List Building How To

Entrepreneurial Profile, and other life lessons… Are you just building a list to have one?

Eleven years ago (or was it 12?) I was gifted by a friend with something that is called a “value profile.”

It was a barely 10-15 minute test, looked innocent enough, but a day or two later the mailman delivered 24 pages of material that was explaining how I was going to fare as an entrepreneur…

I scored a 10 in everything except two skills: having a long range vision and being able to work through others.

Part of that profile gift was that I could go on an interactive telephone conference.

On that phone call I got even clearer about what I was supposed to develop as a capacity… and I have been working on that ever since.

I have gotten much better in working through others, by developing compassion, developing a sense of “there is nothing wrong” when my thinking was too fast and not linear enough for the people I managed or taught.

I still think too fast, and I still make wild leaps that would make me sometimes hard to follow, but now I am willing to go back and explain how someone else can come to the same conclusion as I have.

I also developed a kindness that doesn’t feel justified to give up on people, to call them worthless, stupid, like my mother taught me through her example. And as a result, I am happier and have people who genuinely love me and like me.

Great, you can say, and you are right. The quality of my life more than doubled from that. But my capacity for being a visionary hasn’t changed one iota… and this is what this article is about.

Big picture, long range vision is what gives certainty to actions today, a spring in your step, and a firmness in your voice.

Most importantly: what is the gift that you want to give to people, who are the people that would most need it, even if they don’t know it themselves, and what format are you envisioning of giving that gift so it has the largest impact on them and enriches you the most?

Unless you are clear, you are all over the place, any road will do when you don’t know where you are going… They will all take to nowhere.

Fast forward to today…

I’ve had a breakthrough.

This past Monday we buried Kathy Urschel, the blind, deaf, stroke stricken athlete, who I coached for the past 2 months, maybe 3.

At the luncheon many people came up to me: they wanted to meet Kathy’s webmaster (she told people that I was her webmaster, because that made her feel superior… lol).

Why would they want to meet me, you ask? Weird, right? Except that I was her coach, and I did not tip-toe around her. To me she wasn’t disabled, she was a huge potential asking to be developed.

She didn’t need help in having the courage or determination to get up and get going: she was ambitious and determined.

She didn’t need help telling her story: she told it to whoever was willing to listen, as it turned out, many people got regular hour-long phone calls from her, where she just spoke, and spoke and spoke.

She needed help with the more intricate aspects of being a human being. Forgiveness, gratitude, appreciation, and generosity.

She lacked those, and she didn’t even miss them.

And here comes the answer to your question, why all those people wanted to see me: I had no problems telling her that she was stingy, and that she took people and their kindness for granted.

She was a lot like I was when I had my first value profile done: unkind, unappreciative, looking at people as if they only had use value, and if they didn’t deliver, then they had no value to me at all.

It turns out she called every person on her autodialer to complain about me and gather evidence that I was wrong.

Luckily her brother, Rick Urschel had the gumption to break it to her that I was right.

Darn, story after story… where is this going?

Well, to me, the bottom line is that my job in this world is to help people become their best by holding up a mirror so they can see who they are and how they are, so they can become all they can be.

And the big picture? I am interested in training people who have something valuable to give to the world and are not afraid to work to become wealthy in the process of giving their gift.

That is my big picture. And finally, after 11 or 12 years I have clarity. I know what I am doing. I know where I am going. I know who I surround myself with.

How about you? Why are you building a list? Please share in the comments section.

Flailing? You need to hit bottom…

If your life isn’t going in the direction you planned, if you are trying and trying, with diminishing returns,

You need to hit bottom…

In alcoholism treatment they call it intervention.
In relationship counseling it may be called something similar…

In business they don’t call it anything because it is as if it didn’t exist, because it is counter intuitive.

The vortex

When I was barely 16, I liked to kayak on the Danube (a major river going from Germany, through 4 countries, to the Black Sea…)

You need to have a water license (much like a drivers license in the US) in Hungary to kayak, so I had to do a written and a practical test, lots of fun when you are 16.

One of the topics I learned was what to do when you encounter a vortex in the water.

Quote from wikipedia: A vortex (plural: vortices) is a spinning, often turbulent, flow of fluid. Any spiral motion with closed streamlines is vortex flow. The motion of the fluid swirling rapidly around a center is called a vortex.

The instructions were simple: in case a vortex gets a hold of you and attempts to swallow you, allow it. Make sure you keep your limbs close to your body to decrease the resistance, so you can go down quickly: your air supply in your lungs will only support you for about 2 minutes max.

Stay calm and stay alert. When hitting bottom, allow your knees to collapse. Make sure your feet are firmly planted on the ground. Look up and carefully choose the direction you want to go, away from the center of the vortex.

Now, kick off…

Providence: the real test

I passed the exams on Monday. On Thursday, early afternoon, a quick thunderstorm passed though while I was out kayaking. A lightening hit the water with a huge sharp crack about 15-20 feet from me. It promptly created a huge vortex and grabbed me and my kayak. My kayak broke in half as if it were a toothpick. I fell out of it and remembered to pull in my limbs and go down fast.

The water was twirling rapidly, I resisted the urge to fight for my life, and I descended… maybe 20 seconds later I hit bottom. I allowed my knees to buckle, looked above me, picked the direction away from the center and kicked off… another 20 or so seconds later I was on the surface, watching the big whirlpool not far from me. I swam to the shore without as much as a scratch. We found the two piees of my kayak next day downstream caught in the driftwood.

What does this story have to do with business?

It has everything to do with a very frequent situation where your current course of action is bankrupt and you seem unable to change directions, instead you keep on flailing.

If you listen tot he instructions in my 40+ year old example, your job is to go down as quickly as you can, so you can come up as quicky as you can.

There is no mention there resisting going down, flailing, or the like.

In the case of a vortex, everyone can see that that behavior, flailing will kill you… yet in life, in business, in relationships, in addiction, it is harder to see because you are one-step better than dead… but not much.

Maybe you are still able to pay your rent. Maybe you are still selling some of your stuff… But not much better than that. And your mood… it is an increasing amount of struggle to stay afloat…

Client study #1

Client is a nationally known speaker. Used to be a corporate trainer, spent most of his time on the road, raked it in.

Circumstances changed, and he decided to do it on his own… and become and information publisher.

Results: barely any money, little or no satisfaction, spinning his wheels… flailing.

Prognosis: homeless and miserable… it is happening.

Client study #2

Client is a high level internet marketing teacher, know their stuff, yet has been flailing for as long as I know them, 3-4 years minimum. Barely above poverty level, never any time to stop, to take a break and reevaluate.

Life style is more important, appearances are everything. Prognosis: unless generates hitting bottom, it can only lead to more struggle and less and less return on the investment.

Client study #3

Owner of a very popular magazine. The magazine is popular, but they work day and night, and the income is not paying even a decent salary to the owner. Year after year there is hope that it will get better… Prognosis: someone will put them out of business… unless they are willing to hit bottom at will.

Conclusion:

It is counter intuitive, and counter cultural to fail… and hitting bottom is closely associated with failing. But, in spite of how you feel, there is not going up, unless you get a solid foothold to kick off from.

Powerful people create hitting bottom regularly, so they can re-evaluate their business strategy…

They may not call it that way, but that is what they are doing. One of my past mentors is especially famous for that, and he is generating over 20 million dollars of sales with a handful of people, year in and year out.

His secret? He is not afraid to hit bottom. Everything he does is counter-cultural, by choice, so for him generating hitting bottom every 6 months or so is natural.

How about you? Are you due for a new direction?

Getting back to the drawing board…

I just completed the Landmark Forum. I did it for the 20th time, still hoping that I was going to get what I want. A great life, satisfaction, fulfillment, abundance, good health, you know, the usual.

I got up to share, and shared that when I was 3 and a half I was raped. When my nanny took me back to my mother, she looked at me with disgust and turned away and said “you are a whore”

I decided that I was a disgrace.

The Landmark Forum Leader asked if I could forgive my mother, and I saw that I could not

He asked, for that little girl, would I forgive my mother so she can have, finally, a life, laugh, play, grow up.

I cried and I said yes. I didn’t know that I had this little girl still waiting to have a life

I am now committed to give everything to this little girl so she can grow up and become a person. For myself I haven’t, I wouldn’t.

Since Sunday, I have been getting myself through tough decisions, so she, the little girls can have a life.

I can see that I can’t wait till tomorrow. Tomorrow may never come, and my only chance to give this little girl a life is today, now.

Amazing breakthrough, I never thought it would really come, and I had no idea if it did, where it would come from.

And today I am unstoppable. And life occurs totally new. I noticed that eating has now a certain glow: I am showing that little girl new food, new pleasures, new adventures.

I pick up the phone and call people I don’t want to talk to. I call them because that is what there is to do today, so the little girl can have a shot at a great life.

I call my boyfriend who cheated on me. I call an old friend I gossiped about. I call a woman I have been pissed at for 6-7 years. I call the husband of a friend who died this spring and who I haven’t called to express my sympathy.

That was MY Landmark Forum. I am now a tour guide for a life of adventure for that little one.

PS: webinar signup is at http://www.listbuildingmechanics.com/secret
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Hey, Sophie, your supercoach here… Something personal about me.

I’ll be reviewing the Landmark Forum for the 20th time this weekend. I’ll be having a woman with me, who is deaf and blind, yet lives a full life, earns a full time living.

She will be participating in the seminar through a built in brain device, Choclear it’s called.

She just finished dictating a book, and it will be published next year. She is a paralympic, the Olympics for disabled people, in tandem bicycling.

If she can do it, than I can too… I say to myself whenever I am discouraged.

I am going to this seminar to transform my view of myself. I want to see myself as others see me, a winner, a brilliant coach, a powerhouse.

Instead of paying attention to all that I don’t know, don’t have, haven’t done… can you recognize yourself? In me, or in her?

To see my friend, Kathy Urschel‘s blog –not much there — click on her name. And if you could, send her a note. She has promised me to send me an audio blog every day so I can post it for her… 40 days ago. How many times she has done it? Once.

So you see, winners have weak spots, and losers have strong spots. We are all the same. Just a little different mix.

In my educated opinion, the biggest difference in the outcome is caused by having a coach or mentor who believes in you and can guide you to be your best.

In tandem bicycling the person on the rear is called the stoker. They give the energy to the pair. They can be blind, they can be deaf, what they can’t be is resigned, flimsy, flaky, indulging in self-pity. The front person needs to be good in strategy, direction, and be willing to be stoked.

Internet marketing is very similar.

You may remember from my sidekick post, that I am a fan of partnerships.

If you are a visionary, get a stoker. If you are a stoker, get someone with big vision. Or as Alex Mandossian says, decide if you are a starter or if you are a finisher, and then find your counterpart and start winning.

As Kathy says: Life is a Tandem deal.

Lessons I am learning from work I am doing on other people’s stuff…

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I often take on a client, or even a volunteer job to force myself to learn something new.

One of such clients is a guy, who used to be my employee, in my magazine-publishing days, a photographer.

He is an electronics store typical bait- and-switch salesman by day, street and party photographer at night.

Drinks like a fish, and most parties have an open bar…

I have been handling his site (he claims that I am a 50% partner, but I know him through and through, and I know that even his questions are untrue, so I am doing it as a pro-bono work, a great exercise in marketing something I have no idea how to market.)

The site is http://www.portraitsofnewyork.com and the blog is http://www.portraitsofnewyork.com/blog

I have always felt that pictures are just pictures. We may be visual, but for most of us a picture doesn’t tell a comprehensive, interesting story, not his, at least. I once asked my brother to look at the pictures and he said… what, they are just pictures.

So, my aim has always been to add words to the pictures, but doing that myself was a task I wasn’t willing to take on. It would have sucked me dry.

I advertised for writers, asked for a test… horrid results, if they knew how to write, the writing had no relationship to the pictures or what this guy is doing.

Then I tried to convince him to do daily videos… he didn’t want to do it.

Finally I came up with the audio-blogging idea: got a voice mail service that delivers the audios in email.

He has been faithfully recording his blogs since September 5. Once I get the audio, I send it off to my transcriptionist, and post it on the blog the same day.

The traffic more than doubled as a result compared to the times when only pictures were posted, no text. It’s now around 75 a day.

Where does the traffic come from? From his and my twitter account, so this strategy actually seems to be working.

Next step is capturing email information of visitors… and then monetizing the blog.