The Blog - Where Business Collides with Human Nature

Mindfulness involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there's a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment.

Mindfulness is a popular method to handle emotions by paying attention to them. It is derived from the Buddhist concept Sati. 

You may practice mindfulness since a very young age but not realize it. Here are a couple examples:

At Lafayette Elementary School in Northwest Washington, Sofia Parodi recently took a coveted seat at the head of the classroom and asked a fellow fourth-grader to switch off the lights and instructed the class to “Close your eyes and take three deep breaths,” They fell into a familiar rhythm of silently counting their breaths, then sharing their experience with their classmates.. Source: The Washington Post

Mumpreneur Dani Matthews shares the weekly mindfulness schedule she has set. Source: The Huffington Post

Thich Nhat Hanh, the Vietnamese Buddhist leader who introduced mindfulness to Westerners (Google got first dibs on him as a guest speaker), once said, “The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention.” Yet for the majority of sentient beings today, simply getting through an episode of “The Big Bang Theory” without tending multiple screens is a quasi-mystical triumph. Naturally, the architects of our electronic age approach the situation as if it were an engineering problem.

... the architects of our electronic age have invented an app for that!

If you’ve ever been told that you could make easy money and it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Pyramid schemes often sound like enticing business deals, but fraudsters may use this “business model” - to take advantage of you.

"The SEC’s guidance on pyramid schemes advises investors to “exercise caution...if what is being sold is speculative or appears inappropriately priced.” But experts say this can be difficult to judge.

Pyramid-scheme operators have “learned the techniques of saying we’re a legitimate company,” by purporting to want to make money mostly from sales, rather than new recruits, said Joseph Mariano, chief of the Direct Selling Association.

There is no hard-and-fast test of whether a scheme is legitimate, according to lawyers. Instead, the decision rests on what is often a complicated analysis of revenues and other factors. “It can be like nailing Jell-O to a tree proving they’re pyramids,” said Kevin Thompson, an attorney for multilevel-marketing companies." - WSJ,com

Before you invest your time and money, it’s important to ask good questions and research the company.

Here are some typical characteristics of a pyramid scheme:

• Emphasis on recruiting
• No genuine product or service is sold
• Promises of high returns in a short period of time
• Easy money or “passive income” (money you earn without doing anything)
• No demonstrated revenue from retail sales

If your talent is "speaking and presenting" and you want to learn how to excel and implement webinars into your marketing mix, this is for you. Andrea Goodkind, Senior Marketing Manager at BrightTALK goes through the basic elements of doing webinars. Webinars are a great tool to create and nurture higher-quality leads.

"Keep it simple stupid." - Coined by Kelly Johnson

"Don't make me think." - Steve Krug wrote the book.

"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." - Confucius

"It is always the simple that produces the marvelous." - Amelia Barr

"In building a statue, a sculptor doesn't keep adding clay to his subject. Actually, he keeps chiseling away at the inessentials until the truth of its creation is revealed without obstructions. It is not daily increase but daily decrease; hack away the unessential." - Bruce Lee

You have heard wisdom about "simple" a thousand times but your brilliant and complex mind wants to add to the puzzle while you are hoping to provide a solution. A website page (aka landing page) is created to deliver awesome to someone interested in the topic. A conversion happens when someone shares contact information because they see the relevance, understand and believe. An over complicated mind can add more than what is necessary which makes people pause vs greasing the proverbial wheel to get an introduction.

Any successful entrepreneur has a dashboard which shows measures of guerrilla marketing success at any moment throughout the week. The terminology changes depending on the type of business and culture.  Metrics, KPI (Key Performance Indicators) or MOSvT (Measures Of Success vs. Target).

Business ownership and being an entrepreneur is about “I am responsible”. At times, this is interpreted as “I have the total freedom to do what I want.”

Success stories rarely include major failures along the way, the proverbial blood spilled, families splitting, health failing and people harmed.  

The difficulties can be avoided if they did not have a syndrome that prioritizes theirr hunger for freedom.

My response to those wanting to start a business or become an entrepreneur "Avoid the Freedom Syndrome”

Successful entrepreneurs are risk takers who are willing to consider "Chance Marketing" knowing there is a possibility of failure.  As a result, entrepreneurs are the ultimate target for salespeople selling advertising. Their pitch is: "Anything that improves the chance of improving sales is worth looking at."

It's been about seven years since I sat across the dinner table from Cameron who had the honor of being invited to celebrate Gary Vaynerchuk's 300th video blog for Wine Library TV. After dinner, my new friend says to connect and follow Gary V - so I did.  

No, we are not best friends (though I do have a book Gary V signed saying: "To my new BFF") but he does remain an inspiration and resource. What you may not know is that Gary Vaynerchuk is on HubSpot's advisory board.  As a HubSpot partner and perpetual inbound marketer, I appreciate working with a company with such an advantage.

Gary V. offers advice in his recent video to help you understand how to get in the New York Times, in front of the bigger celebrities or get connected to that BIG audience.

The term “teamwork” is overused and can easily become gobbledygook. Memberships, businesses, schools, and your business all say “Having teamwork helps to create success”. 

There is no disagreement that teamwork offers an advantage.  Even those who appear to be independent have a team of supporters, trainers, cheerleaders, service providers and generous skeptics. When it comes to talking about teamwork, you will hear “Yes!”

Talking about the concept is certainly a positive step. Singing songs, playing games, and keeping an open door for communication are all good but without a bigger commitment, is mostly fluff.

Entrepreneurs, solopreneurs and intrapreneurs may be worse at teamwork and developing a team than others because of the independent thought, impossible missions and impatience to accomplish the mission.  “Good enough today is not good enough tomorrow” is at the top of their mind create success.  A team can easily get confused, disheartened, fail and feel left out as yesterday we were going to do “this”, now we are going to do “that”.  These leaders also expect others to have the same passion and commitment and soon regress to "I will just do it myself." 

Time has always been a precious resource - but it is treasured even more so today. Present day lifestyles are often demanding and hectic. Because modern day society is challenged with busy schedules that are packed into limited timeframes, there are many people who want to know how to master time and relieve stress and pressures from deadlines.

Websites, social media and the Internet feed psuedonymity and anonymity while claiming "copyright" to their content.  It is simple enough to give yourself a fake name.  Even under a fake name you can own the copyright to content.  Your Twitter name can be a meme, mantra or brand.  Your eBay name can reflect the product you sell.  No one needs to know your real identity.  Even a website which has photos, videos and content can be fake, fake, fake.  The more technical term is that the website owner could have "psuedonymity and/or anonymity".

To understand the language we will review a few definitions.  Once these definitions are better understood, you can determine if your marketing strategy will be about standing behind a curtain and acting like the wizard in the Wizard of OZ or standing tall with pride and transparency to build a reputation which gains trust and forms relationships.

You have powers you have not yet fully realized. Within your grasp are talented people, tools and opportunities to make an impact in a bigger way. As you watch this video, consider what a talented team of artists & entrepreneurs can do to help you go bigger: