Archive For: Personal Development

Let’s Celebrate!

There are so many reasons to celebrate.

Yesterday was Mothers day, my brother also turned 50, my sister has a recently purchased a new house, I just turned 48, my dog is awesome and I have the best wife in the world.

Sometimes you can celebrate for professional reasons as well. Your project finished, you got a new position, you got a bonus, your boss left or even simply that you turned up to work!

As long time readers will know, I am a huge believer that if you make Celebrating Success a Habit, you will make success a habit.

So I wanted to celebrate my recent 48th birthday by giving you a present.

WARNING – THIS CELEBRATION INCLUDES OFFERING A DEAL TO YOU TO BUY SOMETHING (But it is an AWESOME deal!)

Of late I have been receiving some fantastic feedback on my Get More Inspiration book. One person said, “I thought this might be a fluffy motivational book and I was surprised that I really like the additional structure, reflections sections and tips. Great work”

Another said, “My husband never reads books but he really liked yours”

Ok, so I don’t want to turn this into a huge sales letter but I really want to celebrate, so here is the deal. If you want a burst of inspiration in a book that is specifically designed NOT to be read (you just flick and read a two page story at a time) then I want you to have a copy of the book. The great news is that it is a workbook as well. It has places to write your ideas and actions, but that means you won’t want to lend it to friends. No problem as I have the solution!

For the month of May 2016 if you order the physical Get More Inspiration Book, I will give you a second copy absolutely free so you can give it to a friend. I will also pay the postage to send both copies to you and I will enroll you in my Get More Done in 90 Days ecourse worth almost $300.

So that’s $385 worth for only $34.95

How does that sound?

If you are interested click the order button to make it happen.

If you are a eBook kind of person, sorry but I can’t do a magic deal for you. What I can do is direct you to the Amazon store where you can get it for only $11.99!

For my US Based buddies, you can hit your Amazon store here.

Maybe you will choose to celebrate some other way and that’s ok. What is important is that you always look to celebrate success.

So how will you celebrate success?

It’s a Wrap

Whew! After 4 and a bit weeks of touring around the USA and Canada and meeting interesting people, places and things, we are home.

While it was a great time, there were a few challenges (part of the reason there was no newsletter last week). So what I wanted to do is give you a few quick thoughts and some other bits from the trip.

1) Travel. Nothing makes you appreciate your life more than going to visit other countries (or other parts of your own country) and see how they live. It also expands your mind in a way that you can no longer go back to old thinking.

2) Stretch yourself. We drove over 6,500 km which meant 6 or 7 hours driving some days. This lead to a lot of conversation time in the car which enabled my gorgeous wife and I to connect strongly, share ideas and thoughts and make plans for the future.

3) Have fun. Many of those hours driving we spent singing, telling stupid stories and being creative in some way. We rarely played the radio or music and we had a stack of fun.

4) Talk to people. We had some great conversations with complete strangers, some were challenging due to a difference in values and beliefs and others were intriguing to discover their perspective. The picture above shows us sharing my birthday dinner with over 2,000 people at the Colorado Springs Air Force Academy. They had a very different perspective on things.

5) Plan for things to go wrong. We had a few interesting experiences. When we landed home in Melbourne, our car had a completely flat battery. At the conference we had unexpected snow (See the 90 second video here). Having a few “What if …” ideas up the sleeve helped.

6) Enjoy the really good things. We were staying in some very cheap accommodation and also some very nice accommodation (that latter had indoor fountains!) Who were we not to enjoy it? You can see a video of it as well as a quick comparison of the Aussie and USA meetings industry here

7) Share it. I have put many photos and stories on Facebook as we have travelled. So many people have commented on how much they enjoyed them and felt like they were having a holiday too (except we paid for it!) We also have catch ups with friends planned who want to hear all the detail about the trip.

8) Repeat it. The value from this travel is so significant that we have more trips planned, the next one is likely to be Vietnam. Why would you stop your own personal growth?

So have you got anything planned?

PS While I was away, two more episodes of the almost award winning show, Get More Success have been released. You can see/hear them here.

PPS May is a special month for a couple of reasons but you have to wait to next week to find out why (and what the special deal is!)

How Do You See It?

This weekends Certified Speaker Professional Summit was held in Denver Colorado.

I got so excited because on the second day IT SNOWED!

Now the others at the conference were less than excited. Snow could mean delays, flight cancellations and missed appointments.

While both perspectives are valid and based on difference experiences, one caused less stress than others.

Some of those with internal flights started worrying about cancellations straight away and others took the approach, “we see how it is tomorrow” and turned their focus on the sessions at hand.

Every situation has different perspectives. Some highlight your fears, others your dreams and some reflect the situation as you see it.

No one perspective is better than the other but some do make your life easier and less stressful.

What about what is going on in your life and business? Do you see the problem, the alternative or some other perspective?

So how do you see it?
PS I am celebrating my birthday on Tuesday. To help celebrate I have a gift for you. But I can’t deliver it until I return in May. So keep your eye out for the gift in May!

Open Your Mind

In two sleeps, my gorgeous wife and I are off to the other side of the world. As you can see, Google Maps optimistically says it will take 14 hours and 10 minutes to get there. You and I know it will take a lot longer.

But the first world problem of sitting in a steel tube that flys through the air in the same way that bricks don’t (credit to Douglas Adams for that) is nothing compared to the pay off.

Travelling brings perspective.

It enables you to appreciate all the small things you take for granted that you can’t get, do or have while overseas.
It reminds you how good your own quality of life is when you see the quality of life of others.
It shows you the truth about a place not just the romanticised version you may have or the photoshopped pieces on FarceBook.
It gives you an appreciation of other cultures and sub-cultures regardless of how similar or different they are to your own
It is humbling as it allows you to see your own problems for what they really are and to acknowledge how blessed your life really is.
It opens your mind to new ideas, new opinions, new perspectives, new ways of being and thinking.

So how open is your mind and do you need to go travelling to open it a bit further?

Grand Opening

WOO HOO!!

I am so excited that after some serious procrastinating, some hard work, bursts of inspiration, serious doubts, more procrastinating, more work, home made design, a lot of interviewing, a stack of support, the kindness of friends and some techo gurus the Get More Success show is now live!

Over the coming years I will be interviewing people from all walks of life and find out how they define success and what are their success tips that you may be able to apply to get success in your life.

As an added bonus, the show will also include excerpts from the Get More Speaker Success monthly blab. This is a group conversation with a more lighthearted approach that covers issues in the speaking, meetings and events industries. It has some great ideas if you are looking to run events.

Because of the increased demand in the visual media, a lot of my interviews are also on video as well as audio. So if you like to look at what is happening, feel free to watch as well as listen.

You can see/hear the show at The Get More Success website.

BUT I NEED YOUR HELP

The first couple of weeks of a podcast’s launch are important to help get traction. So this is where I need your help.

If you like the idea of the show as well as the first couple of editions that are out there, I need you to subscribe to the show in iTunes if you are an iTunes user.

This will trigger some of iTunes magic goodness and increase its profile and shoot it up the charts which then makes others want to look at it.

So I would love it if you could give me a boost.

It’s really easy. Just click this link to see the show listing.

Click on the “See in iTunes” button on the left of the screen

When iTunes opens, click on the subscribe button.

At the very least, head over and listen to Wayne Thompson from the Australian Type Foundry talk about how he creates fonts and some of the icon advertising pieces you have seen in advertising all over Australia (including the Optus “Yes” speech bubble).

So what is new in your life? What have you achieved after grinding away for what seems like years? How can I help you achieve success?

What’s On Your Mind?

It was a big weekend after an even bigger week.

Friday I was hosting a client “talk show” to profile their new and upcoming software releases for their top 70 clients. There was a teenage birthday. Saturday had meetings reviewing the annual residential and future direction on similar events as well as catching up with other training and video production colleagues. Sunday was hang out with my gorgeous wife in the morning, big dog walk and then a few hours of finances and a BAS statement.

Phew!

What better way to chill out than to take the beast for a fang up to Drouin only 75 km away. (If you are not sure, click here to see where it is on Google Maps.)

At our recent residential retreat, Therese Sheedy was instrumental in guiding us through what it mean to be mindful and how that benefits you, your energy levels and your overall health. Motrobike riding is a great way to be mindful.

The secret of mindfulness is to be only thinking about what is happening here and now. If you don’t do that on a bike, you crash!

For me it was great to smell the countryside, be fully aware of the traffic around me (including the dude who was speeding and cut me off), and think of nothing but what I needed to do to keep safe. I didn’t even know where I was going. It took me awhile to decide and only then did I realised I had missed the turn off. No problems – I set a new destination of Drouin and just kept going.

So What?

Ok, so I get you don’t really care that I have gone off on a motorbike ride.

Here is the point: I took time out to forget the rest of the world, the rest what was happening in my life and become a Human Being and not a Human Doing. Not only does that charge my batteries it also makes me easier to be around, more grateful for what I am already experiencing in life and better able to manage the issues that I am facing.

So how do you get present?

How do you let go of everything around you and just “be”?

It is incredibly important to empty your mind at times, so what mechanism will you use to do that?

DIY or DIFM?

(Do It Yourself or Do It For Me)

This was our weekend. We spent most of Friday and all of the weekend moving a very large, very heavy and very noisy bit of equipment around on our concrete floor.

We were trying to make it into a fantastic, shiny and glamorous bit of flooring goodness but it never go there!

The equipment was great and a big thanks to Kennard’s Concrete Care for helping us out. The first grinder died 90 mins into grinding and they went out of their way and swapped another one in 8pm on a Friday night!!

But here’s the thing with DIY – if everything goes well, it’s fabulous and you can save yourself a lot of money. But if you get that one job that has “special” requirements it is a nightmare as a DIY person. A DIFM expert would be able to read the situation, use their many years of skills and know the short cut to success.

This is where the DIFM expert earns their money.

Our concrete wouldn’t grind. We changed to the medium bonding, harder diamonds as directed but still it didn’t grind. We Googled, YouTubed, and even read the instruction manual. It made no difference. We talked to others who had had some grinding done recently and something didn’t seem right.

So we kept on doing what we knew to be right (because we had hired the equipment for the weekend). What we were missing was the 20 years of experience to be able to “read” the concrete and know how best to attack it. The DIFM expert would have known.

I won’t say it was a wasted weekend (because then I would have no reason to feel this exhausted) and the finish we have is better than the raw concrete, but it is not even close to the vision.

What we do have is a unique concrete floor, loaded with character than in two or three years (when we have prioritised the money for it) will have a professional come and grind and seal it.

While DIY is good and can save you some money the DIFM professional undoubtedly gives a better experience, particulalry if an issue arises. It’s one of the main reasons I get booked as a corporate MC.

So what do you need to DIY and what do you need to get a DIFM professional in for?

What’s Your Policy?

A few years ago my good friend Simon told me about a recruiting policy that the company he worked for had. It wasn’t a written policy but it was a cultural policy. That is, everyone knew about it and there was an understanding that it had to be met by all applicants.

I was talking with Natasa, a speaking colleague on Friday and she has the exact same policy for her clients. She and her business partner actually wrote theirs down in long form but the title of the policy and it’s intent is the same.

So what is the policy?

Quite simply it’s “No dickheads“.

What that means for Simon and Natasa is that any potential employee or client automatically goes through the scan of “are they a dickhead?” If the answer is yes then they do not get the job or become a client. It is a very simple way of formalising a gut feel or a vibe that the person you are dealing with is not going to be fun to be around.

Do you have a policy?

With all of the people that you deal with on social media, in real life, at work, in your business, at events, we need to be able to choose quickly as to whether we want to engage with them or not. The No Dickhead policy is an easy tool to help you choose who you invest your time and energy with.

So what’s your policy?

PS I came across this excellent list of 30 Improv Rules that Lead to a Happier Life. It is an excellent list of life policies to consider as well.

Who Do You Listen To?

Eleanor Roosevelt said, “Small minds discuss other people, average minds discuss events and great minds discuss ideas.”
Dr Nido Qubein said, “Who you spend time with is who you become.”
Jim Rohn said, “You are the average of the five people around you.”

So who do you spend time with and what do you talk about? Personally, I spent last Friday hanging out with this bunch of legends.

We all attended the Platform Professionals day long session arranged by the Professional Speakers Association.

To attend you have to be a Certified Speaking Professional.

This is not an easy designation to achieve. You have to prove you have the Expertise, Eloquence, Enterprise and Ethics of a professional speaker.

Not everyone passes the test because we don’t just accept anyone.

The kind of people in the room have spoken all over the world, published many books and other products, spoken in front of audiences of 20,000 people as well as continued to make sure they spend time with their families and friends.

The ideas we spoke of have generated a significant to do list for my business but everyone learnt something different.

There is a power in mixing with amazing people – whether it be face to face, reading a book or listening to a podcast. Too often we settle for a smaller, lesser place in the world. Can I urge you to play it bigger?

Can I suggest that you track down some people who you admire, buy them lunch and discuss ideas with them. Maybe even ask to have a 20 minute phone conversation. Sure they could say no, but what if they say yes?

So who do you spend time with and what do you talk about?

PS It you want to spend time with some fabulous people and kick off your 2016, join us for the weekend retreat at the end of January. You can see the details here.

Bowie is Dead. What about You?

You have probably read by now that David Bowie died of cancer a couple of days ago. He was a titan of the artistic community. His body of work (musical, artistic and theatrical) is significant and ever changing. One of my favourite songs of his was Heroes.

Let me be incredibly blunt.

SO WHAT?

The price of admittance to life is an ultimate death. As someone born in 1968, my musical, artistic and business heroes will continue to die off. There will be calls of “way before there time”, “so unfair” and “they had a great innings” no matter what. The thing is, you rarely get to choose when it is your time.

SO LIVE!

One of the things I love about Bowie is that he lived. He did not conform to what other thought he should do but travelled his own path. He tried different things, created a multitude of characters and alter egos and made his impact on the world as he saw fit. He failed as often as he succeeded and his only competition appeared to be himself.

What about you? Do you live or do you merely exist?

Too often I have met people who have died and just plod along like zombies. Or maybe they have retired on the inside but still turn up to work and life without “getting into it”.

Often our driving influence is from others telling us to follow the path of go to school, study hard, get a job, get a partner, get married, have kids, buy a house and live happily ever after. This is the perceived “safe” thing to do.

Now more than ever, the safety of this path looks flimsy! In the civilised world where people like me can pontificate and try and tell others what to do with their life, sometimes we are distanced from what truly counts.

What truly counts is this:

It’s your choice. If you are happy on the normal path, fantastic – enjoy it. If not, try something different. Make a big change. Take a chance. Maybe you could combine the normal path with a bit of edge too.

Whatever makes YOU feel happy and complete. Not what I tell you to do, or your parents, your partner, your friends, your work colleagues or anyone else.

This doesn’t mean you abandon your responsibilities. Every choice you make has a cost. For example, you want to have a relationship then you need to commit to that person, spend time with them, consider their needs and contribute to them as well as to yourself. If you choose to ignore them and do your own thing, the cost of that may well be them leaving.

Within your responsibilities and choices are a plethora of opportunities to contribute to yourself, those around you and the community at large. You may end up being a celebrity the like of David Bowie (you may already be), you may be a celebrity in the eyes of those you love.

At the very least, you will truly be alive. Enjoy all that life has to offer and getting everything you can out of it.

“If you’re alive, you got to flap your arms and legs, you got to jump around a lot, you got to make a lot of noise, because life is the very opposite of death. And therefore, as I see it, if you’re quiet, you’re not living. You’ve got to be noisy, or at least your thoughts should be noisy and colorful and lively.”

Mel Brooks

So it is sad that Bowie has died. But what about you? Are you alive?

Can You Sleep at Night?

Ethics are so important in business, yet also so boring and dull. Most people can’t identify their ethics or what drives them so how can they make the right decisions?

A recent article regarding the Dick Smith company talked about how venture capitalists made huge amounts of money. But at what cost? They essentially stripped Dick Smith of all its assets and sold it off to an unsuspecting investors (typically Mum and Dads who know the brand). It is now in the control of administrators. While the vanture capitalists made a stack of money for the few, what damage to the many?

A recent Forbes article talks about how a recent Gallup poll rate corporate executives near the bottom when measured on ethics and honesty. It goes on to show how the ethical approach is the more successful long term. That business is seen to lack ethics and are not to be trusted is a poor indictment on businesses today.

I make my decisions based on my core values. Those are to Inspire, Energise, Influence and Have Fun. They guide to do what is right for me and to better serve others. Those who have registered for the 2016 Kick Start later this month will go through the Values exercise to determine what counts for them.

So what about you? What counts for you? How are your ethics? What do you do when no one is watching? What do you base your decision making process on?

Do people trust you, but more importantly, can you sleep at night?

Do You Compete for Success?

competition It’s happening again.

2016 has barely started and already I am getting bombarded with “This is what successful people do”, “10 things to do before you get out of bed” and “7 Ways to be a winner”. You know the kind of post I am talking about.

I get an interesting response. Part of me goes all Anthony Robbins and “Yeah – let’s do iiiiiitttttt!!!” Another part goes, “Meh – I have success already, you can nick off.”

Why do we get excited and exhausted at the same time?

For many of us, it is some kind of primal competition. Higher, faster, stronger, more, more, more! But the main reason is quite simple.

WE DON”T KNOW WHAT SUCCESS IS!

We can have lists, read books, do courses, grow ourselves, plan our days, years and life but most people don’t know why they are doing it.

Take a moment. What is success in 2016 for you?

Money is one measure but there are far more. Is it to do with your relationships with others, your relationship with your self? Do you want to learn a new skill or hobby? What about travel or exposure to different cultures? Is it parenthood? What does success look like for you this year?

It is very seductive to get wrapped up in those lists of “Top 10 things CEOs do before breakfast” but let’s get real. Do you really want to be a CEO working 18 hours a day, earning good money but rarely having time to spend it? Personally, I don’t but I know a few people who do.

So what do you want?

Be prepared to pay for it though. If you want to be the CEO you need to work your way up the ladder, play politics, stand out, be a leader as well as a manager and be at the boards beck and call. It is the same with all of your desires and plans. There will ALWAYS be a cost. Figure out what you are prepared to pay.

So let’s all take a deep breath…

Forget about what others are doing. Ignore what other people say you “should” be focussed on, forget your new years resolution (you won’t keep it) and focus on what will success be for YOU this year?

Personally, I find I get more success if I focus on a theme. Last year for my wife (who is also my accountability buddy) and I it was the Year of the Holiday. This year is the Year of Health.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have a strategic plan for my business with matching Tactical and Operational plans but the overarching theme is The Year of Health. No competition, no worrying about others dieting tips just simply focussing on OUR definition of success.

So what is success for you in 2016?

PS I have joined up with Presentation Expert Zerafina Zara and Psychologist Therese Sheedy to run at 2016 Kick Off residential at beautiful Philip Island on the last week of January (See image above). Our focus will be on creating success, mindfulness and communicating with clarity and purpose all while having a load of fun. Come and join us! Click here for more details.

Mindful, Confident and Successful

This afternoon, Zerafina Zara, Therese Sheedy and I had a Blab chat about our upcoming 2016 Kick Start.

We talked about colouring books, mindfulness, communication, listening, success, deep conversations and more.

The conversation goes for about 30 minutes and you can check out the replay here.

There is also a special offer that almost doubles your value – details at the end of the video (of course!)

Special Offer

After watching the recording you will see that if you book your spot on the 2016 Kick Off by midnight Melbourne time Monday 14th December, you will get the Get More Business Success 12 CD pack worth $597 for NO EXTRA CHARGE! That’s right, it is your bonus for being a take action kind of person. Simply visit the 2016 Kick Off page and book your spot and we will get the CD pack to you.

See you at the Kick Off!

How Strong is Your Spirit?

Here is a surprise. I went to the boxing on Friday night. I know, how weird of me!

Now in the words of the late, great Kevin Merry, I am a peace loving man. So it was a little in your face (even if you weren’t in the ring).

The victor above is my personal trainer Chris. He is also a martial arts trainer and as part of his preparation for 2nd Dan Black Belt certification he thought he would improve his fitness and foot skills by going in for the Fight Fit challenge and have a real boxing fight of three rounds. It was full on!

What I noticed about Chris was not only what he physically fit, his fighting spirit was strong as well. All the fighters I saw almost collapsed in between rounds as they sat on their chair. He stood the entire time in a power pose (think Superman with his hands on his hips). Maybe he was psyching out his opponent or maybe he was triggering his own psyche, whatever it was he was doing, it worked.

Now for you and me, it is not boxing that damages our psyche or spirit, it can be more mundane things. A complaint from a customer, feedback from a colleague or simply the seed of self doubt. So what can you do to keep your spirit strong?

There is a lot of evidence supporting a power pose to give you strength. The right music does great wonders. Meditation can do amazing things for you. Others use the power of interpretive dance (I have to say this doesn’t work for me as I am too self conscious!) The secret is to have a plan and then use it BEFORE you need it as well as when you do.

Have you got a plan and is your spirit strong?

PS Speaking of strong spirits, Jedi Charli cut her hair last week. You can see some photos here (just scroll down a bit) as well as see that she raised over $3,000 for the Cancer Council. A HUUUUUGE thanks to all of you that supported her. It was wonderful of you.

PPS I will never use the phrase “Hits like a girl” anymore either. Those ladies can really pack a punch. It was almost comical to hear the MC announce the next fighters, “In the blue corner, Marina a Marketing/PR representative and in the red corner Jane a naturopath.” These two fighting demons then descended on each other. All I know is that I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of them!

PPS If you want to see some of Chris’ fight, here is my recording of his first round.

Priorities Count

My gorgeous wife and I have just returned from the delightful Dominican Republic.

Our flight home had a 24 hour stop over in Los Angeles so we chose to rent a hotel room and then hire a car for a day to do some roaming around and shopping at some outlet malls.

This is where it became a matter of priorities.

We could have spent a fortune on a hotel with all the modern conveniences, fluffy towels and 24 hour concierge. But that wasn’t our priority.

You may recall that my wife is a petrol head. So we went for the very simple, bed, bathroom and free wifi hotel for under $100. We spent twice as much on our car for the day and neither of us regret that decision at all! Here’s why.

That’s right, it was a muscle car – a Camaro SS just like Bumble Bee in Transformers.

After hitting the Walmart (you can see it in the background) we did a little more shopping and then headed back to the airport driving a couple of hours down the coast road. It was the quintessential Fast and the Furious kind of experience and it was impossible to get the smile of our faces (zoom in and check out my lovely wife’s).

Who remembers their hotel room? I can’t, I just slept through it!

So what are your priorities? What are you doing because you “should” not because you want to? What will bring you the most joy? What represents SUCCESS to you?

Choose wisely because priorities count!

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