Category: Careers

Too Smart For Your Business?

This week’s guest contributor is my friend, Alexis Neely. On the outside, Alexis is a driven mom entrepreneur who has built two million dollar plus businesses, trains lawyers, and appears frequently on television. On the inside she’s got dreadlocks, at least half her body tatted, and lives a Burning Man life.  You can grab her life and business growth kit on her blog and follow her on Twitter @alexisneely.

This week she shares some great insights on getting unstuck in business…

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If you are reading this blog, it means you are a pretty smart cookie.  You love to read, think, critique, improve.  Me too.

Reading at three.  High school and college, a breeze.  Graduated first in my law school class (more to do with over-studying as a result of massive fear that I was the dumbest person in the room than to innate smartness).

A smarty-pants.

With all this smarts, I was baffled by how hard it seemed to get ahead in business.  I saw people who were clearly not as smart making way more money, serving more people and making a bigger difference.

What was I missing?

It took me a few years to learn a reality that may be hurting your business success … in business, smart often translates to stuck.

As a business strategist to lawyers and other very smart people, I see it all the time – the smarter we are, the harder it can be to experience business success.

When we make every decision from our intellect, we tend to overcomplicate.  We see all the options, have a million big ideas, and either want to improve upon everything or convince ourselves of what won’t work.

Quite often, we get stopped in our tracks.  Sound familiar?

If you find your business not experiencing the kind of success or forward movement you think it should based on your previous track record of being the smartest one around, let’s take a look at what you can do to get a little more stupid and finally experience business growth worthy of someone with your innate intelligence.

1. Make a list of all your ideas and partially completed projects.

If you are like most smarties, you’ve got a million and one ideas and not a single one of them actually making any money yet.

It’s time to get realistic about what you really can accomplish and stop dreaming about all the possibilities.

Create a someday/maybe file and put all of your ideas and partially completed projects into it now, trusting that when the time is right, you’ll come back to them.  I know it can be difficult to put aside all the greatness, but if you don’t do it now, none of the ideas will never be completed.

2. Pick one idea that has the most promise to result in a financial reward within the next 6 months and commit to focusing on it no matter what, with no excuses.

Self-discipline is one of the most important success secrets of business.  Without a boss, it’s easy to get distracted by the next bright, shiny object and to give up on that idea or project that would have been successful, if you had stuck with it.

Block 2-hours of intense focus time each day (or a few times a week) and focus your energy, attention and action entirely on moving the one project you chose to focus on forward.  If you blow your focus time one day, don’t give up.  Get back on the calendar the next day and congratulate yourself for not giving up.

3. Get a clear vision of what success looks like for this project.

Create a series of celebration points for this project, the mini-successes that will lead up to the big one. Often, we are so busy looking ahead at the BIG success, that we miss celebrating the many successes that have to occur along the way before we can make it all the way there.

Celebrating your mini-successes will keep you motivated and moving forward.

4. Find a mentor who has done what you want to do and do what they did without deviation.

This can be one of the most difficult steps for the true smarty-pants because it means first asking for help, then doing exactly what you are told to do without making any improvements.

Now, be clear here – I’m not suggesting you never improve on what you learn.  Far from it. That’s not possible for a true smarty.  What I’m saying is that before you improve, discover what works and what doesn’t.  Don’t make assumptions based on what you think without having actually tried it out for yourself.

If possible, see if you can find a “salesy” as a mentor, instead of another smarty.  (Best would be to find a smarty who has embraced her/his inner salesy fully and without shame.)

This will very likely require you to seriously step out of your comfort zone because you’ll probably judge the salesy as not as smart as you and as missing important things that you can see because you are so smart.

But remember, it’s these smarts that have held you back.

So long as you have chosen the right mentor who has truly done what you want to do, do not let your judgment sway you from following your mentor’s advice to the letter.

Do not deviate or try to improve upon the guidance – do it exactly as you are told to do it the first time.  If you make mistakes, it’s okay.  If things could have been better, that’s fine. You’ll learn from these mistakes, make improvements and have a wealth of knowledge for the next time you do it.

Each time I’ve put aside some of my smarts and done what I’ve told you to do here, it’s been hard.  Very hard.  But, I’ve been rewarded every time.

Some of what resulted:

Stopped trying to be smart and serve every person in Los Angeles who needed a Will & Trust and instead hired a marketing consultant who helped me narrowed my focus to serving just families with young children in the South Bay area of Los Angeles.  Result: broke a million bucks of revenue in both 2006 and 2007 and sold the law firm in 2008.

Stopped trying to write a book that would show how smart I was by changing the world on a global level and becoming an instant New York Times bestseller and instead wrote a book about legal planning for parents.  Result: got the book published and in May of 2008 with the help of a book marketing mentor made it to #8 overall on BN.com and #1 in all its categories on Amazon.com.

Stopped trying to launch 3 different information products and coaching programs to serve 3 different markets and hired an information-marketing coach who helped me create and launch one specific program to teach lawyers how to engage more clients.  Result: sold over $117,000 in a 60-minute teleseminar and launched a business that broke a million dollars within 18 months.

And don’t think it ever stops.

Up until a couple of months ago, my inner smarty-pants had me hard at work on three different businesses, a television show, two different books and a few other projects.  But, I’m taking my own advice and narrowing my focus for the next 6 months on finishing one book and I’ve hired the right people to focus on each of the businesses so I can focus on making the television show a reality.

So now I ask you to consider:

How is your inner smarty-pants over-complicating, holding you back, keeping you from focusing and asking for help to do that one thing that will most move your business ahead?  
What is the project you are going to focus on, find a mentor to guide you with, and finish within the next 6 months?

I can’t wait to hear!

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Learn more about Alexis Neely on her blog and follow her on Twitter @alexisneely.

Please do NOT enter a keyword phrase, business, product or service name as your name in the comment section. Doing so will get your comment labeled as spam and deleted. You MAY, however, use a real-person’s name/nickname/handle, along with a brief identifying phrase, like “Jonathan Fields, Career Renegade.”


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The Writing Marathon, or How to Get New Ideas When You’ve Reached the End of Your Thinking

This week’s guest contributor is positioning and creativity guru and blogger, Mark Levy of Levy Innovation, who’s also a friend and author of the newly-expanded, and re-subtitled bestseller, Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content.

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In the past few days I’ve talked with a dozen smart people who create content for a living. They write posts and e-books, record podcasts and vlogs, and are on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

These pros aren’t trying to produce one lone idea a day. They need to generate lots of lively and practical ideas that can be spread across multiple platforms every day. Their livelihood depends on it.

As far as tough jobs go, it may not rank with working in a coal mine, but it’s no cakewalk.

Many of these content creators are burnt out. They feel that, within their field, they’ve reached the end of their thinking. They’ve said everything they know how to say, and anything that comes out now is only a mild variation of what they’ve said before.

What might they do to revive themselves?

As a writing coach, I’d give them the same counsel I give myself when I’m working on an important project and find myself – not just stuck – but empty. I’d tell them to conduct a writing marathon.

Based on Peter Elbow’s Loop Writing Process and the technique of freewriting, a writing marathon is an exhausting yet liberating day-long writing session that’s part information dump and part exploration into ideas that they may have never thought about before.

In the end, they’ll have pages of thoughts and prose. Much of it will be junk. Some of it, though, will be startlingly original, and may well be the best stuff they’ve ever created.

Whether you’re blocked or not, you might like to try the marathon yourself. Here’s how it works:

Set aside a stretch of five to eight hours. If you’re a morning person, begin it in the morning. If you’re a nighttime person, schedule it for the evening.

Get a timer and a computer. You’ll need the computer, because if you try doing the amount of writing I’m asking you to do with pen and paper, you’re hand will cramp.

Now, set the timer for twenty minutes, open a blank document, fix your subject in mind (for instance, “How can service firms sell to mid-sized companies”), and start typing.

Attack the subject from a spot that, for you, has energy. In other words, don’t start writing about it from some point out of obligation. Begin where you want to begin.

No one is going to see what your writing unless you want them to, so be honest and bold.

Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, or grammar. Don’t worry if what you’re writing is interesting or even coherent.

Write as fast as you can, without stopping for any reason. And, if during the writing you feel like digressing, by all means follow those digressions.

What you’re doing is using the writing to watch yourself think.

When twenty minutes is up and your timer rings, stop. Now’s not a time to rest, though. Take a few minutes to read through your writing and note language and concepts that catch your attention.

If a line interests you — if it’s well-said or contains an idea you might want to develop — underline it. If a line strikes you as a considerable insight, bold it.

Once you’re finished making annotations, look the page over once more. The reason? You want find out what to explore next.

Do you see a thought you’d further like to pursue? Is there an underdeveloped idea that needs elaboration? Do you notice a relationship between ideas that needs writing about? Are you struck by a thinking-error that’s apparent only now that you’ve written it out? Has a question occurred to you that bares investigation?

You’re searching for a new starting thought. It needn’t be profound. Again, you just want to begin writing from a spot that has energy. A spot that intrigues, delights, or annoys you.

Once you’ve come up with a starting thought, fix it in mind, set your timer for twenty minutes, and start writing about your starter thought.

As always, follow the dictates of your mind. If you want to stay on topic, fine. If you feel like going off topic, do it. Have fun. Be irreverent, provocative, even scandalous.

When twenty minutes is up and your timer rings, stop. Again, read through your writing and underline and bold the notions that grab you. Find a new starter thought. Repeat.

That’s the marathon. You do twenty minute sessions, punctuated by the search for starter thoughts, over and over for five to eight hours. Why that long?

You want to clear the brain. You want it to dig deep for facts, opinions, people, stories, scenes, details, ideas. By doing so, you’ll burn off the obligatory surface thinking that can’t be avoided. The party-line stuff. Your mind will have to start reaching. That’s what you want.

One of the keys to making the marathon work is by following Ezra Pound’s rallying cry, “Make it new.” Each time you formulate a starter thought, demand that it sends you in a new direction. I can’t stress this point enough.

You don’t want to merely parrot what you’ve already written because, if you hit “Save,” you have that writing forever. Why duplicate it?

You want new. Force yourself into uncharted waters, even if doing so seems artificial or uncomfortable. Pursue novelty and uncertainty. Head towards anxiety. Make yourself write and think about ideas that aren’t traditionally “you.” Get beyond the point where you write about what you know.

As Ron Carlson wrote, “ . . . if you get what you expect, it isn’t good enough.”

By the end of the marathon, you’ll likely have pages and pages of language and ideas that you can use as raw material for dozens of significant projects. The honesty and power of your exploratory writing may surprise you.

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Mark Levy, who founded the marketing strategy firm, Levy Innovation, is called, by David Meerman Scott, “a positioning guru extraordinaire.” Mark’s latest book is a revised, expanded, and re-subtitled edition of his bestseller, “Accidental Genius: Using Writing to Generate Your Best Ideas, Insight, and Content.” It liberates readers from their status quo thinking.

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55 Quotes To Inspire Creativity, Innovation and Action



“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them… a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off… They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.” – Pearl Buck



“F@*# self-doubt. I despise it. I hold it in contempt, along with the hell-spawned ooze-pit of Resistance from which it crawled. I will NEVER back off. I will NEVER give the work anything less than 100%. If I go down in flames, so be it. I’ll be back.” -Steven Pressfield



“Creativity comes from trust. Trust your instincts. And never hope more than you work.” -Rita Mae Brown



“Institutions will try to preserve the problem to which they are the solution”—Clay Shirky



“I am not afraid…I was born to do this.” – Joan of Arc



“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” ~Antoine De Saint Exupery



“It takes a great deal of courage to stand up to your enemies, but even more to stand up to your friends.” – J. K. Rowling



“Do not be critics, you people, I beg you. I was a critic and I wish I could take it all back because it came from a smelly and ignorant place in me, and spoke with a voice that was all rage and envy. Do not dismiss a book until you have written one, and do not dismiss a movie until you have made one, and do not dismiss a person until you have met them. It is a f@*$%load of work to be open-minded and generous and understanding and forgiving and accepting, but Christ, that is what matters. What matters is saying yes.” – Dave Eggers



“Adversity is just change that we haven’t adapted ourselves to yet.” -Aimee Mullins



“The secret of life…is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” – Paulo Coelho, from The Alchemist



“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” – Helen Keller



“Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get — only what you are expecting to give — which is everything. What you will receive in return varies. But it really has no connection with what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving.” – Katharine Hepburn



“Far better to live your own path imperfectly than to live another’s perfectly.” -Bhagavad Gita



“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent” – Thomas Edison



“The soul should always stand ajar. Ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.” – Emily Dickinson



“To get the truth, you want to get your own heart to pound while you write.” – Robert McKee



“There is something deep within us that responds to those who level with us, who don’t suggest or compromise for us.” -Susan Scott, Fierce Leadership



“Each moment of our life, we either invoke or destroy our dreams.” -Stuart Wilde



“I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” -Pearl S. Buck



“Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward; they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” -Goethe



“When I was in the middle of writing Eat Pray Love and I fell into one of those pits of despair that we will fall into when we’re working on something that’s not coming and we think ‘this is going to be a disaster, this is going to be the worst book I’ve ever written — not just that but the worst book ever written … So I just lifted my face up from the manuscript and I directed my comments to an empty corner of the room and I said aloud ‘ Listen you, thing! You and I both know that if this book isn’t brilliant that is not entirely my fault, right? Because you can see I am putting everything I have into this, I don’t have any more than this, so if you want it to be better then you’ve got to show up and do your part of the deal, OK? But you know what? If you don’t do that then I’m going to keep writing because that’s my job and I would please like the record to reflect today that I showed up and did my part of the job!” â€” Elizabeth Gilbert



”We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve” -Albert Einstein



“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.” – Margaret Mead



“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart,…you’ll know when you find it.” — Steve Jobs



“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” -Soren Kierkegaard



“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.” -Virginia Woolf



“People who don’t take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year, people who do take risks generally make about 2 big mistakes a year” -Peter Drucker



“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” -Maya Angelou



“It’s not about breaking the rules. It is about abandoning the concept of rules altogether” – Paul Lemberg



“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” -Leo Burnett



“You can make mistakes, but you are not a failure until you blame others for those mistakes.” -John Wooden



“There’s only us, There’s only this, Forget regret, Or life is your to miss” – Mimi, Rent



“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” –Marianne Williamson



“Don’t hire a dog, then bark yourself” -David Ogilvy



“Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion.” – Martha Graham



“The only thing all successful people have in common is that they’re successful, so don’t waste your time copying “the successful strategies” of others.” -Seth Godin



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5 Ways to Stay in Touch with Your Extended Network

When it comes to thinking about staying connected with your extended network, especially if you have a large one, it can almost be as daunting as, say, public speaking for a lot of people. But, it can be broken down into manageable steps. The most important thing with networking is that you stay in touch with those you connect with and you make every effort to keep a relationship going – even if you don’t “need” something at the moment.

Here are our five best tips for continued networking success.

1) Pass Along Articles of Interest to Your Contacts

One great way to stay in touch is to pass along anything of interest to your contacts. You want to continually demonstrate that you’re not only passionate about your industry (and follow it regularly), but also that you are genuinely interested in your contact’s best interest. It never hurts to reach out to someone you know and say, “Hi, John, I came across this article and thought of you. Perhaps you’d find the statistic on the growing demographics of 18- to 24-year-olds interesting for your research. I hope you’re well. All my best, Paul.”

2) Keep Your Network Posted of Your Updates

We recommend that you touch base with your contacts at least twice a year. A year can be quite a bit of time, and a lot can happen. If you are hired for a position, pick up a new internship, move to a new city or start a new blog, these are all reasons to update your network on what’s happening in your life. It’s also important that you use these opportunities to thank those that have helped you become who you are or get you to where you are today.

3) Remember Special Occasions

This can be a hard one. In a perfect world, we would all remember everyone’s birthdays and important events, but unfortunately, real life can get in the way of that. If there are certain members of your network who are your friends on Facebook, make it a daily habit to look at the “Birthdays” reminder to see if there’s anyone you should reach out to. And this doesn’t mean you should leave a generic “Happy Birthday” on someone’s wall; rather take the time to type out an e-mail and let the person know you’re thinking of them. It doesn’t take a lot of additional effort, and it’s an easy way to stand out from the “Facebook wall clutter.” In addition, keep an eye on big events announced by your contacts. If you want to get into public relations and you see that your friend launched a new campaign, send them a congratulatory note.

4) Create Google Alerts for Your Contacts and/or Their Businesses

One great way to keep tabs on a contact or his or her company is by creating a Google Alert. It’s free and takes less than a minute, and the service can send you valuable information on a colleague that you might have been too busy to notice. Then, when you see big news about someone or his or her company, take a minute to send an e-mail and follow up. If you’re not sure how to set up a Google Alert, check out our recent post on the CareerSparx blog, “Your Dream Employer? Do More Than Google Them.”

5) Follow Them on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn

Again, the idea is to stay connected with your contacts and what’s going on in their lives. If you see that a birthday is coming up or something important just happened, make note of what you see on your social media accounts and follow up via a personalized e-mail. Another tactic is to hit “like” if they post something produced by their company on a Facebook profile, or retweet a Twitter update for a big project of theirs. They will appreciate the support, and you will achieve your goal of staying connected and on their radar.

By following these five easy tips, you will be able to stay better connected to your network. And as you’ll see, it really isn’t as hard or as overwhelming as it seems. Best of luck.

Guest Expert:

Mario Schulzke is the creator of CareerSparx, an online course that helps recent college graduates begin their careers. For more information, download their free 61-page guide on how to start your career or check out the CareerSparx blog.

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