I ran across an article published in the Academy of Management Journal. The primary author is Fred Luthans who hails from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I stumbled across the article when I was doing some research for class. It has been a game-changer for me.
I looked into his body of work to find that he has written numerous articles on the notion of building psychological capital. He claims, and has research to back it up, that things like hope, self-efficacy (confidence), optimism and resilience can be built. I find this quite intriguing because this is directly inline with my research, yet, until now, I had no idea this guy even existed.
Reference
Luthans, F., Avey, J. B., & Patera, J. L. (2008). Experimental analysis of a web-based training intervention to develop positive psychological capital. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 7(2), 209–221.
Here is how you can build a great list and control your destiny.
Those of you who have been with me for any time at all know that I am always on the lookout for ways to help my readers grow their email subscriber base.
I’m writing to share yet one more success that we’ve had recently with a public speaker who used this one simple technique to great effect!
I’ve written about list-building by SMS previously because I heard about somebody in our community who was successful with it.
I was so intrigued with it that I had to try it with one of my clients, and it is working like a charm!
[callout]Get a full 7-page report that details precisely what you need to do to begin leveraging SMS to build your email list today. Click now to get…
3 Methods Anyone can Master
10 Scripts to Boost the Number of New Subscribers
[/callout]
How List-Building By Text Works
You sign up for a service that provides you with:
A Keyword.
Digits to where people text your keyword.
You also get to personalize these two messages that are delivered by the SMS/text system:
The prompt where you encourage a person to subscribe.
Your welcome message.
Once the text system has the email from your new subscriber, it sends that email to your email marketing system so that it can auto-deliver your signup goodie right away.
[shareable cite=”Jason R Owens”]You are crazy if you aren’t using this Oh-So-Easy technique to build your list.[/shareable]
How You Get People to Sign Up
Here are two ways that I’ve seen this used:
The Active Technique. From the stage you say something to the effect of “Thanks for attending my talk today. I have a special piece of bonus content for you [guide, etc. that takes people deeper into your content]. Take out your smartphone now and text GIFT to 33444, and I’ll send this bonus to you right away.”
The Passive Technique. Have the event promoter distribute your keyword and digits. Simply put your info on a business card, on a table tent, on a flyer in a goodie bag, or even list your info directly in the program.
Either one of these techniques are going to help you with enrolling new people to your list.
A client of mine who recently used texting as a way to get people to join her list spoke in 2 different sessions during the day — one morning and one afternoon.
My client received a 36% opt-in rate across the two rooms! This is phenomenal!
Upgrade your reading experience now to learn how you, too, can get a massive influx of subscribers every time YOU speak! It worked for my client. Why couldn’t it work for you?
Why it Works
Not only is having somebody join by text a lot simpler and a lot easier, people feel like they are in a little bit more control.
The user experience is different than somebody asking you to add your name to sign up sheet. This is more of an active strategy and people feel more involved in the process.
Plus, you get the extra push from social proof. If both of my neighbors pick up their phones and start signing up for your bonus, then…I better sign up for the bonus, too, because I don’t want to get left behind.
It doesn’t hurt that they get instant validation an instant feedback from you.
The way the system is set up is that the person ends up getting your goodies, or your freebie, sent directly to their inbox as soon as they register — instant gratification!
For those of you who are not using a technique like this in your list building arsenal, I highly recommend it!
[shareable cite=”Jason R. Owens”]You need to add List-Building-by-Text to your arsenal today![/shareable]
As I begin using this with more and more clients, I’m beginning to see that this technique is working across the board with
health practitioners
business coaches
public speakers
practically anyone who standing in front of a roomful of people in a position of authority.
[reminder]If you have used texting as a way to build your list, how has it worked for you? Good? Bad? Let us know.[/reminder]
From the outside we can watch someone land a big sale, come up with a new product that people love, and even create partnerships that seems to take off into the stratosphere.
All the while we watch them with stupor and envy over how they seemed to do it all without straining.
I recently picked up a copy of The Talent Code from my local Barnes & Noble. While I plan on doing a pretty thorough review on The Talent Code at a later time, I wanted today to focus on one concept — a key concept — that can unlock the path to your true talent.
I’m completely enthralled with deep practice.
Daniel Coyle’s superb writing and excellent research skills have landed us a rare glimpse into what it is like to develop our talent to a level of sheer mastery.
Deep practice is one of those keys. Sure, we have to have a good teacher. And we have to be passionate about what we’re doing. Consider these as foundations to your motivation.
Once we are motivated and have found a love for our craft, the manner in which we approach practice is a clear delineator between those whose path continues upward and those whose path grows stagnant.
[Tweet “Deep practice sets you free to be the entrepreneur you were created to be. @JasonROwens”]
What Is Deep Practice?
The author provides us with this definition.
…struggling in certain targeted ways–operating at the edges of your ability, where you make mistakes–makes you smarter. Or to put it a slightly different way, experiences where you are forced to slow down, make errors and correct them–as you would if you were walking up an ice covered hill, slipping and stumbling as you go–end up making you swift and graceful without your realizing it (p.18).
It is painful. It comes in fits and starts. For musicians it means playing a few notes and then starting over. Then playing a few more notes, getting further, and then stopping again to go back and look at the music.
For some athletes deep practice also looks like concentrated high speed practice like playing indoor soccer on something as small as a basketball court. The game moves fast. Players learn to improvise which is every bit as important as knowing basic ball handling skills.
Take a look here a this image of a student in the midst of deep practice. She is given a word problem (bottom of image) and tasked with finding the answer. Looks like 3 failed attempts before she gets on the right track.
The student starts, sets up the problem, and then gives it a try. She can tell she’s on the worng track, so she starts over. She sets up the problem again and realizes she’s on a dead end a second time. A third try ends in another wrong answer.
The fourth try is the one that finally produces the right answer.
You can see the teacher’s praise for the student’s effort.
Why is Deep Practice Important to New Entrepreneurs?
This is the part that I think so many people miss.
You are not going to do well on your first venture just like you are going to do well when you are first learning to play a song on an instrument or learning to play your first sport.
These things take time.
Sure, at some level we all know this, but we all think that this applies to someone else.
The problem is that most of us don’t have time.
We don’t have unlimited resources either.We have to make hay while the sun is shining. We have to start making money.
[Tweet “What do I need to remove from my days so that I have more time for deep practice? @JasonROwens”]
Where Do You Need to Use Deep Practice in Your Life?
You must be really good at your core activity–the thing you do, the widget you produce, or the service you perform.
Without displaying some level of proficiency here, nothing else matters because you won’t have a business.
The second answer is that you need deep practice at promoting your business. This doesn’t mean selling your product by going door-to-door. It means that you should be able to find a mix of 2-3 activities that consistently introduce you to people who could be in the market for your product either in the short term or over the long term.
This mix of 2-3 activities should have a track record of producing consistent revenue for you.
This track record does not have to be picture perfect. We aren’t looking for perfection. We are looking for something that has worked at least once and gives you some degree of energy for doing it again.
Once you’ve landed on these 2-3 activities, your path is golden. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Learn more and more from each time you reach out, talk about your sevices, and offer your goods.
Give yourself large blocks of time for both the activity, and then do the most important thing. Take a few minutes to make notes on what worked and what didn’t.
Without this, you won’t get any benefit from practicing. All you are doing is just going out and falling off your bike. You have to understand what worked and what didn’t work. If your instrument sounds off-key, go back and look at the sheet music.
And then try again.
[reminder]In what one or two areas should you begin deep practice to ensure that you build a level of genius into your work?[/reminder]
If you feel it is taking forever to find true work that resonates down deep in your soul, then this article is for you.
Years ago I called myself a business coach before most people even knew what a business coach was.
Sure, I felt like I was an innovative-ahead-of-the-curve guy back then, but the last place I needed to be as a one-person shop was innovative and ahead-of-the-curve. No one knew me, and even fewer people could understand what I did.
A nearly certain recipe for failure.
Then I tried my hand at being a financial advisor thinking that this was a good way to make ends meet while I got back on my feet. After a successful start in the business, in a very ironic twist, I ended up as a full-time business coach inside this Fortune 500 company.
Later my role morphed again to one where I essentially traveled most of the time as a software trainer. My dreams of self-employment were on the shelf, and quite frankly I had no idea where I was headed. I was lost.
Then the whole thing ended.
My trainer role, which was a contract position was extended and then extended again. I had hoped on getting another full-time position, but missed it after several tries. The last contract extension ended, and I was out.
At the end of a decade of trying and trying to make something happen for myself both as an entrepreneur and as a corporate employee, I felt like I had totally missed the mark.
I felt like a failure.
After some soul searching I realized that there were only two things that I could really call absolutes in my professional life.
I really like presenting, teaching, researching, and writing.
I love the freedom that comes with being self-employed.
Intentional Exploration Works
Immediately after my Fortune 500 job ended, I started working on a 1099 basis for a rather successful man who has had his own training company for years. I figured this would be a great way to learn the business side of training.
Now here I am two plus years later with my own business, building my own brand, and delivering my own sessions. I love it.
In many ways I think I have found home — work that I could easily throw myself into for a long time to come.
What I want you to pay close attention to is this: Don’t mistake this for some story about a person who bumbled around haphazardly.
It is Called Effectuation
A short time ago while writing my dissertation I came across an article that radically changed my perspective on how long it took me to find true work.
I want to introduce you to a geek term called effectuation.
To explain effectuation, I will start with its evil twin, causation.
Causation says, “This is the product I want to build. This is the market I will target. I have planned my work, and I will work my plan.”
This is good as far as it goes, but things rarely ever go according to plan. What researcher Sarasvathy has done is to move the how-businesses-really-start-when-things-do-not-go-according-to-plan discussion out into the open light.
It turns out that a great number of companies, names you might recognize, did not end up looking anything like their initial plan!
At some point in building the business, the spreadsheets and the market analysis and the demand curves and all that other stuff the leaders learned in business school went out the window.
Instead, the “execute on the plan” mentality turned into something more like “let’s explore the space were in.”
Effectuation says, “Here is what I know. Here are the resources I have. Now, what kind of business can I build?”
Effectuation is an intentional exploration.
And — most importantly — it is a completely legitimate way to build a business.
As I was reading Sarasvathy’s papers on effectuation I had this tremendous sense of relief. In some way, all my years of searching weren’t wasted. Instead, they pointed me to work that was truly mine. Work where I could accomplish things and make a difference.
Searching is Not Failure
I want you to know your time has not been wasted.
If you are currently looking and searching and bumping into walls and trying to follow a voice out of the maze, please hear me…
You are not a failure.
You are not some two-bit hack bumbling your way through life.
If you are reading this article chances are that you have a good head on your shoulders, and you have great intentions to bring something of great importance to the world.
Look at my path.
I followed my dream of owning my own business.
My first attempt didn’t amount to much.
Then I took a job to make ends meet.
Then I had another taste of coaching.
Then I had a great experience as a traveling consultant/presenter.
Then I took work to learn the traveling trainer/consultant business.
Now I’m doing work I love, and I feel I’m making a true difference in people’s lives.
There is no spreadsheet in the world that could have told me any of this would happen.
This path isn’t predictive; This is an exploratoration.
If you have ever
Felt you have lost all chances of living up to your potential
Grown tired of searching for work that moves you
Felt that you are just going in circles
Then keep exploring!
All of your lost days and wasted time are not lost and wasted after all.
I was working on my dissertation this past weekend. I was about 20 layers deep in my literature review when I decided to look up a term I hadn’t seen before.
Then I saw this picture.
Image credit to Scholl, R. W. (2002). Motivation: Expectancy Theory. Retrieved at http://www.uri.edu/research/lrc/scholl/webnotes/Motivation_Expectancy.htm
It hit me like a whack on the side of the head.
I could see the past 12 years of my life in one image.
More importantly, I could put words to why my motivation flags from time to time.
The image lays out like an easy-to-read formula. Movitation equals Expectancy times Instrumentality times Valence. While these last 3 terms in the formula are a little too academic, they are easy to understand when we call them by different names.
Expectancy – If I put in effort, I expect to see results. If I push a working lawn mower across my yard, I expect it to cut the grass.
Instrumentality – Mowing the grass will win me the respect of my neighbors. A little more difficult to control. Here, having a good looking lawn is just a vehicle, an instrument, to get me what I really want.
Valence – Also known as the big picture goal. My neighbors will vote my yard as Best Lawn of the Neighborhood. Now I feel good about my self. Respected by my peers.
For me, a great deal of my motivation comes from valence. I want the big picture. I want to pursue my purpose, bring some kind of change to the way we look at work, make a difference in people’s lives. This is what gets me started on my journey every morning.
Problem is that I often don’t know exactly how I’m going to do that.
My expectancy is off. Way off.
When it comes to the nuts and bolts of growing my business I could choose from any one of a hundred things to get clients and speaking engagements. When I pick one of those ideas, and things don’t work out, I begin cartwheeling into the land of uncertainty and low self-confidence.
As entrepreneurs most of us pursue a picture that we have of what our business should look like at some point in the future. It will be a certain size, employ (or not employ) a certain number of people, be located in this part of town… You get the idea.
Yet, most of us have little idea how we are going to do all that.
In order to grow your revenue this quarter you might plunk down some money on an ad campaign in the local coupon mailer pack. You might join a networking group. You might take a class on public speaking.
And when the mailer, and the networking group, and the class all amount to nothing, you pull back.
This picture was such an eye-opener for me because, in my early years, I was in a cycle of false starts. I wanted to do public speaking. I wanted to make a difference, but I couldn’t get the first two parts of the formula to line up for me. It wasn’t necessarily about knowing how to dial a phone and ask for a speaking gig. It was deeper than that.
I didn’t know how to form a core message. I didn’t know how to dig deep to articulate my big “why”.
Without this core to my message, I feared I would end up just another talking head. Just one more guy who needs to be seen on a stage…any stage.
Even though I knew I still needed to hone my core message, I would pound forward anyway. Get a few speaking gigs. Most of them went really well…but something was missing. The core.
My motivation flagged, and I would pull back from speaking for a while to let things gel.
Now here I am years later. I had put speaking “on hold” for some time. Ok, a long time. I had put it on hold for so long that I had for all purposes forgotten that I wanted to make a big impact on people’s lives. Then, a long series of events (which I will cover at another time) led me to a point where I saw what I felt were some pretty serious injustices with regard to entrepreneurs. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but was powerless to really do anything about it.
At that point, so far from shore, so far from practically everything that meant safety and security to me, I found my core message.
When I talk to most new entrepreneurs, the easiest place for discouragement to enter is that of missed goals.
Why? The achievable question just hasn’t been answered. Sure, “Make $2000 pursuing my dream in the next 30 days” is a great goal by most accounts.
It is pretty specific.
Certainly measurable.
Realistic, as far as that is concerned.
It meets the time-bound criterion with the 30-day deadline.
Yet the achievable question still remains.
How can we ferret achievable from unachievable?
Has this person made their first dollar “pursuing their dreams”?
Is this the right time of year for going after this kind of money?
Does this person have the right network, advertising skills, prospecting skills or other lead generation skills to make a go of this?
In the early years of my coaching business I knew I had problems prospecting for business, but the best advice I had ever been given was “Go hang out at the chamber of commerce.” Sage advice, but not exactly a game changer.
It wasn’t till 4 years later, after I had won a Sales Conference for my sales results as a financial advisor, that I could finally say that I had a good handle on prospecting. The problem is that I had to close down my coaching business to finally learn how to prospect.
Aiming too Low vs. Aiming too High
When I talk to most established entrepreneurs about achieving goals I find that most do a good job with setting goals that are achievable.
I was like a kid on the night before Christmas. I could not wait for my new goal setting kit to arrive!
It was all the rave with my entrepreneur friends, and most had already bought their sets. I didn’t want to be left behind. It was expensive, but I took the plunge anyway.
Three months later the kit was on my desk, collecting dust.
I had worked through every page of every module, but my business was still nowhere near where I wanted it to be.
I just didn’t get it. Why were my friends able to set goals and make progress? Why were they seeing growth and I wasn’t? I was trying just as hard as they were.
I kept sticking to my guns. In all the books I had read and all the audios I had listened to, I had heard that “half of success is just showing up”. Well, I had been showing up month after month, but the success wasn’t showing up at all. I had been duped.
Does goal setting work?
Of course it does. Just look out your window. There are roads. You have electricity. You have running water. All these things were goals on someone’s desk at some point. Somewhere a plan was drawn up, a schedule was put into place, and orders were given. Items got checked off the list and things happened. Done deal.
Setting goals does work, but there’s a lot more to it than jotting your aspirations on paper.
So, when and where does goal setting work?
This may sound a little basic at first but bear with me. Goal setting works when people can actually do the work. Read that one more time really closely.
Why goal setting wasn’t working for me
We’ve all heard the tired expression of setting SMART goals, right? Specific, Measurable, Achievable, and so on.
Here’s the part that I had to admit to myself, and it took me a few years of distance and reflection to finally get to admitting this — most of my goals were not achievable.
Achievable by me, that is.
In those early days I had written goals such as “develop a business with multiple streams of income”, “have x number of clients in the next 90 days”, “grow my revenue by y dollars 12 months from now”.
Here is the vital problem with those goals — I had absolutely no idea how to actually achieve any of that. I was taking the field of dreams approach. Write them and they will come.
I had also entered the land of unfair comparisons. At the time all my entrepreneur friends were at least a decade ahead of me. They had established businesses with established clientele. To some degree they had it easier. They could set goals that they actually had a good chance of achieving.
In contrast, I was still trying to figure out who I was and how to take that to the market. I had no idea if I should call myself a “coach” or a “consultant”. I had absolutely no idea how to prospect for new business. After I was sitting in front of a prospect, my closing skills were mediocre at best.
All this sums to a fantastic beat-my-head-on-the-wall experience when it comes to achieving the goals I had set for growing my business.
How I broke the cycle of false starts
The key that really started turning things around for me was simple persistence. I just didn’t give up.
Much easier said than done.
When I first started I didn’t know much about selling my speaking engagements. I started small where I knew I could be successful. Most of my friends suggested pitching my presentations to local Rotary groups as they seem to be in constant need of speakers.
I was able to land several of these gigs with a couple emails and a few phone calls each.
My confidence started to increase.
Then I tackled paying gigs by reaching out to local community colleges. Again, I found success here.
My confidence increased even more.
Now I’m raising the bar again by pursuing gigs that pay even more. This has taken me quite a while to build, and my confidence is growing in stages.
One of the many things I cover in my book Finding My Voice is about how often I used to read success books, hoping to find the secret sauce for getting ahead. Turns out most of what I believed then ended up being success myths.
This is the first in a series of articles that I have written on what I have learned on my pursuit for success — the hard lessons that have stood the test over the past dozen or so years.
Here I separate the success myths from the real deal.
While the formulas offered in most success books just don’t seem to work for me, these are the lessons that do. I can count on them, and I hope they offer some value to you.
Success Myth 1 – Setting goals works all the time
In Does Goal Setting Really Work? I talk about my frustration of setting goal after goal for years on end only to see most of them turn to sawdust. I talk about where goal setting works and where it doesn’t.
Success Myth 2 – Just stay motivated; it’s easy
My article What Really is Motivation? talks about my recent discovery of a single diagram that explained everything. In 30 seconds I could finally see why I kept getting stuck in the cycle of false starts, why I kept pulling up short all the time, and why I was failing to reach my goals.
Success Myth 3 – Plan your work and work your plan
How Does God Factor Into Your Success? is where I touch on the critical aspect of faith in our pursuit of reaching our goals. Here I wrestle with the age-old question: Does God really care if I am successful?
Bonus – 1 Fast way to bounce back after a setback
Reboot is where I talk about one exercise I do to keep myself in productive head-space. This skill is a must for entrepreneurs who experience setbacks on a daily basis.
What may surprise you is:
That there are times when goal setting just isn’t going to work for you.
Why all the tips and techniques out there are more like mental junk food that can rot your brain, and why you need to “brush” daily.
When God thinks of you, your being an outrageous success isn’t the first thing on His mind.
