Personal Development

Stupid, Addicted, or Just Avoidance/Resistance?

Ryan Healy recently wrote a couple articles that came to mind today:
Why People are Addicted to Info-Products
Is the Internet Making Us Stupid?

Today has been an S.O.S. day (Shiny Object Syndrome). And just like the mariner in distress that SOS means I need help. (Because I feel rather stupid and addicted!)

I realized I was looking for my "hit" by refreshing email, twitter, facebook, and not doing the things I wanted to get done today. So I focused that "nervous energy" into writing this blog post. This has a few positive results.

The first positive result is that I have now created more content, which is one of my tasks for every day. I just happened to get it done earlier today than I usually schedule my content creation.

Second positive result, I will have a legitimate reason to go on a social media site (to post a link to this blog post) and then get off. If I go with no specific outcome in mind, I end up idling on twitter following random links I tagged earlier for follow up.

Third positive, I'm getting a hit of my own personal mix of neurochemical "happy juice" from several aspects. I love creating, so I get a hit there. I am getting something done ahead of schedule, so I get a hit there. I have a small win to celebrate, so I get a hit there.

And the biggest positive result, as far as I'm concerned, is that I've just done something productive rather than succumbing to the Resistance (as Steven Pressfield calls it in The War of Art) and I've won a small battle against Avoidance (as T. Falcon Napier calls it).

3 More Challenges to Managing a Brand on the Social Web

Today's post is prompted by a Mashable post "6 Challenges to Managing a Brand on the Social Web" shared by my friend Gary Walter.

Here is my response to Gary's question "are there more you can think of?":

I hope the first guy was misquoted. ''Be everything to everyone'' means you're anything but yourself. I agree with the transparency, especially upon screwing up, and think he and/or the editor missed the mark.

Congruence is the key to what was said about making sure internal personnel know what external message to communicate. Same thing applies to individuals. And by being congruent you can *never* be everything to everyone.

It's much more useful to polarize people and increase the gap between lovers and haters of your brand and to make sure you get as many people your brand touches out of ignorance and indifference as possible. The clearer you are on who the lovers of your brand are the less time/money/energy you'll waste on the indifferent and the haters.

Another area they missed was choosing your allies. The alliances you make define your brand as much as the actions you take. As one mentor said ''we're Jets and they're Sharks.''

In many ways, this turns into an issue of congruence as well. Knowing who you are and what you stand for (and against) makes alliances easier to choose. If there is no way for me to serve your brand lovers, or vice versa, it is obviously not going to be a very good alliance.

Which leads to the last piece I think they may have skimmed, but didn't clearly hit: being client centric. Yes, you must cultivate the relationships, but even then it needs to be based on a win-win-win situation, not just because you've mandated that ''we're customer focused'' or the horrible platitude that ''the customer is always right.''

By keeping the people you serve at the center of the planning and execution, you'll not only have a clearer plan but you'll develop stronger brand lovers, etc. "You cannot serve two masters" + "in order to get everything you want in life help others get what they want."

And all of this applies equally well when applied on the personal level, as a small business, as a corporate entity, or as a church. Any time you're serving others it becomes a marketing and sales situation. Marketing to let people know who you are, whom you serve, and in what capacities. Sales to get people to take action for their own benefits.

What do you think is missing from my additions to their list?

Independence Day — Reactions versus Responses

Happy 4th of July, and specifically happy Independence Day here in the USA.

Being a professional wordsmith, today was the perfect day for me to ponder independence. Not so much the independence of our country, but specifically the independence of our personal actions from our environment.

Many people blame their environment, whether they consciously mean to or not. "He made me so mad" or "The weather is so dreary" both give control of our emotions to something outside of ourselves.

Whatever "he" did was not the cause madness. The internal reaction to his actions was to start feeling mad. That feeling was not caused by an external stimulus. The stimulus prompted an internal choice, conscious or otherwise, that resulted in that person entering a state that they labeled "mad."

Similarly, the weather itself was not dreary. The "dreary" label was applied based on past experiences and current choices that led to an internal state labeled "dreary" and projected onto the weather.

This is where the independence kicks in

Start by taking the stimulus/reaction and replacing it with stimulus/response. When talking about Newtonian physics "every action has an equal and opposite reaction." When it comes to emotions we are not mechanically driven to an "equal and opposite reaction." We get to choose what our response will be.

Most of the time, when we're in a situation where we have a set pattern, it is too late to change our "reaction" into a measured response. This means we need to do a little preparation ahead of time.

State control, and specifically controlling our own emotional states, is best done in a calm and rational moment far removed from the "offending" stimuli. There are a number of NLP technique that can be used for establishing new responses and most, if not all, work best when applied before hand.

Here's a challenge: apply this idea to your business.

Where is your business "reacting" rather than "responding"?
What one area would you like to have more control over?
How will you plan ahead of time to develop that control?

Blog Daily

I just committed to Tinu's 100 days of blogging challenge. (Thanks Tinu for the prompting and Dr. Wright for assuming I'd be up for the challenge!)

Over the last week I participated in another blogging challenge and wrote 5 posts in a week when I hadn't posted anything here or at LifeLoveAndLearning.com for months.

I realized that I'm a very social beast. There are certain types of tasks that I do well once I get going, but the prompting is usually having others there working along side me. (I'm a social cleaner, and quite likely a social blogger! Who'da thunk it.)

Are you ready to take up this challenge? What ever you decide to do I suggest learning to leverage your own working style.

Now go out there and change the world from the inside out!

Marketing Mastermind w/NLP Trainer, TV personality, and you?

Below is an email I sent out today. I decided to extend the offer beyond just my list and let you join the party. Let me know what you think:

Today's note is for you if are in business or interested in starting a business online. Keep doing what you're doing if you don't want to learn how to earn more.

(Impatient, like me? Click here. )

My good friend Dr. Letitia Wright is the person I run to when I've got any questions about traditional media such as TV, radio, film, etc. (Over the last 10 years, she's grown her own cable TV show that now goes out to well over 4 million homes in the LA area, so she knows what she's doing with media.)

When she set up a 10 Week PR Challenge last fall I jumped at the chance to learn more about interacting with the media. ( http://wrightplacetv.com/pr-challenge )

She and I both know the power of learning from those who have gone before us as well as the power of collaboration and accountability.

When the chance to study with one of the "old time" masters of marketing came along we both took notice. The master I'm talking about is Marlon Sanders, the man who has documented that 1 in 102 people with Internet access had accessed one of his websites, those same sites that have resulted in multitudes of sales of his products!

Marlon is hosting a 6-week "Round Table" series where he shows his computer screen and walks us through the "secret sauce" he's used to get all those visitors and those sales.

Find out more about Marlon's offer.

Now, Marlon only promises that we'll have a personalized plan for going from "nothing" to "something" and scaling that up to whatever amount you can dare to dream.

After Marlon's part ends most people will be left on their own to implement their plan. Most of them will do nothing.

Dr. Wright and I have come up with a plan to make sure you are one who puts that plan into action and gets things done!

When you join Marlon's Round Table through the link in this message, you'll be able to join Dr. Wright, myself, and the other action takers we've associated ourselves with in an additional 6-week mastermind group to implement our personalized plans from master Marlon.

This is the perfect opportunity for you if you've signed up for any courses in the past and either didn't finish the materials or got through it all and just never got it going.

As part of the mastermind you'll get access to my upcoming group coaching "24 hour TRANCE" where I help people break old patterns, get out of that trance, and get things done!

Besides, when are you going to get access to three masters of their trades for such a small investment?

Master of marketing, master of media, and master of motivation.

Join the masters!

Click that link, find out what Marlon's offering, and join us before the calls/webinars with Marlon start next week!

Now, go out and create a great day!

--
Wayne Buckhanan
"Change the world from the inside out!"

Atypical Small Business Planning

When most people ask whether you've got a business plan or not they are thinking of the Assets/Liabilities/Income/Expense statements. That's a piece of the whole plan, but if that's all you're relying on then you've bought into A LIE.

Full blown business plans are useful in an Eisenhower sort of way -- Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

What is often most important is to go through the process of identifying your destination (outcome goals), identifying what you need to do (planning), and identifying how you intend to do it (process goals).

Just walking through your typical day in your dream life can make a world of difference in whether you want to really reach that goal or not.

Many people get stuck on setting an outcome: "I want to be a millionaire." A few get as far as a plan: "flipping X houses a month." Very, very few think through the day-to-day process: "I will call # of home owners a day with a cheerful attitude and ..."

So, while the typical formal business plan could help a start-up get VC funding, an arbitrary small business owner is well advised to work on a lifestyle planning process in addition to the usual A/L/I/E business planning.

Whether you have a formal business plan ready or not, check out what I share (a "secret") for how you can save time, energy, and money. (I say "secret" because you probably already know what to do -- the question is: are you doing it?!)