Mike Michalowicz's Blog, page 59

The Relationship Between Lenders & Borrowers

Most of my speaking events conclude with a book signing. Sometimes I forget to bring a pen. Oops.

The first person in line and I do the obligatory self pat down. Like a pen is going to some how magically appear in my chest pocket – where I have never in my life kept a pen, nor have worn a shirt with a chest pocket. Then the scramble to find a pen begins. Few people volunteer their pens – quickly stuffing them in their shirt chest pockets before I can see them. When I do spot one and ask for it, the response is clear: I better give that Bic back the moment I sign that first book. Crazy, isn’t it?

The Bic pen that I borrow is worth about ten cents. Probably half that, considering some of the ink has been used already. On the certified pre-owned pen market, the pens I borrow would likely go for a nickel. Yet, the owner watches over their valueless pen like they just gave me their first born. Why is that?

It’s called the Lender-Borrower effect, which plays into some of the strongest human motivators: Loss and gain. Loss being the stronger than gain by a long shot.

When people lend something, anything, they feel immediate loss, and the longer the item (or money) is away from them the pain of loss grows. For the borrower, when they get the item (or money) they feel the greatest benefit immediately, yet the feeling of gain diminishes quickly over time.

As more and more time goes by the lender feels more and more desire to get back what they lost, and the borrower feels less and less compelled to give it back. In other words, in any lender-borrower transaction, the lender gives more importance to the deal over time and the borrower gives less.

There is a lot of truth in “neither a lender nor borrower be.” Time is the enemy in these situations. If you do need to borrow something, return it fast – you will save your lender lots of emotional agony. If you are a lender, make sure it is returned fast – you will ensure your borrower doesn’t forget about you. Even if the transaction is as “insignificant” as lending a pen.

What is your lending or borrowing story?

Episode 113: Foods to make you stronger, faster, smarter with Chef Bailey Ruskus

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Show Summary

Today we interview Chef Bailey Ruskus, or Chef Bai. She shares the foods to help make you stronger, faster, and smarter. Learn about the foods you should be eating, how you should be eating them, and short cuts to be eating super well, super easily. Because let’s face it, when you’re stronger, faster, smarter, you become more profitable. Welcome to Episode 113 of the Profit First Podcast!

Our Guest

 

Chef Bai (Bailey Jeann Ruskus) grew up in Boulder, Colorado with a desire from the beginning to nourish people with cuisine. She received a degree at the California Culinary Academy, as well as became an Integrative Health Coach from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition.  Through her experience working in a number of fine dining restaurants and private kitchens, she noticed that the industry was seriously lacking a passion and deeper understanding for clean, responsible food. While knowing that proper cuisine will always be based on love and traditions, she decided to bridge the gap between comfort food and health.  Chef Bai is now based out of San Diego, CA and has made it her life’s mission to source food from local and sustainable companies to educate the public on making clean eating an everyday reality.
Show Links

Website- www.straighttosource.com

Email- bailey@straighttosource.com

Instagram- chef_bai

LinkedIn- www.linkedin.com/in/chefbai

Corporate Partners

Receipt-Bank – Software and service to make the gathering, storage & processing of bills, receipts and invoices as easy and as cost effective as possible for businesses.

Nextiva – VOIP phone providers for small businesses.

Fundera – Single source online funding for entrepreneurs. Also offers an adviser program for CPAs, bookkeepers and business coaches.

Fundbox –  The simplest and fastest way to fix your cash flow by advancing payments for your outstanding invoices.

Surrounded With Naysayers? Here’s 12 Ways To Deal With Them

You have a great idea. Yet, the naysayers tell you it will never work. If you let them, naysayers can crush your dreams. If you don’t confront them they’ll continue to attack you until they drive you insane with fear.

It’s their job to attack, harass, offend, annoy and distract you. You may even start to feel like running a business is the easy part, and dealing with the naysayers and distracters is the hard part! It doesn’t have to be that hard. Here are 12 ways to deflect, defend, ditch, distract and deal with those negative-nannies; and one killer comeback guaranteed to stop the hairiest, hardest hitting naysayers out there:

1. Get in the Media Spotlight— Something magical happens when your idea is put in print. Seeing your thoughts discussed in the local newspaper, a university journal, or even a respected blog, may be enough to shut up the most persistent naysayer.

2. The Right Crowd—One highly effective way to deal with naysayers, is to not deal with them at all. Insert yourself into a new crowd that supports your idea or is marching down a similar path. The break from the negativity may be the simplest way to become more positive and gain support for your ideas.

3. Make It A Motivator— Ask the naysayer for permission to prove them wrong. With their approval put a date to when you will prove them wrong, and wager a dinner. If they are right, you buy. If you are right, they pay for dinner, or wear a pink tutu and wig and your favorite football team’s jersey to work next game day.

4. Fear, Envy & Jealousy— When you get that naysayer telling you that you will never make it, recognize this is their own fear, envy and jealousy telling them that you probably will actually make it. They feel these things because they believe if you make it, they’ll feel left out, or worse, they’ll feel like a loser. If you recognize this fact, you’ll understand the real reason they say what they say and be motivated to push forward.

5. How To Know They’re Right— Naysayers generally should be ignored, unless one of two things happens. If they are your potential customers, listen very, very carefully to their criticism and keep fixing what you do until they embrace it. Second, if you hear a consistent challenge or theme from a variety of naysayers they actually may be onto something. If you hear a common concern from many folks, spend the time investigating what they are saying to see if they may just know something you don’t.

6. Predict The Weather— You would think that in this day and age that the weatherman could accurately predict the weather for more than just the next 24 hours. But they can’t. Why is it still impossible to predict the weather a mere week away, let alone a month in advance? Because there are literally billions of variables that influence the weather.

The same holds true for your ideas. Due to the number of variables, it is impossible to predict how things will go over the upcoming months and years. This is true for good outcomes or bad. Recognize that you and the weatherman are making weather predictions. The only difference is that you can adjust and change every single moment of every single day, giving you a big advantage in having the outcome you predicts, and the weatherman can’t.

7. Show Them The Success— Naysayers can be quieted by showing them your successes so far. Instead of talking about what you have planned (and having them shooting it down), tell them about what you have already achieved on the path you’re traveling. Tangible evidence is impossible to dispute.

8. Flip It – When a naysayer tell you how bad it is going to turn out, tell them an even worse potential outcome. Tell them the most ridiculous disaster that could ever happen. This puts them on the defensive to explain why it can’t be that bad. Without even realizing it, they’ll effectively start arguing on your behalf. Yeah, that’s right. That’s reverse psychology.

9. Agree With Them— Listen to the negative things the naysayer is voicing, and agree with them. If they say, “You’ll never be able to afford to own a business,” say, “I can see where you’d think that, but I see something different. I see that I can make it happen.” Don’t argue, just acknowledge their perspective and point out you have your own.

10. The Battle Of Wills— Sometimes it is going to be you versus them. They will try to keep holding you down, and you need to fight your way up. It is a battle of the minds, and the battle of the wills. Try saying your own “success mantra” and envision the outcome every day. Even if you don’t believe yourself at times, just keep at it. It may be the only way to win.

11. Same For Your Competitors— The naysayers who are squashing your dreams, are doing the same to your competitors. Understand that they face the same roadblocks that you do. The one who perseveres wins.

12. Data Doesn’t Lie— Maybe the naysayers are your own employees, family or friends. Actually, they’re almost always the naysayers. It makes it really hard to avoid them. The only way to dispute what they say, is with hard, cold facts. Do the research, collect the proof and present it. Even if it doesn’t persuade them to change their minds, it will give you more confidence.

BONUS! There is one more way to defeat almost every naysayer out there, and this has worked every single time I have used it. When the naysayer tells me something won’t work, or it is impossible, I respond by saying, “Really? Tell me about the time you tried it.” Inevitably they haven’t tried it, so they have no hands on experience at all. That is when I say “Are you saying you have no experience with what you are talking about?” And that is the time they usually shut up.

7 Weird Habits Of Successful People

We call people weird because they do things differently than we would. Seth Godin wears those bright colored, but mismatched socks. Steve Jobs’ work uniform was a black turtleneck and jeans. Look around and you can see the obvious differences in a lot of successful people. Those are fun to spot, but they’re not necessarily the habits you need to acquire. These are.

What most business owners don’t see when they look at successful people are the habits they’ve developed. Leonardo DaVinci slept two hours a day at four-hour intervals. Charles Dickens would only write and sleep facing north. Some of their weirdness was superstition, but a lot of it wasn’t. Here are six weird habits of successful people.

1. Think like a rocket scientist— Successful people start at the finish. Most of us have been taught to take one step then the next, and the next until we arrive at our destination or goal. But successful people, like rocket scientists, actually clearly define the outcome they want first, and then reverse engineer the steps they need to take to get there.

2. Broken record planning— They repeat themselves a lot. If you’re pre-vinyl and never heard a broken record, think “repeat” or “loop.” Successful people don’t stop when they have a success. When they succeed then they try to figure out ways to repeat that success over and over.

4. Cut corners— Once successful people figure out how to repeat success, then they figure out how to get the same result faster, easier and cheaper. There’s a fine line between cutting corners and cutting quality though. Make sure you recognize the difference.

5. They are quitters— You know the saying “Winners never quit and quitters never win.” Not so much. In fact, that’s wrong. Winners quit a lot. They have a keen eye for what is not working and not supporting the finish line (check rule one again for that). Once they identify the thing sucking energy, money and resources from their business they cut it out fast.

6. They say “no,” way more than they say “yes”— You’d think the best way to success is to get involved with a lot of great opportunities. You’d think wrong. Successful people know the greatest opportunity is the one that is selected, catered to and protected from other great opportunities. They constantly say “no” to anything and everything that is not in support of the one great opportunity they’re focused on. If your goal is to grow giant pumpkins, growing giant melons as well doesn’t distract you.

7. They don’t look the part— I learned a great lesson playing Texas Hold ‘Em. The person with the weak hand acts the strongest (hoping others will fold so he gets the money). The person with the strongest hand acts the weakest (hoping others stay in the game and keep filling up the pot so he gets the money). This is true in life too… that flashy, “look at me” guy is inevitably the one struggling. Successful people don’t look for others approval for their success and therefore don’t need to show it off. I’m not saying successful people are meek, I am just saying that have inner confidence and rarely feel a need to show off the glitz and dazzle.

Learning to look at what people do more than what they say they’re doing is the best way I know of to spot the true habits of successful people. If they’re telling you that you have to work 100 hours a week, but they’re going home at 6 p.m. every night and taking weekends off, chances are they know something you don’t. Figure it out and start building your own list of habits. Those successful habits will ultimately become the system that makes you famous.

Episode 112: Profitable Relationships with Dave Kerpen

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Show Summary

On today’s episode, we talk about the importance of people skills and how it dramatically affects profitability with Dave Kerpen. By following his very specific tips, you can immediately influence the way people perceive you and generate profitable relationships. Dave also explains why accepting a glass of water is one of the smartest things you can do to drive profitability. 

Welcome to Episode 112 of the Profit First Podcast!

Our Guest

 

 

CEO and Founder of Likeable Local, Dave Kerpen is the father of 2 beautiful girls, husband to an amazing business partner, and friend to many. Dave is an entrepreneur, author, and speaker.

In his day job, he’s the founder and CEO of Likeable Local, a social media software company serving thousands of small businesses, as well as the chairman and co-founder of Likeable Media, an award-winning social media and word-of-mouth marketing agency.

 

Following his sponsored wedding, which raised over $100,000 including $20K for charity, Dave and his wife, Carrie started and transformed theKBuzz (founded in 2007) into Likeable Media, the only 3-time WOMMY Award winner for excellence from the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) and one of the 500 fastest growing private companies in the US according to INC Magazine for both 2011 and 2012.

As one of Entrepreneur’s top 10 up and coming leaders, Dave has been featured on CNBC’s “On the Money”, BBC, ABC World News Tonight, the CBS Early Show, the New York Times, and countless blogs. He has also keynoted at dozens of conferences across the globe including Singapore, Athens, Dubai, San Francisco and Mexico City.

Dave is a Venture Partner at Gen Y Capital Partners an early-stage venture firm, which is leveraging Gen Y to support Gen Y.

Dave Kerpen 1st’s book was a NY Times bestseller – “Likeable Social Media: How to Delight Your Customers, Create an Irresistible Brand, and Be Generally Amazing on Facebook and other social networks.” Dave has since followed up Likeable Social Media with 2 more books, Likeable Business & Likeable Leadership and is currently working on a 4th now, The Art of People.

Dave is proud of my Likeable business accomplishments but prouder of Charlotte and Kate, my two daughters.

Show Links

​Website:  http://davekerpen.ceo/ , http://likeablelocal.com , http://Twitter.com/DaveKerpen , http://ArtofPeopleBook.com , http://buyartofpeople.com

Corporate Partners 

Receipt-Bank – Software and service to make the gathering, storage & processing of bills, receipts and invoices as easy and as cost effective as possible for businesses.

Nextiva – VOIP phone providers for small businesses.

Fundera – Single source online funding for entrepreneurs. Also offers an adviser program for CPAs, bookkeepers and business coaches.

Fundbox –  The simplest and fastest way to fix your cash flow by advancing payments for your outstanding invoices.

6 Tips And One Escape Plan to Overcome Burnout

Feeling a little burned out in your job or career? Perhaps you are feeling it and don’t even realize that’s what it is! Whether you already recognize burnout or not, it’s a good time to evaluate whether you have it and what to do it about it, if you do. Burnout can be disastrous for both you and the company, so the sooner you spot it and address it, the better off everyone will be.

First, however, it’s important to identify exactly what burnout is. My definition of burnout is when you feel your efforts are fruitless and that you have lost all enthusiasm for work over a sustained period of time (typically at least four consecutive weeks). If you have just a few lackluster days, or even a few weeks of them, it could just be a simple anomaly. But when that “lacklusterness” goes on for a month or more, you, my friend, are burned out.

Here are six tricks to overcoming burnout:

1. Take an extended break. There is a saying, “everything in moderation.” That includes work. Burnout is often a loud and clear signal that you need to take a break. Take a break from work, even if it is a few days. But here is the key: it must be a complete break. No laptop, no iPad, no cell phone, no nothing.

2. Start relaxed – Too many people jump out of bed, race through breakfast and on to work. In other words, stress, stress, and more stress. Instead, start relaxed. Adopt a morning ritual that includes stretching, exercising, relaxing, meditation and/or reading. Just like you slowly warm up before exercise, you want to slowly warm up your mind & body before working.

3. Regular breaks – Working straight through the day is not productive and has even been proven scientifically not to be effective. Change your schedule to work in a short burst (ideally 60 to 90 minutes), then take a 15 to 20 minute break. Make sure the break allows your mind to totally disconnect from work. Go for a walk, talk with friends about the past weekend, or read your favorite magazine.

4. Avoid the news – In some cases, burnout is a result of depression. The constant negativity perpetuated by news reports, over time, gives many people the false belief that all of life is horrible. And with that comes depression and burnout. Try not watching or reading the news for 30 days. It may be the perfect burnout cure.

5. Change what you eat – Similar to keeping negative junk out of your mind (as in the previous point), you need to keep junk out of your stomach. A poor diet can not only suck the energy out of you, it can also mess with your mind. Improve your diet and, in many cases, you will see a rise in energy and a rise in your attitude.

6. Write down why – Spend the time necessary to figure out why you are doing what you do. Is it a stepping stone to another goal? Is what you do serving a greater purpose than just making money? Once you know why you do what you do, the passion may return and the burnout out will go away.

If all else fails, it may be an indicator that you need to permanently leave the situation you are in. When this is the case, you need to figure out your escape path. Specifically, determine where you ideally want to be in life (not just monetarily, but also what you wand to be doing, etc.). Then determine all the steps you need to take to get there. Can you find a career in that field? Can you take a small immediate step in the right direction? Can you take a night class? Whatever you do, once you have the “escape plan,” start working on it immediately. After all, it is your best means of escape to a better, more fulfilling way of life.

Or Are You Threatened?

There is a difference between uncomfortable and dangerous. Curling free weights until you feel that uncomfortable burn (the trigger to muscle growth) is different then trying to bench press 400lbs right over your throat. That is downright dangerous.

The next time you a presented with a decision that you are hesitant about ask yourself if it is simply uncomfortable or if it is dangerous.  Uncomfortable decisions inevitably bring results. Dangerous decisions inevitably bring regret.

Are You Uncomfortable?

Growth happens when you are uncomfortable. When you exercise, that uncomfortable burn, is your muscles strengthening. When you step on stage for your first ever speech, it the necessary yet super uncomfortable step to mastering the craft.  When you delay that uncomfortable collections call, your money will wait until you do.

The roadblock to success, progress and improvement is the familiar.

The next time you are presented with something uncomfortable, do it. Build muscle in doing the uncomfortable.

Unify Your Client Needs With Your Own

The common belief is that you must pivot your offering until you meet the needs of your customers. That is only partially correct. In fact pivoting to your client’s needs, while ignoring your own, will cause you to resent your business. Instead unify your client’s needs to your own and you will position your business for extraordinary growth and profitability.

Want to learn more from Mike? Attend ProfitCON 2016 and meet him in person. It is time you take your business growth and profitability seriously!

Episode 111: Grow with ‘No’ featuring Clay Clark

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Show Summary

On today’s episode, we talk about the power of saying NO with Clay Clark!  Clay argues that when you say no, you are actually happier and more profitable!  This episode he shares the strategies  around the “F5″ technique to bring balance to life, and to define your purpose.  Clay also shares some very specific things you can do to grow, by simply saying no!  Welcome to Episode 111 of the Profit First Podcast!

Our Guest

Clay Clark is the former “US Small Business Administration Entrepreneur of the Year” for the state of Oklahoma and the founder of Thrive15.com.

He and his companies have been featured in PandoDaily, Forbes, Fast Company, Yahoo Finance, and countless publications.

He started his first business out of his Oral Roberts University college dorm room at the age of 18.

He was named the Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce Entrepreneur of the Year at age 20.

He has started numerous successful businesses, written three books, consulted with companies in nearly every industry under the sun, and has committed to the “family time” necessary to create five beautiful children with his wonderful wife Vanessa.

He educates, he inspires, and he coaches teams and businesses on the specific action steps that are required to grow.

Over the years he has been the “Entertainer,” “Educator” or “Consultant” of choice for America’s leading companies including: Bama Companies, Boeing, Farmers Insurance, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Maytag University, Oral Roberts University, O’Reilly Auto Parts, OxiFresh, QuikTrip, Southwest Airlines, Valspar Paint, and countless other companies and organizations that were looking to grow.

Show Links

​Website: Thrive15.com 

Corporate Partners 

Receipt-Bank – Software and service to make the gathering, storage & processing of bills, receipts and invoices as easy and as cost effective as possible for businesses.

Nextiva – VOIP phone providers for small businesses.

Fundera – Single source online funding for entrepreneurs. Also offers an adviser program for CPAs, bookkeepers and business coaches.

Fundbox –  The simplest and fastest way to fix your cash flow by advancing payments for your outstanding invoices.