mentor – Breakthrough To Success Blog

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.

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.

Personal Success Strategy: Take a Millionaire to Lunch

Take a millionaire to lunch and you may find a new mentor. Spending the money to be mentored by an expert is a key strategy to personal success and business success. In this past year, several new ideas I’ve had originated from the time and money I spent to be with successful mentors.

Mentors are invaluable. There is no such thing as a self-made millionaire. Everyone has had help with some phase of professional development. You can go a long way toward life mastery and business success with books, audios and home study courses. But eventually you will want to have mentors with whom you communicate and interact on a regular basis. There are great professional development mentors to be found right in your own hometown.

Make a list of those people who intrigue you with their achievements in business success. Then, ask the first one for coffee or a lunch meeting. Repeat this process with each one as you refine your professional development questions to get the most out of the time you spend together.

And, don’t forget to ask how you can be of service to each of these people.

When I was beginning this process, I was surprised that busy, successful people were willing to take the time to share their secrets of personal success with me. All you have to do is ask! You may be surprised to find they will even pass on to you professional development strategies that they have learned from their mentors.

An attitude of openness to possibility is essential. Keep your eyes and ears open, and have enough faith in yourself to make quick decisions and go for it. Don’t ever be afraid to pay someone for his or her knowledge.

The rewards you reap in saving years of trial and error, not to mention the strong possibility that you may never learn on your own the personal development strategies that they are willing to teach you, is more than worth the investment.

Just a few weeks ago, I was at an event where I had the opportunity to network with some of the most brilliant marketers. Some were already friends and some I was meeting for the first time. We brainstormed about business and personal success over meals and in the hallways during breaks in the meetings and in the bar at night.

You’ll find that successful people love helping other people succeed. We all share an attitude of “let me tell you what’s working for me now” that allows everyone to take advantage of each other’s discoveries and business success strategies.

Yes, we’re all in the same business as marketers, speakers and authors; but we are building strategic alliances rather than looking at each other as competitors.

It’s a good idea to associate with the people who are already in the place of where you want to go. Only listen to people who have big goals for themselves and are willing to do what it takes to be successful. Don’t make the mistake of asking someone for advice who hasn’t done what you are planning to do.

3 Ways to Position Yourself When There’s Already a Big Guru In Your Topic

I agreed with the comment posted on my last post by Steve Pohlit so I thought I’d hop over to his blog and comment.

Once I was there I decided I had more to say on this and wanted to share it with you.
My post on Steve’s blog:

You commented, “I know I have side stepped topics in the past because of ‘this has already been addressed’ only to see someone else recycle the topic in a new package.”

I wanted to share with you that this is incredibly common. So many times a person feels that there is already a guru at the top of that topic and they are not at that person’s level. And what happens is they abandon that topic altogether, when there are several ways to position yourself as an expert in that situation.

In fact, you’ve just inspired me to write a blog post about that right now so I can tell my readers as well how to do that.

Thanks Steve!

Ok, so there are 3 ways you can enter a market that in your mind already has a huge guru that you don’t want to compete with or don’t believe you can-see, there are those beliefs again.

1. What does this guru say that you disagree with?

2. Where is there a gap in this guru’s system or where do you see a step missing?

3. What new information do you have to add to this topic that would make a difference to your audience?

Let me give you an example. I had a client who came to into my process thinking that her topic was gardening. In her mind she had a passion for it and thought she could write an ebook. That in itself is a small, very easily attainable goal.

But once we started going through the process, what showed up was that she was extremely passionate about helping blue collar people, like herself, build huge financial reserves and move toward financial independence on a very low salary. She had a gift she didn’t recognize.

Why? Because to her it was just something she did! She’d not only done this for herself, she’d done it for relatives, co-workers and countless people at church and never thought it was anything to get paid for or a possible business.

It’s the same story over and over with so many clients. It takes a mentor who knows the right questions to ask to pull out what’s already inside you and show you the magnificence of the knowledge and talent that you’ve either ignored or discounted. The world needs what you have to share, they’re waiting for you. And yes, I’m talking to YOU!

That big guru isn’t the be all and end all for every person. You have your own perspective on the topic that will draw a different segment of the market to you. You may have a style of speaking or a simplicity to the way you present the material that makes you you more understandable than any other guru who’s ever taught on this topic.

My client said, “You mean everybody doesn’t know this?”, as she glanced around the table at the other mentees with their mouths hanging open. She couldn’t believe this was something she could get paid for and the rest of the table couldn’t understand how she didn’t know what a gift she had. And yet they were soon to discover, neither did they.

That’s what I do. I see these gifts in people. It’s very easy for me to have a conversation with you, have you do some exercises and I can see what’s inside of you that you can’t access by yourself. I also can see the whole product line unfolding in my head as we talk. I don’t question it, I just pay attention and tell you what I see and then help you create it. And yes there was a time that I just did it for free-I did a lot of this for free…because I didn’t think it was any big deal, it came so easily to me.

I have never found anyone that didn’t have a topic they were passionate about that was also profitable that could be turned into product.

So don’t discount yourself because you’re not the big cheese. When the gurus started out neither were they. And yet they believed in themselves enough to take a chance, take a stand, step into their power and go for it.

Look at what’s holding you back from throwing your hat in the ring. It’s not because someone bigger is already there. That’s an excuse.

If you need help, I’m here.

P.S. If you’re reading this anywhere besides my actual blog, please go to http://YourBreakthroughToSuccess.com/blog to post your comments so everyone can benefit from your thoughts.

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 http://www.yourbreakthroughtosuccess.com

Daily Spiritual Practice: The Foundation for Your Breakthrough to Personal and Professional Development

Down through the ages, great thinkers, inventors, artists, statesman and philosophers have credited their spiritual connections for their successes.

If this seems like a strange place to begin, you may be wondering what this has to do with our topic of success and life mastery.

Daily spiritual practice is the foundation everything else builds upon to create an abundant life.

In studying the professional development of many of the wealthiest and most empowered millionaires, I found the majority of them start their day with an hour of spiritually oriented reading and meditation. Yes, I said an hour.

It seems like a lot of time for a busy successful person, but the consensus of the truly successful is that taking this time is what sets the tone for the day and gives them the energy they need for an incredibly busy life.

By the way, they also tend to go to bed later and get up earlier than the rest of the population.

How different would your life be a year from now if you added 365 more hours of positively invested time to your year?

If you normally work a 40-hour week, you’ve just added the equivalent of nine weeks to your year, devoted totally to your personal and professional development. And you thought you didn’t have time for personal growth or professional development in your life!

Let me explain what I, as a personal development mentor, term an empowered millionaire. They are different from other millionaires whose main focus may be on accumulating money. Empowered millionaires are what I consider to be truly successful people.

Empowered millionaires have a life purpose that serves others. This purpose is bigger than they are. Oprah is a great example of an empowered millionaire, as is Bill Gates.

Both of these incredibly wealthy people could be living a life of luxury, hording all their money and never working another day in their lives. Yet they are working overtime as philanthropists, helping to make the world a better place.

They go above and beyond simply writing a fat check to a cause, although I appreciate all the people who do that as well. My point is, that despite their busy schedules, they research and travel and work personally to improve the lives of as many people as possible.

That, to me, makes both Bill Gates and Oprah great examples of empowered, spiritually motivated super successful people.

Through their service to the world, spiritually based successful people have become wealthy beyond their wildest dreams. These multi-millionaires and billionaires work harder than most people I know, when they really don’t need to work at all.

Think about all the other examples of people you know who demonstrate their spirituality by freely sharing their knowledge, their money, or both with the world to make it a better place for everyone. These are the people who are truly making a difference in the world.

We all owe them a debt of gratitude for their willingness to come forward and lead. They make things happen not just for profit, but because it’s the right thing to do. The energy to take on the work they do comes from the foundation of their daily spiritual practice.

Would you like to be incredibly wealthy, full of energy and purpose, living a life that makes you outrageously happy?

Would it be worth getting up a little earlier or missing the first half hour of the news in the morning?

If you don’t already have everything you want, I challenge you as your personal development mentor, to ask yourself …“How much effort is the life of my dreams worth to me?”

You may not see the full connections yet, but daily spiritual practice is the foundation for your breakthrough personal and professional development.

You can start with something as simple as being grateful for the opportunity of another day. Years ago in Las Vegas I met hypnotist Marshall Sylver, who suggests jumping out of bed every morning and saying what a beautiful day it is, filled with love, opportunity and abundance.

Any type of daily spiritual practice will keep you uplifted while you achieve personal and professional development and life mastery. It will also keep you grounded in the truth of who you are. As you implement daily spiritual practice, you will learn that it is the foundation to your personal growth, your professional development and your abundant life!