Just wanted to pass on a gem of advice that I’ve recently realized to be 100% true …

Confidence is Everything

In the past three months, I’ve used confidence to …

• Cold call my way through 2 continents worth of assistants directly into the office of a C-Suite executive at a Fortune 500 company
• Went from zero to 3+ clients for my company
• Asked out a woman who was much taller & better looking than I am — and got a YES

Advice I can share on gaining confidence …

• Get out of your comfort zone as much as possible: This will make you more confident when you’re in comfortable situations & able to smoothly handle awkward ones
• Write a list of things you’re good at: Figure out the weaknesses in your strengths and improve on those points
• Write a list of things you’re bad at: Use this list to make a secondary list of action items — what steps will you take to turn these weaknesses into strengths?

What social situations could you use to improve your confidence …

• Concerts: Go to a concert — BY YOURSELF — and come out of the event with at least 2 new sets of friends (complete with contact information)
• Coffee shops: People tend to post up in coffee shops to work or read — try interrupting their space and starting a conversation that lasts more than 5 minutes
• Libraries: If you get a good conversation going in a coffee shop, take on silence at it’s best: in a library. Take the coffee shop exercise to the next level and start a 5 minute conversation with someone of the opposite sex in a library.

What has confidence done for you lately?

Earlier this evening, I found out that a friend from many years back had recently lost his father.

For some reason it didn’t seem real to me.

All I could conjure in my head was the memory of a vibrant father figure; an enormous grin glued on his face, cracking jokes, playing obnoxiously loud 80′s hair medal music and just generally being a big bundle of smiles.

Now, more than a decade after I last saw the man he has moved on to the next life. Which made me think …

Am I doing a good job of cherishing all the special people in my life?

You’d do well to ask yourself the same question. Even better, you’d do well to honestly answer that question.

Cherish the people in your life. You never know when they (or yourself) won’t be around anymore.

In essence: I don’t really give a s*** about high-end cosmetics products because they’re not important to me.

So Imagine My Surprise When I Was Approached by a Cosmetics Saleswoman at the Mall Today

I thought she might have been confused: Why would she choose me, of all people, to approach?

Well, 20 minutes and $65 later, I realized how smart she was to approach me with the face cream offer.

Here are the five steps that she used to connect my wallet with her product that all marketers should incorporate into their tool bag.

1. Doing Your Homework

The saleswoman made a big assumption when she walked up to me: She assumed that I was a pretty regular guy and, as such, didn’t spend a ton of time or money on upscale cosmetic products.

She then framed the problem and gave a solution:

• Problem: Men don’t normally take care of themselves by purchasing high-quality cosmetics because they’re ‘lazy’ or ‘uninterested’
• Solution: Her product only takes an additional 30 seconds to use once a week

I’ve noticed something over the past two weeks …

Karma smiles down on those who invest time & energy in their relationships

Take this story, for example:

• Yesterday, I sent a Facebook message to an ex co-worker just to say ‘hi’ and reminisce about an old work joke we used to tell
• He responded with your standard ‘great to hear from you’ note … along with a mention that he had some business to send my companies way

Just for taking 30 seconds of my time to send him a message, I ended up with a hot new business lead

The point of the story is that you should take more time to connect with friends, colleagues and connections that have fallen by the wayside

Think this is just a one-time example? Lightning in a bottle? Well …

• By travelling through Japan solo this past January, I was able to make new friends that literally span the globe. When I re-connected with one of these friends last week, we began planning a trip through southeast Asia for early 2013
• While attending a house warming party for my friend’s sister last weekend, I met someone who was actively searching for online marketing help and asked for my card so we could connect

I’m not connecting with these people with selfish, self-serving results in mind — I’m simply dropping by and saying ‘hello’

Every week, I challenge you to go out of your way and connect with an old friend, ex co-worker or acquaintance and ask them one simple question:

How have you been lately?

So, I encourage everyone to end each day with …

What’s the best thing that happened today?

Sometimes, you have ignore conventional wisdom and press ‘Go’

It rarely makes sense at the time, but sometimes you just need to have the guts to pull the trigger and make a tough decision.

Recognizing points in your life that are ‘Go’ times is a skill one acquires over time. You just have to experience the ‘Go’ button enough times to recognize when you’ve struck gold or found bear scat.

So do yourself a favor and hit lifes ‘Go’ button. 

You’ll thank me later.

Sometimes, running your own business can chew you up and spit you out.

It seems like the entire world is against you (it is), that you’ll never get anything done (you will), and that you are slowly but surely losing your mind (you are — that’s why God invented Evernote).

So, to help you fellow / potential / aspiring entrepreneurs out there, I wanted to share a great piece of advice that a friend told me a few weeks back.

This very wise person told me that “All you can control is …”

1. My positive attitude
2. The way I present my product / service to others
3. The amount of effort I put into presenting my product / service to as many potential customers as possible

Everything else, according to him, is beyond your realm of control when finding new customers for your product or service.

So next time you’re feeling down, ask yourself …

1. What traits or feelings do I experience when I’m in a positive mood?
2. Who can I lean on to help turn my frown into a smile? What support system do I have in place?
3. Without fail, what can I do to make myself smile under any condition? Otherwise known as “If someone was pointing a gun at me, what action could I take that will guarantee a smile?”

If none of the tips above work, then I’d recommend a steady stream of Johnny Walker Black Label, a comfortable couch and the movie Out Cold.

“Fear is for people who don’t get out very much” 

The world is a terrifying & amazing place that will chew you up and spit you to the curb in the blink of an eye.

How would I know such a thing?

I’ve failed more times in the past four weeks than I have in my entire lifetime.

I’ve gone from the highest of the highs to the lowest of the lows, having mood swings comparable to a pregnant woman who’s just been told that Whole Foods is out of pickles and peanut butter (hint: don’t ever tell a pregnant woman that).

Then why do I keep going?

Well, that’s fairly simple …

• Drive: Getting so close to winning the gold (numerous times) over the past four weeks has made me even hungrier to hold it in my hands. I’m hungry — I want it so damn bad that I won’t stop until I get a taste of it.
• Stubborn-ness: Don’t tell me I can’t do something — forget you. I can do whatever I set my mind to. And because I’ve got the drive to prove everyone and their mothers wrong, I won’t give up until I do.
• Winning is Everything: Say what you will about Charlie Sheen, but that dude was really onto something with his whole #winning mantra; it’s all the matters. Read biographies by Lance Armstrong, Michael Jordan or Peyton Manning and they’ll all tell you the same thing.
• Second Best = Last Place: There’s no prize for second best in this world — either you bring home the hardware or you don’t. Who cares if you were second/third/fourth best … You still didn’t close the deal. There’s no one to wipe away the tears — you simply need to get back on the bike and ride. In the immortal words of Ricky Bobby, “If you’re not first, you’re last.”

What keeps you moving forward?

How do you motivate yourself to bring the house down?

Growth is achieved by going toe-to-toe with your uncertainties and fears.

It doesn’t matter if it’s …

• personal
• professional
• romantic

… it’s impossible to grow into a more complete human being if you aren’t prepared to put your best foot forward, face your fears head on and not care if you win or lose.

Life is the ultimate game: Are you playing it safe or are you taking advantage of every single second you have to do something greater than you did the day before?

“Well, do you want me to coach you up a little bit?”

This was how my first ever virtual sales mentorship began earlier this afternoon. I had just called a person I’ve come to know as a friend to ask for some advice, and when he realized the depth of information he would need to convey to me he offered his infinite wisdom up in the form of 2 weekly training sessions.

Just like that. No catch. No money up front. No money at all, in fact. No request for referrals later on down the road. Just that: I’ll help you out by passing along some tricks of the trade from the past 25 years of my experience and hopefully they will help you succeed.

As I enter into one of my first real mentorship programs, I wanted to pass along some ground rules that will hopefully shape your next mentorship program to be as beneficial to you, the apprentice, as possible:

• Set the terms up front: Imagine this is like dating someone new — except you’re 100% honest with them. Agree to number of sessions, frequency of review and types of information you’re going to cover. Set ground rules so that you don’t overwhelm your mentor with questions, ideas and information. He or she has agreed to help you out — NOT to be your personal Google anytime you have a problem.
• Shut up and listen: You need to be doing the bulk of the listening, so shut up and stop speaking RIGHT THIS SECOND. If you possessed the wealth of information your mentor had, you wouldn’t need to lean on him/her as a mentor. So turn your mouth off and soak down all the information they pass on to you; you’ll have all the time in the world to act on the advice in between sessions.
• Allow for wiggle: Since most mentorships are free programs, don’t turn on your Jedi master if he or she needs to bail on a couple sessions. That mentor has gone out of their way to help you become successful, most likely for no monetary gain on their part, which means the apprentice needs to be grateful for any wisdom they can pull from their sessions.
• Thank your Jedi master profusely: Wait until you hit big milestones, and then pour on the praise. For example, when I close my first deal using my new mentor’s advice, I plan on shipping him a couple hundred bucks worth of wine / whiskey / beer (whichever poison he prefers) with a big fat ‘Thank You’ balloon. It was his advice that showed me how to close the deal, so I want to show him that I truly appreciate all the time and effort he/she has invested in my success.

Keep in mind, the apprentice is going to reap the bulk of the reward in this mentor/apprentice relationship. So as the apprentice make sure to act gracious, write EVERYTHING down and go out of your way to make it easy for your mentor to pass his valuable brain data along to you.