Three Easy Steps to Set Yourself Up for Success

Early last week Colleen and I went to Canada for a retreat with our business coach and some of her other coaching clients. During that time, I learned a lot of great things and I want to chronicle for you my three biggest takeaways from our adventure in learning and building relationships:

1. Listen to everybody.
2. Be resourceful.
3. Apply what you know.

Listen to Everybody

You never know what you’ll learn

One of my biggest mistakes has been avoiding certain business leaders just because of their name. To be honest, I was not the most receptive of some of the most well-known business minds when I first started working at Your Literary Prose. I’ve felt many were gimmicks, snake-oil salesman, insincere, just about anything else that could be said of phonies. These thought leaders seemed to just prey on the weak, make them feel insecure, and force them to buy into a program that most people would never use.

I’ve changed my mind. Over the two days we watched a couple of clips from Tony Robbins. Yes, he was one of those fakes to me, but after actually sitting down and watching what he has to say, I can say I’ve learned a few things about business. Tony is not the only person you can learn from though. Be open to others when they speak, learn from them, watch TED talks, listen to radio shows, watch the Sunday morning televangelists. They can all teach you something – if you’re willing to listen.

My first big takeaway:

Open your mind when others are speaking; you’d be surprised at what you learn.

Be Resourceful

It’s not what you have, it’s how you use it

This is the biggest takeaway from watching Tony Robbins; the biggest reason companies have setbacks is not the resources that they have, it’s how the resources are used. Here’s what Tony has to say on the matter (be aware – he does use a few choice words throughout). If you want to accomplish something you need to be resourceful, “if you want to take the island, burn the boats.”

What was great about this trip was the group used their resourcefulness later that evening. We all went to an escape room. If you’ve never been, I highly suggest going with some friends, business colleagues, or family. It’s a team-building adventure. What happens is you are locked in a room full of clues and you have to unlock the door and escape. You have all the resources at your disposal – the key is being resourceful, finding the clues that actually matter and the clues that are red herrings.

My second takeaway:

We all have the tools we need to succeed, what matters is how you use your tools.

Apply what you learn

It doesn’t count if you don’t apply what you learn

How many of you have ever been to a retreat, a seminar, a class and come across something you want to implement in your business or life? I’m sure that’s all of you. But how many of you have ever actually taken the time and energy to implement what you’ve learned? I can imagine that’s only a few of us. I am that person.

Stop wasting time and money not implementing what you’ve learned. If you take a simple economic approach to this, if you spend $500 to attend a one day seminar and you don’t apply anything, you will have a zero dollar return on your investment and on top of that you lose that whole day and time you could be billing your clients. That’s easily a $1,000 day, and most probably a whole lot more.

How do you implement these things? Take notes. I’m sure you already do this. Read your notes at the end of the day and find no more than three things that you can implement. It might only be one simple change, like how we learned a better way to organize our client work on the calendar. Or it might be a huge change that you have to implement in stages; that’s even better!

My last takeaway:

Make a concerted effort to use what you’ve learned.

Conclusion

Keep your mind open and ready to learn

To better yourself and your business you must have the right mindset.

What mindset are you in?

Stay Well,

-Peter