Archives for August 2019

Back in February of 2016, I was feeling down. I had worked very hard for close to two years months on a book called Change Your Habits Change Your Life.

It was a hard book for me to write because it incorporated complex brain science. I poured through over 200 hundred studies on habits, neuroplasticity neurogenesis, epigenetics, the latest habit change strategies, and many other complicated brain-related subjects.

I was feeling down because after the release of that book, not much happened.

Book sales are often driven by media exposure. For some reason, everyone in the media, some I knew, some I didn’t know, ignored my requests for interviews. They also ignored many of the articles I had pitched them about habit change, from my research.

As a result, sales were anemic, and that negatively affected me.

Evidently, I wear my emotions on my sleeve, because when one of my very nice clients called, she sensed something was off and asked me if I was OK. I told her what was going on. I vented for about ten minutes. When I was done, she said, “Always Believe That Something Wonderful Is About To Happen”.

I thought what she said was so profound, I typed it up and put in on my wall where I would see it every day.

Her words really picked me up and pulled me out of my depression.

Amazingly, later that same day, I received an email from one of my contacts at Business Insider, Kathleen. Kathleen, said she wanted to do a story about my book and asked me to email her the Ebook version.

So, I did and two weeks later we did the interview.

The Business Insider article was released on March 17th, St. Patty’s Day. It was an immediate hit. Within a 24 hour period, it had over 1 million hits. By month-end it had over 5 million hits. As I type these words, the article has been read by close to 12 million people.

Thanks to that viral article, my book sales went through the roof. I must have sold 6,000 copies in a two-week period. It became an instant bestseller on Amazon. The Business Insider article generated many other articles from people in the media, which helped keep book sales robust through 2018.

Life responds to positivity. I don’t pretend to know all of the answers as to why. No one really does. But, in my experience as an author, and from all of the entrepreneurs I interviewed for my Rich Habits Study, I’ve learned that good luck is attracted to a positive mental outlook and retreats from negativity.

Whenever you find yourself in the dumps, find something positive that works for you to pull yourself out of those dumps. It’s in your own best interest to stay positive.

To this day, whenever I feel down, I look at the sign on my wall: ALWAYS BELIEVE THAT SOMETHING WONDERFUL IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN.

Do your best to stay positive. Life rewards the optimists and punishes the pessimists.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

A typical airplane flight is off course 90% of the time during its flight. Pilots and the onboard computer systems continuously focus on the end, the destination, and make constant course corrections during the flight in order to arrive at the destination.

Successful entrepreneurs learn how to pivot – to shift gears, change direction and alter their course or the path they take in order to achieve success. This may be the real secret to their success.

Successful entrepreneurs are successful because they mastered the art of pivoting. Pivoting is what successful entrepreneurs do after they fail to achieve the results they desired.

The key to the art of pivoting is to find out what works and what does not work.

The Pivoting Process

Step #1 Experimentation – Doing things differently and evaluating the results.

Step #2 Documentation – Writing down exactly what worked and what did not work.

Step #3 Formalize a Process – After documenting what to do and what not to do, the next step is to formalize the process – get what works, in writing.

Step #4 Implementation – Institutionalizing the process by implementing it throughout your business organization. This ensures adherence to doing what works and avoiding what does not work.

Step #5 Tweak – Constantly improving upon the process, as the business environment changes.

When the people successful entrepreneurs work with are unable to help move them forward, they find others who can do the job.

When a product or service fails to deliver, successful entrepreneurs pivot, or continuously tweak it, until it succeeds.

They constantly alter what they are doing, find another route and then take that route. They do this over and over again until they realize success, which is the achievement of their goals and realization of their dreams.

Success is a process. A big part of succeeding, as an entrepreneur, is figuring out what works and what does not work and then pivoting.

Keep pivoting until you reach your destination.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!

When I decided in 2009 to write my first book, Rich Habits, I confess that I entertained visions of grandeur. I thought, fantasized, about selling many books and becoming rich, like so many of the millionaires I studied.

That desire to become rich lit the fire and provided the initial motivation I needed.

Since then, I’ve written and sold many books. The money’s nice but it’s no longer the reason I keep at it.

I learned something along the way. My desire to help others lift themselves up, to achieve great things in their lives, is now my driving force.

Not a day goes by where I don’t receive emails or social media messages from readers thanking me for my work. I even got a Linkedin message from a woman who wanted to thank me for helping her save her child from life threatening brain cancer.

While riches may be one of the reasons you decide to pursue a dream, there is usually a deeper, more meaningful reason, hidden beneath all of the piles of imaginary dollars.

Significance.

When you find your calling or main purpose in life, both lead to the same place – a feeling of significance.

Significance is the ultimate reward for pursuing a dream. Not money.

When you live a life of significance, you are doing much more than making money. You are helping others by adding value to their lives in some way. When your short existence on this planet leaves a positive imprint on the lives of others, your life has significance.

If a dream is a rainbow, at the end of that rainbow is a life of significance. That’s the real pot of gold that’s waiting for you. And the feeling that your life has significance, is the feeling we call happiness.

My mission is to share my unique research in order to help others realize their dreams and achieve their goals. If you find value in these articles, please share them with your inner circle and encourage them to Subscribe. Thank You!