Five Ways to Get Started on Anything

mountainMost people fail to do anything major because they see it as a big impossible task that needs to be tackled all at once. If you’re trying to climb a mountain, you can come up with dozens of excuses: you’re not feeling up to it, it’s not the right time to start your journey, you only have an hour and it takes days, etc…. I’m as guilty as anyone — I’ve got more unfinished projects than I care to admit. But these things can be all be tackled (even at once) if you have the desire and the focus. And I’ll show you how.

Social Media Overwhelm – How to Deal with It

Social Media OverwhelmIf you’re not actively using social media to promote your business, you’re at a disadvantage. Services like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Pinterest are now giving small one-person businesses the exposure that used to require a six-figure marketing budget. While this additional access to potential clients is fantastic, the downside is that there’s a lot to learn and it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The good news is that by just taking a few simple steps, you can leverage social media to effectively promote your business.

Reserve Your Spot:

Speaking, Speaking, Speaking

Speaking, Speaking, SpeakingThere is no faster way to scare the living daylights out of someone then telling them that they have to give a speech. For extra points, you can tell them that they’ll be speaking to a large audience — which depending on the person could mean more than 50 or more than 1000 attendees. Why do people associate fear to speaking? What’s the big difference between a speech and a conversation?

Crying During a Speech

Crying During a SpeechGiving a speech can be a time of high emotions. Yes, public speaking is the number one social fear so a lot of folks probably want to cry when they give a speech. And even the most experienced speakers feel a bit nervous and give speeches that don’t go as well as they had planned. So I guess everyone has the potential to want to cry during a speech. But on a more serious note, there are other times when giving a talk might get the most of our emotions. The question: is it appropriate, or professional, to cry when giving a speech?

The Power of Systems

The Power of SystemsWhen most people see the term “system” they associate it to something complicated or in the personal development world, something you need to buy. In reality, systems are simply a set of steps to follow and creating systems is a powerful way to become more efficient by minimizing the duplication of effort.

I have systems for a lot of the things I do professionally – and I’m always tweaking them and adding more. Sometimes my bigger systems have smaller ones within them. For example, I have a system for creating a new course and within that, there are systems for creating the audio program for the course as well as the course workbook.

How to Deal with Your Worries

How to Deal with Your WorriesI remember watching a video as a child about a kid who lived a miserable life because all he did was worry about things. We’ve all come across people like that and some of us are even guilty of it from time to time. As outside observers, we might see that things are often not as bad as people make them out to be. In general, unless someone is dying, there’s usually a way to recover from any tough situation and sometimes we can even come out stronger than ever.

Sharpening the Axe

Sharpening the AxeWhen you’re really pumped about a project, it can be hard to pull yourself away from it — even for a good or productive reason. Let’s face it, progress is progress and sometimes we don’t want even sleep to get in the way of progress, especially when we’re dedicated to reaching our goals. But when we do this, mainly to keep our momentum going, we end up sacrificing efficiency. Whether it’s resting or setting aside time to fix an issue that keeps coming back at us, we eventually hit the point where a pit stop is necessary.