The topic was entitled: Raising Money for your business? It’s easy if you know how!

Looking around the room of 150+ business owners I was not alone in my quest for knowledge on Venture Capital, Angel Investments, and the process to achieve the perfect win-win outcome. Finding capital for any startup is essential for your company to launch and grow. Experts predict that lack of cash closes half of all startups within 5 years. I would suggest it is overspending that kills your business. Find the critical aspects that keep your business afloat and pinch your pennies.

Investing is the least understood topic when talking “business.” Unless of course you live in Silicon Valley where million dollar investments are passed around like peanuts at the bar. For the rest of us it’s a mystery, and our first experience is often across the table negotiating terms of an investment. Here are 5 points that I left with from Basil Peters topic.

• Investments are just as much about the business owner as the possibilities their business presents. Angel Investors seek owners who are charismatic, enthusiastic, and passionate. The business will get you in the door, your personality will sign the cheque.
• For the investment to make cents for the investor (yes cents) your business should have 10x return potential. 80% of all returns will come from 10% of the investments. Without 10x return to cover the failed investments that are expected your investor will be less likely to risk their money. This may not seem fair, but consider your business. If you have a retail shop your markup on products include theft, or damaged products. Investors are simply playing the numbers.
• Most large companies like Yahoo, or Google are constantly on the look out for 20 million dollar purchases. Their growth depends on it, and their shareholders demand it. Unlike small businesses, cash reserves are a liability that generate little interest.
• Popular news headlines include 100+ million dollar deals weekly; this is exceptionally rare. The majority of purchases are under 15 million dollars with the odd exemption being sold for more then 100 million.

The last point describes the truth about available capital for entrepreneurs seeking investment. 20 years ago it would cost millions of dollars to launch your business. Without the internet you would have to create custom software, produce ad campaigns and spend millions on marketing.

Todays entrepreneurs can bootstrap companies for as little as 10,000. The news outlets are accurate when describing the decrease in available capital yet forget to point out the reduced cost for startups. Angel Investors, and Venture Capitalists are constantly looking for new opportunities.

Leap of the Week:
Find an angel investor in your community and be clear about your opportunity. The best advice Peters gave: Utilize all personal financial avenues prior to finding professional investors.

For more information on Basil Peters:   Twitter |   Blog |   Book |   Website

MOTIVATION
You run the 5k to lose weight, stay in shape, raise money for cancer. Maybe to prove something. It’s on your bucket list. You made a bet. Only ten pounds to go. Achievement is thrilling.

All fine reasons.

INSPIRATION
The runner’s high. My body simply has to run. When I run, I feel closer to life.

MOTIVATION
You write the book, the blog, the brochure to raise your profile so you can sell more stuff, serve more people. You compose and package your thoughts. A 1000 words a day until you’ve crossed the finish line.

All fine reasons.

INSPIRATION
I have something to say that needs to be heard. When I write I feel bigger, freer, like God is using me well.

We seem to need motivation to get stuff done. Typically there’s a lot of “measuring” that happens in the realm of motivation. Check lists and goal posts and markers and such. There is often a fear of loss involved. We are on duty. All perfectly natural.

But beyond finish lines and well done, is a different call. Inspiration.
It is magnetic and progressive. Its reasoning cannot always be reasoned — I just gotta do it. It busts you outta shouldsville into the unfenced field of freedom and possibility.

Inspiration is a completely different force of creativity.

What is motivating you?
What is inspiring you?

What is pushing you?
What is pulling you?

Leap of the Week:

Follow the pull. It’s the first step toward flying.

Here are my Top 4:

1. I mistook ‘Enthusiasm’ for ‘Priority’:
I know now that some great ideas HAVE to be PARKED no matter how good they are and no matter how exciting they are, to make room for more immediate and key priorities.

2. I lost my sense of humour:
I started to take everything way too seriously…including myself. Everything became a chore. I tend to do that when I feel like I am losing control.

3. I did not say ‘NO’ enough:
I got lost in the noise of it all. I tolerated way too much. My gut knew better, but I was too busy to listen. Busy, busy, busy! Everything became urgent and important and I know that this is only a representation of a massive lack of focus.

4. I lost sight of MY GAME:
Instead of doing things MY WAY like I normally do…I let myself be influenced by people and circumstances and it altered my quick decision-making abilities. I let myself get confused by other peoples’ noise and basically…bullshit.

Does any of this sound familiar to you?

Well, I can say that I am grateful for 2011 because it allowed me to experience how my clients feel at times and that has already made me an even better coach and catalyst.

Leap of the Week:
What will you say no to today? This week? This month?
What will you STOP tolerating to create more peace of mind?

And talking about guts…here is a gutsy woman making a gutsy move. Mavreen (our rock-star assistant) is making a big bold change in her life. She is saying goodbye to LeapZone to invest in herself. She is taking a leap of faith by going back to school and we are very proud of her. Margarita and I have made many bold decisions in our lives and we recognize how much courage it takes to leave what is safe and familiar behind to start something that is scary and new.

Mavreen, we want you to know that you will be greatly missed by us and by the entire LeapZone Community and we wish you a fulfilling journey of discovery, learning and creativity. 2011 would not have been the same, nor have been possible without you, and we look forward to having the opportunity to collaborate, in one way or another, with you again in the future. The friendship that we have created will be forever nurtured and cherished.

Here are a few words from Mavreen:
Dearest Leapers,
The last year and a half has been an incredible learning experience. I have been challenged, moved, and inspired which has lead me onto a new path. I am thrilled to be going back to school and building upon the experiences I have been blessed with, but I will definitely miss LeapZone and all of the people with whom I have connected. A huge thank you to Isabelle & Margarita for their generosity, support, and wisdom. You ladies are beyond fabulous and I love you both! I hope to stay in touch with you all and look forward to having our paths cross again at some point in the future. Best of luck and speak soon!

Thanks Mavreen for everything that you brought to us personally and to LeapZone. We wish you the best in your new endeavors and may 2012 be all that you want it to be…and remember that it’s much easier to do it, than to dwell on it! LOL!

Note to our Leaper Community
As you know, parting with a great employee creates a lot of loose ends. Both Margarita and I are taking this opportunity to simplify…simplify…simplify…everything from our value proposition to our business processes, client touchpoints, contact management system and everything in between. Why? To force us to keep it simple and to ensure maximum value for you. Having said that, I know that we will probably drop the ball a few times in the process despite our efforts not to, and we thank you in advance for your patience.

Cheers,
Isabelle & Margarita

Hope you had a fantastic Holiday Break filled with great food and great moments with family and friends! Margarita and I are taking some focused Bubble Time this week to really work ON our lifestyle and business. It’s a great opportunity for us to get a lot done while slowly re-integrating into our schedules and daily rituals.

One key factor in preparing for a new year is to reflect and evaluate the previous one. It’s important to look into the eyes of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly to learn as much from it as we can and to recognize patterns so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

As Margarita and I are reviewing 2011 and planning for 2012…we are asking ourselves some tough but valuable questions and I thought I would share some of these questions with you, as they are powerful and important to reflect upon in order to raise the bar and move forward.

Investing 15 -20 minutes in this questionnaire will definitely prepare you for a great 2012. Here you go! Are you ready for 2012?
https://leapzone.wufoo.com/forms/w7×3k1/

P.S. By filling this out before January 7th, you are automatically entered to win one full year of MyLeapTools.com*.

*MyLeapTools™ is packed with kick-butt tools, templates, strategies and methodologies that have greatly helped us, and our clients, take their brand and business to the next level. Each item comes with a kick-ass tutorial explaining how to best use it and what it will do for you!

I look forward to continue to be a part of your “virtual team” to help you raise the bar and take your business to the next level.
Enjoy and cheers to a kick ass 2012!

Isabelle
Catalyst at LeapZone Strategies
Host of LeapTV.com

The answer is yes and no.

Yes, the ideas flow easy. They just come.

And no, the things that are built from the ideas most often are only the product of struggle, and sometimes fear, with the terribly difficult task of realizing what one great sculptor called it, the shape within the stone.

The shape often doesn’t reveal itself within the stone that harbors it that easily as the idea which came from nothing did.

The shape within the stone, which is the predecessor of the actual form of the idea in the things which comprise the enterprise, the thing in itself, the thing which makes the enterprise come alive, the thing which calls out its uniqueness, which I am calling the shape within the stone, the face of it if you will, that entity most often takes some muscling time, some sweat too, some working with it without most of time any real clues that indicate which way to go, right or left, or to just stop and take a breath because if you push too hard you’ll probably just ruin it before its time.

I know this must sound terribly complicated, but it’s actually not.

Saying it is, but the doing of it has a natural flow to it.

Much like lifting weights.  Or doing sit ups.

In one moment the weights just feel like dumb stuff on the end of a stick.

At other times they are transformed into an enterprise of sorts, when the exact form of your body, your shoulders, your arms, your calves and thighs and your feet, and of course, your neck, all combine with your mind, and what was only moments before simply dead sullen weight suddenly appears as a luminously exciting idea, the idea of man, and of form, and of intention, and of a moments’ indefatigable honorable breath.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Feel the swell of it.  The sweat of it.  The intellectual rigor of it.  The drama of it.  The sudden wonderful  elegance of it.  And then it’s up!

Yes, that’s what entrepreneurship seems like to me when everything is going really well.

Come Dream With Me.  I’ll tell you all about it.

Most of us have such psychological “blind spots,” aspects of our personalities that are obvious to everyone but ourselves. There’s the mother who complains, “I don’t know why little Horace is so violent—I’ve smacked him for it a thousand times.” Or your gorgeous friend who believes she has all the seductive allure of a dung beetle. Or the coworker who complains that, mysteriously, every single person he’s ever worked for develops the identical delusion that he’s shiftless and incompetent. As we roll our eyes at such obliviousness, some of us might think, What about me? Do I have blind spots, and if so, what are they?

You can find the answers if you care to—or more accurately, if you dare to. This is the roughest mission you can undertake: a direct seek-and-destroy attack on your own pockets of denial. Denial is far trickier than simple ignorance. It isn’t the inability to perceive information but the astonishing ability to perceive information while automatically refusing to allow it into consciousness. Our minds don’t perform this magical trick without reason. We only “go blind” to information that is so troubling, so frightening, or so opposed to what we believe that to absorb it would shatter our view of ourselves and the world. On the other hand, becoming fully conscious of our perceptions—simply feeling what we feel and knowing what we know—is the very definition of awakening. It creates a virtually indestructible foundation for lasting relationships, successful endeavors, and inner peace. Hunting down your blind spots is a bumpy adventure, but it can lead to sublime destinations.

Identifying your own blind spots is an exercise in paradox, because if you’re aware of a problem, it doesn’t count. It’s like tracking the wind: You can’t observe the thing itself, only its effects. The tracks that a blind spot leaves are repetitive experiences that seem inexplicable, the things that make you exclaim, Why does this always happen to me?

For example:

1. You keep having the same relationship with different people.
All of Macy’s friends are “takers,” emotional parasites who drain her and give nothing back. Steve’s three ex-wives all had extramarital affairs. No one in Corrine’s life—her children, her coworkers, her mother—ever responds to her feelings.

These people don’t know that they carefully choose friends and lovers who match certain psychological profiles or that their behavior elicits similar reactions from almost everyone they encounter. It would take you about five minutes with Macy to see that she’s so self-effacing she actually resists normal friendships, gravitating only toward takers. Steve’s friends will tell you he falls for women who remind him of his mother, an enthusiastic practitioner of promiscuous sex. Corrine is so reserved that even the most intuitive people can’t read her moods. All three have gone through life blaming their relationship patterns on other people’s shortcomings.

2. Your luck never changes.
Over years of life-coaching, I’ve become more and more convinced that we create our own “luck.” I’m not saying that there’s no such thing as blind fate, but I am saying that choice is far more powerful than chance in determining the pattern of our failures and successes over time.

Many of my clients have lost jobs in the recent economic downturn, but those who were previously doing well in their careers are finding ways to learn from their experience and bounce back. Those who complained of relentless bad luck before being laid off have slid further downhill. A client I’ll call Shirley recently complained, “When my sister was fired, I thought we’d bond because we both had the same bad luck. But then she started her own business, so it turns out that for her getting fired was good luck. Just like always, she gets all the breaks.” As I punted Shirley to a psychotherapist, I wondered if they train Seeing Eye dogs for people with her kind of blindness. If so, Shirley will almost certainly develop a dog allergy.

3. People consistently describe you in a way that doesn’t fit your self-image.
If tracking patterns in love and luck isn’t enough to reveal your blind spots, there’s another way to go after them. You just have to notice what people tell you about yourself—the things you have always cleverly ignored or routinely discounted. Complete the following sentences as accurately as you can, and you might be closing in on a truth you haven’t fully acknowledged.

• “People are always telling me that I’m…”
• “I get a lot of compliments about…”
• “When my friends or family members are angry with me, they say that…”
• “People often thank me for…”

If you heartily agree with all the information that pops up in response to these phrases, you’ve simply reinforced an accurate self-concept by recalling times when others have validated your perceptions. But if any of the descriptions seem strange, incongruous, or flat-out false, consider the possibility that your image of yourself may not be accurate—and almost certainly doesn’t correspond to what other people perceive. By the way, you may well discover that you’re blind to your positive characteristics as well as negative ones. Some people (especially women) may be so biased against being arrogant that they overlook or dismiss their own best qualities.

Getting Rid of Your Blind Spots

If the evidence suggests that you have blind spots, you can try to eliminate them with a simple mindfulness exercise. You already know what’s in your blind spot; it’s just that looking at it makes you extremely uncomfortable. Only by being very gentle with yourself will you become able to tolerate more awareness. So as kindly as you can, ask yourself the following questions:

1. What am I afraid to know?
2. What’s the one thing I least want to accept?
3. What do I sense without knowing?

Whatever comes into your mind, do nothing about it. Not yet. If you feel even a hint of some new realization, you’ve taken a huge step. More insights will arrive soon, and the kinder you are to yourself over time, the more likely you are to experience major breakthroughs.

Hunting for your own blind spots, like trying to examine the back of your own head, is much less efficient than soliciting feedback from others. This process combines the attractions of strip-dancing and skydiving, making you feel completely exposed yet energized by the sense that you could be catastrophically injured. Ever since I saw that first printout from my group psychology class, I’ve known how valuable honest feedback can be, how much precious time it can save in my struggle to awaken. I still have to force myself to go looking for it, but when I do I almost always benefit.

Leap of the Week: For a week, ask for blind-spot feedback from one person a day, never asking the same person twice. Just say it: “Is there anything about me that I don’t seem to see but is obvious to you?” You’ll probably want to start with your nearest and dearest, but don’t stop there. Surprisingly, a group of relative strangers is often the best mirror you can find. I’ve worked with many groups of people who, just minutes after meeting, could offer one another powerful insights. Like the emperor in his new clothes, we often believe that our illusions are confirmed by the silence of people who are simply too polite to mention the obvious. Breaking the courtesy barrier by asking for the truth can change your life faster than anything else I’ve ever experienced.

Handling Feedback

Any feedback is scary. The kind that addresses topics so uncomfortable you’ve stuffed them into a blind spot can be almost intolerable. That’s why, before you even ask for an honest appraisal, you have to have a strategy in place for processing it.

1. Just say thanks.
When others discuss your blind spots, you may have a violent emotional reaction. Remember: All of the upheaval is a product of your own mind. You do not have to dissuade or contradict the other person in order to feel calm. Instead of launching into an argument, just say thanks. Then imagine yourself tucking away the other person’s comments in a box. You can take them out later, examine them, decide whether or not they’re useful.

2. Dismiss useless feedback.
There’s real feedback, and then there’s the slop that’s merely a reflection of the speaker’s dysfunction. Fortunately, you can tell these things apart because they feel very different. Useless feedback is nonspecific and vague, and has no action implication. It demotivates, locking us in confusion and shame. Useful feedback is specific and focused. It can sting like the dickens, but it leads to a clear course of action; when you hear it you feel a tiny lightbulb going on upstairs.

“No one could ever love you” is useless feedback. “You project a lot of hostility, and it scares people” gives you information that you need to make healthy changes. It’s safe to assume that useless feedback is coming from people who are themselves shame-bound and blind. The best thing to do with it is dismiss it and focus on the information your gut tells you is valuable.

3. Absorb the truth.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote about a man who, virtually blind from early childhood, had an operation that restored his sight when he was middle-aged. Though the man’s eyes now took in visual information, his brain wasn’t used to making sense of it. He couldn’t differentiate between a man and a gorilla until he touched a nearby statue of a gorilla; then the difference became immediately clear.

This confused state is similar to what you’ll feel when you’ve accepted feedback about what lies in your blind spots. You’re not used to this new set of eyes, this novel image of self. I remember feeling incredibly clumsy just after the revelation that I can be very dominant. I felt a little as if I were talking while listening to headphones: I couldn’t correctly gauge how I was coming across to others. Slowly, asking repeatedly for feedback, I began to see my own behavior more clearly. My false image of self gave way to a more accurate model, and I learned to avoid accidentally stomping on people with my conversational style.

Deliberately, methodically eliminating your blind spots simply intensifies the natural process we all endure as life teaches us its rough-and-tumble lessons. If you undertake this accelerated journey, you will learn much more in much less time (albeit with a few more scrapes and bruises) and achieve a deeper level of self-knowledge than you otherwise would have.

Just observing the truth about yourself without judgment or spin will begin to change you. It’s well-nigh impossible to see yourself more and more clearly while continuing to act without integrity, or in contradiction to your life’s real purpose. Eventually you may come to see what Marianne Williamson meant when she said, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.” To see your truest nature is to recognize that you have a capacity for goodness far greater than you ever dreamed, with all the awesome responsibility that entails. It’s a difficult proposition, but in the end the view makes it all worthwhile.

Thank you Martha for a great article reminding all of us Leapers that we truly are the biggest blocks in each of our own road trips!

To view this video online, click here:

Today on LeapTalk™ we are highlighting Karen laskey. Karen is a mem­ber of the Cana­dian Pro­fes­sional Coun­selling Asso­ci­a­tion, The Cana­dian Col­lege of Pro­fes­sional Coun­sel­lors & Psy­chother­a­pists, and the Inter­na­tional Med­ical & Den­tal Hyp­nother­apy Association.

In this episode of LeapTalk™, Karen shares some of her biggest pivotal shifts towards brand clarity and how she has been able to exponentially grow her business as a result of working with LeapZone on a strategic, branding and  coaching level. Find out how CLARITY has been the key to building her thriving practice.

More about Karen

Karen has been in the health and well­ness indus­try for 20 years. Rec­og­niz­ing the impor­tance of proper diet and exer­cise, she became a fit­ness instruc­tor and trainer in 1986. Help­ing peo­ple to become phys­i­cally healthy was reward­ing, but her under­stand­ing of the effects that the mind and emo­tions have on the body, and her desire to take peo­ple to a deeper level, led her to train as a psy­chother­a­pist through the Cura Insti­tute in 1997. After work­ing with clients for 2 years, Karen began to see the power and the magic of the sub­con­scious, which led her to fur­ther her train­ing to include hyp­nother­apy in 1999.

Since then Karen has trained in Emo­tion­ally Focused Ther­apy for Cou­ples and con­tin­ues her train­ing through var­i­ous related workshops. In order to pro­vide effec­tive ther­apy to indi­vid­u­als with dif­fer­ent needs and ways of being, Karen’s train­ing embod­ies an inte­grated approach. The basis of her work is hyp­nother­apy, cog­ni­tive ther­apy and emo­tion­ally focused ther­apy, but she also uti­lizes tech­niques such as reflec­tive lis­ten­ing, focus­ing, body-centered ther­apy, regres­sion and dream work.

The knowl­edge Karen has gained work­ing with indi­vid­u­als with many diverse issues, cou­pled with her per­sonal heal­ing expe­ri­ence, pro­vides her with the skill, com­pas­sion and com­mit­ment to facil­i­tate your unique process of self-discovery.

You can reach Karen Laskey at: karen@laskeytherapy.com
“Help­ing You, Breakthrough.”

Thanks for Tuning In
LeapZone would like to hear about your journey to success. Share with us your challenges, lessons learned and pivotal shifts made along the way to success. Or let us know about an entrepreneur that you admire and why, for a possible highlight on LeapTalk™.

Penelope makes a really important distinction between appearances and reality. What’s really behind these internet success stories? Read on…

People make money online, for sure. But it’s not the people you are thinking of.

Most small businesses are using the Internet in their business model, but in general, the Internet is a way to market products and a way to connect with people; it’s not a get-rich-quick scheme.

Internet marketing requires all the same tools as old-media markets. For example, you need great visuals, you need a great story, you need some sort of connection to the gatekeepers of big audiences. You also need a great designer — or a Web design firm that has a client list you like.

But most of the success you see online is a great looking front-end that disguises the real business going on behind the scenes. Here are the real ways that people are making money on the Internet.

1. Being great at SEO.

When the Huffington Post sold for millions of dollars, AOL bought not so much a news organization, but an SEO organization. It’s not that Huffington Post doesn’t have news, but the news is simply a way to give their SEO people something to work with. Huffington Post doesn’t have the best news, but they have the news most closely tailored to the keywords that people type into Google, so people feel that the news at HuffPo is the most relevant to them.

2. Write blog posts all day, nonstop.

The sweatshop labor of the 21st century is writing blog posts. Gawker Media, for example, has insightful, timely, non-stop commentary about popular topics online. But the type of person you need on staff in order to generate that type of content is a smart, organized, editorialist, with the ability to be on-call all day long. This is why profits are high at Gawker, but turnover is high as well.

3. Aggregate content.

Sugar Inc. doesn’t write content. The company aggregates it. Sugar is a set of sophisticated tools to move traffic around in a way that generates more traffic. Some people get traffic once, and they never see it again. Take a look, for example, at SavvySugar. The site is fine-tuned from a traffic management point of view — viewers will always click more than once.

4. Sell your family.

Rhee Drummond might be the person making the most money on the Internet right now, with her site The Pioneer Woman. That is, she is a privately held company, without investors, and she is one of the highest trafficked sites online. How does she do it? She markets her own family. Their lifestyle. Their dinners. She has made a celebrity of herself and her kids, and while it seems appealing to be Internet famous, few people would actually enjoy that on a daily basis, and probably the only reason she can stomach it is that she lives on a ranch so far from civilization that they have their own landing strip.

5. Make great landing pages.

Let’s say you don’t want to devote your life to generating online content. Let’s say you have some sort of widget you want to sell. In that case, it’s not really about how good the product is, but rather how good the landing page is.

You can only really sell something that people search for on Google. Because how else would they ever find you? So they search for your type of product on Google and then land on your page and then what? You have to make them want to buy. So you are actually building a business that relies more on your landing page than on your product.

What’s Next?

With the old model of the Internet in 1994, people paid the biggest salaries to the developers. I earned $100 an hour in the Fortune 500 writing HTML by hand. Coding was a mystery to most people back then, and I used to <nostalgia>dream in tags</nostalgia>.

Then, at the end of the millennium, content was king. The writers were making top-dollar online. That was when I pretty much canceled my syndicated print column, even though it had run in about 200 newspapers, because Yahoo Finance was paying me $2,500 a week to write one single blog post. More than all those newspapers were paying combined.

Today there is out-of-the-box software to replace everyday coding needs. And payment for content online has calibrated itself to where newspapers were 20 years ago.

So what’s next? All the business models working today have one thing in common: developing markets around keywords. Your business possibilities are not whatever you can dream up in your head. The business models today revolve around what other people dream up and type into Google.

Leap of the Week:

So think in terms of undervalued keywords, low-cost content, and traffic arbitrage. These are the ways people really make money online. The rest is just marketing offline businesses.

1) They don’t know your industry.
Hire someone who has a similar industry background, ask them industry related questions and test their knowledge. Having someone who does not understand your industry can be more damaging then not having a Social Media presence to begin with.

2) Your accounts are automated.
Social Media must be organic conversation, if a firm offers you a “too good to be true” price, its because its automated. Stay away from this practice, it will destroy your reputation.

3) Twitter, and Facebook are connected.
Sounds like a great idea, two birds with one stone. Wrong! Twitter and Facebook are very different; if the firm, or freelancer suggests linking the accounts, find someone new pronto!

4) No goals, or targets are set.
Would you hire a sales person without goals, or targets? Create specific goals for both Twitter, and Facebook. This can be engagement, new fans/followers, and mentions.  Otherwise you’re just wasting money.

5) Zero owner interaction.
Social Media is about personal connections. As an owner you absolutely must spend 5 minutes each day to make connections, find vendors, and clients. Insist on training from your contractor on the use of Social Media. Don’t miss any opportunities presented from Social Media connections.

Leap of the Week:

Find a freelance contractor who is comfortable with your industry, someone that shows an interest in your field, and will stay connected. It’s also very important to find someone who insists on explaining the process, and involving you in each step. When setting goals and targets ensure its written down in a contract, providing a roadmap for success. Request monthly in-depth reports that provide insight, and result metrics. Social Media is about providing value to the market place; focus on the needs of your customers, not your products. Last but not least; Remember, you cannot automate Social Media.

How, you ask?  How do you know that, Gerber, when we haven’t even met yet?

It’s simple if you want to know.

I have met you tens of thousands of times as I’ve called upon people like you in business, and people like you before they went into business, people just like you who had a plan, they thought, a plan to escape from the misery of a job they held with someone for whom they went to work, thinking at the time that it was the best they could do. And, at the time, it wasn’t, but they didn’t know that, nor did you.

And then it turned out like this.

Yes, you either own a business or you want to own a business, and now we’re having a conversation about the mistake you made, or will make, as though I know something you don’t know…and you’re asking yourself the question, how could I know?

I know, that’s all, and I’ll describe it in enough ways here that will tell you yes, I do.

You think your business is a reflection of your talent, and it isn’t.  A business is a reflection of its talent, not yours.  If the other, a reflection of you, than the business is a gone goose from the very beginning.

You think your life will change dramatically once you start your business, or your business will change in the future, but it won’t.  Yes, change is a constant, but not the kind of change you mean.  If you think your business is a reflection of your talent, your change, your future, is already predetermined.  It is written in the wind, in the clouds, you can see it if you look above, you can see it if you actually see it as it behaves when you open the door, or close it, or get busy in the shop…it’s all written there, as I said, there is no secret at all about this, your life will not change dramatically nor will your business, but, if you persist in thinking wrong thoughts…that your business is a reflection of your talent…it will most definitely disappoint you.

Don’t allow yourself to be disappointed. Your business is not about you, nor is your job.

You think there are skills you need to learn to become better at the work you do, but there aren’t.  Not a one will make a difference in your business, or the business you’re about to invent, the skills you need to learn are significantly different than the ones you wish to learn.  The skills you need to learn have more to do with your presence at work, than the work you do in the present.  The skills you need to learn…call them growth skills…are those which force you to transcend yourself, not those which make you better where you are.  There’s a lot more we could say about that, and I will, but in another blog, not this one.  In this one I want to say only this.  To stop doing what you’re doing is not the key to more life, it is only a reflection of old thinking.  Thinking that you, as you are, must improve as you are, to become better at what you do, and why you do it.  Not so.  There’s an entirely different opportunity presenting itself here.

Awaken to the opportunity.

There is one more thing I’d like to say to justify the thought I started this blog saying…you aren’t seeing what’s possible for you, you’re not.

Leap of the Week:

What’s possible for you can only be seen as Siddhartha saw the river.  He said, “the river is everywhere at once–at its source, at its mouth, by the waterfall, by the ferry crossing, in the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains—everywhere at the same time.  And that for it there is only the present, not the shadow called the future.”

Which is exactly where your opportunity lives, in the present, right now.

You are exactly like that river.

Exactly, right now.