Goals, Systems, Act on What You Can Control
This fits my rule to "set goals in concrete, make plans in sand," which is part of Pillar #2: Act on What You Can Control.
https://youtu.be/ROV36xBFD20
https://youtu.be/ROV36xBFD20
Fail Faster
From my inbox this morning…….
"Danny,
As strange as this may sound, the key to your next breakthrough is to fail faster.
Typically, when we try something new it doesn't work exactly the way we envisioned it. When we implement a new system or use a new technique, more often than not, it does not produce the intended result. Too often we are surprised by the lack of results and go looking for the next idea to chase when, in fact, the initial failure is just feedback. When you step out on uncharted ground, the best approach is to anticipate that you will more than likely need multiple attempts to get it right.
The 12 Week Year is designed to help you get to market quickly, so you adjust your approach based on market feedback. Be prepared for multiple versions and learn to fail faster in order to succeed.
Be Encouraged.
Brian
The 12 Week Year"
"Danny,
As strange as this may sound, the key to your next breakthrough is to fail faster.
Typically, when we try something new it doesn't work exactly the way we envisioned it. When we implement a new system or use a new technique, more often than not, it does not produce the intended result. Too often we are surprised by the lack of results and go looking for the next idea to chase when, in fact, the initial failure is just feedback. When you step out on uncharted ground, the best approach is to anticipate that you will more than likely need multiple attempts to get it right.
The 12 Week Year is designed to help you get to market quickly, so you adjust your approach based on market feedback. Be prepared for multiple versions and learn to fail faster in order to succeed.
Be Encouraged.
Brian
The 12 Week Year"
Pillar #1
Build yourself out front of your business.
What does it mean you ask?
It means exactly what it says - build yourself out in front of your business.
When you do, your business will catch-up. You just need to stay out in front of it. Growing yourself faster than the business is growing.
But, if your don't and you spend all your time and money building your business, eventually the business will outgrow you and it'll die. The business will suck you down like a giant whirlpool.
Or, if you have investors, they'll fire you and hire someone that can handle the growth. Someone that can stay out front of the business's growth.
Think about what I'm claiming.
8 out of 10 businesses fail in their first five years. The business starts out, there's only room to grow. Right? But at some point, the business, if it's succeeding, will start running you, the owner. You started it and you had the knowledge and wherewithal to I get it off the ground. You were smarter than the business so-to-speak.
But then it got a good wind behind it and it's consuming everything you have. Why? What happened?
What happened was…you stopped growing. You didn't stay smarter that the business.
It might have even been that you weren't that smart to begin with. You just did it with pure will and grit.
Your thinking got bogged down with the business and your business outgrew your thinking.
That's partly because our education system has primarily taught us what to think, not how to think. You up and had an entrepreneurial seizure, thought you'd start a business. Good for you.
But you have to BUILD a business to stay in business. And to build a business you have to build (grow) yourself out in front on it.
Do you have a personal growth plan written in addition to your business plan?
You better.
Period-the-end.
What does it mean you ask?
It means exactly what it says - build yourself out in front of your business.
When you do, your business will catch-up. You just need to stay out in front of it. Growing yourself faster than the business is growing.
But, if your don't and you spend all your time and money building your business, eventually the business will outgrow you and it'll die. The business will suck you down like a giant whirlpool.
Or, if you have investors, they'll fire you and hire someone that can handle the growth. Someone that can stay out front of the business's growth.
Think about what I'm claiming.
8 out of 10 businesses fail in their first five years. The business starts out, there's only room to grow. Right? But at some point, the business, if it's succeeding, will start running you, the owner. You started it and you had the knowledge and wherewithal to I get it off the ground. You were smarter than the business so-to-speak.
But then it got a good wind behind it and it's consuming everything you have. Why? What happened?
What happened was…you stopped growing. You didn't stay smarter that the business.
It might have even been that you weren't that smart to begin with. You just did it with pure will and grit.
Your thinking got bogged down with the business and your business outgrew your thinking.
That's partly because our education system has primarily taught us what to think, not how to think. You up and had an entrepreneurial seizure, thought you'd start a business. Good for you.
But you have to BUILD a business to stay in business. And to build a business you have to build (grow) yourself out in front on it.
Do you have a personal growth plan written in addition to your business plan?
You better.
Period-the-end.
From my inbox this morning: The number one thing that you have to sacrifice.......
From my inbox this morning....
Danny,
The number one thing that you have to sacrifice to be great is your comfort. Everyone wants to be great, be successful, yet most people choose short-term, comfortable activities over long-term, pleasurable results. If it were easy to be great, then everyone would be great.
Think about it - the average American worker wastes 2.09 hours every day at work according to one recent study. This wasted time is spent on comfort at the expense of greatness.
To be great, you must be willing to pay the price of greatness. Think about your moment-by-moment choices. What comfortable activity are you choosing over your own greatness?
You have incredible capabilities, but so few people actually make of themselves even one iota of what they are capable of becoming. Decide right now to eliminate one comfort activity from your day and replace it with an activity that drives results for you. At first, this may be difficult, but if you forget, just notice and get back on track.
If you can master your desire for comfort, then you will place yourself among the few people who truly reach their goals and dreams in life.
Be Encouraged.
Brian Moran, The 12 Week Year
The Biology of Strength Training, Excerpt fm Younger Next Year, by Crowley, Chris; Lodge, Henry S.
Younger Next Year
Crowley, Chris; Lodge, Henry S.
Citation (APA): Crowley, C., & Lodge, H. S. (2019). Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, Sexy, and Smart—Until You're 80 and Beyond [Kindle iOS version]. Retrieved from Amazon.com
Excerpt….
The Biology of Strength Training
Strength training is primarily about your muscles’ ability to deliver power, which, surprisingly, has as much to do with a special form of neural coordination as actual strength.
Strength training causes muscle growth, and that’s important, but it’s the hidden increase in coordination that changes your physical life. This is not eye-hand coordination; it’s the coordination of fine muscle detail through the elaborate networks of nerves that link your brain and body.
Generally, we aren’t aware of nerve decay as we get older, but it’s the main reason our joints wear out, our muscles get sloppy, and our ability to be physically alert and powerful begins to fade.
And it is reversible with strength training.
You have millions of potential neural networks in your body, and you shift between them with each step. Your body grows and your brain learns the tiniest amount from each one. They have to, because C-6 is in the background, helping them to forget all this, just a little bit, every day.
The trouble comes when your muscles, brain connections, and the controlling spinal reflex arcs get sloppy and weak from years of a relatively sedentary existence. The casual motion of daily life is not enough to turn on the C-10 of growth. Pushing your chair back from the desk is an insultingly trivial task for your physical brain, and over the decades large parts of it have deliberately gone to sleep in protest.
Remember the threshold for C-10? It takes a critical amount of effort to cross that threshold and secrete enough C-6 to trigger the production of C-10. Below that threshold, all you have is the C-6 of chronic decay. You need to do strength training to cross that threshold for power and coordination, to get C-10 into your neural networks, into the meat of your muscles, into your joints, and into your tendons.
Aerobic exercise takes you across the threshold for endurance, circulation, and longevity, but you need strength training for power and neural coordination.
A single step on level ground doesn’t turn on C-10. Nor does climbing a few stairs. But climbing stairs until you feel your legs burn will turn on C-10. Lifting weights until you can’t lift them anymore . . . that really turns on C-10.
Strength training creates an intimate connection between your body and your brain. It’s easiest to look at this from the top down, starting with your brain and nervous system. Your physical brain—the remarkably complex, physical brain—integrates the millions of messages coming up from your body and coordinates them with all the impulses it’s sending down to move your muscles against resistance. The neural impulses to create coordination and power blaze a trail through your neural circuits. Each time you use them, you directly strengthen the balance, power, and muscular coordination centers of the physical brain. And the trail gets broader, smoother, and faster.
Consistent strength training can change all that by bringing your neural connections out of hibernation.
They will fatigue, and the fatigue will damage them. Taking them to fatigue is what turns on the surge of C-6—the good stress of exercise that turns on C-10.
By the way, this is why you have to sweat when you do aerobic exercise; at low levels of demand, your endurance cells alternate too much to get fatigued. This is also why you have to push to the point of muscle fatigue with weights—to that burning feeling in your muscles that most of us hate and would skip if it were up to us.
Unlike endurance units, which recover from aerobic exercise overnight, your strength units need to enter a forty-eight-hour repair cycle. Two days a week of strength training is enough. Three days is the maximum.
You do not build new muscle cells with strength training; in fact, you continue to slowly lose them as you age, regardless. What you do instead is build new muscle mass inside each remaining cell: the protein, the substance—in short, the red meat. And the potential growth in those remaining cells is extraordinary: certainly enough to keep you strong and fit for the rest of your long life. Put another way, you can lose half your muscle cells over the course of your life, lose half your peak fitness, and still end up stronger at eighty than you were at twenty. Besides, when were you ever at your peak fitness? No one but Olympic athletes and Navy SEALS ever get there.
So the signals to your brain from strength training are loud and important: priority news. And they create growth—first in the signaling pathways themselves, blazing that direct trail through the forest of neural networks, and second in the muscles, tendons, ligaments, and joints directly. With this growth comes a new integration between your brain and body. They have always been fused; we just forgot it. This is how you reconnect them. It’s a literal, physical reconnection: nerve fibers you can see under the microscope, brain chemistry you can see on MRI scans, reaction time you can measure in the lab. It’s skiing better, feeling stronger, feeling better. It’s also not falling down. As Chris mentioned, you’re much more likely to fall as you get older unless you stay in great shape. This is a major public health issue, because you also fall harder and do more harm to yourself. C-6—hiss and, literally, bump in the night. Falls have been carefully studied, and it turns out you do not stumble any more often as you age; in other words, you catch your toe just as often as you did at twenty. But instead of easily recovering your balance, you’re more likely to hit the pavement.
Strength training gives you the power to fight gravity and stay on your feet. Even if you do take a fall, having strong reflexes and powerful muscles changes it from a head-on collision to a softer impact. Like the crumple zones in your car, your coordinated muscle action softens the blow. You will fall less if you are strong, and you will fall better, dramatically lowering your odds of serious injury.
Falls aside, strength training lowers your chance of injury with all forms of exercise—in large part by speeding up your proprioceptive reflexes, but also by strengthening your tendons, ligaments, and joints. Tendons and ligaments are living tissue, but they grow more slowly as you get older. Pulling hard on a tendon strengthens the nerve connections and makes the tendon grow a bit farther into the bone, strengthening the attachment and rendering it more resistant to injury.
Whatever you decide to do, do it. Strength training is critical to the rest of your life, and you can start at any age. Sedentary, seventy-year-old men double their leg strength with three months of weight training. Sadly, men do strength training even less than aerobic exercise. Only 10 percent of Americans over sixty-five even claim to be doing any form of regular strength training. That’s appalling. It should be clear by now that everyone—certainly everyone over fifty—should be doing real strength training two days a week. You can do a quick routine in half an hour, or spend an hour or more if you get into it, but don’t skip it. Aerobic exercise saves your life; strength training makes it worth living.
The Biology of Growth and Decay: Things That Go Bump in the Night
Cytokine-6, or C-6 for short, is the master chemical for inflammation (decay), and cytokine-10, or C-10, is the master chemical for repair and growth. C-6 is produced in both the muscle cells and the bloodstream in response to exercise, and C-10 is produced in response to C-6. This is your body’s brilliant mechanism for coupling decay and growth. C-6 actually triggers the production of C-10. Decay triggers growth.
Failure…not taking action
From my inbox……
Danny, honestly, it’s because people don’t take action.
Think about what failure is… Oxford defines it as "the lack of success."
So then, what’s success?
"The accomplishment of an aim or purpose."
Achieving a goal.
Hitting a benchmark.
Moving from where you are right now to where you want to be.
You don’t succeed by sitting still.
You don’t reach goals by doing nothing.
You don’t accomplish an aim or purpose by trying to keep things as they are.
You see, if you’re trying to keep things as they are, you’re announcing your ignorance to the law of vibration – the universal law that states that everything is in a constant state of motion, a constant state of change. (This is a law much like the law of gravity is a law.)
Everything is either deteriorating or improving. YOU cannot stay the same. Neither can (nor will) your results. They will grow or they will decline.
If you do nothing, the latter will be your ‘fate.’
But the good thing is, the choice is yours. ‘Fate’ is decided by you.
When you look at your financial results, are you satisfied? Are you good to let things be, knowing that slowly, gradually they will disintegrate…?
Or do you want better – for you, for your family, for your customers, for your legacy?
This has nothing to do with me. This is all about you, about your dreams, and frankly, about the results you believe you're worthy of having in your life.
I believe in you and I believe in your dream!!
Hold Your Image!!
Paul Martinelli
ARE YOU READY TO PUT YOUR DREAM TO THE TEST?
“Okay, you may be saying to yourself, I've got a dream. I think it's worth pursuing. Now what? How can I know that my odds are good for achieving it?
That brings us to the questions, which comprise the ten chapters of this book. Here they are:
1. The Ownership Question: Is my dream really my dream?
2. The Clarity Question: Do I clearly see my dream?
3. The Reality Question: Am I depending on factors within my control to achieve my dream?
4. The Passion Question: Does my dream compel me to follow it?
5. The Pathway Question: Do I have a strategy to reach my dream?
6. The People Question: Have I included the people I need to realize my dream?
7. The Cost Question: Am I willing to pay the price for my dream?
8. The Tenacity Question: Am I moving closer to my dream?
9. The Fulfillment Question: Does working toward my dream bring satisfaction?
10. The Significance Question: Does my dream benefit others?
I believe that if you really explore each question, examine yourself self honestly, and answer yes to all of them, the odds of your achieving your dream are very good. The more yeses you can answer, the more on target you are to fulfill your dreaming.
I truly believe that everyone has the potential to imagine a worthwhile dream, and most have the ability to achieve it. And it doesn't matter how big or how seemingly outrageous your dream appears to others if your answers are yes to the Dream Test questions.”
— Put Your Dream to the Test: 10 Questions that Will Help You See It and Seize It by John C. Maxwell
Do you dream? What is a dream?
Here’s John’s take on types of dreams and the definition of a dream worth pursuing-
- Material Dreams-Belief that Wealth or Possessions Will Make You Happy
From my Inbox…..8/2/2021
Dear Danny,
We advise our clients to schedule one to two buffer blocks in their calendars each day. Buffer blocks are 30 to 60 minutes in length, and they are used to get the emails, phone messages, and other routine tasks done efficiently. Buffer blocks reduce the time it takes to get all of the incoming and administrative tasks done and they keep those tasks from interrupting the more important things.
If you decide to try buffer blocks, let your contacts know when you have them each day so that they know when they can reach you. You might even change your voice mail to say something like "I am not available right now, but if you leave a message I return calls between 11 to 12 and 4 to 5 each day." Even if just 60% of your callers leave messages, you will be way ahead!
Be Encouraged.
Brian Moran - 12 Week Year
5 Most Common Reasons People Can’t Identify Their Dreams
"If you've given up hope, lost sight of your dream, or never connected with something that you think is worth dreaming and working toward, perhaps it would help you to learn about the five most common reasons that people have trouble identifying their dream:
- SOME PEOPLE HAVE BEEN DISCOURAGED FROM DREAMING BY OTHERS
- SOME PEOPLE ARE HINDERED BY PAST DISAPPOINTMENTS AND HURTS
- SOME PEOPLE GET IN THE HABIT OF SETTLING FOR AVERAGE
- SOME PEOPLE LACK THE CONFIDENCE NEEDED TO PURSUE THEIR DREAMS
- SOME PEOPLE LACK THE IMAGINATION TO DREAM"
August is “Dream Month”
Join in as we work through Maxwell's "Put Your Dream to the Test: 10 Questions that Will Help You See It and Seize It."
"What is your dream? Will you achieve it in your lifetime? I'm certain that you desire to. I'm sure you hope you will. But will you actually do it? What odds would you give yourself? One in five? One in a hundred? One in a million?
How can you tell whether your chances are good or whether your dream will always remain exactly that-a dream? And are you willing to put it to the test? Most people I know have a dream. In fact, I've asked hundreds, if not thousands, of people about their dream. Some willingly describe it with great detail and enthusiasm.
Others are reluctant to talk about it. They seem embarrassed to say it out loud.
These people have never tested their dream. They don't know if others will laugh at them. They're not sure if they're aiming too high or too low. They don't know if their dream is something they can really achieve or if they're destined to fail. They have no idea how to achieve their dreams. What they possess sess is a vague notion that there is something they would like to do someday or someone they would like to become. But they don't know how to get from here to there.
If that describes you, then you'll be glad to know that there really is hope. And I believe this book can help you."
— Put Your Dream to the Test: 10 Questions that Will Help You See It and Seize It by John C. Maxwell
What are you selling?
What Are You Selling? Who's Your Customer?
Peter Drucker claimed, "the purpose of a company is to create a customer." You have to agree with that on some level.
Being distinctly aware of "what you are selling" and "who is your customer" is extremely important to your success. Yet, I know from experience that it can sometimes be hard to pinpoint. That's due in part to the overflow of information and messages that permeate around us.
We're told to have a vision, mission and/or purpose. Seminars, books, and coaches on best practices tell us to create something bigger than ourselves, and I agree. That ties directly to one of my pillars: build yourself out in front. But bring it home. Bring it down to the grassroots; you have to pay very specific attention to knowing, being sure about "what" you're selling and "who" is your customer.
Ronald Skelton posted on Twitter (@RonaldKSkelton) that marketing raises awareness but selling is getting the check. That's specific and a salesman needs to know that difference.
If you are a mortgage loan officer? do you make dreams happen? Or do you sell mortgage loans? Did you take a application yesterday?
Insurance agents, do you give peace of mind, or sell policies? Did you write a policy yesterday?
Social media consultants, attorneys, executive coaches, accountants, IT businesses, financial planners; what do you sell? Who is your customer?
Everyone, every team, every company, every manager, every executive and every board must do a better job of understanding who the customer is and how to create sales. The revision of Drucker's book "The Five Most Important Questions You'll Ever Ask About Your Organization" states that if Drucker were alive today he would say "a company's most important purpose is to create fans." Can you create real fans without selling?
Just be sure you're getting checks and keep this out in front, right along with your mission statement. Know your mission, know what you're selling and know who your customer is.
Todays's Monday, I pray that you start your week well.
To that end.....
Danny
Peter Drucker claimed, "the purpose of a company is to create a customer." You have to agree with that on some level.
Being distinctly aware of "what you are selling" and "who is your customer" is extremely important to your success. Yet, I know from experience that it can sometimes be hard to pinpoint. That's due in part to the overflow of information and messages that permeate around us.
We're told to have a vision, mission and/or purpose. Seminars, books, and coaches on best practices tell us to create something bigger than ourselves, and I agree. That ties directly to one of my pillars: build yourself out in front. But bring it home. Bring it down to the grassroots; you have to pay very specific attention to knowing, being sure about "what" you're selling and "who" is your customer.
Ronald Skelton posted on Twitter (@RonaldKSkelton) that marketing raises awareness but selling is getting the check. That's specific and a salesman needs to know that difference.
If you are a mortgage loan officer? do you make dreams happen? Or do you sell mortgage loans? Did you take a application yesterday?
Insurance agents, do you give peace of mind, or sell policies? Did you write a policy yesterday?
Social media consultants, attorneys, executive coaches, accountants, IT businesses, financial planners; what do you sell? Who is your customer?
Everyone, every team, every company, every manager, every executive and every board must do a better job of understanding who the customer is and how to create sales. The revision of Drucker's book "The Five Most Important Questions You'll Ever Ask About Your Organization" states that if Drucker were alive today he would say "a company's most important purpose is to create fans." Can you create real fans without selling?
Just be sure you're getting checks and keep this out in front, right along with your mission statement. Know your mission, know what you're selling and know who your customer is.
Todays's Monday, I pray that you start your week well.
To that end.....
Danny
Do you agree it's a noisy world?
If you do, you'll enjoy this book Hurdie and Danny are discussing. The author insists you have to have platform mentality.
Did you catch that?...a platform MENTALITY for your online marketing. Hyatt, the author, insists it is critical to being noticed and a flashy website is not a platform. Owning your platform is critical and you don’t own Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Michael Hyatt knows this from experience. An author, agent, and publisher for more than 40 years, he has spent the past 15 years creating an online following that numbers in the hundreds of thousands.
Join Hurdie and Danny as they discuss a small piece of their 8-year experience with Platform: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World.
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