1.
Confidants
You have very few of them – these are people who welcome you unconditionally. They are into you whether you are up or down, right or wrong, they are in it for the long haul. You can share anything with them. Having a good confidant is one of the keys that unlock the Kingdom.
These are people who you can share your deepest and darkest inner thoughts with, who won’t judge you but will feed you instead of draining you.
Have you ever had relationships where the person was emotionally immature and consistently draining you? It’s okay to help others but you must have someone who feeds you so you can feed someone else. They will confront you; they’ll get in your business and get in your face and tell you when you are wrong BUT will also come back and be by your side no matter what. They will never leave.
2.
Constituents
They are not into you. They are into what you are for. They are for what you are for. They are your constituents. As long as you are for what they are for, they will walk with you, work with you and labor with you – but never think they are for you. They are for what you are for. You have to know that because if they meet someone else that will further their agenda, they will leave you and hook up with them because they were never for you. They were just for what you were for. They are your constituents.
Throughout your life, particularly if you are broken, you will mistake your constituents for your confidants. You’ll think they are for you when they are simply for what you are for and by the time you get through falling in love with them they will break your heart as they hook up with someone else who is for what you are for because it was never about you anyway. It was about the causes you represent. They are for what you are for, but they are not for you. They are your constituents.
3.
Comrades
These people are not for you, nor are they for what you are for – they are against what you are against. The comrades will make strange bedfellows. This will cause people to come together who are not for you, not for what you are for, but they are against what you are against. They will team up with you to help fight a greater enemy – but don’t be confused by their association. They will only be with you until the victory is accomplished. These people are like scaffoldings. They come into your life to fulfill a purpose, but when the purpose is completed, the scaffolding is removed. Don’t be upset when the scaffolding is removed because the building always remains.
Expect the constituents and comrades to leave you and desert you after a while. Don’t be upset when they don’t react to your dreams the way you expected them to because they were never really for you in the first place.
Be careful then who you tell your dream to because if you tell your dream to your constituents they will desert you and try to fulfill the dream without you. If you tell it to your comrades, they won’t support you because they were never for what you were for anyway. If you find a few people in your entire life with whom you can share your dreams with, you are a blessed somebody. I can tell you how to identify who are really for you.
If they are really for you, they will weep when you weep and they will rejoice when you rejoice. When you walk in the room and you tell someone good news, stop being happy for a minute and watch their reaction. If they are not happy for you, shut your mouth and walk back out of the door. When they are really connected to you, they will be happy when you share your dream.
I need someone that is going to be really happy for me. I don’t want just anyone praying for me. I don’t want any of those haters praying for me because you know you hate me and you don’t want me to succeed. I want someone praying for me who really wants me to be blessed. who wants me to be an overcomer. So you can put up your oil and stop speaking in tongues because you know you never did speak to me anyway. There’s no reason for you to come up into this hospital like you’re going to pray some cancer off of me. I’d rather have someone who really loves me lay across the bed and rebuke the devil. God is so faithful; He’ll always give you somebody.
This Purpose-based Entrepreneurship Reflection Moment is brought to you by The One Minute Entrepreneur.
A good life is built on strong, solid values such as integrity, love, honesty and purposeful work.
Purpose-based entrepreneurship should encompass the qualities necessary to build a good life, but at times our purposeful work can strain the balance you aim to strike with your family, your faith-community and the quality time you spend by yourself.
Self-Reflect
What are some ways you can ensure that you maintain a well-balanced life? While you reflect, be intentionally sensitive to the needs of your personal needs, your family and your faith-community as well as to your vision for your purpose-based entrepreneurship vision.
Be careful not to try and conform your “balance” to what’s right for someone else. Your balance may be considered an imbalance for another person. A good rule of thumb is to determine if any one part of your life is being neglected as a whole.
Are You Positioned for Purpose for 2014?
- Do you feel like you’re on a roller coaster when it comes to your business?
- Not sure what’s really working when it comes to your marketing efforts?
- Do you sometimes feel like you’re all over the place or don’t know what to focus on right now?
- Are the challenges of entrepreneurship starting to take a toll on you personally?
- Stuck trying to figure out how to even get started with your business idea?
Schedule your ON PURPOSE Strategy Session to start 2014 with clear direction.
Yesterday the “greatest of all time,” Muhammad Ali, celebrated his 71st birthday. He is one of the most loved men in the world. Why is he so loved? Sure it’s because he’s the former undisputed heavy weight champion of the world, but it’s so much more than that.
Sure, talent matters, but LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Terrell Owens, Dan O’Brien and others are undoubtedly super talented athletes, but there’s something about Jesse Owens, Emmitt Smith, Michael Jordan, Deion Sanders, even Lance Armstrong, in his now infamy, that draws us to want to believe everything they tell us.
Whatever “it” is, they believe it. The “it” factor is– they believe “it” themselves. If “it” is that they’re the greatest, they believe it, if it’s that they can fly, they believe it and they believe it so deeply, we believe it too.
and I find myself searching for clips of him on YouTube to catch a glimpse of the “greatest”. Muhammad Ali is the master of what John Jantsch of Duct Tape Marketing calls an astonishing guarantee. He made such astonishing guarantees that were more than catchy rhymes, they were promises, it became his brand.
“I’m not the greatest; I’m the double greatest. Not only do I knock ’em out, I pick the round.” –Muhammad Ali
Sure there are athletes who make astonishing statements, but without the strength of character to back up what they’ve said, it doesn’t matter if they are great because so much about who they are contradict the hero we want them to be, the astonishing guarantee isn’t there.
“Champions aren’t made in gyms, champions are made from something they have deep inside them–a desire, a dream, a vision” –Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali spoke like the champion he was and it encompasses the legend he is now. His personal brand, his message, is demonstrated in the way he carries himself. Just as in marketing, when your message is more than just an intelligently crafted positioning statement, when your message is developed out of the character of your business and the promises on which you continue to over-deliver, your message will literally pull people into you.
I’m drawn to Muhammad Ali because how he strives to live speaks to the essence of how I strive to be in all aspects of my life, including my business. We may have different views in certain areas, but his respect and love for humanity is a compelling and magnetic message that speaks to the core of what I too believe.
“Wouldn’t it be a beautiful world if just 10 percent of the people who believe in the power of love would compete with one another to see who could do the most food for the most people?” from The Soul of a Butterfly
When you choose to put the needs of others before your own everyday, when you strive to help others reach their goals and be better versions of themselves, when you’re at your happiest when you’re able to bring happiness to others and service is a way of life and not just a mission statement, in my eyes you are the greatest.
Many people have heard the theory proposed by Malcolm Gladwell that it takes 10,000 hours of dedication and practice to become an expert at anything. In a 40 hour work week, assuming you work all 52 weeks, to reach that 10,000 mark it would take you 5 years to become an expert in any given field. The hard part about inbound marketing is that aside from some core values, it is constantly adapting at the same rate of technology, by the time you become an expert, you are already 5 years behind the inbound marketing trends.
How do we define an expert? Is an expert more influential or knowledgeable? Granted it is important to have both, but does one outweigh the other? The best thing you can do is build both areas simultaneously. Below are three easy tips on how to become a marketing expert in less than 10,000 hours:
1) Gain followers in your field.
The best way to become an expert is to let others know that you are becoming an expert. On social media sites make sure you are adding/following the most influential people. On Twitter for example, if you start following the big time marketers (Chris Brogan, Jeff Bullas, etc.) you will begin to gain other followers who are following them as well. People want to be connect with other people who share the same interests. Furthermore, if you RSS these powerful top dogs, you can begin to blog/tweet about their material and have your own opinion on their take of tips and tricks of marketing.
2) Make content that is trend-setting.
I was told along time ago that there are only 3 ways to develop something in life. Cheap, Fast, and Good. You can have two out of the three, but never all three. If you want to be the first one to post something about a recent event, i.e. the Graph Search that was announced by Facebook today, most articles on this event are up moments after the press release, but the chances of the article being anything but scratching the surface are slim to none. Try to find a happy medium by doing some more in depth research on your topical content before posting.
3) Share your content. 1+2=3
Combine the previous steps to begin to develop your own credibility. The more you repeat steps one and two the faster your expertise in marketing will grow. The great thing about becoming an expert is the closer you get to becoming one to your peers, the easier it gets to be one. Follow these steps and you will begin to see blogs referencing your content and retweets about your now vital information to the public.
If you still believe in Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour theory, then by all means, try it. The infograph provided by Zintroblog shows two examples of who the theory is based off of. It highlights the art of practicing perfection, but the most important information in the infograph are the 7 Steps to Cheat the Rule.
Marketing lessons for small business from The Duck Song:
1. You’re only in business if someone is buying what you’re selling.
If every day your customers ask you for things you don’t have and in turn refuse to buy what you do have, you should reassess your product offerings, or at the very least, integrate what your customers want into what you’re offering.
The customer wasn’t asking the owner to change what he was offering, he just wanted him to offer something else. The owner of the stand missed an opportunity to nurture the relationship with an obviously loyal and persistent customer.
2. Listen to your customers
Small business owners need to learn that you’re only in business if someone is buying what you sell; we become so married to what we offer, that we don’t listen to what our customers want. The customer wants grapes, give him grapes. An easy way to be sure you’re selling what your customers want, is to ask them. Do a test trial of your product and get customer feedback before staking your entire business on a product that nobody wants.
Don’t insist on hard-selling your product. Instead, validate your customer’s needs. Ultimately, the customer needed lemonade, but until he felt heard he wasn’t in the mindset to listen to what the business owner was saying. Listen to your customers and they’ll tell you when they’re ready to buy what you have to sell, or they’ll tell you that what you’re selling nobody wants. Both are valuable lessons.
3. Always go above and beyond
As small business owners, we can get so stubborn about what we sell that we will actually send customers to a competitor instead of going above and beyond to make someone happy. The owner left his own business unattended to walk a potential customer over to the competition to give him what he wanted. What a perfect “above and beyond” customer service opportunity. Instead of leaving his own store, why not keep a special stash of grapes behind
“Do you have any grapes?”
“Not usually, but since you’ve asked before, I got some especially for you,” would have been a great answer. And when the customer decided on a whim that he didn’t want grapes after all, but in fact he does want some of your lemonade, you’re golden.
4. People buy People, not things.
Even after the threat of bodily harm, the potential customer was still willing to give the business owner a shot at delivering what he wanted. This shows us that if you’re likable enough, you have to try pretty hard to lose customers.
What other small business lessons did you learn from watching this customer interaction? Have you ever had a customer continue to ask you for products or services you don’t offer? How did you handle it? Share your answers in the comment box below.