pigletpaper.com

Just got a new testimonial from a client I worked with in Houston. It is short, sweet and to the point. John was a client that decided to go in a different direction, but ultimately still found value in my help. See below…

I have owned various businesses for most of my adult life. Recently I was looking for other opportunities and in my search I came across Lisa. She brought opportunities to the table that either I would not or could not have found by myself. She also helped me narrow down what I was looking for as well as what I expected from my next venture. Lisa worked with me through the discovery and validation processes and never missed an appointment. I would recommend her services to anyone who is looking to buy a business.

Sincerely,

John D. Packer

What’s your risk tolerance? More specifically, what is your ‘employment opportunities’ risk tolerance? Do you consider yourself to be conservative? Moderate? Aggressive? Be honest and make a note of your answer.

With your answer in mind, here is another question to ask yourself, whether you are an employee or are self-employed.

Who has all their eggs in one basket?

A. An employee

B. Someone who is self-employed

What if the questions instead asked about having all your ‘income eggs’ in one basket? Does that change your answer? Who is taking the most risk with their ‘paycheck’? Is it the employee or the self-employed?

Consider the following excerpt from Steve Pavlina’s 10 Myths About Self-Employment.

4. Self-employment means putting all your eggs in one basket.

Ask yourself this: How many people would have to turn against you to shut off all your income? For employees the answer is usually one. If your boss fires you, your income gets turned off immediately. Whether or not it’s justified is irrelevant — you suffer a total loss of income regardless of the reasons. Now that’s putting all your eggs in one basket.

With self-employment, however, you can more easily diversify your income streams and thereby reduce your risk. You have the control necessary to make this happen. Generating different types of income from thousands of customers is a lot more secure than receiving only one paycheck.

This really struck a chord with me.

At one time, I was one of those people who would have argued vehemently that being a business owner was much more risky than being an employee. I have long since changed my stance on that issue, but never considered stating it like Steve did in his question.

I think that being an employee can actually give you a false sense of security. What’s that you say? I say that if you are an employee, you more than likely have ’security’ in fact that you will be paid on a regular schedule. Be that weekly, bi-weekly, monthly or whatever. And that is true. True that is, as long as you are an employee.

But what happens to your ‘guarantee’ if that one person, your boss, turns against you? If all your ‘income eggs’ were in that one basket, your life will be scrambled!

If, however, you are self-employed and lose a client or customer, you lose the income produced by their sales. But you still have the rest of your client base. Not to mention any other income streams you may have.

So your mission now, should you choose to accept it, is to take an honest look at your current level of employment risk and to decide if you are happy with the number of people who control your income stream.

Let’s talk about a different kind of Hope today. Hope as in the Hope Diamond! More specifically, popping the question at the Hope Diamond. The question as in the “Will you marry me?” question.

I read an article a while back in my local paper about a guy who popped the question at the Hope Diamond. That, in and of itself, is intriguing, but even more intriguing is that he had help. He had help planning the entire proposal by Mike Bloomberg, founder of An Exclusive Engagement. Mike helps men plan the perfect proposal-fairy tale proposals.

So you can imagine a) being a girl and b) being an Entrepreneur Coach, I am immediately intrigued! I want to know more about this Mike Bloomberg fellow. In full bold form, I find his number and call him up. Voicemail. “Hi Mike, my name is Lisa Grissom. I live in Midland, TX and read an article about you recently in my local paper. I would like to talk to you about your business. Would you please call me at your convenience at ‘number blah blah’. Thanks and I look forward to talking to you!” He called back!

What a cool guy! First of all, he called me back which I never really expected. But second, he was a really “down to earth” guy. I think I really expected him to be a brazen, pompous narcissist. But to my surprise, he was very cordial and easy to talk to, sharing with me the story of how he came to be the Marriage Proposal Guy.

What a cool job! What a cool business! And girls, what a cool guy to refer your beau’s to and not ruin the surprise. I don’t have any idea how much Mike charges, but I am sure that any guy who thinks enough of “the one” to want to do the perfect proposal for his bride-to-be probably doesn’t really care. Stuff like this is priceless.

Mike says he does a discovery with each beau he works with asking questions like “How did you meet?, What was your fist date?, How long have you been dating?, Have you met the family?, Do you have pet names for each other?” and he assigns his clients homework to find out things like her favorite color, flower, food, song, movie, sport, activity, etc.

All of Mike’s ideas are “woman-tested, woman-approved”. He runs everything past the Chick-Tank, a secret board of women directors where he looks for either a furrowed brow or bright eyes! When I talked with Mike, he was being contacted by major networks about a reality TV show and was working toward planning a few celebrity proposals.

You can read other articles about Mike in Daily Candy-Dallas Edition and D Weddings, D Magazine’s bridal magazine. Mike also has a few other things he can do that you can check out on his site. He even has testimonials and tips.

Mike, keep on plannin’ and keep on proposin’. This goes out to all of us chicks still waiting on our “sweep me off my feet” proposal–from the right guy, of course!

Talk to ya’ soon!

Oh…and the Hope Diamond story–she said “Yes!”.

Ronn’s post on Creative Ways to Develop Success Habits really hits home! Basically, it says Do what is necessary to get where you want to go and Do it consistently.

There are two parts to this: 1) do what is necessary. I have discovered the hard way, as probably many of us, that there are no shortcuts. To KNOW this and to DO this are worlds apart. I find that it is very easy for me to do what I call living from hope to hope. Sort of like living paycheck to paycheck, but instead I am living from one exceptional success to another. For example, I send out postcards to people that I know are thinking about business ownership. These postcards are designed to hit nerves and tackle things like F.E.A.R. (False Evidence Appearing Real), Too Good To Be True and Crabs in the Basket among other self-defeating ideas. Once in a blue moon, a recipient of these cards will pick up the phone and call me. I know that passive marketing is useless unless it is cemented with active marketing. All passive marketing does is break the ice when you actually connect and sometimes it doesn’t even do that. But never the less, when someone calls me instead of me having to call them, I dance a jig because I think, “Wow, I don’t have to work anymore!” This happens like hardly ever. To be exact, I think 4 times in 3 1/2 years.

If I built my business around waiting on people to call me and getting my feelings hurt because they weren’t and assuming they would call if they wanted to talk to me, I would have been out of business a long time ago. The truth is these calls are gifts. They are gifts because I didn’t have to work for them. They came to me. They were not a result of my ACTIVity. But would you believe that I can still fall into the trap of behaving as if success is somehow going to be bestowed upon me if I just wait long enough. What I am really doing is giving my power away to all those people who never pick up the phone and call me. As a person who is in the business of helping people get into business, I have a responsibility to pick up the phone and call them. When they get to me first, that is a gift. Nothing more, nothing less. And certainly nothing to run my business around. Running a business successfully means running my business around the rules, not the exceptions to the rule. The exception is that someone will call me. The rule is I have to do what is necessary to stay in business–call them first! I have to do what they are not willing to do.

This brings me to the second part of this simple but not easy formula: 2) do it consistently. I recently learned a very valuable lesson about consistency. We tend to think that consistency is a result, when actually it is a process. Consistency is daily vigilance and it is a small price to pay for peace of mind. The lesson I learned is that there is a universal law of change. Everything around us is constantly changing whether we want it or not. We are absolutely powerless over that change. It is the way of the world and its ever-evolving intention. Consistency is our only defense. By being consistent, practicing that daily vigilance, doing the activities necessary over and over day in and day out; we actually stand a chance. Otherwise, we are doomed to a life and a business of frustration. A life of trying to control the uncontrollable. A business of surviving from hope to hope. Hoping that this time it will be different. Hoping that this time you will still meet your goal even though you didn’t do the necessary activities. Hoping that this time, just this once, you will get a gift, rather than fruits from your work. Hoping that there really is a shortcut.

We act as if we are suddenly going to be struck successful even though to say that would be ludicrous. Why do we do this? Why is it that we can be told what works, we can be told what we need to do to be successful, but yet we do nothing different? We have tools like Joe’s Goals and books like The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. We have people like Wayne Dyer telling us to “believe it before you see it”, instead of the traditional programming “believe it when you see it”. We have Deepak Chopra and Ekhart Tolle telling us that are mind is our biggest obstacle, yet we persist in “reasoning and logiking” our way through life.

I learned from Brian Klemmer and his Pursuit & Practice of Personal Mastery that reason and logic is a very taxing way to solve problems. Yet we persist! We go to great lengths to avoid the activities that are necessary to our success and so often those necessary activities are the ones we don’t like. It has been said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, but it has never been said that the road to hell is paved with intentions. I also learned from Brian Klemmer that “Intention IS Results”. Apparently, our intentions are, all to often, to be comfortable rather than successful. Otherwise, why would we create our own hell?

My theory is something familiar is always favored over something different. No matter how much “familiar” may be making us miserable, we will go to great lengths to stay there, all the while hoping it will be different. It will never be different until we are willing to do what is necessary to make it different!

Instead of food for thought, how about food for action? What is necessary for you to do in the pursuit of your success? And are you willing to do it consistently?

There is quote by E. M. Gray on success that says:

The successful person has the habit of doing the things failures don’t like to do. They don’t like doing them either necessarily. But their disliking is subordinated to the strength of their purpose.

What that says to me is that success is all about your habits. Do what you do. Do it on a consistent basis. And learn to do it well.

Notice that there is no mention of only doing the things you like. It is about regularly completing those tasks that will lead towards your success.

But how do we go about working on these habits in the hurried world we live in? How do learn to do so on a regular basis?

That is where Ian a.k.a. ‘Joe’ over at Joe’s Goals comes in. Ian has written a nifty little web app that in his words:

… is a simple yet powerful tool to make tracking your goals the easiest part of accomplishing them. Use our simple single page interface to setup daily and weekly goals and track your overall progress and score. Setup negative goals (or vices) to confront and overcome the bad habits that finally need to get the boot.

I like it because it appears to be easily configurable and looks fun to use. I can put in the habits I want to develop or the goals I want to work on and keep track of my progress. I can even use it to change my behavior and break some of those negative habits that I have acquired.

Are there any habits that you would like to develop? Any you would like to break? Give it a try and let us know here what you think.

This is a short article I wrote about WILLINGness. The article addresses the insanity of how we get in our own way by being UNwilling. You don’t have to believe something is for the better to be willing to try it. If what you are doing isn’t working for you then do something different–it doesn’t matter what it is. See also Packing Your Belief Bags, an article I wrote for the Midland Reporter-Telegram on resistance to change.

This article was published in the July/August issue of Nuestra Cultura magazine.

View the entire article here.

Ready, Willing & Able…To Change?! [PDF, 56KB]

You can pick up a copy of Nuestra Cultura magazine at Barnes & Noble, Hastings or subscribe by clicking here.

This is a poem sent to me by a great friend about Independence Day. I thought it was good and wanted to share it!

Click here to read it.

Pulchritude the motorcycle here, just wanting to wish you an absolutely, fabulously, marvelous Independence Day! Rest, relax and do all the family stuff, but don’t let this day pass you by without doing at least one thing, big or small, that’s just for you and fills you with that feeling of Independence.

Today is the day you could play your best round of golf, win at a game you have never before won, or finish the book you started and haven’t found the time to finish.

And, of course, I am biased, but you could also take your motorcycle for a ride. And if you don’t have one, today might be a great day to go buy one or at least shop for one. Ronn and Lisa tell me there is Independence in taking me out for a ride, even if I do still benefit.

So here’s to exercising Independence…

-P

Have you ever found yourself following a �rule� and then wondering where you got that rule? �Rules� that say things like it takes money to make money, or that business and personal don�t mix?

This is the seed of thought for this article that talks about our resistance to change and that resistance being driven by our “bag of beliefs”. So often, we inadvertently limit ourselves because we are hanging on to old ideas by binding ourselves to rules, of which we have no idea where we got them or how to let go of them. This article offers a very simple look at this process and suggests a way to take inventory of the beliefs that drive your business.

This article was published in the Midland Reporter-Telegram on July 2, 2006.

View the entire article here.

Packing Your Belief Bags [PDF, 24 KB]

See also previous post Seeking Life’s Treasures.

Ask the average, non-motorcycle riding “Joe” on the street what they think of Harley riders and I would bet you would get a good number of responses that would include “rebellious”. Ask the average Harley owner and I bet you would get similar answers.

But something I observed recently leaves me perplexed.

You see, I have been catching up on a little of my reading over on The XL Forum. The XL Forum is “The International Portal for Sportster and Buell Motorcycle Enthusiasts”. I have started visiting it frequently because it is a great resource for Sportster (Sporty) owners, which is a requirement for membership, and just happens to be what Pulchritude is.

I was recently reading a thread about putting a radio on a Sporty. The original poster simply asked for options to mount an FM radio on his handlebars and got a wide variety of answers. The suggestions ranged from specific mounts that are available to using an iPod or MP3 player. All great suggestions, in my opinion.

What got me to thinking was the negative responses to the post. Here are a few:

“thats why geezer glides were invented”

“please do not mount a radio to your sportster’s handlebars.”

“If I am gonna have a windshield and a radio. I’m gonna buy a convertible…..”

“buy a damn suburban then if you want all that s–t or a geezer sled.”

Remember, these responses came from people who own Harley Davidson motorcycles. Do you see where the irony is this?
You have people out there that ride a motorcycle because they want to be DIFFERENT from those that drive cars. They “rebel” against the “cagers” (those who drive autos) and fight for their right to be different. Yet they decry their “own” when one wants to add an accessory to their bike that they don’t like. Something that would make them different!

Isn’t it interesting how often this type of scenario occurs in our lives? How about in our personal and work life? Have you ever worked for a place that encourages creativity … but only to a certain point? Or a boss that says he has an open door policy, but really you know he doesn’t? Or a boss who’s behavior says “If I want your opinion, I’ll give it to you!”

In the end, creative freedoms are part of what make our country so great. Our right to have varying opinions, and to be able to express them openly.

So with that, I wish each and every one of you a wonderful Fourth of July! And I encourage you to remember those who were so rebellious many years ago so that we might enjoy these freedoms today.