Working smart as well as hard…

Don’t let anyone convince you that making your first million is easy. Sure you can win the lottery or receive an inheritance and yes, we have all read stories about how someone made a million quick and easy – because the media will seek out those newsworthy stories because it is everyone’s dream of doing so.

The fact is that every self-made millionaire that I have met – and I have met a lot – works hard! Some may well indeed spend time by the pool or on the beach with a computer – but they are still working – and they have organized a team of sub-contracted individuals that do all the backroom work.

Inevitably there comes a time when you will not have to work, as your investments from the capital that you have generated deliver a passive income. Most successful entrepreneurs I know, myself included, continue to work very hard because it is their nature to do so. But we work hard at what we enjoy doing – in which case, do not so much consider it as work, but more a way of life.

The true entrepreneur never actually stops ‘seeing’ opportunity or ‘thinking’ about how to extract value from it – it is the nature of being an entrepreneur.

However, the frustrating fact of life is that most determined, ambitious people that work hard, very hard, never actually get to enjoy a 7-figure income. They work hard in the genuine belief that they will get rich but they don’t, even though they enjoy a good lifestyle. So there has to be other factors involved than working hard.

Most people spend their whole life believing that no matter how hard they work they do not deserve riches. Others think that to have money you need to be frugal – a very effective inhibition to wealth.

You need to understand the concept of working smart as well as hard.

You know that, but let’s be honest, the reality is that for the most of the time, even though you know it’s the wrong way, you are too busy spending your working life not working smart. For me working smart is knowing, metaphorically speaking…

The right destination that it is absolutely essential to reach.

Having the right vehicle that will take us on this road to riches – without breaking down!

Having the right fuel essence that ensures that the vehicle will get us there.

And, finally, being the very best driver we can possible become – while actually driving – to get through all the inevitable and frustrating hazards.

http://www.TheMonacoMentor.com

Positioning v. Prospecting

Customers are of course the life-blood of a business – for without them there is no business – without customers it is impossible to get rich.

And to get customers what is the best thing people in sales are taught to do? Prospecting. Every new business that seeks new customers will be advised to go prospecting.

Prospecting is what you must do, everyone will tell you. Yet, here lies the biggest fallacy of all – Prospecting always will be, the weakest link in the chain of selling.

Prospecting is horrible! I personally hate it. Prospects hate being prospected. But for 20 years I was prospecting like an obsessive old ‘forty-niner’ in the California gold-rush up to the armpits in sludge looking for a scrap of gold until I realized it was the worst, most demeaning methodology for winning new customers, new business and earning money through selling.

From 1975 to 1995 I would actively prospect. I was good at it, was told I was a natural at it. As a young Estate Manager (actually a Man Friday, but I had a boss that believed in great titles!) of 20 years old I had to prospect for new tenants.

As an Estate Agent (which actually was a step up) I would regularly prospect new vendors and clients. As a Property Developer (at last my own boss!) I would prospect the proverbial horses to water desperate to dunk their bewildered heads in it. As a deal-maker I would prospect banks for finance, sellers and purchasers. In the early nineties, when empire building, I would prospect every night of the week. I would prospect to the point of exhaustion – to get another client.

I finally had an epiphany: A moment of utter realization that what I was doing was utterly misguided – that there was a far better way of building a business that ensured profitable and sustainable growth – without ever having to prospect again! 

I finally realized that Positioning beats Prospecting every time.

You see when you focus on positioning yourself as the very best at what you do and discipline yourself to ensure you can deliver then prospects will seek you out because they want the expertise you can deliver for them.

If I had continued prospecting I would have continued to waste my time (or my life) in talking to people that were either not interested in talking to me and unable to actually make a decision even if they were interested or people that could not hide the fact that I was wasting their time and wanted to defend themselves against me persuading them (i.e. trying to bamboozle).

Ultimately people buy people, not products or services and all of us want the assurance that who we are dealing with will deliver on their promise.

Irrespective of what business you are in, because every business is ultimately the same – it relies on prospects/leads being converted into one-time buyers that in turn choose to become life-long customers. So forget about prospecting ever again – start positioning yourself as the best at what you do, make or supply.

http://www.themonacomentor.com/

 

Identify what your strengths are…

At school I was good at history. To make the grade of being ‘a good all rounder’ my teachers decided that I must concentrate on math – which I really was bad at – at the expense of history. The result was that I was mediocre at both!

We seem to have become a society with an obsession for fixing what’s wrong. Current practice in society and business is routed in the belief that weakness is the opposite of strength –  as illness is to health, failure to success. Wrong. They are not. Each has its own pattern of behaviour and follows its own particular configuration. In which case studying weakness will not lead to us to improving strength.

In the UK, for example, in researching what keeps families together, emphasis is placed on resolving the weaknesses that cause break up, rather than on developing the strengths that bond them.

The common practice of fixing weaknesses to make an individual, a family, team or company, stronger and better does NOT work. It is a practice that creates average and created on the misnomer that if you can identify all the weaknesses in an individual, team or company, you can then dissolve them by developing them into strengths.

The principle, however, is very clear:

Just for a moment think about your greatest mistake or failure.  OK got it?

Now think of your greatest success or achievement.  Harder isn’t it?

Why? Because our whole mindset is programmed to root out weaknesses in ourselves and in others.

We have been well conditioned at school to listen critically – for what we don’t agree with. Our fine-tuning is centered on the weaknesses in the argument.

I say it is far better to Find Out What You Are Good At And Do More Of It. 

Find Out What You Are Not Good At And Don’t Do It.

When you identify what your strengths are and focus solely on them, your weaknesses do not count. In excelling in what you are brilliant at, your weaknesses become unimportant.

Learning to recognize our strengths and developing the courage to channel our energy into developing them, will transform us into the leaders and achievers in our specific fields.

 

http://www.themonacomentor.com/