Archives for 2013

In my most recent Chats with Champions call, I had the honor of interviewing Michael Gerber, who has been a mentor to me through his book The E-Myth, especially when I was first starting out as an entrepreneur. Never having met Michael before, it was an exciting opportunity to talk to someone who has influenced me personally, as well as millions of others.

Michael Gerber is the #1 small business guru and has helped turn around over 75,000 businesses in over 145 countries! For those of you that have not read The E-Myth, it stands for the Entrepreneurial Myth. Michael points out that most entrepreneurs are not business people, they are technical experts. A doctor opens a medical practice, a baker opens a bakery, a beautician opens a salon, etc. Because they know how to do the work, they believe that they know how to create a business that does that work. And herein lays the E-Myth: Having the technical ability to do something and having the ability to build a business about something you know how to do are two completely different skill sets.

Yet, in this economy, more and more and more people are striking out on their own and becoming sole proprietors. What they dont realize is that they are really just becoming self-employed for a boss that usually does not know how to run a business (themselves). The proof is in the statistics: 80% of all new companies fail within their first 5 years. Of those that survive in the first 5 years, the majority of them will fail within 10 years.

I highly recommend listening to the entire call. Michael is working in a variety of exciting new projects that are for entrepreneurs just starting out, as well as entrepreneurs that want to learn how to turn their own businesses around and then teach others how to do the same thing using his proprietary systems. If you visit www.michaelegerber.com, you will find information on his two latest ventures: The Dreaming Room and Origination, as well as his new book The Most Successful Small Business In the World, focused on helping an entrepreneur understand exactly what has to be done at the beginning of building a new business to be truly successful.

Although Michael focused on a wide variety of important points, the two that I want to highlight here are:

1. Sales is an absolute critical aspect of entrepreneurial success, but there are many other aspects, as well. A concept we also teach that we touched on is: You must have the other aspects of business in place, creating systems and a culture that will support the business being successful, growing and becoming scalable in your absence.
2. And, most importantly: One of the absolutely mandatory factors that any entrepreneur that wants to succeed must have is a vision and mission that answers the question of, What am I going to add to this market, to this world, and to others lives through my business that otherwise would not have happened, if I did not start my business? It is this bigger vision that pulls people through the roughest patches to ultimately succeed.

Both Michael and I believe that as human beings, we are all gifted with our own special talents and creativity which we are meant to focus on using to help make a positive impact in this world. Entrepreneurs get the opportunity to design and live into this role when they create a truly successful business!

For more tips on creating business success, follow me at: Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.

As a speaker, I meet and train hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people every month. Yet, once I say farewell, I cant be sure if participants implement what they learned in their lives going forward.

I believe in teaching experientially so that people LIVE a lesson instead of just hearing or seeing it. This way, I know they have truly learned it. But learning something new and applying it to everyday living are two different things. While many people have written to me telling me that their lives and fortunes have been changed because of what they learned at my Sales and Leadership Events, I often wonder what happens to the people I dont hear from.

I am happy to say that with the development of Social Media Marketing, I now have a place where I can keep in contact with my participants and they can come together to interact with me and each other. What a powerful way to continue learning! This can be done in an unorganized fashion, just by chatting with me and each other on Facebook, or by doing organized events.

To test the waters, I recently started a 2-Day Sales and Leadership Results follow up program that involves five select participants. They have agreed to share how they are taking what they learned at the 2-Day event and applying it in their lives. They will get feedback from me – and I am sure other Facebook fan page visitors and 2-Day event participants. This will be a great opportunity for me to see how my participants apply what they learned into their everyday lives. Ill be learning from them where the successes come easy, as well as where the unanticipated challenges lie. It will also will help me continue to build upon my own training programs, and perhaps create new ones! Using Facebook, I can also support them in achieving the changes that they wanted to implement based on their experiences in my training events. To see this take place, and share your own questions and comments, please visit the Blair Singer Facebook fan page.

Additionally, I will be doing a Live Facebook Chat on August 3rd at 2:00pm PDT. Here I answer questions from Facebook fans. I hope that you will participate by joining my fan page at the designated time. I encourage you to type in your question and I will respond to you in real timeI have learned to type very fast during these events! As always, I look forward to supporting you and reading your “real life” experiences.

After traveling extensively to South Africa, Russia, Asia, and Spain recently, and just returning from a 3-week trip that covered the UK and Malaysia, I am once again reminded of the common thread of the human experience: Hope.

I know that every one I meet, everywhere I go shares an un-killable belief that there is something better out there for themselves and their families. I consider this one of the traits that makes us human. I don’t think animals spend much time hoping to build a brighter future. But, I know that all the people I have met have a desire for things to ultimately get better for them.

I also know that when people have this hope driving them, they are willing to work incredibly hard. What I find very exciting is that over the past 3 years, people have come to the realization that the hardest and most rewarding work they must do to get what they want is manage their own “Little Voice”. There has been a significant shift in global recognition that personal development and working on what is going on internally is going to make all the difference in generating the results people want to achieve.

This has led to a major shift in the level of knowledge most people have today than they did just a few years ago. It seems people are reading and educating themselves more than ever to take on the quest of self improvement.

Sometimes, our quest to improve our situation requires we change our environment. I don’t believe that a strong will can overcome the challenges of an unhealthy and unsupportive environment. I was recently asked what the best thing to do would be if you find yourself in an environment that holds you down or offers you no hope for the better life you seek. In almost all cases, I say change your environment.

That might mean packing a bag and moving to a new place, or simply changing the people that you spend the majority of your time with. I know that peoples fear of the unknown is sometimes greater than the difficulties they already exist with everyday. But, if you have hope for a better future and are in an unhealthy or unsupportive environment, it may be time to move on despite your fears.

The reality is, if you make such a drastic change as a new geography or a new group of friends and coworkers, odds are very high in your favor that you will not starve, disintegrate or fail and in fact, you are likely to actually be rewarded for taking action and achieving the better life that motivated your change in the first place.

Many times we find ourselves in very difficult situations that kick up our “fight or flight” mechanisms. This experience is shared by most animals and is meant to serve as a safety mechanism. But, unlike the rest of earth’s creatures, humans (when dealing with other humans, especially) often have a third choice: RESOLVE the differences between the two people.

As one of my mentors Mack Newton says, “Quitting when things get tough should never be your first choice, although it is often the easiest choice to make, because then you don’t have to deal with the problem anymore.” I know that I have been tempted to throw my hands up and walk away so I can go focus on other things, but I choose to remember another credo I live by:

Always keep in mind the person you want to be and be moving towards that goal. So, if you face a challenging situation and you stop, you are actually moving backwards from your goal and giving up on yourself. In reality, you can run, but you cannot hide. And, as we all know, what we resist persists. So ultimately, you will have to face the problem that you are running from and the longer you wait, the bigger the problem is likely to become. Take your medicine early by dealing with the challenge when you first happen upon it so you can keep moving ahead.

If this is the plan, and “flight” is no longer an option and you don’t want to “fight”, how do you move on to “resolve”?

The bottom line is to start by looking for common ground and establishing a shared reality. Try to persuade the other person to step out of the situation with you and discuss what results the outcome has to have to be acceptable to both parties. Treat it like you are on the same team trying to solve a problem where two distinct needs must be met and together you are working on a solution. This has often worked well for me when the other person is willing to engage in the exercise. Sometimes, this approach does not work and I am not sure what to do. That’s when I seek help from my mentors.

Personally, finding great mentors has really worked well for me. Once you experience how quickly mentors can help you discover solutions you could not see on your own, or weigh your options, you understand the completely life changing results they can help bring about. My mentors have ended up being blessings in my life: Teaching me, helping correct my course, helping me grow and ultimately succeed. Remember, we can’t succeed on our own. It takes a team. Don’t forget to include mentors on your team to help you resolve the challenges that will otherwise prevent you from being the person you want to be.

If you are like most people, you go through your life thinking the chatter going on in your brain is “you” talking to yourself in the present. In reality, that chatter taking place is not you talking to yourself now; it is usually chatter from the past that if listened to, can keep you trapped there!

The chatter is taking place by a “Little Voice” that was created when someone told you something, you had an experience, or maybe you saw something happen to someone else and it left a strong enough impression to get replayed in your mind whenever a current situation triggers this memory from the past.

For example, if you loaned someone that you trusted money and were never paid back, the next time someone you trust asks for a loan, this “Little Voice” is likely to come up and say,

“Whoa! You can’t trust this person to pay you back!”

You may even trust this person less once they asked to borrow money (yet, this is the same person they were before they ever asked for the loan!). The “Little Voice” is from the past applying a situation with a completely different person to the person in the present as if he or she were the same person from before. The Little Voice from the past will try to make this decision for you, without regard that you are not reliving the experience from the past. You are in the present, dealing with a new person and a whole new set of circumstances.

Being able to hear a “Little Voice” as chatter about the past and identify it for what it is, a warning from a past time and past situation will help you make better decisions regarding the moment you are in. If there is good information from your “Little Voice”, great, use it! But, don’t let it try to correct a situation that happened in your past through an entirely new situation in the present. We can never go backwards and undo what has already happened, we can only be here, now, moving forward. To do this, you must make your decision using the current data you have and not let your “Little Voice” transfer past feelings and experiences into the experience you are having right now.