I just got back from being coached by two of the greatest speaking coaches currently teaching in America. Here is one quick take away:
Out work the competition. Whether it is in writing, speaking, sales, or any endeavor. There is something to be said for outworking the competition. For two days I spoke, got feedback, and watched others speak. Doing this gave me the focused time I needed to make an OK speech good and give me the feedback I needed to make it great.

What does it take to make is so great that someone would pay you more than the competition for it? Working harder than others doing the same thing you are doing. Work on writing better, speaking better, and selling my speaking. That is one of the only ways to success.
If you are interested in learning more about how to become a better speaker, then I suggest looking into attending a Champ Camp.

Just last night, I got into an e-mail exchange with Former Apple Executive, Venture Capitalist, Blogger, and Entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki. Check out the details here (http://mytoastmastersblog.com/2008/06/12/welcome-speakingalltopcom-readers/).

It all came about because I had gotten what I thought was an automated e-mail, but being curious, I e-mailed the person back. 10 minutes later, I am e-mailing Guy some comments.

Try it out. You never know what kind of relationship you can start.

So what gives? Why with so many great ideas are people not falling over themselves with success?

They Don’t Try

Many people have ideas, but why so many people are not successful is because they didn’t follow through and try out any of their ideas. Wouldn’t it be great if it was that simple? If you just tried something and it worked. That would be good, but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way.

Feel the Fear

Most ideas don’t get turned into action because of fear of failure. This is simple to overcome, just try to do something related to your idea. Then next time you have an idea, try something again. The goal is to feel the fear of failure, but keep trying to execute your idea. Doing so will make you accustom to the potential of failure and get you set up for the next part.

See What Sticks

Many things you try are not going to be successful. From relationships to businesses, most are going to fail. However, at some point, something is going to stick. It might be the smallest idea you had, but if it sticks and you get a response, be it a job, revenues, or a date, then you can move forward, keep trying and eventually succeed.

Give it a try; you never know what will stick.

Why Read?

Reading is one of the few pursuits that are relatively cheap. For little more than the transportation to the library or a few dollars at a local used book store, you can pick up books that will allow you to explore new idea, escape to far away lands, or figure out how to solve a nagging problem. Reading is the fastest way you can absorb new information.

Think about your local news broadcast on television. How long does it take them to discuss the day’s news events? 30 minutes? In 5 minutes or less, I can read in more depth, almost all of the news they will cover in a typical broadcast. In 30 minutes, I can absorb 10 times as much news as a typical television news broadcast can cover.

 Reading Makes You Knowledgeable

I was having lunch with an associate last week, and he made the comment, “You read a lot, don’t you?”

That wasn’t a put down, but a statement that I have taken the time to really study and understand the topics that I find interesting. It was not a point of embarrassment, it makes me feel good when someone recognizes the time I have spent learning more about business, success, and life.

Reading is Relaxing

I spend time reading every morning before going to work, during my lunch breaks, and every night before going to bed. Reading books, magazine articles, journals, blogs, and news sites relaxes me. Maybe I am a little strange, but when I am stressed or tired, I always find that pulling out some light reading sets my mind at ease and allows me to recover from stressful situations.

Reading Works

Taking the energy to get some reading material, reading it, and doing it whenever possible is the fastest and easiest way to learn a new subject. As you try to find your success muse, try picking up a book, you might just find it.

The Role of Relaxation

Relaxing and getting into a state of flow is where many of us have problems. I am no exception, but I have found that there are a few things you can do to trick yourself into thinking you are in a relaxed state even when you are stressed and not relaxed. The following is a quick trick that you can use before trying to do anything that is stressful, annoying, or that you simply do not want to start.

The Shoulder/Breath Trick

1. Notice if you shoulders are hunched forward and you have tension throughout your upper back. I you are huddled over tensely right now.
2. Roll back your shoulders. Doing the roll back will cause your chest to stick out a little more, straighten your posture, and remove tension from your upper back.
3. Take in a deep breath, pulling the breath all the way into the bottom of your stomach and letting it expand into your upper chest.
4. Breathe out slowly, releasing from the bottom of your stomach to the top of your chest. As your breath flows out, release any tension that is built up in your shoulders, upper back, and chest.
5. Repeat this deep in and out breathing three more times.
6. Now notice now much your posture has improved and the tension has left your shoulders. Take a moment to feel if there is any tension in your jaw and around the eyes, and then let it go.
7. Take one more deep breath and let all the tension in your body go.

Conclusion

You are all done. Try using this trick anytime you are getting ready to do anything that causes tension. You will find that it releases some of the tension, builds confidence, and gives you more energy to accomplish your tasks with ease.

What sucks the life out of you?

As you are going about a day’s activities, think about the things that make you unmotivated, tired, and feel like you want to craw back into bed. For me, some of the energy sinks are:

• Being a passive participant in meetings that require minor input
• Writing process or technical instructions
• Paying bills
• Trying to find missing data for an analysis
• Being stuck in traffic

What refreshes you?

Now think about the good things. What are the activities that bring about a sense of renewal and give you a positive buzz to accomplish more than you would be able to just doing energy sucking activities. For me this can include:

• Creating tasty meals
• Writing insightful blog posts
• Delivering presentations what “WOW” people
• Exploring a city I have never been to before
• Completing personal projects

The Problem – Sink to Sink Schedules

I have found that the problem with most work schedules is that it is set up to move you from energy sink to energy sink without any refreshing events between the sinks. The effect of those schedules is that by the time you leave work or get to the afternoon if you are working at home, you are exhausted and have no energy bandwidth to devote to meaningful projects.

The Solution – Time for Renewal

To combat the end of day fatigue, you need to get you schedule whipped into shape to maximize the amount of energy you have for the day. To do this, you need to follow some guidelines:

1. Don’t schedule energy sink activities first thing in the morning. If you do, then make sure you try to do something refreshing right before and right after the draining activity to get your energy levels back in line.
2. Use the sandwich technique often employed in evaluations. Do something positive that gets you motivated, so something draining then do something positive again to limit the impact of the draining activity.
3. This is just common advice for anyone, but I encourage you to drink plenty of water, take stretch breaks, and make sure you are violently enforcing your energy bandwidth schedule.

Now I know that there can be problems with organizing your schedule around kids, careers, and your personal interests, however, your energy to accomplish things is the most important asset you have. Don’t waste it and find ways to structure your activities to refresh and renew so you can find yourself accomplishing your goals with more energy everyday.

From Esquire Magazine:

The 75 Skills Every Man Should Master

It has been awhile since I have read Esquire Magazine and coming upon this article was a pleasant surprise. I guess I forgot how enjoyable of a magazine it could be.

Hope you get a few inspirational ideas, a few chuckles, and a few skills to bone up on. I know I feel a little lacking after reading through some of these.

Adapted from: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/meek

This relates to my post on Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo and advice given to me by the President and COO of a local company.

In a talk that this President and COO gave, one of his life principles was to be meek. In his mind, this was not to be submissive or give in easily, but to live a life as the definition says, without resentment.

Many people see meekness as a sign of weakness, or a chink in your proverbial armor. Those people see it as something to be taken advantage of in the heat of physical or mental battle. Those advantage takers hold up meekness as something to shun with great distain. To them it is not something to hold has a life principle, but something to discard.

However, the meek know better. For if we look to the etymology of the word we see meanings of soft or gentile. The meek are not weak, for where the aggressive push and push, at some point they give up and move on. The meek however, soft and gentile, slug through with determination through think and thin to reach their end goal.

So I urge you all, be gentile, be soft, and be meek.

What this post is going to do is teach you a simple system so that you can learn to “bill” yourself for potential revenue generating tasks. Though you might not be making money off of these tasks at this time, it will set up the habits in your life that you will need in the future when you are making money from these tasks.

Before you begin, think about the time you have available to work on “billable” work. Here is what a typical weekday and weekend breakdown would look like for me:

For weekdays I, on average, have four hours available for “billable” tasks. For me, these tasks are: time spent writing blog posts, speeches, articles, and white papers. Now use a simple time tracking tool (spreadsheet or free time keeping application) to create these as “billable” tasks.

Now spend some time figuring out what your “non-billable” tasks are. Examples from my life are: watching TV, surfing, reading, window shopping, and hanging out with friends. Now don’t get me wrong, the point is not to stop doing any of these things. The point of this exercise is to help you track what time is spent on revenue versus non-revenue activities and develop the habit of working on revenue generating habits. As you move from wage slave to wage creator, having this habit will help you keep focus on generating revenue for yourself.

The next step in the process is to just track what you are doing and what time is spent doing it. Then at the end of the week, month, quarter and year, you can use this data to determine what amount of time was spent on billable versus non-billable tasks. I find that this can be immensely helpful to figuring out why I am not getting ahead in my dream career of public speaking, writing, and coaching.

One final piece of advice, make sure that you are assigning an appropriate amount of billable hours to the task before you start. For example, if you are going to write a blog post, assign forty-five minutes of billable hours to that post. If it takes an hour and thirty minutes to research and write, bill forty-five minutes.

Establishing standard billable time is another secret of lawyers that keep them on task and generating revenue. Establishing maximum time for completion on your tasks allows you to be more focused and realize that you can only generate so much revenue out of each assignment. To record in your time management system, take the blog post example. If I have forty-five minutes assigned to the post, but it takes me one hour. I assign forty five minutes as billable and fifteen minutes as non-billable “task slack” time.

What is the outcome and why are we doing this? This simple and quick process will have two lasting effects:

1. It will give us the data we need to establish an hourly billable rate for projects in the future and analyze our overall revenue generating effectiveness. For example, if we find that we make twenty thousand US dollars a year on revenue generating activities that used one thousand billable hours, then we know that our base billable rate for activities is twenty dollars an hour. We can then factor in our overhead costs over all hours to get a decent internal billing rate or what we pay ourselves for our projects. This can also be used for actual billing of clients, estimating project revenues, and establishing an internal rate of return (IRR) on our projects. For the truly brave, the data generated can be run through a lean six sigma project to improve our revenue generating processes…but that is another article
2. This helps us develop the habits we need to succeed. If we focus on revenue generating habits, then we set ourselves up to succeed. In Daniel Pinkwater’s book, “Fish Whistle”, he talks about the need for aspiring writers to set a time and place to write and stick to a schedule. This system allows us to track that schedule and make sure that the developing habit is building us a secure fiscal future.

Please let me know if you find this idea useful.