Business strategies – Page 10 – Breakthrough To Success Blog

Professional Development Tools: How to Effectively Use Inspirational Books, Audios and Videos

What books are you currently reading? What audios are in your car? One of the quickest ways to master anything is to read books, listen to audios and watch videos on the subject. These are your tools for professional development and business success.

If you’re spending free time reading novels or listening to music, you’re missing a major key to personal and business success. People who achieve high levels of abundance generally read two or three inspirational books every week. They aren’t parked in front of the TV all night.

With today’s technology you have many choices of how to best receive personal growth information. There is no longer an excuse for not having time to be educated.

Look at this partial list of delivery methods for getting professional development information to you:

• Read online or listen to PDFs online–software can read text to you!
• Listen to audio or watch streaming video online
• Download audio or video to your iPod
• Download print, audio or video to your cell phone or PDA
• Print out a PDF to take with you in a folder
• Read a print book
• Listen to CDs or watch DVDs – in your car, on a plane, on your TV or computer

You’re probably thinking, “I barely have time to complete all my tasks now. How could I add anything else?” But, we all have the same 24 hours each day.

Since you can’t add hours, it’s up to you to decide how to spend the ones you have. The advent of the iPod makes it easier to access professional development tools. Now you can listen discreetly while standing in line or waiting for an appointment. iPods aren’t just for kids. They’re important tools for business success and personal growth.

To create the life of your dreams, you must make new choices about how to spend your time. If it were possible to achieve your personal development goals by doing what you’re doing now, you would already have everything you want.

I’m sure you’ve heard the adage that you can’t solve a problem with the same mind that created it. It’s the same with any personal growth change you want to make in your life. You can’t create a new life with the old habits that produced the life you have now.

Just as when you were a child and books magically took you to places you’d never been, inspirational books will guide you to become the person you want to be and will help build the business success of which you dream.

Every multi-millionaire I’ve met had many personal growth obstacles to overcome in their lives. Not one of them was born into a life of ease. They dealt with circumstances ranging from total poverty, abandonment as a child, abuse, depression, life-threatening illness, divorce, business loss and bankruptcy.

This reality shatters all the excuses you’ve been using throughout your life for why you can’t succeed. For many, inspirational educational tools were the beginning of their road to personal and business success. These professional development tools will start you on the road to your dreams, too.

Let me give you some examples of abundant people who are big readers. Robert Allen, real-estate guru and author of best-selling books including my favorite, Multiple Streams of Income, reads several books at once by leaving them in various rooms throughout his home so a book is always available.

Cynthia Brian, co-author of the best-selling Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul and author of Be the Star You Are, finds it easy to read several books a week because she carries a book everywhere and spends at least two hours nightly reading instead of watching TV.

David Anderson of Famous Dave’s really raises the bar. He’s a self-proclaimed night owl, sleeping an average of five hours. He not only reads two or three books a week, but 20-30 magazines a month! He reads continually for personal development and to stay current on business trends.

You say you want more from life, but will you move outside your comfort zone to make it happen? Maybe reading a book every week seems unfeasible. Commit to reading one book this month, or in the next two weeks. When you find it’s not so difficult, up your quota.

The key to effective use of inspirational books, audios and videos is that you implement what you learn. Put your new knowledge into practice; don’t just read, listen or watch for the sake of spending time doing it.

Lynn Pierce, the Success Architect, has taught people how to combine business and personal development to reach the pinnacle of success and live the life of their dreams for over 25 years. In addition, she is also the founder of one of the most exciting annual events for women entrepreneurs, “Women’s Business Empowerment Summit”. Now she shares her keys to success and life mastery with you. You can get the first five lessons of “Change One Thing, Change Your Life: A Personal Transformation System” at www.yourbreakthroughtosuccess.com.

What’s New

Quote to Contemplate

“Not only strike when the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking.”
Oliver Cromwell

Are you ready to make something happens in your life?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What’s New
If you are in the U.S. I hope you had a great long holiday weekend for the 4th of July.

I had a friend in town last week and when we went to lunch near a Barnes & Noble I had to go in and stock up on books for the long weekend. I got 5 and one of them that I would highly recommend is “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coehlo. I’d love to hear what you think of this book if you’ve already read it.

I really took an extended, more like a 6 day weekend and took it easy. Then I found out one of the reasons why I felt so compelled to relax was that I was over-doing a mineral complex I just started taking and it was working like a natural Valium (don’t ask me for the name, I’m not prescribing). I had to ask the person that put me on the minerals why I was still so tired when I had gotten all this rest.

So the moral of the story is to always be aware of how your body is reacting to anything new you’re taking in the form of supplements or food. I didn’t take any today, just to make sure it was out of my system before I start the reduced amount. But I’m still a little groggy.

Never the less, I’m doing a ton of interviews again this week about Women’s Business Empowerment Summit and how to turn your passion into cash.

I’ve added 2 new faculty members that will be posted on the site shortly, Scott Dennison on Unlock The Secrets to Converting More Of Your Site Visitors into Sales With Online Video
and Michelle Price on Social Networking Savvy for Women Entrepreneurs.

The WBES training calls are incredible this year. I think this is the best year ever with many new, cutting edge topics and faculty members you haven’t had access to before. We’ve got another great call tonight on how to get an infusion of cash for your business with Rex Wisehart.

And if you missed Mike’s call on Tuesday about generating traffic with video, he blew us away with what he taught!

When you go to register for the calls, on the next page you can grab your seat for the summit in August. Our $99 hotel rate room block ends tomorrow. There are hot deals on airfares all over the place, so book yours today.

Remember to join the conversation on my blog where you’ll also find each week’s ezine posted for your comments.

Take 2 minutes to create an account on Twitter, at least to get your name before someone else takes it.

Just go to http://www.Twitter.com

Then visit my page at:
Tweets by lynnpierce

And click “Follow” that is displayed under my photo.

(That’s all there is to it.)

Business Coaching Tip: Be a Well-Informed and Intelligent Risk Taker

To be a well-informed and intelligent risk taker, you must learn from your mistakes. It may not be the most fun way to learn, but people who achieve personal success turn lemons into lemonade by finding the positive lesson in everything that happens.

Always put yourself in a position of learning. The more you continue your personal success education, the fewer mistakes you’ll make and the quicker you’ll know how to correct them.

Read at least one book a month on a subject about which you want to learn more. Read one magazine or newsletter a month to stay on the cutting edge of your profession.

Just imagine how different your life will be a year from now when you have read and implemented this additional information for your professional development. What would that level of information do for your ability to be an intelligent risk taker?

Action Step for your Professional Development: Start reading the classics from this ‘Business Coaching, Personal Success Reading List’:

Magic of Believing by Claude Bristol
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
Acres of Diamonds by Russell Conwell
As a Man Thinketh by James Allen
The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clason

Find these personal success classics on www.half.com or www.amazon.com; they should be part of your permanent library. These professional development books work on your mindset, so it’s fitting that you start reading them now.

Implementing is the key. Reading professional development books may be intellectually stimulating, but you’re wasting your time if no practical application follows.

A good business coaching tip for getting more out of your reading is to take notes as if you had to teach the professional development material when you finish. You’ll learn on a much deeper level every time you do.

Part of being an intelligent risk taker is learning to be flexible, resourceful and resilient. To achieve a breakthrough to success you’ll need to learn to respond creatively and imaginatively by seeing the big picture. Intelligent risk takers bounce back from resistance. Think outside the box by being flexible enough to look at other perspectives and options.

Personal success comes from continuing to the finish in the face of resistance. Flexibility gives you the power to return to your center. Get expert advice and then follow your own intuition. Let me tell you what happened to me when I didn’t follow this advice.

Twenty years ago a respected person in my community was involved in gold mining investments. He said he had received a lot of money from gold mining investments the previous year. I had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right, but I dismissed my intuition because he ‘knew more about this kind of thing than I did’.

It was my first investment and it was substantial. I trusted this person and felt even better about it when I found out a couple of my coworkers were investing, as well.

Based solely on this guy’s recommendation, and doing no research on my own, I invested. Long story short, about a year later, I received a letter from a government agency telling me the whole thing was a scam. I was so embarrassed and felt so stupid, I never told anyone (except for you).

These days I have a different investment strategy. Instead, I recommend that you spend your money on being mentored by an expert. Every new thing I’ve learned in the last few years has been through the time and money invested in an expert mentor. In the end I have saved immeasurable time and tons of money! Now I have profits instead of losses because of advice from mentors.

Mentors are invaluable. There’s no such thing as a self-made millionaire. Everyone has help. You can go a long way toward life mastery and personal success with books and tapes. Eventually you want to have mentors with whom you communicate and interact on a regular basis. There are great mentors to be found right in your own hometown.

The Eye of the Tiger

Remember the theme song from the Rocky movie, “The Eye of the Tiger”?

When Rocky fought his opponent he had the focus of ‘the eye of the tiger’. When that song was written they couldn’t have had any idea the significance it would take on when a new Tiger took the world stage and changed sports forever.

I don’t care if you are a golf fan or a sports fan or if you think there is too much hype over this one particular athlete-yes golfers are athletes.

Tiger Woods is a force to be reckoned with. I could write a book about not only his accomplishments in the sports world, but also his accomplishments as a human being, but many books have already been written. In fact I wrote about Tiger in my book, “Breakthrough to Success”.

Look at what Tiger does in terms of how you live your life. Could you stand up to the level of excellence that Tiger requires of himself? If you raised your expectations do you think you would be performing head and shoulders above your competition?

I’ve always been a huge fan of his because not only is he a consummate professional, he has such intense focus that you can see it on his face when you watch him on TV. I have also had the pleasure of standing just a few feet from him on more than one occasion and watching that focus in person.

Over and over again I heard the announcers at the tournament talking about how nobody would believe this if it was a movie. It would just be too much of a fantasy and the whoever wrote a screenplay that played out like this would be laughed out of a movie mogul’s office. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a movie or a sporting event with this many interesting characters and twists and turns.

Tiger is larger than life and his life is richer, more nuanced and more interesting than any movie script. And this weekend he was Rocky, but he wasn’t fighting an opponent, he was doing what his dad had taught him. He was playing full out because that’s the only way to do it.

There were so many amazing shots from this one tournament, you can probably find them all on Youtube. But it’s not about the shots. It’s about the measure of the man. During the tournament some of his fellow golfers, who should feel really ashamed of themselves right now, wondered out loud through their pettiness and jealousy how hurt Tiger really was.

Tiger on the other hand downplayed his injury to not take the focus off the U.S. Open while he played through incredible pain that would have made almost any other player call it quits, especially when he was so far back that it didn’t look like he had any chance at all of winning.

And yet, Tiger not only didn’t quit, he forced a playoff and played another 19 holes on Monday. And then he made the impossible inevitable by winning…again!

Watching him play in the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines for 4 days instead of the usual 3 was a treat and at the same time painful. My heart ached every time I saw him wince when he hit the ball or when his caddy pulled him up by the arm when he couldn’t get up by himself or when the pain of taking another stroke had him almost doubled over in pain.

And I wondered how he could keep going, where did he find the inner strength to focus enough to pull it out day after day?

Ironically during the tournament there was a commercial running with audio of his dad talking about how Tiger would never meet anyone else as mentally tough as him in his entire life.

Here’s the link to the Youtube video to watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/v/UTuk5Uloyjg&hl=en

He certainly proved his dad right that weekend. I’m sorry I won’t be seeing him play the rest of the summer, but I know he’ll be back next year better than ever because striving for excellence is just his natural way of being.

The question is, is it yours?

If you would like personal mentoring, send me an email detailing what you would like help with. As your mentor I hold a bigger vision for you than you hold for yourself. When you have faith and a team that believes in you, it gives you courage. When you don’t have to do it all yourself, all things are possible for you. Commit today to go for your dream 100%.

I would love to have you share your opinions and personal insights on my blog where I’ll also post this article.

http://www.YourBreakthroughToSuccess.com/blog

How To Master Happiness Like Tim Russert

This article is not an obituary, it’s not a rehash of the news or just a tribute to a truly wonderful example of a fully engaged man.

As you read this I want you to think about how you live your life. Not from the standpoint of dying suddenly, but from the point of wholeness and the level of joy and passion you live every day with. When you have every reason to believe you have all the time in the world and you still live your life to it’s fullest, that is a truly remarkable life.

I was as shocked as anyone to hear of Tim Russert’s passing and also surprised by how hard it hit me and then how hard it hit other women I know. People really felt a connection with him. I don’t even remember how many years I’ve been watching Meet the Press, but I do know it’s been a very long time. Even when I’m traveling I try to see it before I go down to the meeting room or go out for the day when I’m on vacation.

One of the first things I thought of was how much he loved the Buffalo Bills, probably because every time he said “Go Bills” at the end of his broadcast during football season, I would silently say the same thing about my team, the Packers. I shared his passion for football so it made me feel more connected to him.

He was serious about his commitment to make a difference in his profession and he had that same commitment to everything in his life he cared about. I haven’t often seen an example of someone who has such a high level of passion and commitment to every area of their life.

Tim’s father and his son were well known people to regular viewers of his show, so much so that with all the coverage I’ve seen, every time his son is mentioned he is called ‘Tim’s beloved son Luke’.

He wrote 2 books that are best sellers, the first about his relationship with his dad, “Big Russ and Me”, which was followed by “Wisdom of Our Fathers” based on the 1000’s of letters he received from people who wanted to pay tribute to their fathers. (There’s a hint for you information marketers)

Enthusiasm is a great word to connect with Tim. He had a zest for life. He was passionate about his faith, his work, his family, his hometown of Buffalo, his sports teams and Bruce Springsteen.

He lived and loved fully and openly and all those he loved clearly knew it. I’ve never seen so many stoic journalists emotional on camera, because they cared so deeply about this man. He was a cheerleader to everyone who worked for and with him over the years and their families, not just his own family.

He was fiercely loyal to his friends, a quality I admire very much. He was close personal friends with Republicans, Democrats and his closest competitors.

He lived his life to the fullest, passionately and with purpose, never losing touch with his blue collar upbringing; and more than just remembering where he came from, he embraced and supported Buffalo-and Buffalo loved him back.

For a man with so many professional accomplishments, who he was as a man has over-shadowed the talk of who he was as a journalist. I think that’s something we could all aspire to.

He told his son he loved him every day. He loved hanging out with his son & his friends. He never missed an event in his son’s life.

His family seems to be more at peace than I’ve seen with other tragic deaths. While giving his eulogy, his son smiled proudly while talking about his father. I wonder if that comes from a sense of not having things unsaid or undone, knowing that you lived your life and shared your feelings every day?

If there was ever a case of someone who was able to say, “If I died today, I’d die a happy man”, it would be Tim Russert.

In Tim’s words, “Let us all go get ’em.”

Go Bills!

I would love to have you share your opinions and personal insights on my blog where I’ll also post this article.

http://www.YourBreakthroughToSuccess.com/blog

John Assaraf has “The Answer”

I’ve know John Assaraf for several years, we’ve spoken on the same stage, he’s interviewed me for his One Coach program and I’ve been to his home, yes the one the talks about in “The Secret”.

John is the real deal and now with his partner in One Coach, he has released a new book I highly recommend you put on your summer reading list.

“The Answer” is the new book that does for business growth what “The Secret” does for personal growth.

Authors John Assaraf and Murray Smith have applied the simple principles they share in “The Answer” to build 17 successful businesses, some of them from zero to billions in sales and value. If you’ve been looking for “The Answer” to growing your business, achieving financial freedom and living an extraordinary life, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Go to http://www.readtheanswer.com/

You can watch a clip of John & Murray on “The Big Idea”, download 2 chapters of the book, and see for yourself what “The Answer” is.

Also, this is a beautiful site they have put together. If you’re an information marketer you need to check it out from that aspect as well.

New Order Business School

If you had to pick the top 10 easiest things to do in your life, building a successful business might NOT make the cut.

The rarely heard TRUTH is that it’s actually a challenge to build a business. (And it’s worth every minute.)

And it could be THE thing that jump starts your success…

But you won’t see it on the newsstand or at your local bookstore.

You’ve got to visit the page below
http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?Clk=2433124

Big Ticket Inforamtion Product Sales Training Call with Kevin Nations

Every Tuesday and Thursday through the 29th of July I will host a 1 hour training call.

Today, Thursday the 12th of June 2008 I will be interviewing Kevin Nation on Big Ticket Sales.

You’ll learn:

How you can double or even triple the prices of your professional services and then to have your clients thank you for it.

How to get maximum value and a waiting list of clients for your professional services.

And so much more…

Kevin is the Ultimate Profit Mentor who likes to have fun and make a ton of leveraged money in the process.

His strategies are designed to create the leverage and the focus to take his clients through the six figure monthly income barrier. He consistently sells out his workshops where he shares the end to end strategies he uses to grow his own businesses.

Kevin sits on the USA Today Small Business Advisory Panel. His businesses and strategies have been featured in “American Business Journal”, “Bull Market” by Seth Godin, “Masters of Sales” by Ivan Meisner, and Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days” by Al Lautenslager and J Conrad Levinson.

“5 Keys to Developing the Courage to Go for Your Dreams”

How do you develop the courage to go for your dreams?

That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Because if you don’t learn how, it will not only cost you the millions you could have earned, it will cost you the realization of your passion and your purpose.

It’s a lot of fun planning the vision for your life and the action steps you’re going to take to live your passion. It’s another thing to keep moving forward as it all starts to become real. That’s where the fear sets in and you start to wonder what ever made you think you could do this.

Here are 5 keys to developing the courage to go for your dreams:

1. Move Past the Fear

I’m sorry to tell you I haven’t found a magic pill for this. It has to come from inside of you. Nobody can do it for you. And it all starts with your vision.

There is so much more to creating a vision for your life than just discovering your passion. There’s so much more than just writing down some goals. I would venture to say that you’ve done that before and it wasn’t enough to get you where you want to go.

Fear not! There’s a system for creating a vision for your life, just as there is a system for anything else you want to be successful at. The question is whether you will take the time to learn it.

Discovering your purpose was only the first step. To walk through your fear, you have to be clear on where you are going.

2. Create a Strong Vision

You need a vision that is so strong you can’t possibly walk away from it.

Once you have a strong, compelling vision that’s based on your passion and purpose in life, how could you let anything stop you?

When you know what you want and you’ve visualized it over and over and over until it becomes part of who you are, how could you stop?

When you see yourself in the life you will have upon the realization of you vision, how could you stop?

The answer is, you can’t! You can’t stop; it’s impossible! You can drag out the process, but as hard as you try, you can’t stop!

3. Stop Projecting Future Catastrophes

Are you aware that 95% of the things you spend your time worrying about never happen? So, isn’t worrying about the outcome of things you haven’t done yet ridiculous?

Once you realize you’ve invested so much of yourself into your vision that there’s nothing that’s going to stop you from creating everything you’ve envisioned, what’s the point in letting your fears delay the inevitable?

And it is inevitable. With the vision you’ve created, you’ve tapped into the Universal Laws and everything you need is being drawn to you as we speak.

You’ve used the law of attraction by being clear on what you want and asking for it. You’ve used the law of creating a vacuum by clearing out a lot of the things that no longer fit in your life to make space available for something better to show up. Think about it.

You can run and you can hide, but eventually everything you visualize will come to you if you take all the necessary steps. So why fight it? This is what you want more than anything, isn’t it?

Are you crazy?

Why would you spend your time discovering your passion and creating a vision for it if you had no intention of following through?

Are you the kind of person who does things like this for an intellectual exercise?

Well guess what, the joke’s on you. You’ve created a process you can’t stop. It will move forward whether you have chickened out or not. So what’s the point in trying to avoid your future success?

4. Get Out of the Way

When did you want something so bad you could taste it and then decide you were too scared to go for it?

The only courage you need to go for your dreams is the courage to get out of your own way. Just take a deep breath and move aside.

If you look back over your life, I’m sure you can find many examples when you did just this.

So the next time you feel like your courage to go for your dream has abandoned you, just tell yourself there is no reason to fight it. Falling into your fears can postpone your success for a while, but you can’t stop it, so why even try.

Get back on that horse and keep riding to the finish line.

5. You’ve Always Had It, Dorothy

The good news is you don’t have to worry about how you’ll develop the courage to go for your dreams. You already have it.

When you feel like it’s too big for you to go on, look at how far you’ve come already.

The bottom line regarding courage comes from the Wizard of Oz.

Towards the end of the movie, Dorothy thinks she’ll never go home. Just then Glinda the good witch shows up. She tells her she’s always had the power to go back to Kansas but she didn’t tell her before because she wouldn’t have believed her. She had to learn it for herself.

But to find out how to unleash the power she had inside, she needed to ask for help. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need.

So my little Dorothy, you’ve always had the power inside you. All you have to do is have someone show you where it is. You’re so much stronger than you give yourself credit for.

Get a mentor if you aren’t achieving what you want as fast as you want it. You may need an outside perspective and a little refocusing. Because when your actions and your purpose are in alignment everything falls into place. Things just flow. I can help you get there.

I’d be happy to mentor you to successfully:

* Make your dreams a reality

* Develop specific, targeted goals

* Take action on your goals

* Create a plan that gives you the courage

* Create a simple step-by-step personalized blueprint to follow

Lynn Pierce, the Success Architect, has taught people how to combine business and personal development to reach the pinnacle of success and live the life of their dreams for over 25 years. In addition, she is also the founder of one of the most exciting annual events for women entrepreneurs, “Women’s Business Empowerment Summit”. Now she shares her keys to success and life mastery with you. If you aren’t reading this on my blog, you can get the first five lessons of “Change One Thing, Change Your Life: A Personal Transformation System” at http://www.yourbreakthroughtosuccess.com

I would love to have you share your opinions and personal insights on my blog where I’ll also post this article.

http://www.YourBreakthroughToSuccess.com/blog

Dr. Fern Kazlow Rapid Wealth Sytem Training Call

Every Tuesday through the 29th of July I will host a 1 hour raining call.

Tuesday the 3rd of June 2008 I will be interviewing Dr. Fern Kazlow on her Rapid Wealth System

You’ll learn how to:

Reach the next level in business and life (most people who work
with Dr. K double to quadruple income in 6-12 months)
Open the door to success no matter where you are now
Get big-take up your space & fill your bank account
Move through every fear that holds you back, break free of financialand any other limitation

and…
the one factor that determines your success or failure in every endeavor

Dr. Fern Kazlow is known as the “Get Big” Doctor. A psychotherapist, educator, healer, author, and entrepreneur, she founded one of the first holistic practices in New York City in 1981. She built it to a quarter-million-dollar center in less than a year at a time when mind-body health was seen on a par with voodoo.

Having come through life-threatening illness and challenging situations, Dr. Kazlow learned a lot about taking control of your life and refusing to get stuck in pain and limitations. She has inspired tens of thousands of people with her courageous message of hope, determination and victory over any circumstance.

Dr. Kazlow has more than 25 years practice with Wall Street power players, hard-charging entrepreneurs, senior executives in New York publishing and banking industries, and other high achievers both nationally and internationally. She helps them dramatically increase their income and overall sense of well-being while staying true to their authentic power. She has appeared extensively in the media including TV, radio, magazines and newspapers. Dozens of Dr. Kazlow’s articles have appeared in print and online magazines.

Dr. Kazlow wants you to get big, take up your space and succeed in business and live a life that works.