The greatest businesses were built by someone with an intense drive and focus to do whatever it took to bring their vision to fruition:  Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffet, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, etc. These people were not born with anything you weren’t born with.  They were not born with superior skills or super human mental strength.  In this post I’m going to tell you how you can match the intense drive and focus of these millionaires.  This goes for you, whether you got straight "A"s in school or flunked out.  EVERYONE has an intense drive and focus within them.

The millionaires I listed above had their drive because they were able to align their goals with their life purpose.  They built their business for something they valued deep inside.  They built their business to satisfy a deep craving to do something great in the field they were inspired by.  Each of us has a purpose and a craving to do something great. Our purpose evolves throughout our life, but there is always something we are meant to do.

The problem is, most of us have not consciously identified our purpose.  But regardless, we’re still all hardwired to attempt to fulfill our highest purpose through our daily activities.  Subconsciously you filter all your decisions through your internal hierarchy of what is really important to you.  Unfortunately, the things that are internaly most important to you may have have conflicting internal values due to misconceptions and internal baggage you have picked up throughout your life.  Here’s an example:

You may have a very high value on excelling at your daily work, and also a very high value on exercise and fitness.  If your boss expects you to work long hours, and you associate meeting his expectations with excelling at your daily work, you’ll work long hours.  This may not leave you with enough time to stop at the gym and exercise after work.  Since exercise and fitness is also high on your value list, you are now stuck in a situation where you will become depressed or uninspired at the minimum. Your own mind has stuck you in a lose lose situation. 

The key to avoiding this trap and finding the intense drive and focus within you is to know what internally drives you.  If you can sit down and write a list of the top 5 things that inspire and drive you, you can start to organize your day in a way to fulfill all your highest values. Then you’ll be well on your way to starting your own inspiring, fulfilling, and successful business.  In other words, you have to know what your gift to the world is before you can give it.

If you are instead filling your day with activities that don't inspire you, you'll procrastinate at your job, you'll run out of energy before the day is over, and leave your "to do" lists incomplete.  You'll wake up dreading to go to your job instead of waking up enthused to live another inspiring day.  They key is starting the right business to fit your values.  Steve jobs could never have started a construction business, or built a resale retail store like Walmart.  Steve was successful because he knew himself well enough to excel by focusing on what he loved.

Knowing what inspires you will help you define your purpose, set your goals, and achieve what you were meant to achieve.   I’ll continue with this topic to discuss how to identify what inspires you most in the posts to come.

This last Wednesday I passed up a job offer to make an extra $12,500 per year. I think it was a great a decision, and I'll share why in this post. I hope you can relate to my tough decision and gain some insight to help you with your own tough decisions.



The new position was with a company that would require a lot more of my time and energy, but my pay checks would be fatter.  This offer made me decide which was more important:  Time to continue searching for the right side business or more money and advancement in my current career. Here's some background around my situation:



I wasn't searching for a new job.  This offer just landed in my lap.  It's the same line of work I'm currently in, but with a company that has a more intense culture.

As I've gained experience and became more efficient at my current job, I've been able to focus more on starting my own side businesses. I've used this extra time and energy to create several side businesses (Pro Internet Marketer, Healthy Meals to Eat, Purse Gallery, and Reunion Patios).  

Even though each of these businesses didn't turn out to be a huge successes (and not one of them were built around what I really care about), I learned more about myself from each business.  If it wasn't for my proficancy with my day job, I wouldn't have the time or energy to pour into another project after work.  

In order to make the best decision around my new job offer I needed to understand what internally drives me. Otherwise I risk making my decision based on what I "should" do.  When I say what a "should" do, I'm referring to making my decision based on what drives other people around me, instead of what actually drives and fulfills myself.  

Most people make their decisions based on what they "should" do.  It's easy to do this, because you can find plenty of reasons to back up your decision and make yourself feel like it was the "right" thing to do.  If society and the people around you general agree with your decision, you can tell yourself that you did the "right" thing.

When I asked the people around me what they thought I should do, everyone seemed to lean in the direction of making the move and taking the extra $12,500, but for some reason I had the gut feeling that I shouldn't take the job.  I wanted to rationalize my feeling to try and bring clarity to my decision, so I started to dig to the core of what was driving my gut feeling.  

What it really came down to was a fear that this new job would be soul crushing long hours doing something that didn't inspire me.  I don't know if the fear was founded, but it was there and it was driving my decision.  To bring more clarity to my situation and I decided to ask myself a simple question.  Will taking this new offer help me align my daily activities around what truly drives me, and thus achieve my highest goals?  For me this question went like this:

"Will taking this new offer help me acheive the vocational freedom to do what I love every day?"  

The answer was "No".  I think this job would have been a detour that side tracked me from what I really care about and shoved me deeper into soul crushing work that didn't inspire me.  

You could also make the arguement that this job offer was life's way of giving me an opportunity to grow and learn more about myself.  In which case, I probably should have taken it.  What do you think about my decision? Have you faced a similar tough decision? Please share below.  

Whenever you find you are procrastinating while attempting to start a new business, you'll know you're not inspired by your business idea.  This is a sign you should probably move on to a new business idea.  You'll struggle forever trying to start your new business that doesn't inspire you.  The resistance you feel is there on purpose, and you feel it for a reason.  It's there to help guide you.

When you are starting a business around something you truly love, you'll find you won't procrastinate.  Your internal drive to create your new business will prevail.  You'll find you're not starting your new business just for the money, but instead you'll be creating your business because it's your current purpose in life.  You've been inspired to serve others in your own unique way.

This is what sets successful businesses apart from unsuccessful businesses.  The founders of businesses like Apple and Virgin Airlines were/are extremely focused.  Starting their business was/is their purpose in life.  They had an internal drive to push through all obstacles and offer their personal talents to their clients.  I believe we all have our own unique skills and talents. 

The difference between the people who have a large impact on the world around them and the people who don't, is their ability to identify their own unique purpose and focus on building a business around it.   Building a business is just as much about having a positive impact on the world around you as it is about making money.  The two go hand in hand. 

As I continue to explore ways to identify my own unique purpose, I'll share with you how you can better find your own.  In my opinion, this should be step 1 around starting any business.

Returning to the topic of procrastination, I would like to share a few last thoughts.  In the off chance that you are able to fight through your procrastination and somehow succeed at creating your business successfully, you probably won't like it any better than your current job. 

When you are creating a business around what is most important to you, that resistance to move forward won't be there.  You'll have obstacles, but you'll also have the energy it takes to push through them.  Facing the challenges around starting your own business will be an exciting part of your life.  It will be the reason you're here, and you'll never procrastinate to take your challenges head on.

Please comment below about your own experiences with procrastination and resistance while building your business.  Have you felt inspired by the challenges you have faced along the way?

It's common for people to work on a new product in a bubble for an extended period of time when they are developing an online business.  I'm definitely no exception.  I attempted to start three different businesses over the last 4 years in a bubble.  It took these three painful "failures" to learn the important lesson I am going to share with you today.

While it's important that you do work you are inspired by, it's also just as important that this work solves your audience's problems or fills their desires.  Success comes at the intersection of your inspiration and your customer's needs.  It's nearly impossible to find this intersection without engaging your audience (potential customers) during the creation process.  It's similar to searching for a needle in a haystack.  Your customer is just as important to your business as you are, so it only makes sense that you include them in the creation process.
 
It's also likely, if you are just starting a new business, that you have no audience.  It's the chicken or the egg dilema.  You need an audience to engage while you create a product, and you need a product to offer in order to attract your audience.  The way you tackle this problem is unique to your product or service, but here's a few suggestions to get you thinking:

 1.  Promise your potential client a discount on your product or service when it is launched in exchange for subscribing to your email list.  Then use your email list to engage your potential future customers while you create your product.
 
2.  Provide low cost non-scalable service to your client in exchange for their feedback.  An example of this would be to help coach a client one on one through Skype if you were planning on creating a video course.  While you will be exchanging your time for a small amount of money, you'll also learn exactly what your clients actually want BEFORE creating your video course.

3. If you're selling product, produce just a few even if the production costs are high.  Then attempt to sell them at a discount, even if it's at a loss.  Make sure you setup the understanding that you expect customer feedback in exchage for the discounted price.

Building your new business with feedback from an audience will greatly accelerate the learning curve and increase your chances for success.  At first it may seem like a lot of "extra" work that will cost you more time and money, but that is only becuase you have a fantasy about being able to successfuly solve your client's problem without first asking your customer about your proposed solution. 

Have you tried to create a new product in a bubble?  Please share your experience in the comments below.

A few years ago I unsuccessfully tried to build three different MLM opportunities (I'll explain MLM in the next paragraph). Considering I wasn’t a huge fan of any of the products and my marketing plan didn't work out, it’s no wonder I didn’t have success. Unless you have a unique set of effective marketing skills, or a deep inspiration to sell the product, you won’t succeed. 

Amway, Isagenix, Xocai, Numis Network, Mary Kay, World Ventures and several other popular companies are a quick way to be up and running with your own business overnight.  MLM stands for multilevel marketing, and means you get paid based on the purchases made by the team you build.  You make money by turning your customers into marketing partners who bring in yet more customers.  It’s the legal version of a pyramid scheme.  

To succeed with your MLM company you need to be “that guy”.  You have to own that you are an Amway representative (I'm using Amway as an example company).  This isn’t something you can fake.  You have to honestly believe from the core of who you are that your purpose in life (for now anyway) is to help other people become Amway reps.  This means you have to believe that being an Amway rep is a great benefit to the people you are trying to sign up.  

You have to think your potential customers will have an improved quality of life after they join your team.  After all, as an Amway rep the thing you are contributing to society is helping to convince people they will be better off if they join your team.  The problem is 94% of all people who join an MLM fail. You have to believe you can teach your team members to be part of the 6%, or that your products and services are really worth the high price your potential customers will pay for them.

It's my belief that nearly every MLM company sells products at an inflated price. They have to in order to have a good payout to the representatives.  The MLM companies I tried to promote a few years ago were no exception.  Because of this belief, I didn’t feel I was doing my potential clients a favor by signing them up for my company.  Instead I felt like I was selling them a product at an inflated price, and then asking them to turn around and try to sell this product to their friends and family at an inflated price.  Besides the whole inflated price issue, this also meant I didn’t feel like I was adding value to society by growing my MLM team. (BTW, if you are curious - The company I stuck with the longest was Numis Network.)

If your comptemplating joining an MLM company, ask yourself if you feel the prices for the products or services are inflated.  If the answer is "Yes", don't join.  The only way you could still have success is if you have an effective unique marketing strategy you can use and teach your potential team members.  But even then, you're now using marketing tactics to promote a product you don't feel is worth the price.  You're actualy just running an immoral ponzi scheme, made legal through an overpriced product.

If you aren’t adding value, where does your self worth come from?  How can you feel proud of your day’s work if your work didn’t help improve the lives of others?  

Have you ever found an MLM that you felt you could “own”?  If yes, awesome!  Which one was it?  Are you successfully growing your team?  What made you feel that you were helping others by growing your team?  Maybe you have tried and failed at an MLM.  Was the core reason for your failure similar to what I described above?