
Posted on 17 January 2012. Tags: business mindset, positive thinking
I believe we all have a natural desire to be significant and to be contributing members of society. Yet few of us truly feel like we are creating the rules that will allow us to succeed. One way to escape from this in today’s world is to live our lives through other people via reality TV, gurus, experts, music groups,
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 02 December 2011. Tags: business mindset, business strategy
I’ve never used my blog to directly advocate for an issue, but the SBA’s long-term focus on big business has moved from absurd to something there is no word for. I don’t want more handouts. I just want them to stop giving them to big businesses, and expanding to include even more big businesses to give handouts to. Help us stop it.
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 22 November 2011. Tags: Book Review
NFIB, the leading small business association with 500,000 businesses, has named my book, Making Money is Killing Your Business, the number one business book of 2010. The National Federation of Independent Businesses, or NFIB, rated it #1 because they thought it has the most potential for real impact in the lives of the readers.
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 15 November 2011. Tags: business mindset, positive thinking
Conation is one of the 1,000 most obscure English words and yet the most important business word you’ve never heard. Want to know if you’re doing well and going where you want? Filter everything through the word conation: Conation – the will to succeed that manifests itself in single-minded pursuit of a goal.
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Posted in Featured, Mindset

Posted on 07 November 2011. Tags: business mindset, business strategy, positive thinking
Sitting in a hotel lobby in Martinborough, New Zealand after a bike ride, two professors from Vancouver asked me if I thought education was important for success. They hit my hot button. If, like the old saying goes, knowledge is power, then librarians would rule the world. They don’t. Something else is more correlated to success than education.
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Posted on 19 October 2011. Tags: business mindset, business strategy
I Don’t Understand? – I can remember being fresh out of High School and working for a contractor. Some of the people I worked with had a bad attitude about the lifestyle the owner was able to live.
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 19 October 2011. Tags: business mindset, positive thinking
Chapter Six in my next book, Bad Plans Carried Out Violently, is about Conation, the most important business word you’ve never heard. Its antonym is just as obscure and just as critical for you to know – velleity. Our whole community of business owners use this phrase all the time:
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 11 October 2011. Tags: business strategy, Leadership, positive thinking
Words represent powerful ideas, whether we mean for them to or not. We might as well be intentional. Zig Zigler said, “be a meaningful specific, not a wandering generality”. The words we use to represent ourselves and our businesses are much more important than we usually think.
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 04 October 2011. Tags: business mindset, business strategy, positive thinking
The Industrial Age lasted a very short 150-200-ish years in the ten thousand years of recorded human history. It brought us a lot of cool toys and a cushy life, but we’ve been afflicted with a lot of Business Diseases that came from the Industrial Age. Here’s just a few of them:
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 27 September 2011. Tags: business mindset, positive thinking
What are you building with your business? Do you know? If not, it’s never too late to get this answer. Stop for a moment and get it, because every decision will fall from this one if you have it answered. People who try to make money rarely make very much of it. People who answer this question understand it is where significance begins.
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 21 September 2011. Tags: business mindset, business plan, positive thinking
Our Intention – New Zealand. When we started this business four years ago we decided we wanted it to grow up and make money while we’re gone. Today we leave for New Zealand for 3 1/2 weeks while others run the business. We’ll do things like that regularly going forward. We weren’t lucky, just intentional.
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 13 September 2011. Tags: business mindset, business strategy, Earthquake, positive thinking
We were in Auckland when it happened. Everyone there knows someone in Christchurch and felt the impact, if only emotionally. Among the business owners there was a single thread: life is full of risk and we’ll all just have to get back on the horse as quickly as we can. I think there’s something else in this tragedy for business owners as well.
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 02 August 2011. Tags: business mindset, Risk
Recently a client and good friend said, “I would be willing to bet a smart guy like you with a lot of success in your past wasn’t in danger of losing your house when you started your business, even if it had failed.” She’s wrong, but she’s not at all alone in believing that. Why? Does anybody lead by example anymore?
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Posted in Mindset

Posted on 29 July 2011. Tags: business mindset, business strategy
My friend Alan Wyngarden has done some adventure travel and says: “The hardest thing about climbing a mountain is just getting out of the garage.” Huh? Actually, it’s pure genius. A year ago I shared a business concept with Alan around building intimate assisted living homes that I had heard about.
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Posted in Mindset