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. The 10 key secrets to leadership in any organization
. Why a clear and compelling vision is necessary, and how to develop one
. The important values critical to success among top business leaders

Extract:

There are many effective styles of leadership. There are as many different effective styles of leadership as different personality types – of employees as well as bosses.

Here are several “secrets” to leadership in any organization:

1st. Vision.

You must have a clear and compelling VISION for the future of your organization. Your vision is a picture of where you want the organization to end up – of the big picture of how it should look in as much sensory rich detail as possible.

Leadership starts from within. If you have a clear picture of where you want the organization to end up – then your conversation, actions, and goals will tend to fall in line with this vision and ultimately manifest itself.

2nd. Communication.

Having a clear vision of the future is valueless unless you become exceedingly effective at communicating that vision to others.

That does NOT mean that you have to be a gifted public speaker – many great leaders (including Thomas Jefferson among others) were not gifted speakers.

You may communicate your vision through pictures, public speeches, written communications, or through ANY media – as long as your message gets through to the intended recipients in as compelling a way as possible.

Read Part 2 here and Part 1 here.

If you find someone who’s good, using these contracting sites I’ve outlined in previous posts in this series, actually pay them more than they expect when the job is done. That creates an instant loyalty. We talked before about how these countries have currencies and economies that, because our economies in certain Western countries are better, if you give some people a bonus of $10 USD or $20 USD for a job, that’s massive.

It makes a big difference, and can be a whole days’ worth of work.

For you it’s nothing, really, it’s not much at all, another $10, but for these people it can feed their families for a couple of days, and that’s a lot.

This is just a way to create the loyalty and build a sense of team around what you’re doing.

Having team meetings is an important thing. Obviously, if geographic boundaries prohibit that, you can do it virtually through things like Skype, and that really helps to create the connections. But it does depend on what stage you’re at and how much work you have for these people.

Continuing then down this thread, let’s talk about how you can eliminate nearly all the tasks you might deal with online.

We can hand off the technological component quite easily. Another rather labor intensive aspect is writing the content for your site and also writing the marketing materials that you use to promote your site with.

One of the problems I encounter when I talk to people who are so-called ‘experts’ in their sight is that they take on an almost obsessive approach to overseeing the content and being the ones who develop the content. They must have every single thing in place and it all has to be personalized to them.

That’s great if I’m wanting to sign up to your program and I know that it’s all coming from you, but from a business perspective, and from a lifestyle perspective, it’s really actually bad for you to take on that approach.

I’m not saying reduce the quality of your content or be slack in any of those areas, because that will come back to bite you as well, but what I am saying is that you can put together some strategies and
follow a few different models where you can still give a ton of your own input, but not necessarily be there to type every single word yourself.

A prime example is a woman who is an acupuncturist. I met her at a workshop where I spoke and she was wanting to get in and do it all herself, like type it all up and write her own books, newsletters, write all the e-classes and all that sort of stuff.

I just sat down with her and after half an hour of chatting with her, I found out that she had a few of her seminars already recorded on DVD. She’d done a few consultations that she had recorded, but had never thought of using them for content in any way, shape or form. I got her to list out all the major topics, issues, and troubles that her clients have.

And I said to her, “Do you think you could get one of your clients to actually sit down with you for a three-hour block and just really blast your brain and ask you every single question about all the issues
that you have to deal with on a regular basis?”

You will be blown away at how much information you can produce from three hours of Q&A just from an e-class or a newsletter perspective. Once that audio file is created, there’s a ton of stuff you can do with it. You can leverage that to no end, in many ways.

A few examples that I gave her were to break them up into maybe 8- to 10-minute topics and she would have 25 – 30 pieces of content there already. She could get it all transcribed and create two to three ebooks out of that.

She could get someone to edit the information and create e-classes from those topics. She would give direction on how she would like it structured, because in three hours you can talk about a whole range of things, but for that three hour investment of time, with the right outsourcing and leveraging mindset, you don’t have to spend multiple hours developing your content and typing it all up yourself.

I really like the idea of using audio in that manner. I think people underestimate it. Even if you’re not a good speaker, the potential is for audio to get ideas on the table, and that can be converted to content, either through transcribing it or through continuous back and forth Q&A sessions with the right type of person who could ask you the right type of questions – and that can just be a customer of yours.

And if worse comes to worst, you write out a series of 25 questions and get someone – anyone – to ask you the questions and you just go on. You just do your spiel.

You could then deliver that content as MP3s, have it transcribed for text, you could have someone create brand new articles by taking your ideas and elaborating on them. There’s all kinds of ways. And audio is definitely the fastest way to get content into existence. It’s definitely quicker than writing and easier to do than creating videos, so that’s a really big tip for people to get started.

That could be applied for marketing or for content within your sites. It’s a great place to start!

And lately I’ve had alot of people come to me to ask about how to more efficiently achieve an outcome through better systems or more efficient processes.

So I’ve put together a three part series sharing some of my thoughts on the topic. It’s by no means super comprehensive, but I will share some gems to get you started.

I’m a big believer that lifestyle is important. If you’ve chosen the Internet as a lifestyle and you’re working on it as if you were working on a job, then you probably need to reevaluate your strategy.

The first step I’d recommend is checking out Tim Ferriss, who wrote The Four-Hour Work Week. That will definitely give you a mindset rock. Tim’s mind is really cool in terms of being lazy; I love being lazy as well. Not as lazy as Tim, I work a little more than four hours a week, but I don’t see it as work; I see it as play. When I’m in front of the computer, I’m having a great time.

But in terms of automating your business, the first thing you need to do is have a look at your core skill sets. What are you good at? Take out a piece of paper and write down your business, the topic of your blog, and where you can add the most value.

The initial urge will be that you want to do everything. Make a list.

If you’re busy one week or so, you’ll have 20 things instead of only ten things. And if you only get five things done, on the next list you’ll have 25 things. That process will never end. If you’re sitting there in front of your computer trying to do it all on your own, you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle that you will
never, ever win.

The first thing is to identify what you’re good at personally. I’m assuming you’re some sort of expert, some sort of recognized authority in a niche or industry. And if you’re not, you probably are able to associate with someone who is an expert or has some sort of knowledge in an industry.

Once you’ve identified your main skill set, you then need to identify the tasks that need to be done that would take you too long and waste too much of your time to do, but which are still important to get done.

For example, recently I purchased a website marketing program. There’s a lot of installing of tags and all sorts of different technical things that need to be done on a site. I have neither the time nor the inclination to do them, so I find someone who is able to do that quickly and much more effectively and efficiently than me.

I pay them usually very little, and we’ll talk later about some of the developing countries who have a lot of really good workers who work for very little. It’s not a bad thing, just that the market rates for their current situations are not very high, so what seems low to you is actually a fair price to them.

Then I get them to do it and I can spend my time doing the stuff that I see as valuable to me.

So, first identify your core talents and skills, and also identify other things that are of paramount importance to the success of what you’re doing.

Then identify the things that you’re not good at.

Maybe you haven’t got a blog yet, so you need to set up a blog. You need to have some kind of name capture to bring people into your website, for example. If it ain’t your skill, don’t do it!

You can’t say, “It’s not getting done!” It IS important. They need to be done. But not by you!

Please check back next week, when part #2 of this series comes out. You’ll get some specific insights into what I do and how I do it.

You might think I’ll be there at Acer Arena to witness is, but I won’t. You see, tickets were literally sold within hours of the pre-release! So, hell yes I was bummed. Tickets are now going for upwards of $600 on eBay. Now THAT is a market, and its easy to see why MMA is undisputedly the fastest growing sport on the planet.

The UFC organise events every 2-3 weeks, enough to keep their fans satiated, but still leaving them wanting more. They’ve branched out all over the world and audiences are clambering to get in to their events, which almost always sell out. And not only that, some of the PPV numbers are just massive, rivalling and even surpassing other sports like boxing and football. They are growing so fast it will be interesting to see how the organisation handles the growth, and how its president Dana White handles his time. Right now it seems he’s everywhere – choosing and cutting fighters, doing deals with venues, and even making appearances on the hit tv show ‘Ultimate Fighter’. As the UFC gets bigger and bigger he will definitely have let some of this stuff go if the company is to grow without a bottleneck.

Now let’s look at the fighters. First I want to preface this by saying I’m an exercise physiologist/scientist and have worked with many elite athletes. When I look at a UFC fighter, it amazes me as to how extreme their sport is. So lets take a look at how the best athletes prepare, and how you can take those same lessons and apply it in your business.

Before a fight, they usually take 4-6 weeks of their lives and commit to a training ‘camp’. This removes them totally from their normal daily routines and people and FORCES them to train, eat, sleep and recover. They also strategise and watch footage of their opponent, putting together a strategy to beat them.

How does this apply to you?
Do you find your productivity explodes when you have a deadline? When you’ve made it public and other people expect a good performance from you? If you answered yes, and you KNOW this works for you, why not turn all your projects into 4-6 week ‘camps’, make yourself accountable and get a great team on board?

The best fighters spend their camps training at the best academies available – Chute Box, AKA, Miletich, Team Quest and Greg Jackson to name a few. Here’s a beehive where the only other bees you bump into are killer bees. Guys that are way better than you and push you time and time again until your altitude can’t help but rise. GSP (one of the best pound for pound fighters on the planet) said after his 4 round mauling of BJ Penn: “my training was so hard, the fight was easy”.

How does this apply to you? Are you surrounding yourself with people who beat YOU up? Or are you comfortable…..? Do you have access to business minds that help expand your context? Fellow entrepreneurs that inspire you with great ideas? You don’t have to find the worlds best organisations to push you. There are people who excel in your circle of influence right now. Hang out with them!

This blows me away. The term MIXED martial arts is just that: a melting pot of fused disciplines that a fighter can draw on to submit, knock out or defeat their opponent. There is Jiu Jitsu, Boxing, Muay Thai, Wrestling, Judo to name a few. Some fighters are incredibly gifted and good in all areas, although the top of the foodchain fighters are exceptional in 1 or 2 disciplines.

How does this apply to you? Are you spreading yourself too thin by trying to be a master of everything in your business? Just like UFC fighters do, you’ll get beaten up in business if you try this strategy. Focus on the stuff you’re good at. Then get BETTER at it, and find a team to help you with the stuff that you aren’t good at.

With that being said, any fight could end with a lucky punch. And just like in business sometimes things are unpredictable. But every fighter has gotten back up to fight another day. And you should too!

Questions pre-determine the answer. The size of your question determines the size of your answer. Few people ever ask million dollar earning, inventing, innovating, generating and creating questions. They are yours to ask.

The difference between earning $100,000 per year and a million dollars per year is one zero. To earn a $100,000 per year a person must
work 250 days @ $400 a day. To earn a million a year the $400 must be increased to $4,000 per day. The difference is one zero.

If your loved ones life depended on it could you do it? The answer : “YES!”

Statistics prove that each millionaire creates ten new jobs and each billionaire creates ten thousand new jobs.

As you ask yourself and others better questions, your results will vastly improve, the world will be better off, your quantity and quality of service will expand, the difference you make will experience quantum change, and you will leave a profound legacy.

A coach communicates with you in order to help you achieve certain results. But its more than just talk – a coach doesn’t just have a conversation with you. A coach helps you identify goals you desire. He helps you create a perfect plan.

A Coach helps you understand what might prevent you from getting it. A coach helps you prepare for the worst yet helps you expect the best. A coach helps you stay accountable to your commitments.

All the worlds greatest elite athletes and super successful people have one. How about you?

In the sport called LIFE …Do you have one? If not, why not?

And get creative when you’re doing this! Think it through. If your time is so valuable—and it is because once it’s gone, it’s gone, and you can never get it back—then why not combine some of those valuable activities to increase your personal value and succeed in life? Why not walk around the neighborhood every night after dinner with your kids and talk to them? Work on health and family at once!

Remember, time is more valuable than money. How you’re investing your time is even more important than how you’re investing your money. Spend it wisely.

2. Live Your Life On Purpose – What separates motivational thinkers from the unsuccessful is that they believe they’re doing what they were put here to do. The difference between this and just living, is that the latter is just getting through the week with the least problems. But when you live your life on purpose, your main concern is doing the job right. For the entrepreneur this means finding a cause you believe in and building your business around it.

3. Be Willing to Pay the Price – Be willing to pay the price for your dreams. Wanting a big house, a luxury car, and a million dollars in the bank is all very nice, and everyone wants these things – but are you willing to pay the price to get them? This is one of the major differences between the successful and unsuccessful.

4. Stay Focused – Every day we’re bombarded with hundreds of tasks, phone calls, messages, and everyone competing for our time. Focusing requires giving up something in the present because you are investing your time in something that will pay off big-time down the road. Jack Canfield and Mark Hanson were turned down by 30 publishers when they submitted the first “Chicken Soup for the Soul” book. Instead of giving up, they stayed focused on their goal and did four or five interviews per day for radio, TV, and newspapers, for five days a week for a whole year. Eventually, a small publisher decided to take a chance, and of course now it’s a best-seller that spawned an entire series that have sold more than 10 million copies.

5. Become An Expert in Your Field – One striking factor all successful people have in common is how seriously they take their profession. They strive to be the best at what they do, and do almost anything to improve. If someone followed you around all day with a video camera at your business, would it be a tape you’d be proud of or embarrassed about? Make the decision today to work at being the best in your field. How? By finding out what the “best” in your field are doing, and do what they do.

6. Write Out a Plan for Achieving Your Goals – Write out an action plan/map for how you’re going to achieve your goals. Trying to reach your goals without a plan is like trying to drive from Los Angeles to Chicago without a map. A goal that isn’t written down is merely a wish or fantasy.

7. Never Give Up – Never, never, never give up. When you’re fully committed to achieving your goal, giving up is not an option. You must be willing to do whatever it takes to make it happen. The power of perseverance is an awesome force. As someone once said, “inch by inch it’s a cinch”. Think of the lowly inchworm – if it pondered the length of the trip from start to finish before it started, it probably would never move. To a worm’s point-of-view, the garden path must look like a trip to Mars. Never give up! Keep on going like the Eveready battery bunny, and pretty soon you’re there.

8. Don’t Delay – Nobody knows how much time they have left to accomplish their dreams, and we must remember that we don’t have forever. The clock is ticking, and sooner or later your number comes up and you’re gone. Successful achievers know this too, but they don’t view it as a “negative”. Achievers use it to “spur them on”. They go after what they want as energetically and as passionately as possible, for as long as they have.

2. Rich people don’t use the word maybe – they prefer a straight yes or no.

3. Poor people concentrate on cash flow and earnings while rich people focus on increasing net worth.

4. Rich people experience the same fears and hesitancies as any one but realize procrastination costs money.

5. Poor people worry about making the right decision – rich people analyze the facts and then decide anyway – as often as not using their gut feel.

Are you sitting comfortably? I’ll bet you are. Or if not, you pretty soon will be! Because we humans like our comforts don’t we? We live in nice homes that we fill with cozy furniture and surround ourselves with things and people that we feel at ease with.

This week’s Post is all about being comfortable or, more particularly, your comfort zone, how it limits you and how you can break out of it.

There are two types of comfort – physical, where we want to experience wellbeing, and emotional where we just feel right about or simply accept what we are doing.

In the second type, some people – not us of course – are actually only comfy being miserable, moaning about life or complaining about their health. You know them, don’t you? Even uncomfortable clothing can be comfortable if it gives us an emotional check mark that we are conforming to fashion.

It’s the same with work or business projects: we get settled into a job and a particular way of doing things. We know the people we like to work with and avoid those we don’t.

We stick with it because it becomes our comfort zone – the set of things we are prepared to do without becoming anxious – inhabiting an area where it seems there’s no sense of risk.

And, as I’ve suggested, it doesn’t even have to be nice in there – plenty of people wallow in comfort zones of poverty, inadequacy and misfortune, with no apparent desire to get out.

All these things confirm our way of seeing the world. They’re really just a variation of ‘habit’ – things that we do repeatedly till they become the norm and we are stuck in a rut performing them – and they are nearly always way below what we are capable of achieving.

We opt for a totally unfounded sense of security, a form of mental conditioning that leads to stagnation and boredom. But we feel safe. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that even when great, positive things happen outside the realm of what makes us feel OK, we somehow sense that it’s not quite right – it becomes uncomfortable at an unconscious level, if you like, and we yearn to get back to the ‘old ways’.

People even have different levels of comfort when dealing with money. If they are used to a certain level of income any additional earnings may simply have to be disposed of through unnecessary purchases in order to stay in the zone.

Studies suggest, for example, that the vast majority of people who unexpectedly come into big money – such as from winning the lottery – are actually ill at ease with their new found wealth.

On the surface, they may tell you they’re over the moon but it’s surprising how many of them then devote their energy to what seems to be almost a frantic effort to get rid of their money and, as the Beatles would say, ‘get back to where you once belonged.’ And most of them succeed too, losing their money and personal relationships along the way!

The comfort zone is the norm and most people live there every day.

It’s as if we are linked by a giant piece of elastic that pins us near the centre of a comfort circle. As we get nearer and nearer to the edge of that circle – the boundary of our comfort zone – the more powerful is the ‘pull’ that holds us back.

The truth is that our unconscious, instinctive behavior is to maintain our comfort zone. What lies beyond though is a fantastic world of change and opportunity. But we need to make a conscious effort to escape.

If you’re reading this, chances are that pretty well all of the things you want to achieve in life lie outside of these boundaries, don’t they?

For, no truly great people live permanently inside the comfort zone. If they find themselves in it, they pretty quickly move out. Indeed, there are some who almost relish being in unfamiliar territory.

Competitive athletes are a prime example of people who push themselves by sheer force of will beyond their existing comfort zone to achieve success. They are prepared to travel through the pain barrier for the benefits of what is on the other side.

And, guess what. One they’ve gone beyond their previous boundaries they find themselves in territory which, after a while, feels just as comfortable as their previous zone. So they push themselves forward again.

It’s the same thing that motivates explorers – past and present – astronauts and entrepreneurs. They provide powerful examples that can help us identify our own comfort zones and teach us how to break through to new and exciting areas of growth and prosperity where we will feel truly at home. Invariably, that’s what successful people have done to achieve their dreams and goals.

As you might expect from previous classes, the comfort zone is born out of mental conditioning, your mind set. Fear of change, fear of the unknown, insecurity, keep us inside. And eventually we stagnate, accepting our situation as if there was nothing we can do about it.

But there is. Here’s a fairly simple four-step process I’ve found to be very effective in tackling this stagnation, enabling people not only to step outside of their personal comfort zones but also to reach a point where they find those old behaviors unacceptable – and they never want to go back.

Identify

First all, you need to know where the boundaries are of the comfort zones you want to change. It’s not really that difficult to do. Mostly we already know them as the situations and circumstances we consciously try to avoid. But, just to be sure, spend some time imagining yourself in a situation where you’d really like to be. For example do you want to be able to mix well socially? Mentally put yourself there right now. How does it feel? Are you cringing a bit inside? Or how about being a stock market investor. Can you feel what it’s like to place some of your hard-earned money on a stock? Do you have the jitters? If so, then you’re outside your comfort zone.

Small steps

Some people are capable of just bursting through the boundaries of their comfort zone but for most of us the challenge is better met by taking small steps. Select a realistic, realizable situation where you feel modestly uncomfortable and actually put yourself in it. This could be something for instance like speaking in public – not a stadium full of people just a small gathering of friends or associates. Even if you can’t positively identify your boundaries, just think of something you do regularly – even eating, smoking or drinking (the sort of things from which some people think they derive comfort) and decide you’re going to do things differently from now. Experience proves that most of our fears or concerns are more imagined than real; so tell yourself that what has been holding you back is nothing more than a set beliefs, without any foundation. Just do it.

Repetition

The first time you move out of the comfort zone won’t necessarily be easy – that’s why most people never do it. But the fact that you are reading this is evidence enough to me that you do want to break out. And your reward is that the second time you repeat your chosen action it will be less painful. And the third, and so on. Eventually, you will discover that you are now comfortable with something that previously terrified you. It has become your new comfort zone and you never want to return to the old you!

Moving forward

Successful people share a number of common characteristics. One of them is that they never ‘stand still’. They are always looking for new opportunities and challenges, even if these lie outside of their personal comfort zones. The same must apply to you if you are to achieve the success you strive for. Now that you have extended the boundaries of your comfort zone, you must do so again – first within your ‘test’ situation and then with other new challenges you have identified. If you keep on doing this you will set up the mind set that makes you comfortable at the higher levels of activity and achievement.

The great thing is that once you are comfortable about feeling uncomfortable, so to speak, you will find you have the courage to apply this to pretty well any situation where you might previously have been held back.

Expelling your unfounded beliefs will provide the confidence and strength to move into new territory and with that comes the invisible attraction of success and wealth. When you exude confidence and determination, people and circumstances just behave differently – in your favor.