Four Steps To Help You Set Your Goals

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The most important benefit of setting goals isn’t achieving your goal; it’s what you do and the person you become in order to achieve your goal that’s the real benefit.

Goal setting is powerful because it provides focus. It shapes our dreams. It gives us the ability to hone in on the exact actions we need to perform to achieve everything we desire in life. Goals are great because they cause us to stretch and grow in ways that we never have before. In order to reach our goals, we must become better. Continue reading “Four Steps To Help You Set Your Goals”

9 Things You Need to Let Go of For Success In 2017

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Here we are at the start of a brand new year! Before us is a blank book of 365 pages and everyday we write one page. In the end, how will your story read?  Amna Shamim wrote a great article in Entrepreneur magazine, and I wanted to share it with you.

As an entrepreneur, you are your best friend and your worst enemy. You vacillate between believing in your ability to take on the world, making it better as only you can, and doubting your worth, self-sabotaging through procrastination and unnecessary spending. You can make 2017 your best year yet, but in order to do so, you’ll need to let go of a few nasty habits.

1. Having a sense of entitlement.

Yes, you are a special snowflake with a unique combination of skills and vision, but that doesn’t mean the world owes you anything, especially as an entrepreneur. If you want success, you need to make it happen. You want a new client or your company featured in a great publication, then you’d better start hustling to make it happen.

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Imagine NEVER having to CHOOSE every weekend!

Continue reading “9 Things You Need to Let Go of For Success In 2017”

How To Help Others Reach Their Goals

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Zig Ziglar was America’s most influential and beloved encourager, and believer that everyone could be, do and have more. He influenced an estimated quarter of a billion individuals through his seminars and his 33 books, including the bestseller See You at the Top, which has sold almost two million copies. Continue reading “How To Help Others Reach Their Goals”

Have You Diversified Your Income?

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For anyone who values financial security and ultimately desires financial freedom, creating at least one additional stream of income is no longer a luxury. It has become a necessity.

Diversifying your income stream is crucial to protect yourself and your family against the unavoidable ups and downs of economic and industry cycles. Because of the financial risks that come from relying on one source of income, such as a job or a business, consider creating at least one or more additional streams to generate cash flow.

Your additional income streams can be active, passive or a combination of the two. Some may pay you for doing something that you love (active), while others can provide income for you without your having to do much of anything at all (passive). You can diversify your income streams among different industries to protect you against major losses during downturns in one market and allow you to financially benefit from the upswings in another.

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This truly is one of the not-so-obvious secrets of how the wealthy become — and stay — wealthy, which unfortunately isn’t taught to the masses. The good news is that it’s not magic. It’s not even complicated. Creating your next stream of income is a simple, step-by-step process, which you can arrange to start bringing you monthly income faster than you might realize is possible.

1. ESTABLISH FINANCIAL SECURITY. diversify-income

Now, this idea isn’t sexy, but it’s imperative: Don’t focus your time and energy into building a second stream of income until your primary source is secure. Whether you have a day job or own your own business, focus on establishing and securing a primary monthly income that will support your expenses before you pursue other steps.

2. CLARIFY YOUR UNIQUE VALUE.
Every person on this planet has unique gifts, abilities, life experiences and value to offer — and be highly compensated for. Figure out the knowledge, experience, ability or solution you have that others will value and might pay you for. Remember, what might be common knowledge to you isn’t for other people.

You and your personality differentiate your value from that of every other person on earth. Many people will resonate with you (and your style) better than they will with someone else offering value that’s similar or even the same.

Knowledge is the one thing you can increase very quickly. As Tony Robbins wrote in Money: Master the Game, “One reason people succeed is that they have knowledge other people don’t have. You pay your lawyer or your doctor for the knowledge and skills you lack.”

Increase your knowledge in a specific area, and you’ll simultaneously increase the value that others will pay you for, either to teach them what you know or apply your knowledge on their behalf.

Are You Ready To Diversify Your Income?

3. IDENTIFY YOUR MARKET
Determine whom you are best qualified to serve. Based on the value you can add for others or the problems you can help people solve, who will pay you for the value or solution you can provide?

4. BUILD YOUR COMMUNITY.
Dan Kennedy says, “The most valuable asset you have is your email list, so focus on growing it.”

I don’t like to think of my email community as merely a list of names but rather as a group of individuals, each with their own hopes and dreams.

5. ASK YOUR COMMUNITY ABOUT THEIR DESIRES.
You can either guess or assume what people desire and need, invest valuable time in creating it and then hope your guess was correct. But remember: Hope is rarely the best strategy.

6. CREATE A SOLUTION.
After your community members tell you what they need, it’s your golden opportunity to get to work and create it. This could be a physical or digital product (a book, an audio, a video, a written training program or software) or a service (dog grooming, babysitting, coaching, consulting, speaking or training).

7. PLAN THE LAUNCH.
Think about how Apple rolls out its products. The company doesn’t just throw a product on the shelf or its website. No, the company makes it into an event. Apple builds anticipation months in advance, so much so that people are willing to camp out in front of stores for weeks to be the first in line.

8. FIND A MENTOR.
The best way to cut your learning curve and achieve a specific result is to find people who’ve already achieved what you want and then model their behavior. Rather than try to figure it all out on your own, find someone who has already achieved what you want, determine how this person did it, model this behavior and make it your own.

Click Here To Begin Diversifying Your Income Today!

While you might seek a relationship with a face-to-face human mentor, you could also hire a coach, read a book or articles by an expert or do web research. After some consideration, you may decide to make this your first step.

Schedule time to begin implementing these steps, one at a time, and within months you can be enjoying the benefits, the perks and the financial security and freedom that comes from having multiple streams of income.

 

Need A Little Help Reaching Your Goals?

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Successfully executing any personal strategic plan for change requires that as you develop your plan, you effectively incorporate these seven steps for attaining each and every goal:

1. Express your goal in terms of specific events or behaviors.

For a dream to become a goal, it has to be specifically defined in terms of operations, meaning what will be done. When a goal is broken down into steps, it can be managed and pursued much more directly. “Being happy,” for example, is neither an event nor a behavior. When you set out to identify a goal, define what you want in clear and specific terms.

2. Express your goal in terms that can be measured.

How else will you be able to determine your level of progress, or even know when you have successfully arrived where you wanted to be?

OPPORTUNITY IS HERE!
3. Assign a timeline to your goal.

Once you have determined precisely what it is you want, you must decide on a timeframe for having it. The deadline you’ve created fosters a sense of urgency or purpose, which in turn will serve as an important motivator, and prevent inertia or procrastination.

4. Choose a goal you can control.

Unlike dreams, which allow you to fantasize about events over which you have no control, goals have to do with aspects of your existence that you control and can therefore manipulate. In identifying your goal, strive for what you can create, not for what you can’t.

5. Plan and program a strategy that will get you to your goal.

Pursuing a goal seriously requires that you realistically assess the obstacles and resources involved, and that you create a strategy for navigating that reality. Willpower is unreliable, fickle fuel because it is based on your emotions. Your environment, your schedule and your accountability must be programmed in such a way that all three support you — long after an emotional high is gone. Life is full of temptations and opportunities to fail. Those temptations and opportunities compete with your more constructive and task-oriented behavior. Without programming, you will find it much harder to stay the course.

6. Define your goal in terms of steps.

Major life changes don’t just happen; they happen one step at a time. Steady progress, through well-chosen, realistic, interval steps, produces results in the end. Know what those steps are before you set out.

7. Create accountability for your progress toward your goal.

Without accountability, people are apt to con themselves. If you know precisely what you want, when you want it — and there are real consequences for not doing the assigned work — you are much more likely to continue in your pursuit of your goal. Find someone in your circle of family or friends to whom you can be accountable. Make periodic reports on your progress.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution

imageThere are two principal things a leader can influence when it comes to producing results : your strategy (or plan) and your ability to execute that strategy. Stop for a moment and ask yourself this question: Which of these do leaders struggle with more? Is it creating a strategy, or executing the strategy?

Every time we pose this question to leaders anywhere in the world, their answer is immediate: “Execution!”

I just started reading this book, “The 4 Disciplines of Execution.”  I highly recommend it to everyone who desires to reach their goals and execute their strategy! Have a blessed day!

Here is the Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/The-Disciplines-Execution-Achieving-Important/dp/1491517751

Turning Dreams Into Reality

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To one degree or another, just about all of us are unsatisfied with ourselves and our circumstances—and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. A certain amount of dissatisfaction is necessary if we’re ever going to make progress. To become all that we can be, we must dream of being more than we are. The problem is, too many of us stop there, in the dream stage. Why do you suppose that is?

More often than not, it’s because we don’t think we have what it takes to turn our dreams into reality. And we’re usually right about that. We can make some changes by sheer willpower or working harder, like reaching a new sales quota or dropping a dress or pants size. But what about the bigger changes, the changes inside that we know would make us so much happier and enable us to truly make a difference in our corner of the world? It’s that kind of change that is usually most elusive.

We’re not good enough, we tell ourselves. We have too many flaws and make too many mistakes. It’s just not in us!

Jesus summed it up so simply when He said, “With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible.” The secret lies in putting ourselves in God’s hands and letting Him do the impossible for us and through us and sometimes in spite of us. We’re small, weak, and incapable, but there is a very big and strong and capable God just waiting to help us.

A dream without a plan is soon exposed.  As Warren Buffet has said, when the tide goes out, you discover who’s been swimming naked.

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Dreaming is good when it leads to a learning agenda that directs our intentions towards what’s most important to us.  John Kotter has said there are two kinds of people in the world: (1) those who accept their life, and (2) those who lead their life.

Some people just get up, look at their life, and hope (dream), something good will happen.  The successful person says, “I’m going to make something happen.  I’m going to build on trust; make that relationship work; take control over the things I have influence over; lead my life; create a personal learning agenda that will help fulfill my dreams.”

The key to transforming dreams into reality is to set goals that can be broken down into doable steps.  As Mark Twain said, “The secret to change is one step at a time.”

So how do you create a learning agenda that will help you fulfill your dreams? For starters, is there a gap between what you know or the skills you have and the information or the skills you need to actualize your dream?

Below are Seven Steps to turn your dreams into reality:

1. Start with the end in mind.

Determine your goals and ask yourself: Where do I want to be next year? What do I need to do to accomplish these goals?  Your answers instantly become your learning agenda.

2. Assess the skills or knowledge you’ll need.

Some goals won’t require new skills or knowledge, but others will.  What specific skills are needed to make your dream(s) come true?  What skill that you already possess would you like to improve by 25% within the next year?

3. Explore the best sources.

Is it going back to school? Enrolling in a training course offered by your employer? Developing a relationship with mentors and/or coworkers who can teach you new skills or insights? Look for that optimal source for every skill you decide you need to learn.

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4. Create your learning agenda.

You now have the information, so start creating your learning plan.  It should lay out the skills and knowledge you need to acquire.  It should include a timeline of where and when you will go about it. And it should be in writing.

5. Begin with the most important.

Don’t start with the hardest or the easiest.  What is the most important thing you can do right now?  Not every action is of equal value. Evaluate and then rank them according to value.

6. Get moving. Execute.

What is your W.O.W. (Within One Week)?  What step will you commit to this next week?  Let the fun begin—you are putting your learning agenda into action.  The sooner you get going, the sooner you’ll learn the knowledge and skills you need to enjoy and achieve your goals!

7. Identify your limiting beliefs.

We all have them.  When you identify them they begin to lose their power.  Don’t doubt your dream. I’m too young.  I’m too old.  I don’t have the time.  I don’t have the money. These doubts are common to all of us.  One of the best ways to fight your doubts is to be clear on where you want to go.  You must take the first step.  That’s what builds confidence.  Every time you do something you didn’t think you could do, your confidence is built.  Action leads to confidence more than confidence leads to actionIt’s easier to act my way into a feeling than it is to feel my way into an action.

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Stand up for who you are and what really matters to you.  You can choose what you will believe, and it will shift your mindset to be clear on the action you will take. This action will be proof to yourself that YOU  believe in where you are going.  I am not talking about clicking your heals together, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, saying I believe…I believe. I’m talking about putting a stake in the ground, and making claim to your life.

So go back and review these seven steps for creating your learning agenda.  They will become part of your Doubt-Removal System. This will shift your mindset, and this action will deal with your limiting beliefs.

Live Tomorrow Over Again

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If you could do tomorrow over again, would you?

Seth Godin says that most of us live programmed lives. Tomorrow is set, finished, done, and you haven’t even started it yet. And we accept that as part of the deal in setting goals and reaching them.

But what about the tomorrow thirty days from now? Or a year? If you could do those over, would you? How? Thought provoking, isn’t it? Hmmm….