Place your ashes in a biodegradable urn with tree seeds and bury it and hey presto…soon you’ll be a big and strong tree. What an awesome idea. http://ow.ly/4QFJV

Anyone got other excellent or off-the-wall ideas of how they are going to dispose of themselves?

Steve 

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My fellow CEOs are a pretty switched on bunch of people and keep themselves up to date with most things. For a lot of them however the social media space has escaped them. The short video below is my 3 minute view on the ‘why’ and how to get started. Happy to talk to anyone who wants to learn more. Call me on 07545 855324. As always I encourage comments and positive discussion.

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I posted a blog about 6 months ago on this subject but on my way back from Vistage HQ in Winchester today I was again listening to Kris Kristopherson and I thought that it’s worth blogging about it again . He was singing…

“If you spend your time talking to the people who don’t listen to the things that you are saying who do you think’s gonna hear?”

It reminded me of how often we see someone pressing home their point relentlessly onto an uninterested person who is pretending to listen? A complete waste of time for both of them but the “I’m going to convince you if it kills me philosophy prevails” for the talker who’s wasting their time and the “I need to be polite” philosophy prevails for the listener who, of course, is doing anything but listening.

I do believe that without passion you have nothing. However, I would suggest that we must guard against our passion becoming overenthusiastic at the risk of our reputation and our business. If someone is not interested it’s not sensible use of our time to try to convince them. It may be a challenge but your time would be better spent on profitable challenges. Find someone to talk to who is interested in what you have to say and spend your time building relationships instead of destroying them. If you’re not interested in what someone has to say, tell them politely and suggest their time would be better spent talking to someone who may be interested. You’ll be doing them a favour.

Kris went on to sing…

“And if you should die explaining that the things that they complain about are things they could be changing who do you think’s gonna care?”

Food for thought maybe?

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This is video 3 in my series of short blogs on the elements of success.

We’ve identified desire as the overriding ingredient and agreed that you’ve got the passion, values and vision, and that it’s all about communicating and connecting. In my last blog we covered the need to establish your success team.

In this short video I’d like to talk to you about turning up and tuning in. I apologise in advance if it’s a bit ‘salesy’ as it was originally produced to send to a potential client (now actual client ).

Are you constantly and consistently turning up? When you turn up are you tuning in? Is you tuner working at its optimum?

Tomorrow I’ll cover Befita in more detail.

I’m tuning out and turning up somewhere else now.

My shop is currently undergoing a huge upgrade including superdoopermegawhackersmackerfortknowstyle security upgrades…please bear with us. You can order anything you wish by email or telephone in the interim.
Steve

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My previous blog introduced my deliberations regarding the elements that make up success and I had concluded that overall they came down to communicating and connecting. I did omit that the first thing that’s needed is DESIRE and thanks to John Murray for reminding me. I am presuming in these short blogs that the people who have the desire to succeed already have the passion, vision and values that are required to achieve it. So onwards….

In my view the first element for success is your success team. No one and certainly no one who has created significant success has ever achieved it on their own. This short video explains my thoughts on the success team…

If you don’t have your team in place already, go out and do it straight away. It can be formal peer group, an informal mastermind group, a kitchen cabinet or whatever. It only needs to be filled with people you respect, trust and can be open and honest with and can be the same with you.

I’ll be blogging tomorrow about turning up and tuning in.

I wish you every success.

Steve

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Spending over 20 years researching and analysing what makes successful people successful, I am now getting somewhere close to really understanding it. Each person is unique and so is each success story but the base elements that make up that success are consistent.

Many analysts more academic and capable than me have written about this for centuries. They all seem to whittle it down to between 7 and 47 elements. These all include Passion, Purpose, Vision and Values, and I start from the view that you have these otherwise you wouldn’t be in business and be ambitious to be successful.

It seems that everyone is talking about how to be successful these days. Maybe it’s the difficult trading climate. Maybe it’s just that we are all communicating and connecting more widely and deeply. There’s some rubbish written about how to be successful and there’s some fantastic insights written also. My quest has been to identify how it can be distilled into something each of us can understand from an early age; something we can learn about simply and quickly; something we can easily practice to rapidly become second nature because only when it forms part of our habits and normal daily practice does it actually work effectively.

Please offer alternate views to any of mine as this is how we all learn but taking Passion, Purpose, Vision and Values as a given – what other elements are needed for success?

I’ve created a series of short videos where I explain my view. The first is an overview of  the two most important elements that we all do, some well and some not so well. However, these are the areas I believe we all need to excel in if we are to succeed.

Success Element number 1 is discussed in my blog tomorrow. I hope this has started you thinking about how you focus on success and that this series of blogs helps you to identify where you can improve your results.

Steve

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The really successful people in every walk of life and every field of endeavour have two things in common. Firstly, as in my last blog, not one of them have achieved it on their own and secondly, they have had an unbending crystal clear vision of what they want. From the inception of their quest they could see the result clearly, hear what it will be like and feel what it will be like. This vision becomes their overriding driving force and their passion.

I know we are all bound in our mind to some extent by circumstance, resources, opportunity and such things. If we really have the desire to achieve something and we can clearly see it, hear and feel it – we can do it irrespective of external obstacles. OK…I won’t beat Usain Bolt in the 100 metres in 2012 but I will beat my time in my next marathon.

On the other hand…if your vision is a bit fuzzy or you can’t quite see it, hear it or feel it…or for the chefs out there smell it and taste it…then I urge you to take some time out and focus, focus and focus some more until you can see it, hear it and feel it. Once you can…nothing can stop you – only you.

I’d be interested in your views on this.

Steve

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This is old news but I was pleased to have been reminded of it when talking to a young entrepreneur last night. He asked me how I did it all on my own. I gave him my view and gave myself a refresher at the same time. To summarise I said…

There has never ever been a successful person who has done it all themselves – not one. Even the most self centred, brilliant, egomaniacal, driven, focussed successful person needed others to help them succeed. In fact the most successful entrepreneurs of all time are quick to point out that they may have been the driving force but it was having the right people to help and support them was the key element to their success. So how do you do it when you work on your own or in a small business that can’t afford to hire the people you want?

Find the people you want, be the person they want and form a mutually supportive mastermind group. You will already either know these people or can easily find them via low cost networks offline and online.

If the best business advice you get is down the pub, Create your own virtual pub and fill it with people with all your required skills and experience. You can join organised formal groups but most of all be sure your group comprises the people you would have chosen. You can do this locally in a pub or globally via Skype conferencing. There is nothing to stop you.

I love being reminded of things I know but have let slip from the forefront of my mind.

Keep asking…become the best listener.

Steve

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The most accurate way to record and transmit original information is using analogue waves, but copies of this deteriorate over time.

The most accurate way to copy information for multiple re-use is using digital technology, but you have to sacrifice accuracy to achieve it.

Michio Kuku explains it very well here http://bigthink.com/ideas/26351

Which version are you? Your analogue accurate self or a less accurate more easily distributed digital copy?

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