Live Life With Purpose with Adam Smith

With the current election happening, it doesn’t take long to realize that we are in the middle of a leadership problem. In fact, it has been the only election that has made me consider eventually running for office. No, this isn’t a podcast about this political election, but about leadership as a whole, so I won’t go into my thoughts on it here. But just know that I think this election has been an absolute circus. If you think that we are looking at the best candidates in Trump and Clinton, you are sadly mistaken. What we are looking at are the candidates with the deepest pockets; nothing more. Maybe the best candidates are holding out to run next time? I sure hope so. I’m now going to jump from talking about Trump and Clinton to the Kardashians, because there are two very important similarities between these individuals: attention and influence. I think it’s safe to say that the Kardashians are the most influential family in the world as of right now, which is sad, but true. And if leadership is controlled by the amount of influence one has and gives, then this further solidifies the fact that we have a leadership problem. If people are allowing the Kardashians to influence their lives more than anyone else, then this shows that they are learning from them, allowing their desires to be influenced by them, and also wanting to emulate them in some way. This is the reason that we have the current selfie generation, amongst other self-perception issues, but there’s a solution to this. Once people stop paying attention to a particular story that is being shared, media moves on. Of course, this would take people to do this as a collective group, but if it happened, the overwhelming popularity of someone would cease to exist. Although it may now be too late to implement this idea in the presidential election, if it would have happened at the beginning, the popular candidates would be different than they are now, and no amount of money could have stopped it. What this doesn’t mean is to turn a blind eye to someone who is doing wrong, but if no one is paying attention to a presidential candidate or tv personality, a political party moves on, or ratings become so bad that a tv show is canceled. It’s the truth and it’s the way this world works. Don’t like Trump? You should have stopped talking about him, good or bad, and stopped supporting his businesses long ago. Don’t like Clinton? You should have stopped talking about her, stopped funding the big businesses who fund her, and stopped commenting about her on Facebook long ago, as well. Don’t like the Kardashians? Stop watching their show and stop following their story. Attention of any kind will only continue to fuel the madness. All of this is to say that we must be very careful as to who we allow to speak into our lives. Influence is a powerful thing, because it requires individuals to open their hearts and minds to receive the message that one is spreading. But the most important question in all of this is, what opens the door to influence? What creates the opportunity to influence people in 2016? The answer is attention. This is the single most important factor in both influence and leadership, and it will only become stronger as social media continues to become more popular. Media sees what is trending and then amplifies what is popular. By no means am I the best entrepreneur in the world, as I’ve come to find that the best entrepreneurs as far as wealth builders and operators are those who are able to devote their full time and attention to one thing. But, I can say that I’ve successfully garnered attention, which is the gatekeeper to leading in a specific area. This is the one thing that has allowed me to influence millions of people over the last ten years, but this doesn’t mean I know everything; it just means I know how to successfully grab ...

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast and reading my blog. You make all of this possible and I appreciate you so much. I can’t believe this is episode 100. Here’s to a few hundred more! Today, I want to share some of my own stories with you to give you a quick snapshot of my journey. From this, you will quickly see that when you expect easy, you’ll only get difficult. This is because success was never meant to be easy. Success takes hard work, which is the only way to produce results. There are no shortcuts here. I can remember sitting on my roof many humid nights as a teenager in Alabama, looking up at the stars, dreaming of all the possibilities to come. You’re probably wondering how I got on my roof, so I’ll let you in. I did this by climbing a wobbly antenna, then leaping over onto the slanted roof shingles, and finally scrambling my way up to the spot between the chimney and the downward sloping section of the roof. I would use the brick chimney as a backrest, creating the most comfortable position I could find to view the sky above. Now that we have that out of the way, on with the important stuff. Of course, there were far fewer responsibilities then, so dreaming big wasn’t difficult. I knew I wanted to travel the world a million times over, I knew I wanted to be in a rock band, and I knew I wanted to make tons of money without having to go to work. Sounds like the normal dreams of a thirteen-year-old, right? But, even though these are the dreams I had, none of these things happened. I have never been out of the United States, I quit playing drums in a band years ago, and as soon as I turned sixteen and wanted a car, I found out that work was necessary to make money. All of these things would have required different decisions, more fighting for what I wanted, and more work along the way to make them happen. This idea of putting in the work also translates to my marriage, which I dreamed would resemble an effortless fairy tale, but again I was wrong. If anyone tells you that having a great marriage doesn’t require work, they are lying. But, know that working on marriage is always worth the extra effort. The same principle applies to my first four years of college. I dreamed that university would be easy, but these years took more effort than I could have ever imagined. I can remember taking a 5:30 a.m. math class to fit it in before work, only to return to school for two more classes after work. Wow, am I glad I don’t have to take any more 5:30 a.m. classes, but I’m sure you have a similar story of having to put in the work. How do I know that? Because anything worth having doesn’t come easy. Fast forward to chasing the career that I thought was my dream, only to be told that it wasn’t going to go as planned. After ten years, I left that career, only to encounter more letdowns. I then decided that I didn’t want to work for someone else anymore, but I needed to work on building my own businesses. Is building businesses easy? Again, it’s a “no.” Ninety to one hundred hour work weeks aren’t for the faint of heart, but that’s what it takes to run multiple businesses. So, why do I share all of these stories with you? Because I dreamed of living an easy life, but all I ended up with was the reminder that work is the only way to make dreams and expectations meet reality. At some points, we’ve all come short of what we truly wanted from life. But the beauty is found in the things we didn’t see coming, which were lessons in disguise all along. In fact, life is one big classroom, reminding us of the need to be aware of our surroundings. What has my life taught me? The need for a better work ethic, the importance of perseverance, the power to fight for what I believe in, the dissatisfaction of not giving life my all,

People matter. Chris Peterson, one of the founding fathers of positive psychology, said that positive psychology could be summed up in 3 words: “other people matter.” Not new gadgets, or the latest and greatest car, or the biggest home, or your investments. While many others in the self-help and business field will try to tell you that these things should be your only focuses, this advice just isn’t correct. I know this is a top focus that many entrepreneurs focus on because a lot of business moguls that I follow on Instagram only share photos of stacks of money, new Ferraris, Rolexes, and penthouse suites; not people. Is this what the meaning of life has come to? I sure hope not. On the other hand, please never feel bad for building wealth. Building wealth can be fun, and having fun is amazing, but I am more talking about wealth in that it should never be your sole focus. Building a bigger business is only worth it if you are impacting people in better ways. The mindset that says you must increase your volume and your profits, leaving no efforts good enough, is a relentless cycle of let-downs, anyway. This is what builds a life of never finding what one is looking for. This also builds a life of never being happy and never finding peace. To find happiness you need to be able to see the fruits of your efforts, and the easiest way to do this is to see how you’ve helped other people. When you flip your focus from money to people, employees and customers are taken care of properly, and more revenue is then a byproduct of the leadership work you’ve put in. When people are first, the rest of life falls into place. We are talking about leadership here, so if leadership is the impact you have on people, then I want to see the number of lives you are impacting, not the dollar amount in your bank account. There was a time in life where money was my only focus, and I found that the chase of more, more, more was empty. When I achieved what I thought would make me happy, I only wanted more. I recently talked to my wife, Jasmine, about this time in life and she agrees — it was the most miserable we’ve ever been. Our priorities were out of whack, and as a result, we weren’t looking for ways to impact people. (If you haven’t noticed yet, leading in life is intentional.) Instead, we were looking out for what would only benefit ourselves. Again, only focusing on yourself is another wrong principle that many leadership books teach, but I’m here to challenge this idea. I fell for this trap, and I don’t want others to do the same. When I found that the key to life is being intentional with pouring into the lives of other people, I stopped focusing on only getting to know people who I thought were successful, and instead focused my attention on everyone. You see, there’s tons of leadership books that also say to only focus on those relationships that will help make you more successful, leaving an underlying message that there’s people who shouldn’t matter to you, but that’s nonsense. All lives matter, not just a few. Now, go and focus on what really matters, today. 

In 2016, silence isn’t being sought out often. I see people every day driving down the road talking on their bluetooth earpieces, changing the radio station, while drinking their coffee, and eating their morning bagel. These same people are headed to work to only throw themselves into a ten hour workday of clients who need assistance and endless emails. They will then drive home, again talking on their phone, and will try to spend a few minutes with their family, only to lose them quickly to the need for sleep. They will then decide to fall asleep themselves due to exhaustion, and will wake up the following day for a repeat of the day before. Maybe you can relate to this lifestyle, but the glaring issue in this is the absence of silence. The power of silence is often overlooked, only so a few minutes of work and imagined productivity can be had. But when there is no room given for silence in one’s day, pressures mount, and the room needed to exhale isn’t given. We must be given the time to breathe, to rest, to reflect, to prepare. And when there is a constant push and pull in every single direction, something must give, and it will be one of the two: your sanity or your schedule. You see, the problem is that some people have bought into the lie that they can just keep going, without the need of recharging. This mentality is a trap, a myth, and a letdown. It’s all of these things because the tyrant of work is designed to never let us discover ourselves, let alone the world around us. Without silence, no wonder stress is so prevalent. We need silence to live our very best lives. If we remain busy all of our days, always focused on the next task at hand, we will never gain the opportunity to dabble in the beauty that our lives and the world around us have to offer. If there’s never any time for silence, if there’s never any time for recharging and discovery, then it will be our unfocused busyness that will end up being our very worst enemy in the end. This is what creates the scene of people arriving at the end of their lives, only to regret their vast amounts of wasted time, and their lack of devotion to finding all that life had to offer. You need silence, because you need direction. If you always take the next step, only because other people tell you to, you will miss out on directing your own life in the way it should go. If you don’t create dreams and aspirations for yourself, and passionately pursue them, other people will recruit you for their dreams instead. Now that you see just how important silence is, here are three ways that you can find silence in your own life: * Schedule at least a fifteen minute period of time each day where silence is your only focus. * Know the exact spot where you want to be silent at. Whether it’s at your spot on your favorite trail, or in your office sipping on coffee in your favorite mug, go to a spot where inspiration flows. * You can use some of this time to shut everything completely off in your mind, and some of this time to strategically plan your day. Your main goal should be stillness with no exterior influences. In these moments of silence, just be. Silence is something that everyone can partake in. Maybe you have been afraid to be silent in the past, but please know that there’s nothing to fear. You don’t always need to be doing something to be productive. In fact, I hope you find your moment of silence each day to be something you look forward to and benefit from immensely. Now, go and find silence, today. 

Many people wander aimlessly in life, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t, but bringing value is always the best answer. I recently wrote a post on the importance of becoming invaluable in your workplace, but the idea of value can be applied to any and every area of life. When you bring value, you attract others to you, influencing them along the way. So, here are three questions to ask yourself when trying to figure out how you can add more value with your life: How can I bring value to people? Since people are the most important thing in this world, this question comes first. In most cases, the easiest way to do this is to listen, and then speak when needed. People need help, and you being there for them shows that you care. Creating lasting relationships with people builds valuable connections and allows you to live life together, rather than in isolation. You can bring value when you contribute to relationships more than you take from them. How can I produce value with my work? The best work in this world offers solutions for people’s needs. When this happens, people will pay for your answers, whether it’s in the form of spoken word, written word, or in the form of a product. When people have problems and you answer with a solution, that’s providing value. That’s why it is important to give your very best work. There’s not only satisfaction for yourself found in a job well done, but your best work actually helps people. When you understand this, and realize that you can create better outcomes for people, the reason behind your work becomes more apparent. When this happens, the extra effort becomes worth your time. How can I value my own time and the time of others? Since time is one of our most valuable resources, we must learn to use it wisely. We steward our own time well by cherishing every minute of it, while allocating time for rest. Keep this in mind as you create your schedule, and see the difference it makes with your willingness to take more vacations, or even just stepping away. You are more effective when you recharge. We value the time of others through our level of productivity. The way in which we conduct work meetings is a great way that we can show others that their time is important, too. People are more effective when you use meetings for their intended purposes, so it is important to limit small talk and end on time. Adding value not only changes the way you see the world, but it it impacts people, it offers your very best work, and it ensures that you use your valuable time wisely. When you focus on these three questions, you don’t have to worry about living a great life, because bringing value to the world is what leading in life is all about. Now, go and bring value, today.

We should all strive to give knowledge away in the most efficient and effective ways possible. Why? Because if you are truly captivated with making this world a better place and seeing other people grow, it becomes imperative that you do everything within your power to help others achieve their definition of success. So, with this idea in mind, here are three efficient and effective ways to help other people become successful: First, start a blog. Sure, I do paid one-on-one coaching sessions to personally help people with what is going on in their lives and their business, but a much easier way for people to gain access to what I have to say is through my blog and podcast. I offer free posts and podcasts that offer valuable content every single day to help other people grow. Helping others is my mission in life, and I’m always looking for new ways to offer information in more efficient ways. I could sit down with twelve people every month in life coaching sessions, or I could write articles that reach thousands of people every day. The more reach had, with less time being given, opens up new possibilities to influence more people. Second, write a book. Other people want to know how to reach success in their own lives, and if you have reached success in your life, then it becomes a responsibility of yours to share knowledge. A person who hoards information only cares about themselves, but a person who shares knowledge to better the lives of others is someone who leads with their life. And a great way to share content is to write a book. This way, when you run into someone who needs help, you can just give them your book. Some would even say this is the best form of communication, as books have been around for ages, and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Third, teach a class, webinar, workshop, or conference.  This type of event seems to be what everyone’s doing right now, so to take advantage of the moment, you may want to think about holding one soon. Although the market is flooded with webinars and alike right now, it’s a great way to spark interest from others. You can offer it as a free event to build your email list, or you can charge a premium to pay for speakers who will bring a bigger audience to your event. Whichever way you decide to go with your event, when it is organized well, you can reach tons of people at one time. Not to mention that these events offer a live interaction aspect to them that can’t be found in blogs or books, giving you a better personal relationship with your audience. In the end, if there is information inside of you that could help other people, it must come out. That way, it can be passed to others who will benefit from it for years to come. Your success helps others, and the more people you can help efficiently and effectively, the better. Now, go and help others find success, today. 

We all produce work in some form or fashion, and we all want to do our very best. But what happens when you finish your work, and know that it’s not your very best? Well, it is probably best to go back and fix your work to make it the best it can possibly be. But what if you could know what to do before you start working to set yourself up for producing even better work? It would save you tons of time, heartache, and frustration. In other words, it would set you up for success before you even begin. Here are 4 ways to begin producing even better work, right now: First, prepare to the best of your ability by conducting research. Many people want to dive straight into their work without putting the time and effort into doing the research, but great work never skips this part. Prior to this podcast, I have established that ideas are meant to be built upon, and research is a part of the process that allows you to do just that. Conducting research allows you to take the findings of other people who have excelled in a specific area of work, and then lets you use what you find as a case study for your own work. How did they work? What did they find? How can you build on their ideas and make their work better? All of these questions matter, as the answers allow you to skip the mistakes that their previous work found for you. Learn from research and use the lessons to make your best work even better. Second, bring passion into everything you do. I am not just talking about the need to become passionate for your work, but the need to become passionate for life. This is what drives curiosity, and curiosity is a major factor in making your work the very best it can be. What solutions are you searching for? What can your discoveries do for the world? What is worth being passionate about? How can your passion impact people? These are just some questions that can spark curiosity within you, and let that be the main driving force behind what you do. When you are curious, you will persevere when others quit, and you will uncover solutions that others didn’t even think were possible. Third, be creative with the entire process.  It is imperative that you are creative with the entire process, because doing so will challenge your work and test your boundaries. And it is when you change things up and challenge yourself with your work that your best work will become even better. If you are looking for an answer you have never come up with before, you must use a different process to get there, and that’s where the beauty of creativity becomes most useful. Implementing creativity is how you produce different work, and in a world of so many similar options, different work usually equates to better work. Fourth, allow other people to be a part of your work. I don’t know about you, but if I am in my work for too long, I can miss out on seeing the important details. I can become so focused on finishing that I rush past the given moments of making my best work even better, and that’s why having other people around us is so important. We need to bring other people into the work process, so they can look at our work and show us where we missed opportunities. We must have friends, mentors, coaches, an audience, and/or work colleagues, that we can be comfortable enough with to share our work with. When we only look at work from one direction, we can only produce work that appeals to a very select group of people. When we allow other people in, we embrace different perspectives, and take their useful advice to help our work reach endless possibilities. Now, take these four tips to make your best work even better, today. 

A year ago, I went through a period of time where I felt completely overwhelmed. My schedule was out of whack, I had said “yes” to far too many things, and as a result, I wasn’t getting enough sleep. I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this combination, but if you have, you know how dangerous it can be. I thought I could handle it, all the way up until the point where I found that I couldn’t. This unbalance was keeping me from growing deeper relationships, producing my very best work, and properly taking care of myself. I was trying to keep up with every demand, and I had to finally say “enough” and walk away from the fast pace of life that I was running. At any point in life where you go through a transformation, it becomes a pivotal point in time that one can look back on, gain understanding from, and be grateful for. Here are the four major takeaways I took from this point in life where I changed my entire view on things: First, start focusing on your fears.  I thought my issue was my schedule, but that wasn’t the root of the problem. The root of the problem was that I should have been focusing on my fear of letting people down. I was what you would call a “people pleaser.” If someone would ask me to do something, I would more than likely say “yes.” I forgot about the importance of barriers, and I paid dearly. Second, you need to take a look at your schedule often.  I was treating my schedule like I had unlimited time, without giving a second thought of all the things I had already committed to. I forgot about the importance of going back through my schedule and eliminating what was unnecessary. I have now made this a monthly practice. People will pull you in a million different directions if you allow them to, and pruning your schedule is the best way to keep that from happening. When you stop focusing on the gift you are supposed to be to the world, other people will volunteer you for a journey you’re not even supposed to be on. Third, health is your top priority.  When your health is deteriorating, you can’t keep up with demands anyway. It doesn’t matter how many appointments you have in your schedule, if you aren’t healthy, showing up doesn’t even matter. Without health, you aren’t helping anyone. You can’t be effective, you can’t give life your all, and you can’t be a gift to those around you. If you feel your health is slipping because of meeting demands, it’s time to step back and reevaluate the importance of the things you do. Fourth, it’s time to focus.  Before this awakening, I used to do what I needed to do and then some. Since this time, I’ve learned that ultimate focus means doing what only I can do. Now, if someone else can do what I have in my schedule, I give it to someone else to do. I can only be in one place at a time, and the same goes for you. You are only one person. This step is extremely important if you get to a point where everything you have committed to is important, and you can’t remove anything from your schedule, but you find that you don’t have the bandwidth to meet obligations. When you’ve reached your limit, it’s time to delegate and expand your reach by creating a team. This allows you to only focus on what you do best. In the end, not being overwhelmed with the demands of this world requires focus. If you keep committing to more, more, more, you will eventually reach a breaking point. The secret is to do something about your schedule now, before things get out of hand. And you can do just that by applying these four steps to your life, right now. Now, go and stop feeling overwhelmed, today. 

Since I am the only person in the business space who solely focuses on bettering relationships, when most clients reach out for business consulting, I always find myself helping with questions regarding people problems. As long as there are broken teams, I will be busy fixing people problems, and I don’t see a lack of dysfunctional teams anytime soon. When individuals decide that they want to work with the other people on their team, the possible results are endless. But when people decide that they don’t want to become part of a team, but instead want to remain ego-driven individuals, the only possible results are terrible results. I have seen plenty of examples of what does work and what doesn’t work when it comes to building better team relationships within the workplace, and I want to share with you what I’ve found. So, if your workplace doesn’t have a great company culture due to a lack of relationship on your team, here are five ways to begin fixing problems, right now: First, you have to build trust. All solid relationships have trust as the foundation, and it starts with you, the leader. Are you trustworthy? Do you have good character? Are you the same person behind closed doors as you are out in front of people? Knowing the answers to these questions and making changes are extremely important for your business to be successful. Next, do you have a problem with trusting other people? If you always feel like people are out to get you, then chances are that your team will adopt the same mindset. And if people are truly out to get you, have you thought about genuinely apologizing for the reason they are mad at you? I would say in most cases, when employees hold grudges against other employees, it’s because there was no apology for something that happened months ago. Sure, you may not feel the need to apologize, but be the bigger person by apologizing, and move on. It’s amazing what a little humility will do. Second, is your team properly trained? Most employees who feel that the rest of their team is out to get them is because their performance levels aren’t meeting the expectations of their boss, or other employees for that matter. And I would say that in 75% of those cases, the employees weren’t trained properly in the first place. Teaching people how to do their job correctly isn’t just important from a task point of view. Knowing how to do one’s job properly is actually important for business operations as a whole. Leaders, if your team isn’t functioning properly, it may not be the individuals on your team, but rather the way you are doing things that is causing more harm than good. When workflows, meetings, work environments, and systems aren’t beneficial to your team, they serve as hinderances to building better work relationships. In many cases, employees get fed up with not having what they need to complete their job properly and end up taking it out on other employees they work with. Third, open communication is key. Without open communication, progress cannot be made. When people harbor bad feeling towards others on their team, they tend to either harshly verbalize their feeling towards them or they retreat from any contact with them. Either way, these tactics prove to be detrimental to a team’s performance. Individuals who walk around on eggshells all the time are not able to give their full contribution to their team, and as a result, their very best cannot be achieved. Remember that everyone has something to offer, and if even one person is not offering their insights, then your team isn’t performing at maximum power and efficiency. If open communication is something that you’re struggling with, my suggestion would be to privately communicate all things that are getting in the way of your team performing at their very best with the people who are responsible for the lack of teamwork. The only time that things can’t be taken care of i...

We’ve all made decisions that we wish we could take back. In fact, as soon as I said that, you were most likely able to think of a decision that was the 22nd best choice available to you in that moment, yet you still chose it. Making bad decisions will happen, but the important part is to learn from them and begin making better decisions in the future. But, how? Here are four ways to begin making better decisions, right now: Believe that you can make a difference.  At the core of taking action is the belief that one can make a difference. It’s why people start new businesses, it’s why people protest the system based on their beliefs, and it’s the only reason that change in this world takes place. I know that when I haven’t believed that I could make a real difference in this world, I chose the easy way out, instead of the best way. And as you already know, the easy way isn’t always the best way. However, it is when you truly believe that you can make a difference in the world that putting in the necessary effort becomes worth the extra energy. Leave yourself more time for better decisions to take place. Taking the best way has usually meant that I needed to put more work in, and it was going to take longer, so there has been many times that I opted for the easiest decision instead. Making better decisions means making the right decision, no matter how much effort is needed. And sometimes you may feel that you need to make a quick decision, but this may just be a misconception. You may have more time to make a decision than you think. Yes, there are times where we must make quick decisions, but it’s important to differentiate between the times where quickness is beneficial to decision making, and where taking the time to evaluate the situation is more important than a speedy answer. Surround yourself with people who are already making better decisions.  Motivational speaker, Jim Rohn, said, “You are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with,” and for good reason. Thought processes and decision making techniques are contagious. This being said, if you spend enough time with people who are making better decisions, you will pick up on how they come to such solutions, and will begin to adopt their practices. Of course, the same idea applies to making bad decisions, so this is why Rohn’s advice is so important. When you learn from better decision makers, you will reap the benefits greatly. Take all possible outcomes into consideration before making your final decision.  Sometimes the easiest way to know if your time and effort will be worth the struggle is to ask yourself, “What’s the worst that can happen?” If making a wrong decision doesn’t bring about much grief or heartache, then why not give it a try? Experimenting with all possible outcomes isn’t a bad thing, but you must evaluate the risk versus the reward to know if your decisions are even worth your time in the first place. Now, go and make better decisions, today. 

There are many people I talk to that just want their work to be noticed. I’ve been there, as well. Ten years ago, when I started blogging, I just wanted my work to be noticed, too. I wanted instant recognition, but that didn’t happen. The problem with this mentality is that there is no such thing as overnight success. Anyone who thinks that they can reach their goal instantly is in for a rude awakening. In my own work, I quickly found out that people weren’t just going to start taking notice without first doing something worth taking notice of. I needed to produce more ideas that mattered, so that’s where I began. So, if you currently want to get your work noticed, my first question to you would be, “Is your idea and/or product worthy of attention?”  Without a worthy idea or product, you’re just noise in an already noisy world. So, what makes a product worthy? The research of an idea or product, the execution of the product, and the delivery of the product to customers. Without one of these three things, the product will be a flop. The execution of the product is the step where a product’s worthiness is focused on the most. Too many times products or ideas are released to the general public before they’re executed to the best of a team’s ability, and I will be the first to say when this happens, it is frustrating to say the least. I can remember standing in line for hours to get my hands on the very first iPhone, and the experience with the phone was terrible with reception and functionality. At first I was blinded by the coolness factor of the phone, but the more I used it, the less appealing it was. I thought about trying an Android phone, but the ease of syncing my other Apple products with my iPhone is what kept me buying future iPhones. And people would say to me, “but, it’s Apple,” and my response was, “I need a phone that works.” It wasn’t ready for launch — end of story. Thank goodness the iPhone got better with time, and I now love my iPhone 6+. The only thing that saved the first iPhone was the marketing around the new gadget, which brings me to my next point. Second, if you want to get your work noticed, have you considered your packaging?  There is so much that goes into the marketing of a product, but I really want to focus on the packaging. If you are a writer, then the book cover is a very important focus of yours. If you are an entrepreneur and have a new product, the way your product is packaged tells your customer how detail oriented you are. If you are offering a service, then the time you put into preparation and the expertise you offer is your packaging. You communicate a vast amount of information by the design of your company logo, the building you work in, and even by the way you talk to clients on the phone. All of these attributes are part of the package your business offers. The way that a product or service is packaged tells the customer a story before they even experience what you and your business have to offer. Third, if you want to get your work noticed, have you taken the time to build relationships? If you’ve followed my work, then you know that I place a huge importance on people, and for good reason. I love people. I have learned to never take relationships for granted, as people are the reason that I have the opportunity to do what I do in the first place. If you have a business of any kind, then I would ask you to at least consider the benefits of creating relationships with your clients. The main reason that this is important is that companies can only become real to customers when they speak to them on a personal basis. Until then, a company is just a logo. Putting a face with a voice who cares about an individual builds trust, and shows that a brand cares. Fourth, if you want to get your work noticed, have you pinpointed your audience? If you offer any product or service,

Hopefully 2015 was one of your best years ever, and having 2016 eclipse it almost seems impossible. But we can always work at making our lives better. So, here are the 4 ways that we can all make this year better than last year: Look at the opposite. In the midst of similarities, the best approach is to look for the opposites. I had a great year, so the question I will be asking myself is, “What didn’t go so well last year?” If your year wasn’t so great, begin by asking yourself, “What went great last year?” It’s okay to have a bad year. I’ve had plenty of them. The priority in times that could have gone much better is to keep moving and use what you’ve learned along the way to accomplish more in life. Stop letting things get in your way, but be realistic. Focus is what will get you and me both to our dreams. When your focus isn’t where it should be, then it is much more difficult to accomplish your goals. To do this, categorize tasks for each goal into one of these four categories: urgent, important, less important, and unimportant. In doing this, your goals will be much more manageable, and you’ll make sure to complete everything you need to do. This exercise also helps you connect the dots between your goals. Can you be more efficient and complete a few of the necessary action steps for your goals in the same sitting? If so, you might as well work smarter, not harder. On another note, I didn’t do as well with my exercise goals as I wanted to in 2015. I had a goal to run a marathon, but the necessary training never happened. The reason that it never happened is that I had other huge goals that I wanted to accomplish in 2015, and I put those first. If I were to do everything that I had planned on doing in 2015, I would have probably slept three hours a night, and I’m a mess with no sleep. The issue wasn’t the amount of work that I was putting in, but the issue was that I wasn’t being realistic with my goals. So instead of beating myself up this year for not completing everything that I plan, I’m going to be more realistic with my goals for 2016. Be more aware of the needs of others. Some people are more naturally wired to be aware of needs than others, but the important thing to realize is that we can all be more aware than we currently are. Even though being aware of the needs of others helps better relationships outside of work, this year I will be looking for even more ways to implement this principle in business, as I believe this is the foundation for building a business to become bigger and better. If you’re also looking to better your business this year, you should ask yourself, “How can I be more aware of the needs of others?” You will always need to focus on how you can become better before you will get bigger. Never lose sight of why you do what you do. I’ve lost sight of my why before, and the results were awful. The terrible thing is that it happens to so many people. When you don’t know your why, your passion for life is lost, and a life without passion is a life with little hope. Your why wakes you up in the morning, your why increases your determination, and your why helps you find your way. Don’t let this year end without catching your why. You can use these four keys to make this year better than last year. Now, go and live a better life, today.

When the facts tell you that 92% of New Year’s resolutions fail, you know that there’s a problem. Yet, 45% of Americans look over this fact and spend time thinking up new ones every year. Well, I’m tired of seeing this happen year after year, so that’s why episode eighty-nine is on New Year’s Resolutions. As a life coach I have found that some things work, and other things don’t, and I want to tell you what I’ve found. So, here are the six top reasons that New Year’s resolutions don’t work: Most people aren’t very specific. The top five New Year’s resolutions are lose weight, get organized, spend less and save more, enjoy life to the fullest, and staying fit and healthy. As you can see, people aren’t very specific with their resolutions. This is where goals differ from resolutions. Use SMART goals to help you stay on track in the future, and see the difference that well-thought-out goals differ from writing the first thoughts that come to your mind. Most people don’t find their why. You need a reason to why you are pursuing your goals. What’s the reason behind the reason? Why do you want to lose weight? Why do you want to get more organized? Why do you need to spend less and save more? Why do you want to enjoy life to the fullest? Why do you want to stay fit and healthy? Yes, all of these things would make life easier, but why is that important to you? Your answers to this question should be tied into your goal to remind you why you are pursuing it in the first place, because if you forget the reason, you’ll likely quit before seeing the finish line. There aren’t many people who have found passion. This point ties perfectly into the last point, because once you know your why, you have what you need to begin your pursuit. This is the main reason that only eight percent of people complete their New Year’s resolutions. These people don’t know why they want what they want, and so they don’t have their fuel to push them forward. If your goal is to just go to the gym, you first need to tie it to the facts that it will help you lose weight and keep it off, make you feel better, give you more energy, make your thinking process more effective, relieve stress, better your heart health, extend your day, and will ultimately help you live longer. Now, that’s something we can all get passionate about. There are many people who aren’t realistic. If you want to run a marathon, that’s great. I do, too. But it would be unrealistic to think that you can go and run a marathon without first being able to run a mile. This podcast episode is centered around health, as it is the top resolution that people have, but each principle here applies to whatever goal you are chasing. If you take anything away from this point, it should be that you need to put the necessary work in before you can expect to see success. I wouldn’t focus on your goal of losing 40 pounds, but I would focus on losing ten. I wouldn’t fast meals entirely, but I would cut out the foods that will help you lose weight. Remember, we need to look at what you will realistically do here. Again, this is pertaining to your health, but it also applies to other things. I wouldn’t focus on becoming a millionaire without first paying off all of your debt. I also wouldn’t focus on getting organized until you get rid of everything you don’t want first. Without preparation you will only come up short on your goals, which leads to bigger amounts of frustration than anyone needs to deal with. When this happens, not finding success seems like failure, but it’s really a lack of preparation.

This week, I need to talk to you about complacency. Far too often people fall short of their potential due to a lack of drive. People lose focus, they lose their way, and they lose hope. When these things are lost, it is only that individual who can find it again. So, how can you make sure that you’re not being complacent? I have three tips to help you make sure you’re always moving ahead with the right things in life: First, be mindful that complacency and rest are not the same things.  Many times, it is a struggle for people to differentiate between being lazy and getting much needed rest. I wrestle with the popular term “hustle” for this very reason. It sounds like a never-ending struggle to me. What ever happened to the term “hard work”? Is that not good enough anymore? Maybe it’s just me… Anyway, people who are always going and never stop long enough to plan, or breathe for that matter, will end up tired and confused in the end. Don’t ever beat yourself up for needing rest. It’s essential for brainpower and function. Second, realize that awareness wins. One of my favorite quotes on complacency comes from, Andy Grove. He said, “Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive.” And in a way, he has a point. It’s easy to stop looking ahead for far too long when success comes, but we must alter our view on success. We should all look at each success as a stepping stone to another. Remember that life consists of a long list of successes, not just one. What is it that drives you? Do you need rest? Is this a season that you need to just need to put the work in? Do you need to be planning? Do you need to be dreaming? All of these require tons of work, but when people aren’t physically moving, they can feel complacent. Of course, becoming paranoid about success and complacency like Grove’s quote from before is taking it too far, but we must be aware of the marathon that life is. If you treat it as a sprint, you will eventually become exhausted, and that will most likely lead to complacency. To avoid complacency you need to be self-aware and aware of what is needed around you.  Third, complacency thrives when there is no plan. Complacency loves to come right before you take the first step. Imagine you are at a fork in the road and trying to look at your map so that you know which road to travel. This idea shows how complacency abounds when you either don’t have a plan, or don’t know what step to take next within the plan you have already created. Sure, plans will change, but your drive doesn’t have to diminish. Even when things don’t go as plan, it’s imperative that you gather yourself, make a new plan, keep looking ahead, and continue to move forward. Complacency will ruin your life if you allow it to, but the decision is all yours. Will you give in, or will you make an attempt? If you never try, you’ll never know, so you might as well take a step. Now, go and make a difference, today. 

I recently talked about how to have great ideas, and how to create better products with those ideas here on the podcast. In those episodes I talked about living life, continually building upon ideas, fascination, building a great team, building something that you will use, and taking your time. But, how do we choose which ideas we should pursue in the first place? Well, it comes down to a three question system that I have created, and here it is: First, what is your experience in? Not only is this question important so that you know what you’re doing, but it helps you build credibility on a specific topic. The more often you build on a certain idea, or speak about a certain idea, the more knowledge you will gain. And the more research you put in, the more exposure you gain, and the more you learn how to use the idea and how to deal with it, the more you will be known as an expert. I would even suggest that you overshare a topic until people associate you with a product or idea, because it is only at this point that people will know that you have the answers they need in that area. Keep pursuing the same thing over time until you become reputable. Second, which ideas give the most return? I often skip over the topic of return on investment, but it is extremely important. We all have resources to grow, not to hold onto and squander. When you are spending time growing healthy relationships, I hope that you are fully giving yourself, and gaining valuable lessons from people in return. When you invest money into something, I hope that your goal isn’t to lose money or break even — it should be to profit. And when you invest time into something, I hope that you find what you are looking for, too. So, when I am thinking about the return on an idea, I always look at where these 3 things intersect: * The possible amount of lives changed * The shortest amount of time input for the most benefits received * The financial profit gained from amount of work I know your goal isn’t to use all of your available resources and gain nothing. If this is the case, then you could just go on vacation and not worry about work. Yes, this idea sounds great, but it isn’t realistic, nor is it very rewarding. When we gain resources from our work, we can then reinvest them into the next best ideas that we have. Until then, let’s keep looking for a great ROI. Third, what idea(s) can you build more than one product off of?  My problem for years was that I kept a blog that couldn’t be expanded past that. There was no book that I could write to enhance the content, there were no speaking engagements that I could book from it, and there were no online courses that I could possibly create for the content. I built my blog and wasn’t thinking broader. It was a good run, but I eventually grew tired of the same old thing, and needed to find a way to offer people something more. I learned that I shouldn’t pursue ideas that are so niche that I could only have one idea out of it, and the same idea applies for you. If you want to have a bigger impact, only pursue ideas that are broad enough to write about, speak about, and build a product with. This requires some prior planning on your part, but it will be worth it in the long run. When you think about it now, you won’t get years into the future and wish you would have done it differently. But, the good news is that if you have already chased an idea that you have found to be lackluster, it’s never too late to start over. Sometimes, it takes more clarity to quit than it does to keep going. Wherever you are in the process, you can use this three question system to pave a better future for you and your ideas. Now, go and pursue the correct ideas,