in business you have many alternatives. There are many different types of leaders that have been incredibly successful in life. What I want to do is go over some of the differences. I’m going to point you in the direction of a particular blog post that was done that really does a nice job of showing the differences with some examples. Now, I haven't done research and analyzed all the other research in this area. This episode is just to point out interesting leadership styles, done very well. For you, it is an opportunity to understand that there really can't be only one type of training and there are different styles that will appeal to different personalities. I was particularly impressed by research done by one individual. This all started because I was getting a lot of information and hearing a lot of statements that I really had trouble believing. Remember, I’m always asking: “Why? How? What causes this?” questions of that sort. When it doesn’t make sense, I keep asking questions. I ran across this article as I was researching ideas on leadership. It’s by Suzanne Vickberg, PhD, so Dr. Vickberg. She’s a Social Personality Psychologist with very good training. She also has done a great deal of research, statistical and otherwise that gives her a very nice measurement and characteristics that are attributed to four different types of personalities that are leaders. I’m not saying that there are exactly four types of leaders. What I’m saying is this is what she’s done is good and should be motivational. I’ve also seen examples in other studies and other research of seven, or five, or something, and people make up different categories. What I like is as an example, something to show you that yes, you can become a leader. You don’t necessarily have to be an outgoing, dynamic personality. You may be somebody who has a completely different set of characteristics. You may be that mathematician/engineer that could still be a leader. Let me first go through an overview of some of these and what they are, and some of the examples that she gives. As I say, keep in mind there are many different types of leaders, so some of these would in a sense turn me off or may turn you off, others are people that you would follow.  Just like we have different personalities, we have different products that go to different people. The idea of how to be a leader is a really loose concept because there are different types. Think of it very much like niche marketing or marketing across the internet. You can pick your industry, you can pick your market, and you will have people follow or buy your products. That’s what you have, in a sense, in a leader. It doesn’t mean that everybody in the world is going to follow you. It means that people that fit into certain norms or certain personality groups will follow you. Forgetting training for a minute, let’s just talk about what compromises a leader. First of all, the four types that she mentions are a pioneer, a driver, a guardian, and an integrator. What does she mean by each of these? As a pioneer, it’s somebody who’s outgoing, somewhat adverse to detail. You know that person who stands up and is the life of the party? Think of it in that way. Spontaneous, willing to take risks, etc. Jump outside their comfort zone (see Comfort Zone). They don’t really seem to have fear. That may be good or bad in many situations. The driver style, what is the driver? Quantitative, logical, focused, competitive, scientist-oriented, so things that really are much more detailed. There will be many, many people that will follow that direction or leadership style. You can see immediately if you think of the different people who have been around you.

I want to talk about getting business advice. Actually it could even be considered getting advice for life, life advice. Before I get into the episode I want to remind everybody that I’ve always said over and over again how you can learn from anybody and everything. Be ready for Business Advice that questions and challenges! I’ve given examples of how birds and other animals sometimes know how to raise their young better than we do. Why? Because they raise them to survive. Taken that little intro in light, ignore the person, but I want to talk about how I am always asking: “Why?” I’m always wondering why something exists. “Why does it happen? Why did somebody do that?” Of course I saw everybody’s criticism in the comments when Trump’s cabinet went up and said they disagree with some of the things he says. A lot of people seem to be surprised. I don’t care whether you like him or not, this episode is not about politics, nor about anything Trump says or does. As a matter of fact that is the last time I need to mention him. The idea was being surrounded by people that are going to tell you what they think and will be very happy to disagree with you, but you trust, like them, and have a good, strong feeling that they know what they’re talking about. It reminds me how important this is. Do you find yourself around people that agree with you? Stop for a minute. How are you ever going to learn? Add people to your circle that disagree, people with whom you can have reason discussions to better understand the cause and effect, the why something works or happens, why it should be done a different way than you thought. Then you can run your company better, perform better at work, or create a better company. Just recently I explained to somebody what underlies the unemployment number. That understanding is in part crucial to your confidence in the future for your own investments and how the economy is going. The note I got back was a ridiculous rant telling me something political. I’m not interested in discussing politics, so if I recognize it as political, I stay away. Why? It’s a waste of my time. Don’t get confused with what you do day to day. For example, Facebook posts, no matter what is said almost everybody seems to agree. Somebody can say the most outlandish things and everybody tells them how wonderful it is and they’re given compliments. If a friend is suffering, okay, maybe say all those lofty, nice, wonderful things. You’re going to visit somebody in the hospital, tell them how wonderful they look. But if somebody is about to open a crochet store in a major mall, do them a favor: Get them to evaluate the feasibility of that. Inside a company this is probably in general not a safe thing to do, so you may have to do the political thing and all the other things, but I’m going to relay a couple of stories that show you how important it is. When I was at General Motors we’re all at a coffee machine one day and my executive director a couple levels above me asked a question by giving an opinion. One of those: “What do you think? Where I believe such and such.” Everybody there was agreeing, shaking their head: “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I disagreed. Everyone looked at me like I was about to be executed. He said: “Wow. I’ve been here 32 years at General Motors before somebody would tell me what they really thought.” From that moment on we had a great relationship and almost daily he had me in his office discussing or asking for opinions, ideas. He became a great mentor for me in business as well as analysis. I will certainly never forget Gene Steininger. He was a strong individual seeking the best business advice he could obtain rather than ego satisfying agreement. After all, he would be either taking action or recommending to superiors based on the business advice he received. When I was leaving GM, Gene asked me, he said: “You’re already targeted and slated to be very high up in the company.

This episode is about feeling as the customer or to 'be the customer'. This is apparently very difficult for people, but we all know and have wonderful experiences as a customer. How come we can’t reverse it and feel so well by being the customer that’s in front of us or around us to have them have the feeling that they want to do business with us? At the end, I’m going to give a few examples of some good companies and one person as well. You can't understand customer perception without actually thinking as if you are the customer, i.e. be the customer. First, what do we do and how do we learn the technique, or better than a technique, the ability and the inner feeling to know what a customer feels like when they’re in our business or we’re talking to them? Yes, you can learn how to 'be the customer' and understand customer perception (listen to Customer Perception, not Yours ). First, practice. Listen intently to what every person you are with says, whether it be a customer, a businessperson, or even your family. Try to go beyond understanding what the person says. You don’t want to just understand them. You imagine that that person is using your product or service. Imagine what they’re feeling like when you’re talking to them or one of your salespeople, or one of your technicians, support people, whoever is talking to them. How do they feel? Can you do it so well that it can be the culture in even a large company, let alone a small one? Most people even as an individual can’t attain this, but there are companies that do it overall and make most everybody feel good. You feel good just belonging or participating at that establishment. It is important to “Pick up on buying signals.” is a phrase frequently told to people. Forget the buying signals, unless you’re strictly in sales. Even then you don’t need buying signals if you can imagine or picture the customer with the product. How you’re making their experience so that even you would feel good inside if you were on that other side of that transaction. Just focus on over-satisfying your customer, helping them internalize the feelings of the product. At the same time, this has to last so you have to truly maintain absolute integrity. Then you are building true trust. When you attain true trust, you will not lose them either as a customer or referral. Now, this doesn’t come easy. I’m sure of that, I know that. But at the same time, you can do it, if you can practice it. Practice it just by how you interact with other people in the supermarket, in line someplace, whatever you’re doing. Are the people around you positively influenced by how you act and what you do? That actually is great practice for how you treat your own customers and how you build your own company. Any Size Company Can Develop the Culture to 'Be the Customer' Starbucks hire people who believe in the atmosphere to create a satisfying experience Companies often have cultures that are taught, and they hire based on that culture so that the culture is trainable and they hire the people who are trainable. That is right, trainable people with the right heart. One of the examples is Starbucks. Take a look at the way Starbucks’ employees act and their training. They only hire people that have that very strong sense of belonging and that want to make the person on the other side of the counter smile. What do they do? They also treat their employees that way. Every one of their employees has all kinds of benefits, etc. Alaska Airlines. This is a great example, and I’ve used it before but it’s a great example in this case because you can use the comparison. How and why do the employees at Alaska Airlines, the flight attendants, the pilot, co-pilot, everybody, the ticket agents – why are they so nice? I have to say I’ve only had one person ever that I’ve ever run into that was less than wonderful connected with Alaska Airlines. At the same time, other airlines you go in there,

Today business opportunities are growing, and they will explode over the next year. Let me explain this a little bit. First, I did postpone, I apologize for that. I postponed a few days for this episode to come out because I wanted to wait until the dust settled after the election. At the end of this episode I want to wrap everything up together so you understand why this opportunity is so big, literally for everybody who wants to start and build a business. It doesn’t mean business is easy, but at the end I’ll wrap it up and put it into a tight package. At the end I will go and explain a little bit more about how growth really happens, and why you can count on it and why you should feed into it. Business is expected to boom for 2017. Get ready! First, this is a great opportunity to start a business or to look at expanding your current business. Why? Because the economy in 2017 at some point should start growing fairly well and fairly rapidly. There’s going to be a lot of changes, and the changes are all towards the growth of economy and growth of business. I’ll discuss that a little bit more and I’ll discuss some of the things that are happening in specific industries, but more importantly, it doesn’t matter where you are because whatever you’re doing there could be opportunities that are expanding now and you could be one of the ones to fulfill that demand. (see episode 67, 'Developing Business Ideas') Back to the episode. Whenever there’s great change, there’s always opportunity, and that’s what gets into business ideas and business opportunity. It is a unique opportunity today in America because of the change. Whether you like or don’t like the candidates, who cares? Let me remind you of something that happened to me a long time ago. I want to give you an opportunity, get off the Xanax or whatever anti-depressants you might be taking, and just move forward. Remember that all of this is done and then it’s over. Focus on your Future Business Opportunities, Leave Past Behind What happened to me in high school was during my last year, my senior year. We were had Shakespeare in English class, so the whole year was devoted to Shakespeare. During that time, I was always wondering, because I would take an exam and of course, like most people, after the exam you start thinking: “Oh, gee, I wish I had thought of this, or if I did that, or had wrote that. Or I should have done this a little better,” or something like this. You end up literally wasting a lot of time after the fact when you should really be studying for your next exam. You don’t dwell on what’s already done. What I ran across in one of Shakespeare’s plays was: “What is without remedy should be without regard. What’s done is done." So whatever is done is done, it’s without remedy, there’s nothing you can do about it. Move on, get going. I wrote that exact quote on an index card, posted it on the wall right in front of my desk. Whenever I started to think about what had happened, rather than focus on what I was doing for the next event, the next exam, or the next career goal – I just looked at that and immediately refocused myself. Do it, take that as a little bit of advice for yourself. Put it down on something so that you can use it the same way. As I mentioned, and I’ll repeat: Change brings opportunity. Why? Because everybody is acting a certain way, and as the tide shifts, and the seas ebb or flow, you have new opportunities that come up, particularly with this particular change. It is very different. We’re embarking on a grand opportunity, particularly for small business. Small businesses potentially have a great deal more opportunity. There'll be a lessening of regulation, there’s no question about that. That includes on banks. How does that help an individual? Well, the intent of some regulations were to rein in banks. But what happened without realizing what some of the effects would be is it put a lot of pressure on the small banks and the ...

We’ve all heard people talking about work-life balance, and: How are you supposed to have it? It’s a choice. Let’s talk a little bit about work-life balance versus the hustle, that is you hear people saying: “Work smart, hustle, keep going,” etc. and then you have these other people trying to tell you about work-life balance. Let’s take a look at the two, because there’s really a lot to each story. Some gurus preach Work-Life Balance while others lecture the importance to hustle. Balancing work and life is a personal preference with consequences First, work-life balance, as defined by Wikipedia, it’s listed as a concept including the proper prioritizing between work, which they include as career and ambition, and balancing with lifestyle, meaning health, pleasure, leisure, family, spiritual development/meditation. So what does that all mean? I’m not going to say that one is better than the other, but I am going to say that whatever you make as a choice, it is your choice. Don’t be jealous of the person that hustles and doesn’t have a proper work-life balance, but has a lot of success in whatever they’re doing. That was their choice, you choose something else. That’s okay. But it’s just we each have our own priorities. Now, if you want to have a little bit of both, that is you really want to have that work-life balance as well as be very, very successful, the only way you’re going to carve out that bit of extra time is through better time management. Go to www.LifeUnsettled.com/time and get some of my suggestions there so that you can get more time out of life. But I’m not saying you have to do that either. These are two really important topics to think about. One of the reasons that life-work balance comes into play a lot, some it has to do with the fact that you should have fun, and that’s good, but a lot of it has to do with pressure. Just like you have the pressure to hustle, you have the pressure in a sense to devote more time to your family, more time to other things/activities that you’re supposed to be involved in. In either way, there’s stress going both ways. Where does it all stem from? Many years ago, not too many, but many years ago there was that one person in the household, usually the guy, (almost always the guy) who was working and he was supporting the family. That meant that whatever school, house they bought, place they went, whether they had a vacation or not, what things they were able to get, how they were able to live was all determined entirely on how he performed, and everything that he did at the job he was captive at in order to get the most income he could to provide for the family the best he could. The pressure was all on him. Then what happens is, and sometimes it’s featured in movies and you see the movie shows some guy that: “He’s not putting in his time with his family. His kids are less involved with him, they don’t appreciate him because he’s never around.” Part of that is the job of the female in this case (right now it can be switched around; it can be the guy staying home and the woman working), but in either case, the one who is staying home, it’s part of their responsibility to make sure that the kids understand what’s going in, why dad has to work late, etc. and that yes, he would like to be home, yes, he would like to go to some game or something else. I hope he would anyway. But there are those kinds of pressures that if he doesn’t he’s not going to get the next promotion, he’s not going to get the bonus, he’s not going to get whatever. So what you really have is a situation which society has turned upside down in essence because the pressure was all on the man many years ago that would determine everything about their family’s lifestyle, etc. Now there’s much more of dual income or in some cases, in many cases the woman making more money. That doesn’t matter. Actually, when I was in college I used to say: “Quite frankly,

Hustle versus the Four Hour Work Week shows two competing paths to your success. This episode was motivated by a conference I went to where Ryan Deiss, one of the Co-Founders of Digital Marketer, and Gary Vaynerchuk both spoke. It was the Digital Marketer Conference. Don't believe the myth of the 4 hour work week. Hustle to the extent you want, not someone else's opinion What happened and the idea is: Hustle versus the four-hour workweek. We hear, and so many people are following the four-hour workweek, and we also hear about how important it is to hustle. So, what should you choose and what do you want in life? You’ve heard me many times talk about the importance of investing your time and effort, and really working a lot harder than just the average person, that is you put in the extra time, the extra effort in order to invest in your own future. I just laughed when Ryan Deiss got up on stage and he was introducing something, and he put up a picture of Tim Ferriss and the beach scene, sitting in the chaise lounge under an umbrella as if that’s his life. First of all, if you’ve seen and followed it, he is a hustler, he does work hard. But the key was people have this image of Tim Ferriss basically working four hours a week, and that everything else is running through VAs, through people in India, etc. doing a lot of the work for him. There is a lot of outsourcing and stuff, but Ryan turned around, looked at it, pointed to the picture and said: “If that’s the way that guy works, I will eat his lunch.” It’s true. You can’t compete in the world today in a growing, thriving, aggressive business working a very small amount of time. Gary Vaynerchuk got up a little later, he said some of the same things about the importance and how somebody doing something like that, and believing in the four-hour workweek was not going to be able to keep up. Let me put that a little bit in perspective. First of all, The 4-Hour Workweek was a title chosen by sampling and testing things in Google, looking for what the searches were and what was going to generate the most traffic, and what was going to be picked up the most. That’s really where it came from. Originally, I’ve heard all kinds of stories about what it was. Actually I think the stories changed a little bit, because originally I heard and I thought it was from something that Tim had done, said that he had some title and actually the publisher changed the title, but whatever it was, it was tested. The original title had no relevance, in a sense, to the concept of just a four-hour workweek, but the content was still there. People need to know that that investment in energy and effort that you have, that’s what’s going to drive your success. That doesn’t meant that you can’t have a leisurely style, but you might be trading off a little bit of the present for the future, so that what you might be doing is you might be pushing more effort now in order to have and build an income stream, which by the way is not easy. Too many people are buying into the concept that they can find income streams all over the place or residual income everywhere. Keep in mind, as I’ve mentioned before, MLM turns around very often and talks about their residual income. Very few of them are going to really generate ongoing residual income for you. It’s actually very rare. It may generate income for you, you may even make a very good amount of income, but in the product-based world, generally it’s described as 80% of customers will leave within three months, so that auto shipping that’s going and taking place isn’t going to keep up, so there goes your… Imagine your income is going to drop by not just 80%, but by more than 80%. Why? Because not only 80% of your customers, but then your rank goes down so you would leave even more. That’s not necessarily the thing for an income stream, but as I say, there are some. I’m not condemning them. There are some, but just be careful.

To stand out in the world, master a skill. Yes, become the master in a niche! In this episode I want to talk and follow up from last time. Last time I talked about becoming an authority. I mentioned that to become an authority you’re going to have to have some special skill, trade, whatever it is. Not only a niche, but you’re going to have to become a master. That is, you’re going to have to be that person that somebody admires and other people want to gain your information. That also puts you in an excellent competitive situation when it comes to other people around you trying to do the same things. Set yourself apart by becoming a Master in your niche Why do you want to do this? Sometimes it might be self-esteem, it might be a feeling of adequacy, a feeling of need that other people have for you or towards you. It may be that you want to escape from the humdrum of your daily life, you want to be something special. One of the least important ones actually is probably money. Yes, you want it, you desire it, you would like to make more, and you’d like to be more secure (and that last one, secure, is the key). But all those get satisfied by what you do, how you do it, and how well other people think you are doing it, and that you have the confidence because you know you do it well. It’s not something easy, and it can be overwhelming. So, what do you do? First of all, whatever it is, deconstruct it. That is: Break it down into pieces so that you can learn parts of it at a time, and commit yourself to realize that it’s going to take many, many hours, days, weeks, months, whatever, to get to the level you want to be at. That’s the overwhelming part. You break it down, you put in your time, and you slowly get it into pieces and chunks. The multi-year project of doing a dissertation when I was at Berkeley, it is overwhelming. As you’re doing it, what you’re trying to do is trying to break down: How can I get this monstrous thing done? And you have the pressure because you also want to graduate, get your degree, and all that other neat stuff. So, what do you do? You break it down into the parts and the research, and you break that into different pieces. Then even when you get to the writing you do the same thing. When I got to the writing it was little bits and pieces, little chapters or sections that were going to be written, and I would commit to just drive it right down inside two hours, get that one section written no matter how it was, just quickly brain dump it from my notes. Then take a 10-15 minute break, do something else, go back to that section the next day when it’s gone through my mind, I’ve refined it, and get it better and better. What happens is you’re breaking these things up, and you’re looking back on them, saying: “Gee, I had a success. I did that chapter, that one, and that one,” so that you’re having repeated successes, and that gets you down to the point that you can master the topic. Why? Because you’ve had 17, 1700, whatever it is, successes along the path of developing that skill. Visualize yourself actually doing it, that is gain yourself some confidence. As you gain that confidence, make sure that you have that confidence with humility. The reason I say with humility is because realize that things are changing, they’re always getting better, bigger, faster, whatever, and that humility gets you to learn more and keep on refining your skill. You’re going to have to weather classes, courses, and all kinds of other things that you’re going to have to go through in order to feel very comfortable. Best of all, of course, is to find a mentor, somebody that is already truly a master. Because what’s the key that I tell people open and have said many times? Master what the master has already done. If you can do that, then you’re well on your way. Questions are really good, and you should feel free to ask questions. Actually a good example, I was a little cautious of this at first and figured: “Oh no...

How do you establish authority in your field? I don’t care whether that’s internet authority, or workplace authority, or as a business expert. Learn to become a recognized authority One quick note just before I get into the episode. As soon as I finished the episode, within two hours I ran into two different situations, two different people (not related) both claiming authority, talking about it as if they have it, and I know they don’t. They couldn’t answer some of the very basic questions. So, be careful, make sure that whatever you’re doing, whoever you’re listening to is not somebody who’s just selling it and their career is based on selling you that product, but that they’ve actually done it. If it’s a coach, somebody who is successful in business over and over again in companies, etc., not somebody who just decided that they don’t have a job, or somebody who’s selling something that’s supposed to be performing. Make sure you see things that they’ve done. Now to the episode. How to Establish Authority Today I want to discuss how to establish authority. Clearly, the more you’re approached or have the presence of authority, the better your position, the better your following, the more money you’re going to make, the more satisfaction you’re going to have, and the family you have will have in you. OK, now, how do you establish authority in your field? I don’t care whether that’s internet authority, or workplace authority, or as a business expert. The idea is that you are regarded as the go-to person or highly regarded, the key is: Without saying it. First of all, you’ve got to get to the point where you can develop the confidence, that is you stand tall and you don’t categorize yourself, you’re driven. You don’t say that you’re an expert. You have to have it reach out from you, from what you’re doing, what you’re saying, and how you’re acting to be recognized and thought of as that expert. That is you demonstrate it and you let other people say it. Don’t say it yourself. Some of the things you do is make sure that when there are topics or things that are being done, you make the topic of conversation, that is that you have and develop the innovative ideas that are the discussion. You don’t want to just be part of the group or in the discussion. That’s not going to do enough. Just being that is just being one of the masses, one of the people, which can be a wonderful thing if that’s what you want. But if you want to be recognized as an authority, how do you get it and how do you separate yourself so that you’re appreciated and recognized? First, while I say don’t say it, do acknowledge your accomplishments, whatever they are. You don’t state them, but you do acknowledge them. Thank the other person for stating it or something. Join with an associate, with other leaders in your field, you both learn from them as mentors. Think back to the chapter in the book, but also that episode where I discussed your five friends, the people closest to you, and how your family, friends, and acquaintances can actually be harmful to you. Why? You want to establish that broader reach of people who really are recognized, that you start to be recognized with them and then even amongst them. In order to do this, you’re going to have to do whatever it takes to get the knowledge that you need. In the next episode I’m going to be talking about mastering a topic, mastering a skill. It’s a little different than you’ve established, you know it, you’re very good, but you haven’t established an authority, that is that you’re not recognized. This assumes that you already really know the stuff, whatever the field, whatever the business is, but you want to be recognized for it. Just think about it. If you’re recognized in your field or in your expertise, that means you’re more in demand, everything from your pay to your happiness is going to be increased. It also means, though, in order to do this, because it’s not static,

This topic is about women in the workplace. When I say women employees, there are all kinds of things that pop into people’s minds, and probably everybody’s thinking something different. What I’m going to get into is (and there’ll be a bunch of recommendations at the bottom, both for women and for men) are women cheap and inexpensive employees? Are they worth the risk? Are they an opportunity? What happened was I was talking about something with a woman, I’m talking about the topic in planning of an episode, and all of a sudden she started talking to me about incidents that happened. How other women set a really bad example and hurt other women’s chances.How opportunities are ruined or restricted because of the way some women behave in the workplace. I’m not talking about how they go after each other. That’s well-noted, well-documented. It’s happened over and over again where it seems like the woman boss doesn’t really help out a woman who’s coming up. Those things may be changing over time. Hopefully they are. I’m talking about something a little different. What she was talking about was the fact that here are a lot of women who are trying to show and demonstrate that they are really good employees, workers; that they’re creative, innovative, productive, etc.; all of the things that you would expect from a great man or woman regardless of what category, what sex they are. She started citing, and then another woman chimed in with other examples of women who, for example, come out of school, they go into a job, and they start out by saying and demanding on day one: “I graduated such and such, I am this. I need to have this much time off. I need to be allowed to have such and such for my kids. I’m going to be having kids in the near future. I’m going to need so many months or so much time off,” etc. They’re making these demands, because popular opinion in the media has said this is what is expected, that this is what everybody should have. Let’s go to the other side. From the woman’s perspective, here she’s trying to establish that she is independent, just as good as a man, and then there’s a woman who’s saying: “I’m just good, and I’m so good in such a limited period of time that I can have things where I don’t show up because something happens in my family or I need time off,” etc. There’s a real conflict there. Let me explain it by going through what happens in hiring a person or a woman. In some cases there are certain positions that people are going to be reluctant to hire a woman in certain situations. Why would that be? Take a look at it. Yes, there is bias, there’s prejudice. Is it in some cases an appropriate business decision? Nobody wants to say it. Let’s say for an example that you have (a key employee need), and I’ve had this discussion with many women, and quite frankly they understand it very well and can see the problem with it. When a business hires somebody that would be a key employee, think in terms of how long they go out there, strive, and search for the right candidate. They don’t hire the candidate just to fill a spot, but they might spend months looking. We’re not talking about an employee that you put an ad in Craigslist or in the newspaper, or go to the local agency and say: “I need a new person to do XYZ,” or that you’re just going through the recent graduates in college. I’m talking about people that will end up being in key positions or going to be hired right into a key position. If it takes a long time to hire that person and choose them, then it’s also going to be hard to replace them, even for four weeks, three months, whatever the period is. It’s going to be very hard for somebody else to substitute during an absence. If it was easy for somebody to substitute, they wouldn’t have spent four, six or nine months searching for somebody for that key position. They spent a long time because they thought somebody else wasn’t appropriate or wasn’t sufficiently skilled.

The Game of Life, a real challenge for everybody, the idea of the topic is game. What is a game? We often hear and think in terms of a game. I looked up all kinds of definitions of it. I want to refer to and bring in the idea of The Game of Life. Make projects a game yields a positive Attitude A game, something that is structured, has rules or whatever, you use it for play or enjoyment, but it can also be educational. Gee, if a game can be educational, that brings up other topics and other ideas. There are some definitions that say the difference between game and work is that a game you’re not paid for, whereas work you’re paid. But wait a minute, there’s golf, tennis, baseball, football, and lots of games that people are paid for once they learn how to do it well. Even the video games, there are things out there that people make money competing in a video game. The difference between game and work is really blurred, so what I want to do is get back down into it really deep and talk about how YOU can make life a game. First let me start by telling you what I used to do when I would train some of the programmers, developers, database administrators, etc. across the country. Very often I would go in there and they were at their computers already, etc. or I was standing up front as they entered. After we got everybody there and we got started, I would usually say something on this topic because I already noticed many of them playing things like Solitaire. Most of them were playing Solitaire. I would say: “I can’t understand why people play games on the computer.” I’d get a lot of odd looks as I’m probably getting right now, but fortunately this is audio, so I can’t see what you’re saying or what you’re thinking, but think about it for a minute. I would say: “Think of it this way, you’ve got Solitaire. Okay, you played Solitaire yesterday. How many games did you win or lose?” They have no idea. “How many games did you play?” They have no idea. It was a mindless exercise of some random occurrence of cards and trying to put them in the right place. What happened? Nothing. You got nothing out of it. Instead, these are people that are there on the computer to learn. By the way, this involves everybody today. There are things on the computer that you need or should know. That could be anything as simple as learning Excel or Word better. For them it was every single object on the computer. You notice when you right click something, you see all these things, all these choices and actions, etc. You can set things. As a programmer, you actually develop those and write the code for those items. You write the code to decide that when you click on “Open,” it opens it and maybe opens up a new thing with certain colors, certain properties, what size it is, etc. All of those things are done. Even the idea of clicking on the icon or double clicking on the icon has different events, and those events cause different actions. Those are all things they need to learn. So, what the hell are they doing playing Solitaire? What if instead of sitting there, waiting, playing Solitaire, they went to figure one of those things out or two of those things out? I asked them: “What happens if you figure it out? You’ve won. What happens if you don’t figure it out? You get to play the game again tomorrow. No big deal, and you’ve learned something along the way which is what you were supposed to do in the first place, but by making it a game, a challenge.” By the way, that’s the definition or part of the idea of a game. A game, basically you have some sort of goal, you have rules, you have challenges, and you have interaction. I just described what they’re supposed to be doing. The same thing. The goal was to figure it out, the goal was to maybe how to set the properties, or figure out how to cause it to do something. The same thing goes for most of everything you’re doing. You’re sitting there in front of your computer.

Dress for Success, that is, appearance and perception is extremely important. This is a time for taking a look at what we’re doing in public or online, which is basically public. You’ve all probably heard about a book a long time ago called Dress for Success. If you haven’t, you’ve heard references to it or something. What it’s about is what kind of impression you make or have to the general public, to other people. They’re really talking about job interviews and while you’re at work, trying to move up or be exposed to a better audience. The same thing goes if you’re in business for yourself. Remember and keep in mind that first impressions are crucial. You’ve all heard how important first impressions are. I’m actually kind of surprised that people sometimes can’t relate A to B, or B to D, or whatever. They know this, they hear it, but then I hear people turning around and saying: “Oh, just go ahead and do it, and learn on the way.” You learn on the way, and what do you do? People hear your first attempts, and those are their first impressions. I hear so often people recommending to people who are going into podcasting: “Oh, don’t worry about it. Just do it for a while and you’ll fix it up. You’ll learn, then get better skills, and you’ll start doing better and you’ll sound better.” I heard that, but I also remembered and related the idea of first impressions and success. Make sure your sound is good. Low and behold, now more and more you hear that the most important thing is the sound. It’s even true in video. The video is not as important as the audio that’s in the video. People can put up with a little bit of static or a little bit of interference that just affects the video so it’s not quite right, but they really want to be able to hear the sound. So, you must make sure that it sounds well. What I’m getting to with first impressions is also some of the things that we see out there today that are going kind of crazy. I’ll use an example. Colin Kaepernick. Everybody’s heard, it’s been all over the news, guy makes a dumb statement, turns around, and he decides to sit during the national anthem. So, what happens there? First of all, let me clear up one thing. Everybody’s turning around, running around, saying: “Oh, he’s got freedom of speech and there’s free speech.” First of all, let me share a big surprise to everyone: No, he doesn’t. That’s right, he doesn’t. Why? He’s at work and he’s representing the company, which is his football team. You try to do something like that in your job, and you can find yourself kicked out if it’s something that the company thinks doesn’t represent them well or doesn’t perform properly. Let’s push that aside. The other part is: What’s he doing? First of all, he was sat down for the last five games of last year. Why? Because he wasn’t performing, he lost his starting job. So here he is trying for a starting job, fighting for it, and he becomes controversial to a brand new coach who happened be at Philadelphia the last few years and got fired from the team. Everybody on that team who was controversial or not toeing the line and not being part of the team, they were kicked off. So maybe it’s not such a good idea. It may not be bright, unless he’s taking a look at the 11 million dollar guarantee he has and saying: “I don’t really care. Maybe they’ll kick me out and I’ll just go home with my 11 million dollars.” I have no idea, but it doesn’t make sense if he’s looking at a future. Then there’s a guy at Philadelphia, Myke Tavarres, he turns around and says: “I’m sticking with Colin Kaepernick. I’m not going to stand for the national anthem either.” What a dummy! This is an undrafted rookie who’s hoping to get on the roster. Keep in mind it starts out with like 90 players at the beginning of training camp, it’s going down to 53. Probably 40 to 45, someplace in there are already set in stone to be rehired. You’re not going to bump them off.

How often do you get sales calls or marketing calls, and how do they go? Damn. Some of these salespeople, actually an awful lot of them are lazy sacks of excrement. It’s often somebody calls me, partially from personal connection, and they basically know a bit about me. We had a lot of conversations, we’ve been on things together, etc. and all of a sudden they call and it sounds like they think I’m from outer space and have just landed. It’s like they don’t remember or don’t know anything. How hard is it to find out about somebody? Do your prep! This episode was actually originally motivated by somebody who was talking with me about being on my podcast. I’ll explain that a little bit later. What happened was I stopped because somebody else that I had an appointment with, a salesperson, called and this is the scenario. Some just do this and are supposed to be in sales and marketing. Think of it. They’re going to webinars and seminars, and talking to others about how to do sales well. What to do. How you’re supposed to do it. What you’re supposed to say. They’re teaching people how to use X, Y, Z software so that you have a real personal connection with the person, and to develop that personal connection. What happens? This person called from a major software company. Actually they were hired away from another company where they were supposedly a cracker-jack salesman, and they approach me in an absolutely inept way, annoying the heck at me. They start up with things, like asking me about myself. Heck, he already had the links in the email that we exchanged. I had already been talked to by somebody else that supposedly gathered some information so that he’d have it in front of him. So I just leaned back, took a nice deep breath, tried to hint to him as to what he should do while I’m on the phone. He couldn’t even take the hints. He still didn’t get it. He said things like: “What do you do?” Really? I just freaking gave you my information, my link, and told you what I was. I even said: “Didn’t you see my bio on…?” and I gave him the link for that. No. I had sent him things and he had the links to my bio in there. You would think, if nothing else, he would be pulling it up as he talks to me. Folks, if you’re in sales, do a little bit of prep ahead of time. Make sure that you’re able to get on the phone and as best as possible seem like you’re interested in the person, know a little bit about them, and make sure you’ve thought of things that relate to you and them and your company, and what your company can do for them. Don’t brag about your company. They don’t give a dang about your company. What can the company do for them? Then you can get into all the testimonials and the support material. I think from now on and I recommend you do the same, when I get a call from one of these folks I’m going to refer them to this episode. This will be episode number 81. I’m going to say: “Go to www.LifeUnsettled.com/81,” tell them to listen to it and call back. If they don’t have my information together then, I’m just hanging up. I suggest you do the same thing. I wasted like 40 minutes on the phone. I needed some things from this particular person, so I did. Otherwise, I would have hung up right at the beginning. But I and I imagine you may, too, get calls from these lazy salespeople on a regular basis. I’ll just ask them to call back after they’ve listened. The process of some of the sales call was really crazy, too. He was asking me things as if he was talking to a person who had just started out doing certain things, someone who had never been in business. There are all kinds of things that he could have just said, like: “Are you familiar with X, Y? Should I go on to this?” There was lots of ways he could have skipped on it or been complementary in the way that he asked, instead of trying to tell me how to tie my shoes. That’s basically what it was. “How to turn on a light switch.

What happens at the Olympics and what we get out of it(what do we learn for our own success)? You may or may not get the same things I get out of it, but I really was taken by some comments during interviews by a couple of the gymnasts that really sung home. It’s frequently thought that a person who has done as well as Simone Biles or Aly Raisman are somehow destined, that they’re just built that way and it works. They may have some special abilities beyond somebody else, but you have to know and acknowledge what it really takes. Simone Biles was asked that question and she said: “Yes, most people have no understanding how much it really took.” The fact that she was not able to go to homecomings, prom dances, all of the football games, all of the parties. She missed all of them. She was always in the gym all day long. A lot of hard work. It was definitely not easy and it was definitely not always fun. I partly want to refer to some of the other episodes where I talked about passion. You could say: “Well, she must have had this tremendous passion.” When she didn’t like it, probably hated the hard work at times, at that point did she have passion? Probably not. She was able to work her way through it. Why? Because she had committed to her goal of being the best she could be in her sport in the gymnasium. Aly Raisman made the same kind of comments, a lot of sacrifices, personal things that she’d love to do that she basically had to give up in order to spend all that time and energy in the gym. When she came back from 2012 and said she wanted to compete again for 2016, at first her coach just pushed her off to the side until he saw that she really wanted it badly. Of course, she says: “All of the hard work and dedication is worth it,” but that’s not the way you necessarily feel during the process. Most people lose the fact or the idea as to how much hard work and effort goes into getting to be like them. Okay, you’re not going to be competing in the Olympics, winning gold medals or silver medals even, but whatever you’re doing, are you working hard enough, are you making the sacrifices? I have a sacrifice episode you can go look at. Are you involved? Do you understand passion is not just something like: “Gee, I’d love to be a dancer so I’d love to be an actor”? It has to be available, it has to be a big enough market you can fit into, and you have to compete so heavily for it. Most of all, you have to know how to do it. For example, I never was able to gain any muscle, any weight at all, and I was having trouble with my knees. My best friend at the time in the military was a champion powerlifter. He won the Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico Tristate Heavyweight Division, so he truly was a champ. He took me aside and he coached me. I exercised and I followed him. He coached me through three months and one week, and I just did everything he told me to do, exactly as he told me to do it (see episode #7). If I started to look to the side, he’d say: “Hey, back down here.” I ate with him. I did everything with him. People at the end of that time or actually a little bit before that time were walking up to me. There was so much progress, such a tremendous difference that people were walking up to me, saying: “Gee, what’d you do? Would you mind showing me?” Of course I’d say: “Sure, I’d be glad to,” but of course they weren’t willing to put in the effort. When I went to graduate school at Berkeley, there was a lot of stress involved by the time I got into the end of my second year, beginning of my third year, and I realized: “Gee, maybe I better get back into exercising.” I did nothing new, nothing different. I followed exactly what Joe taught me to do, and I got to be the second biggest at a big California gym all by just following exactly what it was, and putting in the effort and the hard work (but never more than 3x/week and less than 45 min/day), which then of course aided my graduate studies as well because I had more energy and...

Cognitive dissonance and how it affects business. In this episode, the psycho-babble is reduced to much of the root cause and why there is an easy fix, although most will not ever do it. A definition is that cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time. It occurs when someone is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas, or values. Isn't that something that quickly resembles making decisions too early. That is, a person arrives at a conclusion and then as new information or ideas come to be known, they are weighing the decision already made versus one new data point. This all quickly sounds like much of the election this year in 2016. I'm not talking politics nor any side. What I am referring to is the large number of people that long ago made up their mind on either side. When new information arrives and asked about it, they don't care. It may conflict with their preconceived ideas, which they will not re-evaluate. Rather, they will defend them to the end. What concerns me, however, is not politics but your decisions in life an business. Someone who has an inconsistency, dissonance, is uncomfortable, but briefly, as they tend to avoid situations and information that will conflict with their decisions. Yes, even with new information, because it arrives one drop at a time, they push it away! I point out here that decisions should not be made until it is necessary for exactly the reasons discussed. Why? Let's say you have a list of 37 pros and 25 cons on some topic and assume they are all of equal weight to make it easy. So, right now, you make the decision or belief it should be done or is positive. Well, over time with new information arriving, but one drip at a time, the tally is really 49 pros to 57 cons. You are on the wrong side of the issue. The key is to make decisions when necessary, not to hold opinions for the sake of arriving at conclusions! This goes a long way to avoiding cognitive dissonance.

Everybody is always wondering how to get a competitive advantage. In this episode, I discuss how to use honesty and integrity as a competitive edge. An interesting dilemma it’s actually pointed out that almost everyone thinks of themselves as honest. But when I ask how many people do you know that are honest, I usually get an answer like very few. So while everybody thinks of themselves as honest, they generally don’t think other people are. This means that people have differing opinions of what honesty is. Well, this just means it’s a lot harder to be perceived as honest then you might think. You will not only have to achieve honesty based on your own criteria, but I’m more global criteria as well. In the episode, I gave several examples of how the perception of honesty can lead to much stronger and bigger and better relationships. While this seems like a difficult maybe even very hard process be perceived as honest and with high integrity, by its very nature that makes it a huge competitive advantage. Now, confidence in your honesty can also lead to problems. It is important to combine it with humility. What this means if you are building trust with customers, workers and other colleagues.  This gives you the ability to become a true confidant to others. I give some examples how this helps me tremendously. I also give a couple of examples of people who said things of me or to me including Lee Iacocca. Just think of how you feel went somebody makes unrealistic statements of promises to you. I’m always very disappointed when I hear people promising that they can help people get to 6 to 7 figures very quickly. Most of those people, I happen to know are not making very much money themselves.  Now, there are some that are doing quite well. But something like seven figures is an extreme rarity. So, set your own competitive advantage by not making unrealistic promises and building trust that leads to long-term relationships. I will make you one promise. With most people trying to reach a goal with the quick fix, you may take a little longer but will have a tremendous competitive advantage and longer-term relationships. Check out my new website ThomasOGradyPhD.com and my new book “The Mechanics for Breakthrough Success.”  Let me know what you think. Thank you!

Teamwork, team building and how ego can adversely affect your efforts.  The biggest mistake I see consistently across companies is that every individual wants to own everything, that is, every idea. Every person wants to take each idea and show that it’s at least in part theirs or it is theirs.  What is more important success or your ego? Unfortunately, most can’t seem to determine or differentiate between the two. Now, teamwork or Team building is all about buy-in.  The idea of course, is to get everybody joining forces together to accomplish something. Take yourself out of the picture In this episode, I give you a couple of examples of things I did to include everyone except me. That is, I actually intentionally left out myself in order to get tremendous acceptance. I also give you a very detailed explanation of how the very same system the Japanese use is completely compatible and inside an American company. So you decide, what do you want profitability or success or the credit for an idea? You follow these examples and ideas you’ll be pleased with the results. By the way, almost everything I have ever seen trying to explain Japanese systems was wrong. They just don’t really understand the Japanese culture. If someone says they just bought a new car, do you ever hear somebody say, ‘I got a new (mentions the car)’. Consensus Kills Results The very concept of consensus is extremely annoying to me! Why? You’ll hear in this episode,” Consensus is the Minimization of Maximum Solutions.”  I am just going to let you think on that one. But the idea is that consensus is a compromise on every facet of a solution amongst all members in the group. The key to the solution is that you have not let your ego get in the way of progress, success and team building. You have teamwork. In here, I explain how the head of one company, where I worked, went ballistic because I reached profitability when he said wasn't possible.  He actually felt embarrassed rather than coming out and joining me in a celebration. Now I didn’t even celebrate nor did I even say anything because being quiet was more important to survival. I’m sorry, that is crazy. I hope you can take some of these ideas and use humility.  Create teamwork through good team building whether it’s in your company or amongst your cohorts. Pick up my just released book, "The Mechanics for Breakthrough Success" at Amazon, https://LifeUnsettled.com/bts Just implement a few of the ideas and you will be very pleased.  

Success in business requires a true comprehensive look at the business both internally and externally. Most businesses fail. The numbers most commonly stated are 80 to 90 percent of businesses fail. So, in this episode, the topic is how to reduce the probability that yours is one of those failures. By understanding and knowing what might cause failure, you are also aiding both the success and the growth of your company. When starting a business, you should always have at least the basics of the business plan. This serves several purposes. The most apparent is keeping you on target and focused. However, it also drastically increases your probability of success in business. With limited time, I will cover the various topics that should at least be monitored. You should have a thorough industry analysis that is continuously look at and updated. An industry analysis includes an understanding of the size of the industry, the technology being used and its future as well as the changes affecting it. Customer understanding an analysis are of course key to developing the right product and positioning that product to be attractive to the customer. This includes more than just an avatar person, but the comprehensive demographics. A thorough understanding of competitors as well as potential competitors. Potential competitors really means the ease of entry into the business. Yes, if it’s easy for you to get into the business, it is easy for others to enter as well. That means even if you found a profitable business it may soon be crowded with competition. Also, there is only so much in a person’s budget. For example, if you are trying to sell the latest antioxidant juice, it is not only other juices that our competitors. You have competitors from other products that reduce people’s antioxidant levels as well as the limits on a person’s willingness to spend on their health. That is, everyone has a budget constraint even if it is a little flexible. Customer satisfaction, while often quoted, is usually not well understood. It can be so much more comprehensive than just keeping somebody happy that is buying your product. While it is very difficult and much more expensive to get new customers, many businesses forget how important it is to keep existing customers happy and returning. Probably the most important factor in success in business is good financial planning. Rapid growth can actually kill a business. Yes, one company that I know, grew too fast.Now almost everybody reading this, will gloss over this part as it is and can be one of the most boring. However, 70% of business failures our caused by business financial mismanagement. One example I discuss is a $10 million company that almost went out of business because it was growing rapidly and their success was actually killing them. Taking a comprehensive look at your business helps you to see the alternatives. You are constantly having in mind the overall long-run goals of the company and the pieces needed for long term success. Too many people focus on the short run and dying in the long run. This episode was partly motivated at the request of a listener along with the constant drum beat of bad advisors telling people to do things at most times don’t make sense. Please, only take advice from people who have done it. There’s enough information in social media and other websites to differentiate whether somebody really has the background and experience to justify the advice they’re giving. I continuously see people who just want to start a business and the business they start is either business advice or business coaching or life coaching. Starting your business is not hard, but being a success in business is.(See Episode 11)  

How do you achieve success and how do you or can you know your limits? This episode was the result of not being able to answer easily a question on a radio interview. That question was,” what was the key trigger or breakthrough in your life?” My problem with the question really goes back to the title of my book,” The Mechanics for Breakthrough Success.” Let me explain why this question is absolutely so important. If you have a goal in life, when you are successful you can look back and see what triggered that success. It is important to note that if you are repeatedly succeed to new levels, you will have breakthroughs along each one. It requires motivation, an open mind to new opportunities, a willingness to move outside your comfort zone and to engage in and with new audiences, i.e. new contacts and friends. Another way to explain this is that most people as they approach their goal they start to slow down as they fill in their success. However, as you’re on your journey to your goal, you going to learn new things and see new opportunities. The difference is explained more fully in the audio episode.  When you see these new opportunities, do you set new goals or do you get off the success train at the stop and enjoy the success you’ve already had. So, when asked the question, I have several things to list. When I was in the military and went Russian language school, completing something that I never thought was possible for me. The breakthrough was when a professor sat down with a friend and myself and put it all in perspective. Another breakthrough came when I was put in charge of Russian analysis. Another came when I was offered the nominations for three fellowships at Hofstra University. Another breakthrough came when I learned Japanese better than I ever learned Russian by applying what I learned in the language school. I was certainly shocked upon being admitted to UC Berkeley for the graduate program in mathematical and statistical economics. It was an even further surprise and breakthrough when a Nobel prize winner, Gerard Debreu, asked and urged me to do a dissertation under him. There are several others mentioned in the episode and the book, but that is not important. Only what you can glean from the experience and how I learned from it is important. Now, each of these breakthroughs were very significant and got me to achieve success in new, different and better things. Each one was created by the success of earlier ones. It doesn't matter whether this is personal success or business success as you are building your skill set and opportunities. As I approached the goal I was pursuing in each case new opportunities I arose. Additionally, not only did each goal give me more confidence but they were many mini goals along the path. So part of the process of achieving success is that success compounds opportunities. The problem largely for most people is that they do not recognize nor desire to work towards new opportunities after achieving what they thought they were going to do. There is more detail in the episode and a Great deal more in my just-released book, ”The Mechanics for Breakthrough Success.”

The decision making process and having a basic understanding is useful for understanding customers and employees but probably most important ourselves. In order to influence customers to buy our product or services, it's useful to better understand why sometimes it is so difficult to get people to change their mind. Given that it is difficult to change someone's mind, customer retention is that much more crucial to business success. The easiest way to understand some of this is to look at politics today. Now, I don't really care whether you like Hillary or Trump. This is only an example and is not taking any side. Everyone seems to agree that there are some people who support one or the other no matter what they hear, will not change their mind. The same thing can happen with the opinions of companies or products. The difference with a company is that usually the stubborn opinion is usually in the negative. That is also much worse. In the political case in this example, the timing is what is most important. Nobody has to make a decision on which lever they will press until November. However, by making a decision months ago, they are left defending it when they hear one bit of new information. That is, they are not weighing the entire database information but rather the new piece versus their complete decision. Similarly, I have seen when somebody explains or when I show or tell somebody what an expert does. I get an interesting response. I often hear," well, this is the way I do it." Have you heard that yourself? Do you defend your idea what method no matter who is trying to help? Probably one of the biggest secrets to my successes is to keep an open mind as long as possible. One practice surprised me immensely and greatly aided customer satisfaction, I saw used several times. That practice or method was allowing an angry customer to vent their anger. Afterwards it was apparent because of the process followed. Now, usually you may hear a person cut off the complaining or screaming customer in order to answer their questions. So what is missing? First, as we've already mentioned, you may not yet know the entire story nor the real clause of complaint. You may have made your decision too early. What he did with the angry customer was wait until the person was finished. Anything before that might have appeared to be arguing. When the customer was finished, he was able to acknowledge the customers concerns; address the issues and in some cases remedy parts of the problem. As it was only after venting, the customer might listen. In understanding the decision making process, whether it's someone else's or our own, we have a better chance of achieving success.

Just about everybody will say: “I have no time.” I’m sure you’ve heard that. Just about everybody utters it at some point. What in the world does it mean? First of all, very successful people look at you kind of funny or at least in their minds think of you kind of funny when you keep on saying you don’t have any time. Everybody has the same amount of time. Time is the great equalizer. So much is wasted, that wise use can increase your relative success First of all, you need to find time if you want to be successful, if you want to do something new, if you want to make changes in your life. More important: Change the expression. Don’t say: “I don’t have time.” Find another one. It sounds good, but: “I don’t have any time” is really just a great excuse. Why is it a great excuse? Everybody uses it, so it’s verified. It’s too easy and it’s not a positive outlook on your life or your future. Before I go on, let me tell you for this episode I’m giving you a lot of summary and some details, but I will have a handout that you can get at www.LifeUnsettled.com/time. It’s a very detailed PDF that will give you a lot of suggestions you can work through and get more time in your life. First of all, procrastination. Another thing that people don’t realize is many of the things they do that they think is accomplishing things. It’s all the little things that they do during the day, running the errands, basically busy work. Yes, it needs to be done, but it’s not the most important. It is a form of procrastination. It’s just disguised procrastination. Some important things to keep in mind: Move on, that is don’t dwell on whatever you’re doing. Whatever you’re doing, if you can, set a timer for it. If you have an iPhone, an Android, or something, there’s a clock feature there that has a timer on it. If you think it’s going to take an hour and 50 minutes, two hours, an hour…set the time! Don’t go more than two hours on anything. Even serious, concentrated work, time it and push yourself to get it done to the best of your ability within that timeframe. You might go back and do some other work on it, summarize it, fix it up, etc. That’s almost like another task, so you’ve completed one and you’re going to do another one. You’re going to edit it or you’re going to fix it up, whatever it is. Another is keep energy up. One of the problems with not having enough time sometimes is that your energy is not good enough, not strong enough, and that very often is that you really do have to take out and dedicate some time for regular exercise. That will keep your energy level up throughout the day. If you turn around, go to exercise or do something say at 3:30-4:00 in the afternoon, you will have that energy. You’ll get rid of the stress and you’ll have that energy into the evening. Time is the most limiting factor, but also the great equalizer. There is income inequality, but no time inequality. We all get the same amount, every day! Separate your high productive time. When are you most productive during your day? Is it in the morning? That’s what it is for me. Is it in the evening? Whenever it is possible, set that time aside and that’s when you get that harder work done. One of the things that I really concentrate well in the morning. A lot of people think that mornings are not good for them, but it may be better than they realize. One of the reasons is, in the morning you have no things that have interfered with anything yet, there’s no email that you’ve read and other things that you might’ve done that causes you to be thinking a dozen different directions. You just start out, take your shower, take your walk, whatever it is to wake up, water on the face, get your work done before you do your email or before your mind starts drifting off into other places. On top of that, if the night before you were thinking about the topic or the project you were going to do that morning,

I’m going to talk about the kind of women I like and motivation hustle. No, no, no – this is not an eHarmony or Match.com episode, not at all. By the way, kudos and thank you very much to Trishia and Julie for urging me to do this episode. I had these discussions, saying this was going to be a future episode, and they said they were really anxious to hear it, so here goes. The business women that is has motivation hustle develops drive like an immigrant. What I’m talking about is women, as we’re talking about women going into business, being entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial, success-oriented, driven, etc. There’s a lot of things that happen in a woman’s life that’s a little different than a guy’s. In particular, first, many, many women will start out, and as they enter college, you’ll notice a difference. Go to any college, if somebody wants to argue with me over this, just go to any university, and you’ll see the engineering courses, the ECS electrical engineering computer science, computer science, mathematics, etc. – the statistics are filled with guys. Generally, the women have a much larger majority in the things, whether it be arts, sociology, social work, etc., that feel-good. The key difference they found it in colleges, is that guys tend to pick things that are going to earn them more money later on. Women tend to pick things that feel better or feel good. By the way, before you send me anything, I know this is not universal, it’s not everybody, but it is very largely biased towards those two categories. What happens? Many of the factors—and this is actually kind of crazy—many of the factors are because women are thinking more in terms of both marriage, even though they may not admit it. They realize marriage, family, etc. is going to lead to somebody else, the husband, etc. taking the major role for income. They’re more geared towards other things. I thought this changed about 40 years ago, but apparently it hasn’t a great deal. Actually, when you think about this, this is absolutely crazy, because here, if 50% of marriages fail and the mother usually—I should say almost always—has custody of the kids – Hell! It’s much more important for the women to pick those higher-paying careers with a greater return on the college degree. They should be concerned about that when they’re younger. Here’s what happens when eventually the families are formed and that case, which I would like to say is unlikely, but where somebody is divorced. This ends up, in some cases, leading to superstar women. But first let me explain that. When there’s a divorce… I’m going to break down what happens to women into three categories. One of which is, and you’ve all seen these women who are absolutely decimated. They spend their time whining and complaining, etc. Unfortunately, there’s too many people that help enable that. A middle category is a category of women who are trying to constantly balance having some income or as much income as they can, taking care of their kids, and being at all of the events, and everything else. Unfortunately, those also have a lot holding them back, because of taking care of the kids and all of the other things that are involved, but they’re doing as much as they can. There’s a third category of women who comes into a whole different drive, and in here is what I really have as the purpose for this episode. There are really two purposes. One for business owners anywhere to help identify the women who are really just absolutely wonderful to have to work with, etc., those are the women I like. The second purpose is a signal to the women to realize and reflect a little bit on some of the choices that are around you. Now, I’m not here to paint any pretty pictures. I just want to help and see people succeed. This third category of women is what I would refer to as a new immigrant class. That is: She stands there, usually setting up her own business of some kind, and she will not let that fail.

I want to talk about one of the problems that I see in the area of self-motivation or hustle. In the first part,  I just want to talk little bit about the quandary of motivation;  the difficulties people have who have much more opportunity than what you might have. If it is difficult for them, how much more difficult it might be for you.  In the end,  I am going to give you four points tell keep yourself relatively motivated. To be successful you must hustle. For long term business success, hustle needs to be sustained. I often look, study, and see: How do people motivate themselves, how do you learn, how do you succeed, how do you make progress? Recently with a whole bunch of events that I’ve seen on TV, etc., related to the sports world, as well as other people, comes with an interesting question. If people who already have great promise for success, that it’s even guaranteed, they already have the success, they already have the millions – if they can’t motivate themselves to just follow the rules or be good to collect the money, how are you going to get somebody who’s not guaranteed, who’s starting out and saying: “Gee, I wonder if I can become a millionaire, a multimillionaire and make all that money. How will I have whatever I decide as success”? How do you motivate those people if you can’t motivate the people who already have the guarantee? They are different people. They are different situations, different people. You have to have, already built into your DNA, those motivational factors, those factors of life that say: “This is what I should do, this is what’s right, this is what’s wrong.” Recently, take a look, the most prominent example, of course, is Johnny Manziel. He had a life that was guaranteed to be wonderful for him. Now, maybe because his parents are well off or something, he doesn’t think he’ll ever have to worry about that. Whatever it is that’s going on, whatever that constant decision to make himself look bad on everything from TV, to selfies, the constant ongoing mistakes that he seems to make. But he’s not the only one; there’s lots of them. There’s been lots of people in the football world or other sports world, where they have done things that are just ruining their career. Just the other day we had the NFL draft, a few days ago, and during that draft, here was this video that pops up, and this guy lost somewhere between 7 and 12 million dollars because that video showed him smoking from a bong with a gasmask on. It’s not just those in those situations. There was somebody who was guaranteed a ton of money, and he knew it, even though that was a couple years old, he knew it well back then because he was that much of a star player; expected to be the top draft pick, other than a quarterback. Let me go a little bit adrift, then, from just football players or other sports figures. I use those as an example, because these people are guaranteed a great income that’s going to be provided for them, or they’re already under contract and they screw up. What happens to the person who’s trying to work their way up, going to college or other things? Take a look at some things. It turns out 30% of people being interviewed lose the interview not because of what goes on in the interview, but because then when the research is done on Facebook or some other social media, they don’t want that person or that person of character coming into the office. In discussion with some younger people, I’ve had them say things like: “Well, that’s not anybody else’s business, or that’s self-expression,” etc. Fine, it’s self-expression, but somebody who was going to give you a job just found out things about you that they feel uncomfortable with, bringing you in, having you go out, and be “their employee.” How do you stop that kind of behavior besides just giving knowledge and information? How does somebody motivate themselves, or just to follow certain guidelines of their own as when they represent or put th...

This topic is probably my favorite on many, many dimensions, and that is causality. Causality, what do I mean? Causality means something that causes something else, or is a partial cause for something else. The study, the watching, the asking of questions to delve into the depths of causality are critical for everything, from anything you’re going to do in business because it’s going to have an effect on the customer, or: What do you do that has an effect that’s negative or positive for the customer now? If you don’t understand that, what are you going to do in the future, all the way to your kids. Just take a look at what your kids do and how they do. I’m not saying there’s right or wrong answers, but what I am saying is: Always look underneath the covers. Some of the examples are really kind of interesting. You take a look at kids, for example: What do you do if your kid does something wrong? What happens if your kid doesn’t study? If you repeatedly don’t do anything, are they going to study? What happens? Watch any time—you may have done this, or caught yourself in this, or one of your spouses or whatever—what happens when a baby cries? You’ll see very often that the mother picks up the baby, and then the baby stops. There is sometimes that that’s necessary or appropriate, and other times you shouldn’t pick up the baby. Now, I don’t know the answers to that, not at all. I don’t have the foggiest idea, but watch how sometimes babies train their mothers because they want to be picked up, they want to be held. Heck, I do, too. (But I’m a little too big for the pick up part.) Anyway, also take a look at education, everything that’s happening in education today. Here, again, ask questions. I see all the time, and it really, really gets to me when I see these flyers outside or the thing in the mail that says: “It’s time to vote for a new bond issue,” or this, or that, or the other thing, and it’s usually about something like: We need lower classroom size, or new classrooms, or more classrooms, or more teachers. First of all, there’s an over-supply of potential teachers out there. There’s all kinds of women, in general, (some men but mostly women), go through the education departments at our universities and then can’t find jobs. Why? Because the unions close them off because of the tenure, etc., role. Then you think of: What’s the cause in there? The tenure causes not only the good, but also the bad teachers to be retained. The idea is supposed to protect the teachers. Why are we protecting them? They’re not supposed to be giving political speeches in class, either. They’re supposed to be teaching our kids. It’s also not a popularity place. They’re not supposed to be winning over the students, not in the sense to be popular, but in the sense to be respected, well thought of, and to be teaching. Back to classroom size, much smaller than when I went to school, so the problem isn’t the classroom size, it’s that they can’t have discipline. The problem is other things that they have to figure out, but they have to go back to the root cause. Take a look at government programs, how many programs there are for poverty, etc. None of them ever get deleted. What are they doing, what do they do? What is the purpose behind them? Okay, yes, to make somebody so that they’re not destitute or unhealthy, or something like that. But if it doesn’t work, why doesn’t it work? What happens when we supply or provide something, and make it easy to get? How easy should it be to get? I mean, these are difficult questions without easy answers, but they should be discussed and they should be thought about. The idea that when you have a program that makes it so that somebody has the ability to get income, and food, etc., and if they start making money, they’re going to lose that – they’ll be afraid to go out and make money. There’s a disincentive. I’ve met, over time, a lot of women who were single moms, and they would talk to me,

Many of you out there want to be an entrepreneur, or you want to earn extra money, or find an easy path to the money that you need for new things, new stuff, and your future. One question. Many people right now and are also tempted or drawn into the idea of an MLM or network marketing. Is an MLM the answer, or your answer? I’m not going to give you an answer or the answer, because I want you to think about whether that particular opportunity or situation is good for you. But wait a minute, this explanation is not just about MLM or network marketing, because I want you to think about any business in a similar vein. I want to give you the thoughts and questions that come to my mind, so that you can ask yourself whether it’s network marketing or whether it’s some business you want to do it on the side, whether it makes sense, whether it makes sense to you or whether it makes sense at all. If you’re going to be spending your evenings and weekends starting a business, in any case, be careful on how you do it. First of all: Can you make money? I don’t mean success in the sense that you’re bringing in income, but are you actually making money? Net revenue, that is, after expenses, are you actually bringing in money? If you’re talking about other people or other people’s examples, for example in network marketing you’ll hear the top earners and all the wonderful things they’re making. The first rule would be to ignore the income of the top earners, particularly if they come in early or they’re given a position. Many of them have sweetheart deals to help start the company up. You don’t have that deal. If you do, congratulations. I’ve been offered that a couple of times, but have turned it down for various reasons. Some of those you will specifically hear in a little while. You need to find out, ask, and get the actually income that’s being generated by people. Not the people that you’re talking to there at some meeting, or that knocks on your door, or that you know is a friend or family member or something else, but rather, verifiable income printed and put out by the company. Why do I say the company? Because they have a legal liability to tell the truth. Those other people that tell you all kinds of things, generally, frequently lie. If you have to rely on somebody else’s income, get their annual income for a couple years, and I mean get it by either them showing it to you on the company website or the 1099s for a couple of years to show you that they really truly earned that money. Your income must come from the company in one way or the other, or some verifiable government document. Then, what about the income? How does the income come into the company? You’ll hear things like: “Oh, you’re going to earn income five ways, or seven ways, or eight ways,” you’ll find all, but probably one or two, are all things that are only geared if you attain some supersonic level, which there is only a couple of people up there, and those are usually the people that started at the beginning of the company. Yes, there is always an exception someplace, but very rare, and those exceptions are people who come in with a lot of contacts from major players that have been in other companies. Ignore that, and then take a look at what you’re really doing. This is a business? Okay, then, does it make sense? What is the product or service that is being sold? If the video intro that you see focuses on the money… I’ve actually seen where some friends of mine, and I looked at them only because they were long-term friends, and they never said what the thing was. They basically talked about: “Oh, you’re going to make this, you’re going to make that,” etc., but they never made a case for whatever the product or the service was. Make sure it makes a case. It’s got to make an economic case to make this a “viable business,” not just a promise of a lottery ticket to you. As I say this, what I also want to caution you about is the other side. Yes,

Today I want to get a little further into some of the ideas of the customer perspective. I talked earlier (last episode) about finding a problem, and that solving it could be your next new business. Another area is: Take a look that problems that are sort of solved. I say, “sort of solved,” in the sense of something else has had an unintended purpose. Whenever that happens, that was a market opportunity that was missed. Do notice over and over again that I say, “customer perspective,” that’s because it’s what the customer sees; not you. Very different. Most people, and very often as an economist, we talk about customer demand, but demand is a function of all the attributes of the products, the characteristics of the person that’s buying it, etc. That’s where it all comes in, but: What is it about that person and what is it about that product that make it a nice fit? I’ve always wondered why most people can’t really see that, and I think I have a theory on it, anyway, and I’ll get to it at the end. First, let’s talk about some of the unintended purposes of products. Someplace somewhere along the line, baking soda, Arm & Hammer Baking Soda was basically for baking; use it in dough for rising, etc. What happened? Somebody someplace along the line must have stored it in their refrigerator, and noticed all of a sudden their refrigerator didn’t stink as it usually did, so now not only did people get encouraged to use it, Arm & Hammer came up with a version itself that is directly related to the refrigerators. Its purpose is to help reduce odors in refrigerators. They sell that for that purpose that way. They say it is not to be used for baking. So, it is not as pure, my guess is that it’s probably then either cheaper to make or it might have been runoffs or something where impurities have creeped into the process, so rather than throwing that batch away, they make it into the non-edible baking soda, and you stick it in your refrigerator. People noticed that for grating, people used some of the microplane wood rasps. So, people using microplane rasps for hardwood, literally for grating of things, cheeses, etc. So, what does that do? People then realize there’s a marketplace there, and they start selling graters, somewhat looking like a rasp (long, thin graters) that work great for the kitchen, exclusively for the kitchen. New product, same idea, same concept. Here’s one that I find very interesting: Q-tips, those cotton swabs that you have. First, what do you use Q-tips for? Most people don’t use them for the purpose that they were made. Most people use them for the purpose that they’re warned against not to use them for, that’s right, Q-tips does advertise and say it has a multitude of uses. Of course they want to say that because there’s sort of an implication, there, of some of the things, like your ear. They even have, let me read this to you, this warning: “If used to clean ears, stroke swab gently around the outer surface of the ear,” then in bold print: “without entering the ear canal.” I think everybody uses Q-tips for cleaning the ear canal; maybe they try to not push it in too far. That’s what they use it for. It’s probably the major use for Q-tips, so of course, they advertise it as: “There is no softer or safer swab than Q-tips cotton swabs, ideal for a multitude of uses.” Minoxidil was actually for high blood pressure. It was a treatment for high blood pressure. Somebody found out—how this happened, I have no idea—that it would grow hair, and they started selling it as Rogaine. Probably it was just a person taking it regularly, and started to get the fuzz on the top of their head. What about pie plates? Until I was reminded this, I had forgotten about it. Yeah, when there was a pie plate, the pie was done, we cleaned off the plate, we’d use it as what’s today called a Frisbee. So, somebody took something that everybody else was getting for free, made it out of plastic, made it look a little neater,

Today I want to talk about your business, the business you may have, may want to start, and what opportunities are out there today. Really, more the purpose of how exploding the capabilities and the opportunities are. Really, how to find your business success or your next business idea. Can you find a problem and turn it into a business? That’s really what it’s all about. Success in business starts with the idea. While you have much to do, it must be something that is solid. Think of nothing more than you go into Starbucks, and you get the little spill sticks. How many times before they had spill sticks to stick into a coffee cup, or if you forget them, you’re in your car or something else, and there’s a little bit that spills off, or it spills on to your hand when you’re walking around? That’s all a tremendous business that somebody found, and saw: “I can have this little thing called a spill stick, stick it into a cup, and each and every cup,” and every Starbucks around has a little package of those to give out to anybody. Of course, I always want to put a little bit of caution, there, because: Because something is a problem for you doesn’t mean it’s a problem for somebody else. When you take a look at something, and think of an issue, you also want to look at: “Who is affected? Who does the problem really harm/hurt, or would like the solution? And how big is the marketplace for that solution?” You can’t have a solution somebody can’t pay for, not unless you can reinvent how it’s done in such a way that it lowers the cost to make it marketable. Then define and decide who’s the market. We’ve always discussed the demographics of the market. Today, most people talk of an avatar coming out from the internet days, and the emoticons, etc. Same thing, same concept. The only thing that’s sometimes is done incorrectly is they talk of an avatar, as if you’re going to have one person. It sounds good, but most products are differentiated across some demographic groups. Start out with one. Find out, though, what others might be affected, because there most likely is more than one marketplace that really your product suits very, very well. It may be just multiple age groups, maybe mostly 35- to 44-year-olds, but it turns out that 25- to 34-year-olds are very heavily invested into the same thing, maybe because they want to mimic the people who are slightly older than them. Notice it’s not just notifying and noticing that they want that product, but they want it because they’re mimicking something of a slightly older age. That affects how you position the product. So, you identify what problems people are having. It’s obvious in the one I just mentioned, spill sticks with Starbucks coffee. There’s also other things. Take the GPS. The GPS now, and this is more modern obviously, because we’re talking about not only GPS, but getting into mapping, and then linking it into your reminders. So all of a sudden, when you’re pulling up to the grocery store and your list of groceries that you want to buy pops up. Why? Because it was in your reminders, the GPS found it. Just you’ve created something where the applications are talking to one another. Keep in mind you don’t necessarily have to know how to do all that programming. That’s where you have, as I mentioned in a previous episode, your virtual team, your virtual company. There’s a town nearby that you go to for a variety of different things, and as you pass over the bridge, or under the bridge, or over the river, whatever it is – all of a sudden, the list of errands pops up for all the different things that you need to go see in that town or take care of in that town. So your lists are right there on your phones. Things are constantly being created, invented that are new that are taking advantage of the new and different technologies. Of course, we’ve seen Facebook and Twitter have been around for a while, and now we have Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat,

I’ve got a really interesting topic that so many people make mistakes. It’s absolutely crucial if you’re in a business, in a company, starting your business, building your business. I’ll refer to it as listening to the customer. Everybody talks about listening to the customer, but why do so many companies and people get it wrong? Many companies, even very large ones, have no idea where their markets are, or who is in the market, or who might be leaving the market; who might be entering the market. Sometimes it’s just utter ignorance, sometimes the market has changed and they’re not keeping up with it. Think in terms of the auto industry. Back in the, say, 70s and before, there were really three companies here, and while there were those three companies, they were sort not really even competing very heavily; it was more what advertisements they had on TV, and traditions and loyalty to the different companies. Something happened, something changed, the Japanese came in with quality products, they were different in many different ways – it changed the market, and they weren’t ready for it. Sometimes it’s an accident, and sometimes they just don’t have a complete picture. Something that I had given in speeches in a couple of companies (the last time was at Microsoft, another time was all the way back when I worked at General Motors), and that was early on (well, in Microsoft it was much later), I was asked to talk to the people that were what they call the evangelists all over the world, and they had come in. What I started out with was letting them know: People and businesses don’t give a damn about your products! There were a few open mouths in the audience and there was not a peep in the room. What they care about is what your products can do for them. Can it solve the problem? That’s what you focus on. It sounds obvious, but when we have a product and we have engineers who are developers in whatever industry it is, that have developed and built new features. They’re more interested in showing people their features than what the features can do for the business. A few different examples on this. First of all, we can go all the way back – there was a period of time with Chrysler, when it was in its financial difficulties, etc., it had terrible cars. I was inside Chrysler at the time, very often talking to key executives, and they basically just kept on saying: “We don’t have any good products.” They knew it themselves. I asked them: “Why are your customers buying them?” They said: “We don’t know. They’re terrible.” They literally admitted that. I picked their weakest, most horrible car, and I said: “If you’ve got over 100,000 people buying that car, why are they buying it? Find out why those people are buying it, and that’s what you advertise. You advertise what the people are buying it as their preference. That is your advantage.” “Advantage Chrysler,” that was the campaign. Many of you who are older probably remember it well. When I first brought it to Chrysler, they just said to me: “We don’t have any advantages.” It was because they didn’t know why their own customers were buying their products. Keep in mind: You find a niche in something or you find a hole in somebody else’s product. That is they don’t understand why somebody is buying their product – you can position yourself and advertise through marketing to position yourself as the advantage. Also, inappropriate or ineffective customer focus affects loyalty. When I was at Microsoft, one of the early things that I did. The training & certification areas were focusing on helping the developers from the different product groups, such as the database server, the operating system, Windows, or the mail server, etc. They wanted to help them showcase the new features. Again, remember what I said: Nobody cares about the features of your product; what they care about is what it can do for them. It’s the same thing when you get into training.

Today I want to discuss the idea of being an entrepreneur or entrepreneurial and entrepreneur risk. Part of the reason for this is as we’re talking throughout all of these episodes, we’re hinting or talking about the idea of having additional income, extra income, starting your own business, etc., and there are several different avenues for that, and I want to get clear on some of them and some of the methodologies of getting there, and what you really need to have inside of you. But first, what I’ll consider the three general categories of an entrepreneur. This is: You’re not working for a company, but you are doing something else. Now, some people (and this is a different classification by different people), some or many people would classify entrepreneur as somebody who starts their own business, but I don’t mean working independently, getting contracts or getting customers, but rather having employees, building a company which has complete financial responsibility, all the risk, and all the management and responsibility it entailed. That’s the real, true broadest definition of “entrepreneur”. Now, there’s two other things you could do, one of which is you could work completely independently, and be making things based on contracts. This could be something where somebody is working for another company, and they do it part time; they do it on evenings and weekends. Maybe they’re an electrician and they take side jobs, an electrician at a major company. Or they’re a painter, and then they take side jobs as well. Or they’re a systems person, and they help other people advertise on the internet or whatever, or by word of mouth, and they loan themselves out on nights and weekends to solve people’s problems. Or to build things that other people can use. The last is probably… Well, I’ll call it the newest because it’s risen into a new stage that didn’t exist before, and that’s really because of the internet, and that is this sort of quasi-company that you build that’s a virtual company, whereby you don’t really have employees, but you have lots of people that you’re relying on working with virtually. Now, they don’t have to be virtual; it could be down the street, some of them, but the idea is that you’re not really having that complete financial responsibility with them. That is, you don’t have to file all the papers and all the other things for employees, etc., but also, if something happens, you don’t need them anymore, there’s not the process of laying them off. Also, you go and you find somebody and they don’t work out, then you move on to the next person until you find that very special person, that is your special virtual assistant, or your special web development person that’s building your website and giving you ongoing support, or that social media person that you’re trying out different people and you find the right one that you just mesh. It may not be the best one; it may be the one that is best for you. So you’re building a company that’s a virtual company. This is much lower risk, and there’s an essential part to see the different here between that and what I referred to initially as an entrepreneur. So, depending on your age, you may want to go into some entrepreneurial activity, but it’s got to be something that’s inside of you. Now, what do I mean by that? It was interesting, you may not even know it yourself, but when I was younger, of course, I always thought that the idea was you were supposed to go work for a company, but I had done a lot of entrepreneurial activities when I was younger. So here it was that when I graduated and went to General Motors Research Labs, then General Motors, and Chase, and I got the opportunity, I built my own company. I built a consulting company, it became very large, extremely well-respected, covered around the world. As I transitioned out of that, I got another opportunity, and that opportunity was having a training center offered to me by Microsoft,

Today I’m going to talk about one of the biggest expenses a family ever has, and that is college, and the money it costs to send somebody to college. One of the big questions is, first of all: Is it worth it? Should it be done? Should somebody go? I want to discuss all of these. Colleges are forcing graduates into major debt. Is is worthwhile or are there better paths in life? Just an aside, colleges and universities are really in trouble right now. They’re bloated, and they’ve had rising tuition for many years, decades actually, and now they’re trying to figure out how to make things match for the students, because quite frankly, it’s becoming more and more difficult for people to go to school. The solutions that are being proposed are usually: “How do we subsidize the kids, or something else?” The real problem is the colleges themselves have bloated administrations, and bloated faculty in many cases, with incomes that are really unrealistic for what they should be getting. I say “should be getting,” because really, they’ve been negotiating from the standpoint that they always get this money from just raising tuition or alumni donations, pleading and begging for additional donations. Those two sources are not like you’re really negotiating directly with the person that pays the money. Somewhat similar, in essence, to the government. That’s just a little backdrop to give you where the problem really starts and started; not your solution to it. You have to make the decision. First, college costs $40,000 to $50,000 a year. I hear several that are over 50, a few that a slightly under 40, but that’s an awful lot of money. Think of it in these terms: What is the ROI? What is the return on that investment? Let me give you some comparisons. If you took that $40,000 to $50,000, let’s say you took $40,000, and that 20-year-old child (not an adult yet), that was put away in some sort of trust for them that could not be opened until they were 65 – they would have a retirement that would take care of them the rest of their lives. The second one could have been put aside for a house when they’re 30 or 32. All of these things, because of the compounding of interest, would be great investments. Let’s get back to college. If a parent, you have to say: Why? Everyone says that you have to get to college, it’s the ticket to a good or better job. Some say that it’s just what the kid wants. Ask the question: Is it worth it? Second: Does Jack or Jill deserve it? Three: Am I doing it because of peer pressure? Remember the peer pressure episode. Peer pressure, even indirectly. Somebody might not be saying to you: “What school is your kid going to?” but you see everybody else preparing their kids, and everybody else is talking about where their kids are going to go, and when they’re going to go to college, etc., and that indirect peer pressure. “Is it really worth it?” first of all. Is there a strong reason for a potential career that requires or should have college? The reason I say this is because I see so many people that finish college, and I meet them every day, and what are they doing? They’re working retail in Best Buy or someplace else, or they’re doing something else that doesn’t require or shouldn’t have ever required college. If they’re working as a waiter, waitress, or bartender, they don’t need to have gone to college. Many other things don’t require it. It used to be that college was a ticket to show future employers. It didn’t really prepare you by teaching you, necessarily, the skills; although, it did the skill of logical thinking, etc., but also perseverance and determination. It used to be 30-40 years ago, three quarters of people were failed out of college. Then they started more and more needing students to stay in to pay the bills, and they started with student evaluations of faculty, which when I was in college, they were just starting that, and I thought that was absolutely ridiculous.

I want to talk about the rich. Not in the way you usually hear it, particularly during this politically hot climate. What I’m talking about is we should be, instead of condemning them or worrying about them, encouraging them and using them. That’s right, use them for our benefit. Why do we need to use and have the rich there? I want to explain that a little bit, but let me first tell you a little analogy. Think in terms of the lottery now. Separately from everything else. We have the lottery. Every once in a while, we hear somebody won a hundred or more million dollars, etc. Why do people buy the tickets? The odds of winning are incredibly small. Why do they buy the tickets? They feel there’s some chance, some odds of them winning the jackpot. The jackpot used to be—now I’m talking about the Mega Millions, here, you can use different ones for different statistics, etc. but that’s the biggie—1 chance in 176 million, until I believe it was this past October, the odds changed, and they made it so that it would also bump up, because there would be fewer winners, it would bump up the prizes. Now the chances of winning are 1 in 259 million. It’s clearly a waste of money. When you hear somebody buying a ticket: Okay, I won’t condemn somebody who buys a ticket, figuring: “Okay, what the heck? It’s $2 or $1, whatever it is,” but when they say: “Oh, no, I buy a lot of tickets because it’ll increase my chances,” that is plumb idiotic, but they get there and they do that because they think there might be a chance of them winning. Let’s first look at—back to the rich—the distribution of income. Wouldn’t most people like to be in the position that basically 90-95% of the people are below them, that means they’re in the top 10%, 5%? What about that enormous number, the top 1%? Well, there are different ways of measuring it; by individuals, male, female, personal income, family income, household income, etc. Just to give you an idea just for individuals, because that’s usually what we talk about: The top 1% is $235,000 a year. This is 2014 data. The top 1% for families, everybody that’s related in that household as a family (not relatives) is $365,000 a year. Certainly not the outlandish numbers we hear, but yes, it is a lot of money. They are usually made out to be villains, or these people that somehow, nefariously, got their money from some “source” or something. Actually, 80% of the people who are considered rich came from poverty. This is why in so much that I talk about these things on the podcast of what you can do. Yes, you can at least do well. Keep in mind, the numbers are not that high, and these people didn’t have some special dispensation. 80% came from poverty. It also means a lot of them move in and out of poverty, up to being rich, and maybe lose it. They probably don’t fall all the way to the bottom, although some come close to it, and they get that way by what they do. In the case of what we’re talking about is starting a business. Why do people start a business? Because they feel they might or can be one of those that make those high incomes, but the numbers show that most people fail within five years. I hear the number 80%, according to Forbes. Most of those that start small businesses; stores, franchises, etc., work ridiculous hours and may only make 50,000 to 60,000 per year. It is only when they finally get in the case of franchises, say, three locations, that they start seeing those six-figure incomes. Yes, there are exceptions, there are always exceptions; but then, yes, so many of them die off. So, is it worth it? Well, it’s what drives people, just like the lottery. According to Houston Chronicle, there was a survey that had been done of franchises in the restaurant owners’ industry, and the average income was $47,000 as of 2013, but they still do it, and people still drive into these things doing small businesses. The small businesses, they hope to become medium businesses, etc.

Today I want to talk about peer pressure. Peer pressure – yes, it can be positive, but most of the time it is not. Most of the time it stands in the way of success and wealth. First I want to discuss a little bit about kids, because it’s really kids as an analogous discussion will lead into parents. First of all, what happens with kids? You’ll see peer pressure causing them to take on risky behavior, but it also affects everything from the fashion that they wear, to alcohol and drug abuse. Friends are constantly recommending, or pushing, or pursuing them to do certain things. It affects who they hang out with. Do they hang out with the right or the wrong people? You’ll see the recommendations. I went and searched around for recommendations. I don’t think I saw a decent recommendation anywhere on the web. They would say things like: “Just say ‘No,’” and some of the dumb ads on TV that sit there, and the father says: “You’ll tell me, won’t you, if people want you to drink?” Oh, come on. Come on, folks. What you have to do is you have to have them address the underlying pressures that exist. They’ve got a whole bunch of people, saying: “Are you afraid? What are you going to do? Come on. Let’s do it.” How do they resist that? I’ll tell you a little bit of a story of how I got one person to do this. I don’t want to mention too much detail, because they might be a listener, but it was somebody that was just finishing up grammar school, headed into middle school, and at that time there was concern, both by the parents and family members around because this particular child always followed everybody else; whatever they wanted to do, she would just go along. One of the discussions I had was: What do you do and say when everybody’s telling you to do that? Do you ever have that situation, where somebody says: “Come on, come on. What are you, afraid? What are you, afraid?” Of course, the person starts to shake their head, and of course they do, and they hear that all the time. We all did. What I did was say: “What you do is you just turn around, look that person straight in the face, because there’s a whole bunch of other people with them. If they weren’t with them, they wouldn’t be saying that to you. Turn around and say: ‘I’m not the one that’s afraid. Those others, they’re afraid. They’re afraid to say ‘No’ to you.’” This person did that, this child did that, and completely changed directions. Why? Because other people, then, started to feel that confidence. The person became popular, very popular. The child was pretty popular before, but then became very popular, was very independent, and had some of the tools. There are other things you can do and say, but the idea is you have to give them something to say in response, not just: “Say ‘No.’” That doesn’t work. It hasn’t worked for a hundred years. People have been pushing it. You think the kids are much stronger or can be stronger. When they have that pressure, they’re usually facing a group of people, and some that they look up to. Most assume the characteristics that they must have – they don’t. They’re vulnerable, and they don’t have the strength. They need something to make them feel strong. The interesting thing, though, is it would be best if the adults were able to display those characteristics themselves; that they weren’t, in a sense, pushed into situations where they were influenced heavily by peer pressure, too. How do you expect kids to fight peer pressure if the adults don’t? Take a look at all the debt that exist, in many cases, because of peer pressure. Purchases that don’t even make sense to people, but they have to keep up with the Joneses, they have to keep up with other people. I saw that amongst executives at different companies that I was at. There’d be a release of the new Apple iPhone or the new Xbox, and key executives would be talking about the fact that they got it on the first day. “Look at this one,” or “Look at that one,

This episode is actually out of the request from a couple of people, having to do with debt and finances. It turns out that in the United States, very few people really are prepared for retirement or getting themselves prepared for retirement. How important is that? Let me go backwards a little bit, because most people are well before the age of retirement, and they live paycheck to paycheck. Actually, 61% of the American public live paycheck to paycheck. 63% don’t have $500 for an emergency. Given that, what happens if the paycheck stops? This could be retirement; it could be some other emergency, or you were just laid off. You’re working paycheck to paycheck, and all of a sudden it stops. Some people living paycheck to paycheck are actually doing that because they’re thinking through and thoroughly on a real budget, and they are allocating some money into different pockets.  That’s fine, because they are saving. Those are not the people I’m talking about. The problem is almost always on the spending side; not on the income side. It’s not that you don’t have enough income, it’s that you spend too much. What do I mean by that? Think in terms of the last time you got a pay raise, or the last time you got a promotion, or the last time you got a new job with a higher pay. What happened to that increase? Think in terms of what will happen. Over the next two years, almost everybody will have some sort of an emergency, whether it be a car repair that they didn’t count on, or an appliance breakdown, or roof that starts leaking. Something will happen, and it will be an emergency. What has been set aside, and what will people do in preparation or at that time? Too many people are worrying and hoping that they’ll somehow, someday hit that lottery, which is a ridiculous thing to be investing your money into, putting your money into, wasting your money into. I’ve often heard and I see people that are always out, and there’s actually peer pressure to go out to do things to get the latest car, to get the latest little toy. People will say, and I’m sure you’ve heard this expression: “Live for today.” Or as a couple of people have asked me over time: “Why are you saving? You might die tomorrow.” My reaction and response to that is: “Yes, but what happens if I live?” Remember that if you don’t retire until 65 or 66 years of age, you’ll have 25+ years in all probability that you’ll be living beyond that. There’s no chance to play catchup when you get close to retirement. There’s actually very little chance when you start hitting your 60s. You have to have and save from as early as you possibly can, and to be putting money aside both for your emergencies and for your future. This is partially motivated at this time because somebody had sent me a note, a very nice note, about how the episode on reverse compound interest (see LifeUnsettled.com episode 56) rung home to them, that they had just received a bonus and where they had ordinarily been thinking of they would get something with it, they went and paid off the credit card, and how the elimination of that debt will actually be a large increase over time of their actual income. That’s all explained in that episode, so I won’t go back to it here. It’s the same thing right now, because we’re on the verge of a lot of people getting their tax refunds. What are you getting with those tax refunds? Are you getting out of debt, or are you getting the new latest toy? What would happen if instead of getting a new car, you took that car payment and just put it away? Assuming you already have a car that’s maybe a few years old and it’s just at the end of its loan or you own it free and clear – what happens if you held on to that car for the next three or four years, and instead put money aside every month and just put it into a savings account or a fund so that in your future you would have that much more money? You might have an extra $20,000 or $30,000.

As we’re talking in a lot of these episodes about things that you might plan on doing, whether it be for business or changing your career, starting a business, etc. Most of that will depend a great deal on how you are greeted, or how you impress or not, other people. That is, first impressions, and that’s what I want to talk a little bit about. This came up because in a couple of recent events I’ve been to, the speakers were telling people and urging people more to take action, and you better be prepared before you do take action. I’ll give you a couple of examples of that. When you’re starting up, you’re going to immediately have and make first impressions on other people. You want to make sure that you are prepared. That doesn’t mean to procrastinate for a long period of time, but it does mean to find the best way to introduce yourself to the public, other businesspeople, customers, etc. As an example, I very frequently have heard people and they’ve asked me about podcasting, and they would say: “Gee, I’ve been told that I just get started, and I’ll learn on the way.” The problem with that is the person first time they listen to you, they might listen to one or two episodes. If you’ve made a bad impression, they’ll never come back. It’s not like going to the corner grocery store and just because you saw a bad apple there doesn’t mean you’re never coming back, because that store is the one that’s locally convenient to you. You want to make sure that that impression that you make on someone is very strong and very good. There’s a divergence, here. While other people will have a very quick first impression of you, you should be very slow on defining an impression of somebody else. I’ll explain that in a moment. First of all, it’s said, whether it’s 30 seconds, a few seconds, a minute or something longer, that a mental image is brought into people’s minds of you when they first meet, and it happens fairly quickly. We know that. Therefore, that first impression is extremely important. Imagine that you’re a company and you have a product out there, and people have a bad first impression of you. During the late ’80s, early ’90s, Audi was the luxury car in demand for most popular. What happened? There was a series of articles and things about something called “unintended acceleration,” which today I still do not believe there was ever such a thing. A lot of the other luxury makers went and researched it, tried testing, etc., and nobody could ever find it. But that impression literally destroyed Audi at the time. They’ve come back now, and they’re now another very well-accepted car, but for so long they had suffered from that impression. It took many years, decades literally to overcome that impression that was made. When somebody has an impression that you’re not open or that you’re not appropriate for something, you know it’s going to be very difficult to change their mind. That’s the importance of first impressions that you would want to put on others. On the other hand, when you hear something, slow down a bit and try not to cast judgment with such little information. Think of it this way: You hear about something, you think of it, and there’s seven things in favor of it and three things against it – if you absolutely determine: “Okay, this is good because seven in favor, three against, that’s a winner,” over time you may see other bits of information that make it look bad, but each time that information comes to you, you’re going to weigh that bad information against the entire decision you already made. It’s going to be very difficult to overcome it. You want to be slow to arrive at a first impression, but very quick to realize that you have to make a very good first impression on others because they do arrive at them very fast. You’ll have an advantage if you slow your own decision down, but realize that others will have that very quick impression of you. This becomes very important,

Today I want to discuss something that really burns me when I hear about it. It’s such a labelling of a boatload of misinformation and bad information, and that is this expression: “Perception equals reality.” Come on. Get a life. I’d like to say it stems from some of the newer things that happened today where people are basically having some bad teaching, schooling, etc., but this stems way back. It goes back into probably the ’70s or ’80s even, where this was breeding, this kind of information from—yes—MBA programs. Why is it even important? Because in order to market well and also to interpret well what’s going on in the world around you and when you’re seeing products, you need to know this and you need to know the fine differences between perception, bias, reality, and personal preference. Let me explain each of those. It probably doesn’t surprise me, particularly today. I just heard today, something about 10% of college graduates who were interviewed, these were recently graduating seniors from college, thought that Judge Judy was on the Supreme Court. You’ve heard things about them being surveyed, they didn’t know who George Washington was, they didn’t know who the first president was, (which is George Washington, in case you haven’t heard), and a whole bunch of other things. Part of it happens from the idea, the assumption that you do research, you get facts, and that means you’re right. No, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re right, because if I do some research and I think of something, and you do some research on the same topic, you have something else – that doesn’t make either one of us necessarily right or wrong. When we start talking, we may find a better solution, but it doesn’t mean: I’m right, you’re wrong. What I’ll be discussing here is that there are really two parts. One is actually born in the idea of bias, and the other part is personal preference. Those two are very critical and very important if you have any product or service that you want to supply or sell, as well as if you’re a consumer. But people think that somehow they’re better perceiving or judging than somebody else, that’s why everybody thinks that their way is the right way; they are in the right and somebody else is in the wrong. What really happens, there? It actually reminds me a little bit of something a little bit off on a tangent as an analogy. I saw this in a book one time, and it talked about how almost everybody, if they think they’re honest, if they’re honest, almost everybody will say: “Yes, I am.” Then ask them the question: “How many people do you know that you believe are truly honest?” And they’ll say: “Very few.” So, what has happened, there? Yes, it’s a difference between what they think and what their rules are, but it’s an abstract idea. Reality is a combination of perception (what you see) and the error, that is what mistakes, bias, or other things that you’re making as a mistake. For example, you go and measure something, they say: “Measure twice, cut once.” Why do they do that? Because you’re liable to make an error. If you’re doing anything, you want to eliminate the error or the lack of information. Some error is just because you don’t have as much information so far. The missing information doesn’t mean that what you’re perceiving is reality. It just means you don’t have all your questions answered and all the perceptions proper. The error is a combination of missing information, bias, and just absolute mistakes. To consider that your perception is reality and ignore those three things means that you’re not going to seek a better solution. I’ll get to why this is important for your customer shortly if you have any product or service. Your perception is based or focused on your past experience, your understanding, and the interpretation you have of everything around you. But be careful of mistakes or misinterpretations. For example, and I’m actually taking some stuff out of some very h...