The proverbial rat race is the one paradoxical location that most people have just as hard a time getting into as they do getting out. While this statement may seem contradictory, it is true. The rat race, according to Robert Kiyosaki, is the “churn and burn pursuit of a paycheck.” While the Rich Dad organization helps people find their way out of the rat race, this article pauses a moment to reiterate how important it is to first find a way to get into that rat race. Being successful at business is basically a proposition of learning how to create your own little flywheel of commerce. Once you create a system for financial gain, business becomes a game of duplication. However, finding your own money stream can be difficult. This topic is of great concern to me since the workforce I generally support is the Free Agent, the small business owner, or the individual who is a self-proclaimed “Me Inc.” entity. I work with people who want to live their lives and earn their livings by doing those things that inspire them.

Therefore, finding a way into the “rat race” is more than a proposition of being able to eat. It is a necessary step on the path to owning your professional satisfaction. The good news is that neither magic nor voodoo is required for success. Here are a few ideas for those who want to learn how to make money.

1. Interview someone who is doing exactly what you want to be doing, earning what you want to be earning. Find out the key behaviors that they consistently perform and attribute their success to. How many presentations, sales calls, follow-up e-mails and new business networking meetings must they complete in order to get a new account or client? Take notes. Experiment. Discover which components work for you. Create your own system of monthly, weekly, daily tasks that contribute to your bottom-line. Create a system for charting your progress. Keep track of your statistics.
2. If you are looking to get hired for a particular job, read C.J. Hayden’s book Get Hired Now! Another handy reference book is the most recent version of What Color is Your Parachute? Both offer you ideas and lists of key activities and behaviors that typically land folks jobs.
3. If you are looking to build new business for yourself or your own small company, invest in C.J. Hayden’s book Get Clients Now! You could take a course on this same material. Learn the basics of client acquisition. There is a science to the process.
4. Sit with your own intuitive nature and generate your own creative ideas. Then be brave enough to experiment on these ideas. Use a coach or a sounding board to debrief after each experiment. Note what worked, what didn’t, what you learned and what new action can now be generated by what you’ve experienced.
5. Read the book Now, Discover Your Sales Strengths or Strengths Finder 2.0. Take the test that comes with the book and learn what talents are waiting for you to develop so you can better sell yourself and your offerings.
6. Regardless of the industry, seek out the people you admire. Shadow, observe, as well as interview them. Then adapt their formulas and apply to your own situation.

This is a simple and short list of how to get started in creating your own system to show yourself the money. Everyone has the capacity to build a system for creating an income. Find yours. Learn to duplicate it, and therein lies one basic secret to your own business success.

Lyn Christian is the founder of SoulSalt, Inc., a coaching and coach training company. She is passionate about the “free-agent” worker who wants to earn their living and live their lives by doing what inspires them. Get more information by visiting www.soulsalt.com or contact Lyn directly through lyn@thecoachtoolkit.com.

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Richard Paul Evans

Sometimes it takes guts and audacity to create a seedbed for success. One writer that I consider quite entrepreneurial is a great example of both. Bestselling author Richard Paul Evans is a local legend here in Salt Lake City. And for me he is even a bit of a hero – an example of doing the “gut honest” thing in those critical moments when all that separates fate from fortune is a tightrope walk of courage.

Several years ago he realized how much joy he found in being a parent. He wanted to put his passion into some tangible form and leave a legacy to his children. He wanted them to someday understand how he felt about them. The project became a book titled The Christmas Box. He self-published about 20 copies and gave them as gifts to his family and close friends. Buzz began to build around this book and soon Richard was getting calls from local book stores wanting to know where to order them.

Richard took notice and dove into his own bank account, invested in more books, purchased marketing materials and eventually showed up at a book show in Colorado.

And this is where Mr. Evans really made an impression on me. While at the book show he noticed that his plan to give out books was failing.  Hardly any book store owners came to his booth. He inquired and learned that most of the owners were avoiding the displays such as his. Instead they were out in the halls getting free books from the rows upon rows of authors who had been invited to be there. He could have settled with the fact that he had spent time and money to be in the wrong place at the show. That’s not what he did. Instead he grabbed his books, snuck into an empty space on a table between two authors and set up camp to sign and give out his books. Almost immediately Richard was approached by one of the show organizers. She had caught him at his ruse. But he had come too far to give up so instead of choking he looked up at the organizer and said, “I’m sorry I’m late.”

She blinked, cleared her throat and announced that she’d get him some water. Richard spent the rest of the day signing books and giving them away.

So how does this tie back to you? I have three suggestions:

First, Richard was awake enough that when the market told him he had a winning product, he listened and believed.

Next, he ran at the market. He didn’t wait for things to happen to him. He created and crafted a way for things to happen by going to places like the book show.

Finally, in the clutches with obstacles, Richard did the bravely crazy acts that such moments call for like sneaking onto a table.

If you are a small business person like Neil and I. you have to admire someone who is willing to be both gutsy and crazy about their own success. Do you have a story about how you’ve bravely gone where you’d rather not go? We would love to hear about it.

If you enjoyed this story find out more about Richard Paul Evans at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/soulsaltcoaching?feature=mhum

Lyn Christian is the founder of SoulSalt, Inc., a coaching and coach training company. She is passionate about the “free-agent” worker who wants to earn their living and live their lives by doing what inspires them. Get more information by visiting www.soulsalt.com or contact Lyn directly through lyn@thecoachtoolkit.com.

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One of the things I’ve learned as a coach over the past 12 years is this:

 “We can’t be responsible for something we don’t know. Once we come to fully know and be aware, that’s when we are responsible to take action.”

Let me help you become aware of the simple concept of avoiding BMHAAW so that you might be more aware, responsible and less unrealistic. Part of enjoying life and reaping the benefits of being fully engaged with your life comes by being aware, and able to respond well. 

The unhealthy practice of BMHAAW snares almost every human being. It is the frustrating, sometimes overwhelming practice of feeling like “I’m beating my head against a wall. If health and wellness matter, beating our heads against a wall is not a position one would want to stay in for long. 

Note that BMHAAW is a much different occurrence than having your head beaten against a wall. BMHAAWI is self inflicted. Now how do we know this? Take a moment to observe the nearest, friendly neighborhood wall. Notice that the wall doesn’t have legs, it doesn’t have feet, and it doesn’t have any arms either. The wall cannot walk over to you and hit itself against your head. What has to take place in order for us to feel like we’re hitting our head against a wall is this: we literally have to walk over to the wall on our own volition and start banging our own heads against the stationary object. 

Here are a few examples:

• A new law states that you must now appear at the DMV in order to renew your driver’s license (a wonderful example of a bureaucratic wall). You have not had any moving or parking violations. You don’t want to go into the DMV to renew. You decide not to go = beating your head against the wall.
• Property taxes are due (a classic wall). You don’t want to pay them. You decide to avoid paying them = beating your head against a wall.
• You lose your parking slip while parking at the airport. You know the rules say that lost slips will result in a minimum payment of $25.00 (another wall). You know you lost it and you won’t be able to find it. You try to negotiate with the cranky and un-empowered parking attendant = 9 times out of 10 you are hitting your head against a wall.

One thing I’d like to conclude with is this: Please don’t make a villain out of an innocent wall.

Let’s go back to this thought: “We can’t be responsible for something we don’t know. Once we come to fully know and be aware, that’s when we are responsible to take action.”

Now that you are aware of the BMHAAW, safeguard your head. You’ll save yourself time and sanity.

About the Author:  Lyn Christian is the founder of SoulSalt, Inc., a coaching and coach training company.  She is passionate about the “free-agent” worker who wants to earn their living and live their lives by doing what inspires them.  Get more information by visiting www.soulsalt.com or contact Lyn directly through lyn@thecoachtoolkit.com.

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As much as we don’t like to admit it, we entrepreneurs are human.  (However, we do have a strong sense of our super-human powers).

By being human, we are governed by a set of personal values. What we value shows in our thoughts, our feelings and our actions. To be sure, when we speak of a values system, we are not talking about religion, ethical or moral values. We’re talking about a far more broad sense of the word. We’re talking about the components of an individual’s unique and personal inner compass system.

Values are pieces of an inner code that when we align with these elements, as we find ourselves in our own personal stream of flow. When our actions are aligned properly with what we value most, we are living within our own individual boundaries of personal integrity.

When Angie says that connecting with her family is one of her core values, and when she carves out time to put together a movie about her Father’s emigration to the United States, she feels empowered. By so doing this, she has a stronger sense of being grounded and sure. Her performance is enhanced with a certain amount of peace of mind that she is on a path that is “right” for her. As busy as she is as a co-owner of several small businesses, Angie is willing to sacrifice time on this creative project.

When Phillip says that physical fitness and wellness are at the top of his value list, and when he continues to eat junk food and miss workout sessions, he feels a growing sense of despondence. He is beginning to become depressed. Phillip is the proud owner of a new video rental franchise. His business is doing extremely well. However, personally he has recently become less and less capable of experiencing exuberance about his professional wins. Phillip hasn’t found a way to clearly make what he says is most important to him the most important activity of his day or week.

In a nutshell, your core values are your unique sense of character, integrity and those enduring tenets that serve as your guiding principles. We are most satisfied when our personal set of values are guiding our actions.

Neil and I would like to know:

• What are your core values?
• How much of your life is in tune with these core values?
• How much of your work-life is led by them?

If you’d like one of us to take you through a values clarification exercise, either read the chapter of our book on Core Ideology, or send us an e-mail. One of us will personally take you through this valuable exercise.

About the Author:  Lyn Christian is the founder of SoulSalt, Inc., a coaching and coach training company.  She is passionate about the “free-agent” worker who wants to earn their living and live their lives by doing what inspires them.  Get more information by visiting www.soulsalt.com or contact Lyn directly through lyn@thecoachtoolkit.com.

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When you can look yourself in the eye you are you able to pull yourself fully in the present?

When you can work fully in the present, your feet are firmly planted on the soil, and that leads to making visions become more real one day at a time.

Can you look yourself in the mirror? How long can you stand there?

About the Author:  Lyn Christian is the founder of SoulSalt, Inc., a coaching and coach training company.  She is passionate about the “free-agent” worker who wants to earn their living and live their lives by doing what inspires them.  Get more information by visiting www.soulsalt.com or contact Lyn directly through lyn@thecoachtoolkit.com.

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Neil and I earn our living through coaching.  The power tools we reach for daily are Active Listening and Powerful Questioning.

For today, if you allow this blog entry to be your self-coach, we have just one question:

If you stopped and looked behind you right this very minute, what would you find in your wake?

About the Author:  Lyn Christian is the founder of SoulSalt, Inc., a coaching and coach training company.  She is passionate about the “free-agent” worker who wants to earn their living and live their lives by doing what inspires them.  Get more information by visiting www.soulsalt.com or contact Lyn directly through lyn@thecoachtoolkit.com.

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Our usual way of thinking tends to stifle our creative thought processes, but there is an alternative perspective we can adopt.  Traditional reasoning often undercuts our creativity.  We get so stuck thinking in the box that we can’t imagine any other alternative.  And when we think we’ve had a genius moment and climbed over the sides of our cubic prison, we’ve discovered that we’re inside a larger box, and we get stuck. 

John Dewey, one of the great forefathers of our modern educational system, wrote about this idea nearly a century ago.  His label for this whole process was called Occupational Psychosis.  Now, he’s not writing about any big psychological problems.  What he means is that we develop some broad patterns of what we think fits with what (the round peg should always go in the round hole).  Dewey thought that we get so fixed in our thought patterns that when we encounter new situations we just mold our perceptions of what we see to fit, or we throw up our hands at the chaos that we’ve just encountered.  What we don’t do very often is engage in creative thinking. 

Our traditional problem solving process says to identify the problem(s), identify the solution(s), pick the best one and then just charge ahead.  This pattern works for most situations but it is not a creative pattern.  In our thinking behind the problem solution pattern, is a set of assumptions about what is right or wrong, and what is good or bad.  This pattern simply applies our set of assumptions to the current problem.  We never look at the assumptions themselves.  We get so stuck in the traditional pattern that we try to apply it to all of our problematic situations.

Here’s a quick example that I think we’ve all encountered.  A “big box” store comes into town and opens in close vicinity to local hardware, dry goods, and grocery stores.  The common solution would be something like:

• Try to compete on price
• Close
• Try to zone ‘em out of business.

Basically, you look at what similar stores have done and chose to do one of the same things. 

To be creative, we have to develop some different ways of thinking about our problems.  We have to be open to creativity.  One theory that I think describes this open thinking process well comes from a philosopher named Kenneth Burke and he calls it “perspective by incongruity”.  It simply means bringing two ideas or concepts together that seem unrelated or incongruous.  Our thinking is jarred by a comparison we haven’t seen before, and we may start to think about traditional assumptions.  Our thinking has been taken to a new level when we focus on thinking about our thinking rather than thinking about the problem. 

Physicist Niels Bohr believed that if you hold two opposite ideas together and then suspend your thoughts, your mind moves to a new level.  This suspension of thought allowed an intelligence beyond thought to take form.  In his case, Bohr could imagine light as both a particle and as a wave and that led to monumental breakthrough in the field of physics.

There is one sad note.  There is no formula for creativity.  We can spend time talking about creative people and creative processes, problem solving, what usually works and what doesn’t work.  In the end, the only way to be creative is to be creative.  Everyone has moments of creativity.  We’ve all stood up straight, slapped ourselves on the forehead and said “duh!” in reflection of something that we’ve missed.  We’ve all had those moments of eureka and we’ve also all experienced those dreaded moments when all we can think of is the same old things.

The good news is that the more we do the things that allow our personal creativity to happen, the more we will be personally creative.  What do you do to think different thoughts?  What are you willing to do?

 About the Author: Neil Phillips is a founding partner of Team Connections and Director of the DSWA Coach Excellence program.  Get more from Neil on his Direct Selling Notebook , the DSWA Coaching Center and Twitter.

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Neil and I earn our living through coaching.  The power tools we reach for daily are Active Listening and Powerful Questioning.

For today, if you allow this blog entry to be your self-coach, we have just one question:

What part of your business are you holding hostage? Meaning…if you set it free how would it would really take off?  Does allowing it to soar really scare you?

About the Author:  Lyn Christian is the founder of SoulSalt, Inc., a coaching and coach training company.  She is passionate about the “free-agent” worker who wants to earn their living and live their lives by doing what inspires them.  Get more information by visiting www.soulsalt.com or contact Lyn directly through lyn@thecoachtoolkit.com.

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Neil and I earn our living through coaching.  The power tools we reach for daily are Active Listening and Powerful Questioning.

For today, if you allow this blog entry to be your self-coach, we have just one question:

 How do you create a life that works with a life that matters?

About the Author:  Lyn Christian is the founder of SoulSalt, Inc., a coaching and coach training company.  She is passionate about the “free-agent” worker who wants to earn their living and live their lives by doing what inspires them.  Get more information by visiting www.soulsalt.com or contact Lyn directly through lyn@thecoachtoolkit.com.

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You’ve heard the phrase, “It’s ok to make mistakes.”

How about this one:

“Anything worth doing is worth doing a lousy job with–just to get it started.” (See Positioning, The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout pg.184)

Before you push back, reflect on these notions:

• If the idea in your head isn’t worth doing, don’t start it at all.
• If the idea is worthwhile, don’t procrastinate and don’t go for perfection.
• If the idea is worth doing, jump in right now and get started.  Risk a tiny bit and see what develops in the first chunk of completed work.

Dr Edward Deming, the late, nerdy and bespectacled professor from MIT who is known for his work in quality and productivity said it this way “Put 85% of your effort into getting the first 15% of the process going.”

I’m just suggesting you take a moment and reconsider that sometimes doing a lousy job is better than not doing anything at all. Here’s an example of how this idea played out in real life:

Once upon a time, Harry Nelson, Director of Audio Programs at Franklin Covey, and I  started a new company called Headtrip Audio. We produce an A-zine or audio magazine that acts as a portable coach for coaches and entrepreneurs. It was a monthly CD that served up the wisdom of people who are succeeding at small business owners. Harry and I had talked about our idea for over two years. Finally during lunch that particular day we decided to put some money, time and effort into the game and get the first issue completed. We put 85% of our effort into just that one product. As we look back, while this first product wasn’t our best, it was a catalyst. Today we have a total of 12 CD’s and a great product.

Here are more samples of how to apply the “do a lousy job” mentality:

Client A is focused completely this month on getting her business card designed and printed. That’s it.

Client Z’s focus is on writing a book. He succeeds when a proposal is written and an appointment is made with his agent.

Client L is creating a pilot program, or test for a grand idea. Eventually it will require at least 50 volunteers to run the program. She is starting with one volunteer this month and getting the structure laid out while she learns more about potential pitfalls and opportunities.

What about you? What project or idea do you have banging around in your mind?

What’s going to happen if you never, ever get that idea going?

Don’t let that happen.

Pick one step you’ve been procrastinating. Scale it down. Get started. If you need help in knowing how to get out of your own inertia, call me or Neil.

About the Author:  Lyn Christian is the founder of SoulSalt, Inc., a coaching and coach training company.  She is passionate about the “free-agent” worker who wants to earn their living and live their lives by doing what inspires them.  Get more information by visiting www.soulsalt.com or contact Lyn directly through lyn@thecoachtoolkit.com.

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