SuccessCo

If there was no Chamber of Commerce . . .

• There would be no office to respond to the inquiries about your community and its opportunities.

• There would be no information-gathering center with which to inform the business community and advise it of current events affecting them.

• There would be no collective force to make known the physical needs of the community such as improved roads, utilities, facilities, safety and the like.

• There would be no forum wherein the business community can exchange views and positions, and no voice to express those to other agencies.

• There would be no focal point for social gathering of the business community wherein an exchange of ideas and services may take place.

• There would be no political voice to keep our elected representatives aware of the business community's feelings on legislative action and needs.

Support your Chamber of Commerce

-Jim

© 2008 ChamberFind.com

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Success Video ~ Tony Robbins on Unlocking Your True Potential

Tony Robbins talks about how to unlock your true potential -- and high-fives Al Gore in the front row! A fast-paced, mind-expanding, motivating TEDTalk for high achievers and those who wish to be. Recorded in Monterey, CA. at a *TED conference.

* TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

Success Quotes ~ Perseverance

The road to success is dotted with many tempting parking places.

Author Unknown

Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it.  The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.

Earl Nightingale

"Failure is often that early morning hour of darkness which precedes the dawning of the day of success."

Leigh Mitchell Hodges

"The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win."

Roger Bannister

Amazing Technique for Ending Procrastination

I like formulas. I have books of them for making recipes in the kitchen, stacks of them for business application and years of handwritten notes documenting the formulas that work in every aspect of daily life. So when I stumbled across a formula for eliminating procrastination, I just had to give it a try.

It’s called (10+2)*5

Here is how it works. . .
(10+2)*5 – Dedicate ten minutes toward the completion of a task – It must be a task that can’t be completed in ten minutes, but rather moved forward.
(10+2)*5 – Now take two minutes to reward yourself by doing what ever you want. I.e. coffee break, surf the web etc. When the two minutes are up, go to work on the next task you have been delaying.
(10+2)*5 – Now complete this process four more times (five in total) for one hour’s worth of pure sense of accomplishment by starting or moving forward that which has been eluding your focused attention.

Hints:
- Use an egg timer
- Tasks do not need to be finished, but rather moved forward
- Don’t skip breaks
- Doing this first thing in the morning increases the sense of accomplishment that carries for the day

This technique comes from one of my favorite blogs 43 Folders

-Jim

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Having a Rough Day? Read this and Suck It Up.

Do yourself a favor and bookmark this page. Yes, really. . . .I'll wait.

Now, the next time you’re having a bad day, come back and read this post as I think it will speak for itself.

When Lucille Ball began studying to be actress in 1927, she was told by the head instructor of the John Murray Anderson Drama School, "Try any other profession."

When Pablo Casals reached 95, a young reporter asked him "Mr. Casals, you are 95 and the greatest cellist that ever lived. Why do you still practice six hours a day?" Mr. Casals answered, "Because I think I'm making progress."

Michael Caine's headmaster told him, "You will be a laborer all your life."

At the age of 21, French acting legend Jeanne Moreau was told by a casting director that her head was too crooked, she wasn't beautiful enough, and she wasn't photogenic enough to make it in films. She took a deep breath and said to herself, "Alright, then, I guess I will have to make it my own way." After making nearly 100 films her own way, in 1997 she received the European Film Academy Lifetime Achievement Award.

The first time Jerry Seinfeld walked on-stage at a comedy club as a professional comic, he looked out at the audience, froze, and forgot the English language. He stumbled through "a minute-and a half" of material and was jeered offstage. He returned the following night and closed his set to wild applause.

After his first audition, Sidney Poitier was told by the casting director, "Why don't you stop wasting people's time and go out and become a dishwasher or something?" It was at that moment, recalls Poitier, that he decided to devote his life to acting.

After Fred Astaire's first screen test, the memo from the testing director of MGM, dated 1933, read, "Can't act. Can't sing. Slightly bald. Can dance a little." He kept that memo over the fire place in his Beverly Hills home. Astaire once observed that "when you're experimenting, you have to try so many things before you choose what you want, that you may go days getting nothing but exhaustion." And here is the reward for perseverance: "The higher up you go, the more mistakes you are allowed. Right at the top, if you make enough of them, it's considered to be your style."

Now, go out there and succeed to fail.

-Jim

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Improve Your Game On the Green OR the Board Room

Imagine yourself stepping on to the golf green as you prepare to putt for par. When you look at the hole to gauge your shot, you notice that the hole is much larger than its normal size.

Now imagine yourself at bat during your company softball tournament. You walk up to the plate and notice the ball the pitcher is about to toss your direction is the size of a basketball. How would these new desirable circumstances impact your game?

Let’s try one more. . . . Imagine the potential customer base for your product is twice as large your current estimation? How would this “new reality” impact your sales results?

According to scientists in two studies at the University of Virginia, softball players and golfers who had good games perceived balls and golf holes as larger than players who had bad days.

Could it be the holes that Tiger Woods sees are twice as large as what his competitors see?

What I can tell you from a business perspective is professionals that expect more and “see larger opportunities” usually get them!

Read about the studies here.

-Jim

© 2008 SuccessCo.com

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Even More Classic Marketing Blunders

Clairol introduced the "Mist Stick", a curling iron, into German only to find out that "mist" is slang for manure. Not too many people had use for the "manure stick."

When Puffs tissue started marketing their tissues in Germany it didn’t do so well. The reason - Puff means “brothel” in Germany.

When Italian mineral water company promoted their mineral water Traficante it was a failure because the word “Traficante” means “drug dealer” in Spanish.

When Mitsubishi launched its Pajero 4WD in Spain they had the shock of a lifetime. As they were promoting Pajero they forgot to take into account the word “Pajero” means “jerk” in Spanish.

For more on the subject
Famous Marketing Blunders
More Famous Marketing Blunders

-Jim

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Success Book ~ The 4-Hour Work week

Excerpt from The 4-Hour Work Week written by Timothy Ferriss

Being Effective vs. Being Efficient

Effectiveness is doing the things that get you closer to your goals. Efficiency is performing a given task (whether important or not) in the most economical manner possible. Being efficient without regard to effectiveness is the default mode of the universe.
I would consider the best door to door salesperson efficient – that is, refined and excellent at selling door to door without wasting time – but utterly ineffective. He or she would sell more using a better vehicle such as e-mail or direct mail.
This is also true for the person who checks e-mail 30 times per day and develops an elaborate system of folder rules and sophisticated techniques for ensuring that each of those 30 brain farts moves as quickly as possible. I was a specialist at such professional wheel-spinning. It is efficient on some perverse level, but far from effective.
Here are two truisms to keep in mind:

1. Doing something unimportant well does not make it important.
2. Requiring a lot of time does not make a task important.

From this moment onward, remember this: What you do is infinitely more important than how you do it. Efficiency is still important, but it is useless unless applied to the right things.

The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich