Business Genius

Tara McMullin wrote: Becoming an influencer seems fun. Depending on your interests, being a vlogger or influencer might look like luxury travel, great food, or stylish clothes. Maybe it looks like being an athlete, a musician, or a memoirist. But there’s a difference between performing these roles and actually doing the work of those roles.

Are you one of the many employers, workers or business owners who confuses delay with procrastination? Learn how to tell the difference between delay and procrastination. You might believe you're guilty of something you're not even doing! And, if it turns out you are procrastinating, find out what you can do to overcome it.

As a business advisor, I often see smart, creative and well-educated people ignore the essential requirements for building a successful business. Generally, it’s because they’ve allowed themselves to be convinced an online (or digital) business is different. It isn’t. A website is not a business. It’s a marketing tool. If you want to make money with it, you need a solid sustainable business behind it. Build your business first, then build a website that works to market it well.

The anorexic entrepreneur, obsessed with achieving success, pursues it with the passion of a spiritual quest, believing it is a lifestyle choice. Unable to recognize when success has arrived, it remains forever elusive often resulting in financial, emotional and spiritual bankruptcy. Today’s episode includes an exercise to keep this from happening to you.

Every business owner and aspiring thought leader faces three challenges: getting good, getting going and getting known! Lisa O’Neill of Thought Leaders breaks this down beautifully for us so we can become commercially smart.

An email from the Daily Stoic reminded me that given how terrible most of the Roman emperors were, you might think that Marcus Aurelius was universally loved. Of course, this is not true. Plenty of people hated him, plenty of people thought they should be in charge and not him. (In fact, one of his best friends betrayed him in a terrible coup). It’s a given that all successful people attract haters. It’s not a matter of if, but when. That’s why you must prepare now rather than waiting until your first hater comes along …

On Dictionary.com, lexicographer Jane Solomon explains that the word influencer has been used in English since the mid-1600s, though back then it wasn’t a job title. In recent years, the term has become a catch-all for a certain kind of career track that is at the center of a burgeoning but profitable industry. As influencer continues to expand in English and pull new terms and meanings into its orbit, it is worthy of charting from a lexical perspective.

Most people prematurely cut off idea generation by immediately judging whether an idea belongs in the cabinet in the first place—by evaluating what’s reasonable, what’s probable, what’s doable. As a business coach, this is one behaviour I must quickly help them unlearn for their own benefit. In this episode, I share insights from business genius Ozan Varol, author of Think Like a Rocket Scientist which, by the way, is a really great read. Ozan is a master of weaving interesting stories from real life to support better ways of thinking and working. In the example of his writing I’m about to share, he explains why it’s important to shut down your mind to be better at creating.

Herbert Freudenberger defined burnout in 1975 as emotional exhaustion, decreased sense of accomplishment, and depersonalization. Essentially, when we burn out, we’ve been caring too much for too long, seeing a lack of impact from our actions, and burning the empathy candle at both ends.

Achieving a superhuman level of efficiency, so that you never need to disappoint anyone, or make tough choices about how to use your time? Impossible. Satisfying the contradictory demands of maddening bosses (or family members) who can’t decide what they want? Impossible. Bringing a creative project into the world precisely as you envisaged it in advance? Impossible. Can you relate? If so, let me share with you how Oliver Burkeman breaks it down for us …

Looking for a new way to boost your productivity? Want to bring more enthusiasm to your work day? Theme days might be just what you need!

It’s only two little letters, but for many, no is such a scary word we hold ourselves back from saying it when we really should. Especially when we are afraid saying no means missing out on a big opportunity. An opportunity that would have catapulted us to success, or that will never come again. Most of the time that simply isn’t true. More importantly, it’s the saying yes to everything that holds us back from success which is why we must commit to mastering the beautiful no.

Clients don’t want to work with people who are perfect; they want to work with people who are REAL and not pretending to be something or someone they aren’t.

Are you a marketer or a thought leader? Do you know there is a difference between marketing and thought leadership? How about the three things all thought leaders have in common? Not sure if you’re on the right path for you if you want to be a thought leader? Let\s start a conversation about that with today’s episode!

The life you want is just beyond the challenges of self-doubt, fear and procrastination. To successfully navigate the disappointment many entrepreneurs encounter, you must create consistency in your life so you can focus on the things that matter most to you. And do the work needed to close the 3 gaps faced by every entrepreneur.

Marketing is simply a conversation you're having with strangers. The goal is to turn strangers into friends, friends into prospects, prospects into clients with as little efforts as possible. Then, you serve your clients and customers so well, they’ll be happy to introduce you to more strangers. To succeed with your marketing you must move the conversation along through 5 distinct stages and in this episode I explain what they are...

All marketing begins as an experiment in communication. Subtle changes  to your messaging don’t always create immediately noticeable results.  And it can be difficult to measure the impact of a different messaging  strategy because of the lag between when you make relevance-related  improvements and reap the benefits. Still, fine-tuning your relevance is  key to long-term marketing and sales success and this episode talks  about how to do just that.

Stuck in a rut? Living and working from pattern and habit alone? Rather  than consciously choosing how to spend the hours of your days and life  ... Get off the expressway to burnout and forget about work-life  balance! We explain what to do instead and offer our 3 best tips for  making the change in this week’s episode.

Everything matters to your marketing message: font, colours, even direction (as in images and your own body movements in video, livestreams and on stage). With direction being extremely important to effectively communicating your marketing message. Yet getting direction wrong is one of the most common conversion-killing mistakes people make in their marketing. Today I’ll explain why and what to do to fix it!

Is math anxiety crippling your business? Math trauma leftover from grade school can prevent even the smartest business owners from engaging with their business finances. Don’t let it destroy your business and personal life ... Math is part of doing business. You don’t have to struggle with anxiety over it. And you might be just one decision away from bringing home more bacon. This episode talks about how to keep math anxiety from stealing your joy and derailing your success as the money comes into your business.