I made a kind of funny, crazy decision a little while ago.

Limit extremely or stop completely watching TV that

doesn’t in some way inspire or motivate me.

-News… nope

-Most sitcoms… nope

-American Idol… (well the really really bad try outs, those are encouraging, but other than that, nope)

-Sports Movies and Stuff That Stretches my ideas like

Rocky, The Matrix, It’s  a Beautiful Life, Rudy, and on and on.

YES.

So, I’ve been on a bit of a Rocky kick lately, and just got done watching

Rocky IV where he battle’s “THE RUSSIAN”… Drago.

Anyway, I got to the end of the movie and saw that there was about 15-20 minutes left and “THE FIGHT” was just starting.

90% Of the movie is all the build up to the fight.  The fight that the “Boxing Movie” is supposed to be about is only a small part of it.  The rest is mostly Rocky coming to the decision to fight, getting mentally and physically ready to fight and so on.

How This Can Make You More Money

So that brings me to business.  Yes, I could end there and state the 80/20 rule an say that what you think about your bring about and stuff like that.

While that’s true, it’s not what I am going to do today.

I want to give you a real, actionable way to look at it and apply it to your business right now.

It’s in your marketing.

All about guarantees.  I’ve been doing a lot more copy writing lately, so I am listening to a lot of the good old direct mail guys.  I heard Dan Kennedy tell a story and talk forever about guarantees.

I realized that almost NO ONE uses this strategy ever… and there are some powerful ways to apply it.

Here’s a the quick video explaining it.

When I say there is NO secret, what I mean is that there
isn’t a single secret. There isn’t one principle, idea, concept, strategy,
or technique that is sure to make everything work no matter what.

To really be successful with any principle, always requires other
principles, strategies and techniques to make them work.

This is the power of AND.

It’s actually demonstrated most perfectly by the natural world with
chemistry.

Any element alone by it’s self is just that, a single element.
Only when elements are combined do we get reactions, action, things happening.
It usually requires some kind of state change to make the difference,
but the point is, no one thing alone without the other pieces is complete.

There is not one secret that makes everything work, there is a philosophy and
a series of simple things that when combined you get a result.

So, I’ve been thinking about this lately and he’s a short list of keys to the puzzle:

1- Success Psychology

2- Self awareness: Your understanding of your self, what you’re best at and what you truly want, your purpose, motives, drive, etc

3- Productivity: This is really my favorite.  Our lives are ultimately an equation of inputs and outputs.  I love to draw inspiration from natural laws of how things work.  Newton discover that ”To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction.”  (part of his 3 laws of motion) Every input your make, every action you take produces some kind of result. Your ability to recognize what you want and then manage your productivity (your inputs) will get you there.

4- Emotional intelligence.

All in all, this is probably an incomplete list.  I’ve kind of just figured out through my own experience that like Jim Rohn said, “there’s always about half a dozen things that all the difference.”

So that’s the big secret, that there is no secret.  It’s a combination.  Your job is to figure out all the numbers on the lock so you can open it up to what you want.

Jacob, has always talked to me about his idea of a list of books
that you read every year, so I twisted his arm to see if he’d let me
interview him about it.

Here They Are, 10 Books You Need To Read In 2010

Click Here To Play The Interview

Here Are The 10 Books You Should Read Every Year

1. The 21 Irrefutable Laws Of Leadership by John C. Maxwell
2. If Harry Potter Ran General Electric
3. Secrets Of The Millionaire Mind
4. The Speed Of Trust by Stephen M.R. Covey
5. 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
6. The Greatest Salesman In The World
7. Think and Grow Rich By Napolean Hill
8. PERSONAL POWER II 30th Anniversary Special Edition
9. How To Win Friends And Influence People by Dale Carnegie
10. The Power Of Full Engagement

Sometimes this means bugs. Somehow, a bug or error in code
during some of the updates took me and several of my friends
sites, and many of my other sites, down.

We’re back now.

Happy happy joy joy.

Andrew James

Click Here For The Jim Rohn Tribute Video

A legend passed away today.

I have to say, Jim Rohn was maybe one of the most influential people I ever picked up.  Not because of the message or the insights, while those were deeply profound and influential, but because he was one of the first, and one of the starters of the habit.

It is amazing to me how our lives form and start to turn out (I am still in the begging) and how little things make big differences.

Jim Rohn was one of those to me.  Here are a few of the most important things I learned from him.

Some Of The Best Lessons Jim Taught Me…

“It’s Not The Wind That Determines Your Destination, but the Set- Of – The -SAIL…”

The Magic of part time

If can should you? If you can give more should you? If you could make more money should you? If you could be a little better shouldn’t you?

“Isn’t that interesting?”

The power of your philosophy…

For things to change you have to change.

Let’s go do it…

The Bigger Lesson That Jim Rohn Taught Us Today, Without Writing, Speaking, Or Setting Foot On Stage…

If you take nothing away from the life and teachings of Mr. Jim Rohn, watch the video above and see the impact of a human being.  What can one person do.  It is amazing the power of one life, one person who sets out to be great, and persists until the end.

Action Items

Write your thoughts on what it means to live a great life like Jim Rohn did. Tell everyone what you have learned from him, or one of your greatest mentors.

Screw Social Media Purism

Instead Kill ‘em With Kindness And Authenticity… Just because someone is practicing so called, “taboo” or basically “un-popular” tactics, we don’t have to shun them, this doesn’t have to be high school where you get socially punished for wearing the wrong brand of jeans…

I have to say I am kind of a fan, lately, of the short posts.

The other thing I have realized is that I may go way

too deep here sometimes, but whatever.

There are a whole heck of a lot of people giving, getting,

and distributing social media advice these days.

Who’s to say I should be one more of them.

I’ve just got a short tip though.

Why do we have to be so freggin mean to all the people

who are just trying to figure it out and may be

too robot like or whatever?

So what if they are using stupid auto reply messages,

(they do work by the way, even though I don’t use them)

So what if they have a tons of automated stuff, they have

thousands of followers and barely 100 tweets.

Here’s my point and then I’ll leave you alone:

Even if there are people out there being in-authentic and they are overly

automated, robotic or whatever (not as big a problem as people make it out to be)

Or you’re just annoyed that people “just don’t get twitter like you do yet,

JUST DO THE RIGHT THING AND BE AUTHENTIC AND YOU’LL

STAND OUT 10 TIME MORE… AND Don’t Judge people for being smart about

leveraging their time with a good tool or two.

What brought on this rant like post you might ask?
I was actually tweeting away, just becasue I actually felt like it
and I followed some people and go the usual automated direct messages.

And I realized how stupid my, “gosh I hate these things can’t they see they don’t
work” attitude was. And I thought, “you know, if I am basically numb to all these
messages, just about everyone else in the world probably is too.”

What if I were to actually reply to them, or be a little bit real
or actually check out their blog or whatever. (not every single one, but just the ones that catch my eye.

It might be the only real reply they get all day. (That may also be an exaggeration)
But the point is, just be real, be cool even if people
aren’t following the “social media guru’s popular people rules”

The point is to use it how you want, and it’s dumb to shun.

Andrew James…Over and out.
Comment and shout below…

I’ll be more professional, polished and business like later.

How many FREE reports, videos, and interviews are in box or on your hard drive right now?

Have you ever been told that all that it takes in this social media game is to give a ton of great content and people will automatically find you, know like and trust you, and magically want to buy from you?

The fact is, those techniques work but 99% of us, (you and I included) usually get it wrong.

I’ve been blogging much more often and reading some new and different (to me) ideas that have brought me to a new conclusion.

Content is not king. Leadership is.

“Here’s the mistake. Content DOES NOT EQUAL VALUE, VALUE = VALUE”

Content is only valuable to the extent that people preview it to be valuable. Your authority, positioning, copy writing, persuasion and THE POWER OF THE SOLUTION you give all determine value.

Professionals lead by giving value, amateurs create content.

I just finished “Crush It” by Gary Vaynerchuck, and one of the things that hit me was what he said about content being the easy part, especially if you’re passionate about it.  He said the hustle is around the commenting, syndicating, interacting, joining and starting conversations with all the people that are as passionate about the topic as you are.  In essence, create great content, but do it as a leader and player in  the community.  I personally know, that I need to re-tool and get better at this, which is why I am writing this post.

So here’s the action Items:

1- find 5 -10 people that are just as passionate about your topic as you are, who have a blog, and add those blogs to your RSS reader or just book mark them and start reading and commenting.

2- do the same thing but in twitter, and just re tweet them, frequently.

I’m realizing that blogging for any of the following reasons is secondary to this number one reason.

Blogging For:
-traffic
-money
-branding
-networking

They may all be primary purposes but none of these things offers the benefit of the number one benefit.

THE BIGGEST REASON EVERYONE SHOULD BLOG

… It’s what it does for your brain. The number one reason for me to blog is that it enlivens my mind and makes me learn at hyper speed…and because of my emotional blue print it’s ultra fulfilling

Here’s why this happens:

1. Super learning studies have shown that when you learn with the intent to teach your brain records the information differently and you internalize it faster and better.

When you blog you’re teaching. Whether you have 300,000 visitors a month or 3, the simple fact that people COULD read it, and maybe will is enough to make your brain encode whatever you’re learning about in “super-learned format”

2. Writing and communicating information evolves it in your mind. Stephen Covey talks about this in the 7th habit. Sharpening the saw, refining your ideas through preparing the for communication gives you more and better ideas.

3. Know what’s valuable: you get real time, real feedback as to what is valuable to others based on your content.  Most of the time, we are wrong in determining what is valuable to other people, what we value and what they value are often very different.
4. Give: this, to me is one of the best ways to give to others, and help.  Giving has it’s own benefits and we could have an entire blog and books about why that is so.
5. Allows you to shut up: If you’re like me, you have way more stuff to talk about that you find interesting and relevant to business, friendly, and almost all other conversations.  You learn a lot and need to share those thoughts.  A blog let’s you get that out so you can actually listen to others, and you don’t always have to be explaining your point of view, because it’s already there, on your blog.
6. Legacy: Perhaps the biggest and best reason of all.  This is the first time ever in the history of mankind that we don’t have to work that hard to create and preserve our legacy.  When you blog, you get that same benefit, even more, because it’s not just a recording of your actions on face book, what you had for lunch that you tweeted or whatever, it’s your best most important thoughts.

7. Accountability: Turn your life into your own reality show and you can create whatever reality you want. There was an amazing study in the book Predictably Irrational, (I forget which chapter) that talked about a woman who started a get out of debt blog, chronicling her “journey.”  The same has been done for weight loss.  The point is, there are some amazing goal getting, psychological benefits of telling everyone about your progress that actually helps you to progress.

Action: don’t be dead like this lobster I ate on my cruise in new England a month ago, TAKE ACTION

here’s some suggestions:

1. Start a blog if you don’t have one yet… Easiest is blogger.com
2. Pick a topic you like
3. Write at least 7 posts, once a day for a week, the challenge gets your mind moving….

1. Bust your balls, your brain, and maybe your bank account

I don’t know anyone who’s achieved anything you’d want who hasn’t had to go through at least some of this stuff to get there

2. Leverage, momentum, and cash flow…

Aka you actually start making money

3. System Over Ride: Freedom

Outsource stuff just to see if you can or because you feel like it…

You basically don’t have to do anything but you still do you favorite stuff and anything that sounds fun.

Focus time on building, optimizing and delegating systems to people companies or other systems so you don’t have to touch them at all.  Taking you to freedom.

So this basically the pattern I see with most entrepreneurs who make it from start up to freedom.  Have you seen differently?

Please, just watch this.  It is huge for you. After you watch it, I’ll explain why it’s such a big deal.

Investment of Character

The mystery box, what makes compelling stories work are mystery boxes.

Story telling and character are key’s to marketing and branding

Mystery boxes are keys to mystery boxes.

If you want people to follow you, you need to start making mystery boxes…