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What’s Your Motivation?

September 14th, 2009

Small Business
I went to a Tea Party meeting last April to observe and chat with a few folks. This was no large gathering in a large city but a small one with just a few hundred folks in a town of about 5000 people. I spoke with many people I did not know, and I ended up actually speaking to the whole crowd after being prompted by many with whom I spoke to on the sidelines. I mainly talked with many folks from truck drivers, retired veterans, moms, small business owners and conversed about a familiar theme that is near and dear to me, small businesses and their impact and contribution to this great nation we live in. On my Facebook profile I proudly proclaim that it will be entrepreneurial spirit, not government intrusion that will revive our economy. This folks is the heart of small businesses. Small business employs over 75 per cent of the United States workforce. Anything that harms small business in my opinion, harms America.

What I Said
I did not speak about how the current administration is taxing or is planning to tax. I reminded them that it is the Washington politicians of both stripes that are reaching into our wallets. This has not been something that just happened. It has been incrementally occurring for over the last 95 years. The news media is portraying it as a battle between the parties, but for most of us it’s Government overreaching their bounds and getting involved in issues that are not ever discussed in the constitution and using that to fund their own constituencies for one reason or another. It is done by politicians to get re-elected and to have power. I’ve seen right through this for many years. The second oldest profession is being a politician and I actually think there’s not much difference between the first and second.

Leader or Politician
Now there is a line between what constitutes being a leader and being a politician. A leader by definition has to serve their followers and constituencies. I suppose a politician can do that. But one thing that is sorely missed in all of this is what their motive is. If the motive of a leader or politician is to be in charge, make the organization or government run smoothly, make a profit, build a respected company or department, get elected, and to win that might sound good. But to truly define leadership we need to completely understand one thing, motive. How was it the person got into a position where they could be called a leader by the definition used above? Did they inherit it? Was it simply appointed to them? Was it funded by interest groups? If it wasn’t earned on the merit of truly serving others then I would hesitate at calling them a leader. Leadership is also not the one who promised the most. If the leadership was arrived at by taking from someone and giving to another, it is not true leadership.

Motivation
A leader’s motivation is not how far they have advanced their position or power, but how far they have advanced others. That’s the bottom line. If a person takes away from someone intentionally, they are not a leader. A leader strives to add value to others. The value you add to others is teaching them skills, providing opportunity, giving them insight and perspective, and having faith in them. I know this may sound like a politician but the difference lies with their motivation. You can add value to others by not having to take resources from others to give them. A real leader provides inspiration, values, strength, solutions, character, and does not waver in them. There may be politicians whose motives are those of a true leader, but I find it rare to find one. Remember, a true leaders motivation is not to advance their own position or power, but to advance others.

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Take The Leap

August 28th, 2009

One of my favorite movies of the past 20 years actually was considered a box office flop but later gained a cult following. It featured the first pairing of Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. It was called “Joe vs the Volcano”.Joe Banks worked in a job where routinely day after day people acted like drones and went in to do their job. One day when he went to the doctor he was diagnosed with a “Brain Cloud”. He was told that it was terminal and he would have a very short time to live. After contemplation he was convinced by a person that he would be given very large amount of cash if in the end before he would die, he would jump into a volcano in a far away island. So he lived a life of luxury and eventually set out to go to the island. On the way he met Patricia and fell in love with her. They ran into a storm and the boat sank but they were saved by his luggage that he tied together. They ended up awash on the shore of the destination island. After a party by the natives Joe was supposed to go up the volcano and appease the gods according to the local customs. Patricia decided to go with Joe and jump together. While on the way up Patricia figured out that Joe had a fictitious disease and wasn’t dying after all. Well they had to make the decision to jump. Was Joe going to jump anyways because his life would be no worse off than that of slaving away in his job? The girl he loved was going to jump with him. So they jumped. They decided they weren’t going to go half way, they were going to go for it, hell or high water. The volcano ended up blowing them out about a mile into the ocean and somehow that same luggage mysteriously appeared for them. They were alive and happy in the end.

The movie was very symbolic. The only color and piece of individualism in the office where Joe worked was Joe’s lamp he kept it in a drawer till he came into the office. This was quickly quashed by his boss. When Joe had made the decision to live like a king and die like a man, he said “There are certain times in your life when I guess you’re not supposed to have anyone, you know..certain doors you gotta go through alone.”

You gotta go through alone… Hmm… It may effect your family but it really is a decision that has to originate from you. How many of us are at that road or door? How many of us even notice that there is even a door we could go through? How many of us are living drones going through the paces day after day hypnotized by the media and politicians that determine what is best for us? How many of us all of a sudden are approaching retirement and have yet to live? I’ve said before that most people will choose unhappiness over uncertainty, so most never even try anything with even a hint of risk. Well no wonder Joe took the plunge. His supposed demise was not going to be any worse than his dreary existence, though he now had Patricia.

I’ve spent to many years in Corporate America and I’ve made the commitment to get out. Completely out. I want to visit the world, I want to be able run on the beaches of the world while I still can run. I don’t want to wait till I’m 65 1/2. I want to visit places and stay as long as I feel like. I want to share with my wife helping children in orphanages. I want to live. There are too many opportunities out there where you can either simplify your life, slow down and smell the coffee, start part time businesses that make full time income, all while being able to do it anywhere you can get an internet connection. The sweet thing about it, is that the businesses you start can be about the things you are highly interested in and passionate about. Do you see the face of your boss more than your children and wife? Are you looking for something else? Are you ready to make that symbolic leap of faith?

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My Passion For Building My Business

July 7th, 2009

Johnathan Budd had a highly passionate post with a video and at the end we were asked to leave a comment:

I want you to LEAVE the BIGGEST reason you are building your business, spending your time learning new goals, researching how to succeed, and developing yourself into an entrepreneur.

This is how I responded.

I am driven. I am motivated. In that internet marketing is now a science, it is the creative aspects that I like. Creative aspects for me are the results from the originality of thought, the expression, the interaction, the learning, the teaching, and gaining satisfaction from accomplishment. The challenges make it much more fulfilling than any 9-5 job ever could. It’s like I am painting a masterpiece and I have to concentrate on the brush strokes on a small corner of the painting. As I work on the colors and learn how to mix the paint to achieve the exact real life colors and textures and then transfer them to the canvas, a picture of the future is emerging.

I of course will have to consult with others with whom I will associate to have them help and guide me and give me perspective to the process of finishing the painting. And it will be those relationships that I end up fostering that will determine whether my painting is a masterpiece. I can’t do it myself and when I do finish the painting, it will be because of those with whom I trusted and shared my passions. The success will be reciprocal as one of my passions is to help people understand and achieve things that they didn’t know they could archive or thought unattainable. My way is perfect only for me. But there are things I can offer that will help others and in return I will learn from others.

In the end, I want to be able to help people and kids in some of the eastern Europe countries that would make a typical U.S. minimum wage job seem like a muti 6 figure job here. Outside of the main cities there are families that live on $50 a month, don’t have a water heater, use outhouses still, and live the life our parents and grandparents lived in the 20′s and 30′s. There are orphanages whose conditions are deplorable at best, and run by corrupt governments and bureaucracies were little ends up directly benefiting the children. That’s my dream. to see the smile of some happy children who are the happiest they’ve been in their lives just because I bought them all some new shoes.

Historic Proportions

June 25th, 2009

Recently over at Facebook I had as a comment in the “What I was thinking today” section at the top the following, “Chris. W. Kilber is thinking that today is a day to make some history! What are you going to do today that you will remember for a long time?” I’m not sure what was in my coffee this morning or it must be the new vitamins I’ve been taking recently that has really fired me up and made me optimistic about a lot of things. Nicole Sundene then replied that it was empowering and a tall order. That may be, but was it the cost of success? Anyways, so then I happened to hear something on the radio dealing with the saying, “historic proportions”. It gave me an epiphany. I was thinking of something that could make a historical impact upon your online business, especially if you are just starting out or you started out following the wrong advice. Here is what I came up with.

There’s a lot of information written on online network marketing. There is so much in fact that it’s hard to separate the grain from the chaff. We as online marketers need to steer or coral potential business partners or customers into a position where we can educate and inform them to the services and offerings we have. How do we do that? We create a “marketing funnel” and attract people NOT by being a salesmen and touting the benefits of your product, but by building “YOU INC.”! I would bet that 98% of the products out there are being marketed by 1000’s of people. How can you be the one whom customers come? What you need to do is differentiate yourself from the others using attraction principals and move them into your funnel.

A successful entrepreneur will build their marketing strategies around processes and systems. They will build their own lists of prospects, customers, and partners by offering real world value. This may be in the form of information, how-to’s, time saving methods, insight, motivation, and other things that your list will value. As your list grows and they begin to gain your trust the potential products and services that you may market to them, which may be the same as others are offering, will have a better chance to be purchased from you. As time goes on you could even develop lists that number in the 10’s of thousands. By setting up your funnel properly and using an auto-responder you then have the ability to build your relationship with them with one simple email. As long as you continue to provide value, they will stay on your list.

It is imperative that you set up your marketing funnel as the basic marketing tool in your arsenal. Your possibilities are then endless once you know how to use this basic business building principles to grow your organization on the internet. By using “YOU INC.” as the attraction to your marketing funnel you will be able spin income streams with a variety of products and services. Once you understand this thoroughly and put it into place you will transform your profitability online. We all know that success begets success and imagine what you could do with 50-100 new opt-ins each and every day. How much would your business grow?

In closing, seek out what you need to learn, study it, implement it, and you will increase your online marketing success tremendously, maybe even to historic proportions. You can then thank Nicole for inspiring me to write this. What are you doing today that will be historical?