Are you one of those people who seem to be a highly functioning professional who is constantly stressed or overwhelmed with life, even though you have many of the measures of a successful family life and professional career?

Why does it seem that people who are not as bright as you or as capable as you have achieved far more?

A short aside – You have achieved much success than you feel. After climbing a hill, you need to remember to spend a short moment – looking back down the hill and say “Wow – I did it!”

The difference between people who achieve their hopes and dreams and those who don’t is often very small.

Successful people do many of the same things that people who are still for success do. But, for some reason the same actions work for successful people but don’t for people struggling.

The difference is the setting of tangible and measurable goals.

This situation is uncomfortably common for highly intelligent and educated people. We think we know what we are doing, and we do, but we are off just by a bit.

The strength of highly intelligent people is their intelligence. It is striking how many forget to apply that intelligence to themselves and to their lives.

Setting goals mean that each and every action have a purpose and becomes a part of the fabric of your life.

Everyday you have tremendous demands on you. This demands take your time, your focus and your inner strength.

The demands work, your possessions, your boss, your customers, your employees, your significant other, your kids, your parents, your siblings, your in-laws, your home, bills, movies, Internet, TV, hobbies, and exercise to name just the list of things you had to handle today.

Imagine instead of these “things” being demands, that each represent an opportunity to meet a goal. You still do the same things, but instead of having impatience with your children and their question, it represents an opportunity for you to teach them independence. Again, the same situation, but just changed slightly.

So how do you transition from a huge number of demands into a life of opportunity?

Always start with something small and manageable.

The simplest and smallest is to just to start thinking about the situation. Do it when you are in the shower, walking down the street, or exercising.

And you can start by asking yourself one question.

“If what I am doing now has created this situation, why do I believe the situation will change if I continue to do the same actions?”

A related question is

“Does what I am doing now get me closer or farther from my goal?”

Asking yourself these two questions will help you to probe what you are doing and why you are doing it. Many times you are doing great and wonderful things, but they are off by just enough that you won’t help you meet your hopes and dreams.

Think about the answers to these questions over and over. Use the rule of 6. Ask the same question six times to get the real answer. Juts like a six year old. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Start with simple challenges. And you will start to see immediate improvements. Once you feel comfortable with the questions, and how to improve. Then ask the same question for larger challenges. Since the larger challenges in life are the result of consistently doing the same thing for a longer period. The answers are harder to find.

The effect can be profound on even the simplest goals:

When I first started training for 1/2 marathon – I was running 3 times a week, doing 10km or so each time. Giving about 30 Km per week. Sounds great, eh? The results were sad. When I ran my first 1/2 marathon, I totally cramped up at 18Km.

The same thing happened when I tried my first full marathon. Lots of long training, but I cramped up at 26KM.

I asked myself the questions. Why wasn’t I getting the results I wanted? Why did I think it was going to change? The answer came when I realized I probably knew very little about running. And running wasn’t as simple as putting one foot in front of the other.

Once I started following a program designed by people who knew what they were doing – the next time I did a 1/2 – no cramping and no problems. And their program had me running the same distance with the same amount of time involved. No cramping and better results.

The lessons were profound for me.

• I was arrogant. There are so many books and stores dedicated to marathon running – did I really think there was so little to it?
• I realized that completing a marathon is a substantial accomplishment.
• I was close – but doing the same thing – only slightly different and I had success.

This example is simple and it is dealing with a simple problem.

To best use the approach – you must articulate what you doing the same.

If your sales are stagnant for a year and you use cold calling to find prospects, why do you think cold calling the way you are doing it will make any changes? But is it the cold calling technique? Is it the list whom you are calling? Is it the offer? Should you even be cold calling?

If you have been using a strong discipline approach to your children with no effect, why do you think being a stronger disciplinarian will improve the results? But is it the way you are delivering the message? Is it the time? Is it the language you are using? Are you choosing too many battles? Is it even the correct approach?

These two questions can change your life forever.

You need to make a change, if you are not moving closer to your goals.

You need to make a change, if don’t have any goals.

I was overwhelmed with the number and the depth of the answers. They covered such a wide and varied ground that I was astounded.

The stories and the short histories provide an amazing amount of encouragement.

If you have never considered running a Marathon – these stories will tell you why people do it and why they are passionate about it.

If you are a beginner marathon or are considering Marathon running as a hobby, these stories will tell you just some of the amazing successes people have.

If you are an experienced marathon runner – these stories will remind you of all the wonderful reasons you do it and let you share with others.

An Edited Version Of The LinkedIn Marathon Stories can be found here

The main themes that I gleaned

• Its not about the Marathon – its all about the Marathon training.
• Marathon runners are successful in life.
• Marathon runners learn that nothing will stop them.
• Marathon runners learn the value of managing their time and priorities.
• Marathon runners learn not to give up.
• Marathon runners learn how important planning is to their success.
• Marathon runners learn how many months of effort is required for a single successful day.

As you read the stories and comments, you become aware of how much people love Marathon running.
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Most of the articles and writers refer to GOSPA as a methodology that is applied to a business problem or as part of Six Sigma quality program.

I think its a great approach to helping a person succeed in life. Its a way of focusing and getting through the clutter of a busy life. My approach to success it to find the Balance in life and continuously maintain that balance while moving to one’s goals.

Like most great ideas, GOSPA is simple to understand but becomes complex when implementing. To help you apply GOSPA to your Success plans I have created a chart to explain it and some examples to help.

One cool feature about GOSPA – it can be used in an iterative approach to success. Using GOSPA will identify details that need to be worked on. You then apply GOSPA to each of these items. When done in a chart form as I have below – can quickly illustrate how things are connected and they work together.

In my The first I provided a simple description of what needs to be placed in each box. These are my descriptions and may vary from other speakers or writers. I suggest if my descriptions are not intuitive that refer to more detailed descriptions of GOSPA. Brian Tracy of course is a great start.

To make the example real, I have applied the GOSPA approach to some of my goals. These goals are discussed in other articles, so that I can maintain a consistency.

For the iterative example, I used my life goal to dance at my grandchildren’s weddings. This goal actually breaks down into a number of objectives which I have then applied GOSPA to. As this is a public forum and the purpose is to teach the method, I have kept some private details out while maintaining enough content to help.

There are different levels of detail for GOSPA. If you can just start with point form like the table below, you will be fine. In fact, you can use the GOSPA table to help share your ideas and your approach to the people in your world.

There are several rows for you to fill in for yourself.

	Goals	Objectives	Strategy	Priorities	Actions
Description	Place here a measurable and tangible goal. This means that an outside observer will agree with the measure.	Place here some smaller measurable goals that will help you progress your final goal.	What is the overall approach that you will take to achieve this goal	What are the priorities that need to be focused on to meet this goal.	What are the specific actions that are needed to achieve the goal
I would like to dance at the weddings of all my grandchildren.	My youngest is 11 years old. Assuming he has a child at 25, at that child has a child at 25 – I will need to live and be healthy into my 90′s.	Regular exercise Healthy eating Low stress Keeping my mind active Good relationships with my children	Keep my life in the five areas of Balance	Health Relationships	Running Reading Writing Speaking Working
Run The Boston Marathon	Complete the Boston Marathon (About 3:30)	Learn to be an excellent Marathon Runner Qualify For The Boston Marathon	Continuous improvement in my running skills	This requires further research	This requires further research
Learn To Be An Excellent Marathon Runner	Finishing a Marathon in Under 4 hours	Completing the Running Room Marathon Clinic	Follow the Running Room 4:00 Training Program	Understanding my Hydration needs, Running Form, Learning to run Hills Performing all runs in the schedule	Long runs Speed runs Hill runs Experimenting with hydration
Growing My LinkedIn Connections	10,000 Direct Connections	Having 10 requests to link a day Being able to send out invitations	Create a desire for people to connect with me.	Maintaining an accurate Profile Helping my connection database as much as possible	A profile that interests people in connecting with me. Generating connections through Databases that list LinkedIn Members Driving connections from my website Asking useful and valuable LinkedIn Answers
Create Readership For www.ZaleTabakman.ca	1,000 Readers a Day	Having articles on all the areas of Balance Providing specific details of implementing ““Tell Me The Secret to Success”	Explaining the details of “Tell Me The Secret to Success”	Live the rules of “Tell Me The Secret to Success”	Writing at least one new article each week Growing my personal knowledge Teach “Tell Me The Secret to Success” to as many people as I can.

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Published August 2007

Have you ever heard the expression “The Loneliness Of The Long Distance Runner”? Other than the name of a book and a movie, I have no clue what they are talking about. Long distance running has shown to be one of the best opportunities to meet people that I have had in years.

Long distance running is the Marathon run, 42 kilometers around the world and 26 miles in the United States. A middle aged guy (like me) will dream about running it 3 ½ hours and should be able to do it in about 5 ¾ hours. When you think about running long distances, images of sweaty shirts and shorts, huffing and puffing and some cursing probably come to mind. And when you visualize networking, it’s about business attire and acting suave and debonair. I imagine you are having trouble rationalizing these two images and maybe think Zale is desperate for an article this month. Marathon running is an exciting hobby with events all over the world with over a million participants and fifty million more cheering them on. The most famous North American events are The Boston Marathon and The New York Marathon. My exotic goal run is The Great Wall Marathon.

Locally, in Toronto, we have 3 Major Marathons, The Toronto Marathon, The ScotiaBank Toronto Waterfront Marathon, and The Mississauga Marathon. This doesn’t even touch the numerous smaller events such as the Sporting Life 10Km Run, The CIBC Run for the Cure, and the Angus Glen Half Marathon.

So where is the networking in all of this?

Let’s start by introducing you to my friend Mike Collins of the Toronto Marathon. Mike is a business graduate who has worked in finance, retail, and other business stuff. When Mike first discovered the Toronto Marathon, he was a smoker and was volunteering for The Heart and Stroke Foundation. When Mike innocently asked for financial support for Heart and Stroke, the fellow said yes and countered by asking Mike to help out in at a Marathon water station. By the end of his first Marathon, Mike was driving the cube van and involved in all sorts of logistics. Mike volunteered for several years, stopped smoking, started running 5K events and now works full time with The Toronto Marathon. One of his key roles? Mike is the coordinator for the volunteers before and during the race weekend.

Volunteering is the huge networking opportunity in a Marathon. While marathon runners come from every walk of life, it’s been my experience that majority are successful, aggressive educated professionals. Like attracts like and the sponsors extend into almost every area of business. The Toronto Marathon Sponsors include the companies you would expect like Gaterade, Powerbar, and The Running Room. It also includes hotels, newspapers, and all the other companies required to make an event this big successful. The size and types of sponsors keeps growing with ING sponsoring The Ottawa Marathon and The New York Marathon. (ING is not a sponsor of the Toronto Marathon) The Toronto Marathon raises funds for the Princess Margaret Hospital by attracting over 10,000 runners competing in one of the 5K, ½ Marathon and Full Marathon events. The Full Marathon runs down the centre of the city going through the famous areas of the city. Including North York Centre, Hoggs Hollow, Forest Hill, Casa Loma, Rosedale, Downtown, Hyde Park and the waterfront. Following the path of the Marathon provides a great tour of the city. Click here to see it in Google Earth!

From a networking perspective there are opportunities to create friendships that last for years. The Marathon is directed by a committee of about 30 volunteers. The committee has to look after things that take the whole year to develop. For example, advertising, planning the route with the city, and working with the different sponsors, vendors and suppliers.

The next big networking opportunity is the race weekend. Every Marathon has an Expo where the runners pick up their race kits, sponsors and other vendors display and sell all sorts of running related wares. The Expo is all volunteer run and the majority of the 10,000 runners will come with friends and family. While the booths are operated by vendor employees, the Expo is run by the volunteers.

One highlight of every marathon is the pasta party so that the runners can fill up on their carbohydrates. The dinners are sponsored by vendors and operated by volunteers.

Then there is the day of the race. The networking continues all day. There is the start and finish lines. There are water stations, there are marshals all along the route at every street corner to keep traffic out, make sure the runners go in the right direction, and watch for runners in trouble. There are the police to coordinate with, there are the Emergency Services people to coordinate with, and there are the marshals on bicycles to help the runners as they are moving along. Since the Marathon is several hours long, the opportunity to meet and get to know people is relaxed and powerful.

The medical community plays a huge role during the race and at the end. For normal aches and pains there are message therapists and foot doctors. For the more serious problems there are nurses and doctors to help out with chest pains, asthma, and other major problems.

This year the Toronto Marathon is making a special effort to add music to the Marathon. Mike is diligently trying to place bands all along the route. The music will be for the runners, the volunteers, and all the people the community that comes out to cheer. So, if you are a musician or part of a band – this will be a great opportunity to let everybody hear you!

And I don’t want to forget one last opportunity for networking. For those who can’t do the entire marathon, join with some business buddies and create a relay team. It’s a great way to build long term friendships.

All-in-all there is so many different ways that a Marathon will grow your network, its clear that I wasn’t desperate for an article this month.

By the way – I am running a full Marathon in the Toronto Marathon and a 1/2 Marathon in the Scotia Marathon on Sept 30/07 a Sunday long run for Running Room Marathon Clinic I instruct. I am a member of Team Osteoporosis and a $10 donation would be help fund research into this disease – that your Mother may get! Please click here if you would like to contribute to this great cause. A tax receipt is issued immediately.

If you do come out watch for me and say Hi!

Till Next Month!

–Zale

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I have said it, you have said it, and our friends have said it and we are all wrong.

When I hear myself saying it, I know I have messed up and am scrambling.

Websters describes an “excuse”:

• to make apology for
• to try to remove blame from
• to forgive entirely or disregard as of trivial import
• to serve as excuse for : justify

When you are “Giving a reason”, “Explaining your actions”, or start a sentence with “Because” you are giving an Excuse.

Excuses are terrible things because they focus on the negative and every time we do it – we destroy ourselves by a tiny bit. However, A slight change to a Positive Mental Attitude and the same conversation can improve as people and move us closer to success.

These breath wasters occur when a Goal has not been met. The goal may have been an explicit one created by ourselves, a goal we didn’t even know we set for ourselves, or a goal set for us by somebody else. A Goal set by somebody else is called an “expectation”.

When a Goal is not met, sometimes we feel a need to explain ourselves and sometimes we are asked by somebody else. This other person can be a spouse, boss, parent, child, a friend, a co-worker, or even a perfect stranger. We are so conditioned by our parents, our schooling and people around us, that many of us just start immediately responding without any thought. The response is an excuse.

I want to share how a Positive Mental Attitude strategy can convert this common occurrence into an opportunity for growth and improvement.

While this approach is about dealing with day-to-day life, with refinement it also works in legal and quasi-legal environments.

First Things First – Start with the assumption that that there is something positive about “excuses”

Zale!!!! You have created a contradiction. On one hand you say excuses are bad, and then a just a few sentences later you make the bold and clearly contradictory statement that there must be something positive about excuses.

This is the basis of a Positive Mental Attitude – everything has a purpose and a value. It just needs to be reworked and understood from a different perspective and it positive.

We need to break excuses into little pieces to get the understanding we need to convert it into an opportunity.

Lets now approach the problem of giving an excuse.

Ask Yourself “Why Is The Excuse Being Given?”

In the simplest case – nobody has asked for a reason and nobody wants to hear it, but an excuse is given anyway. This happens a zillion times a day. People walk late into a meeting and start explaining why they are late, and to my amazement, there isn’t even a funny story to go along with it.

For some reason many of us just feel the need to explain our behavior. While I am sure many years of therapy can explain this in an individuals case, the general reason is that one’s own internal mechanisms need us to look good to ourselves. While I have zero claims to providing therapy, I have some some ideas on how to take a course of action.

Lets understand a few reasons why is it so important not to give an excuse when you haven’t been asked.

1. It is boring
2. It clear its an excuse
3. You are probably undermining your credibility
4. You may be making a fool out of yourself
5. People want to get on with what’s important

Stopping the simplest situation is a simple rule, Don’t Give An Excuse Until Somebody Asks For One. There are the exceptions – such as a funny story or a piece of information relevant to others. Such as “Highway 401 has been shut down”.

After you have learned the rule, the next step is to ask yourself “Why Do I Feel The Need To Give The Excuse?” The answer to this question is complex and is beyond the scope of this article. But here are some suggestions that you may consider, “You think its polite or normal social behavior”, “”You may feel competition with the listener”, or “You feel insecure, believing that providing an excuse will make everybody happy”.

Once you stop giving excuses when you haven’t been asked, you will be shocked to see how frequently people around you do it and how useless it is. But, don’t tell them that until they ask.

The next case is when you are asked for a reason in a neutral way, such as “What happened?”

Here you have two choices:

1. You can take the question in a negative manner, or
2. You can the question in a positive manner.

In the negative case, the person asking could be attacking you, they are looking to embarrass or demean you, or looking for evidence of instability. Positive reasons for asking can be they want to help you, they are concerned about your well being, they are looking to avoid the same situation in their own lives, or just simple curiosity.

When presented with having to provide a reason, some common thoughts are – “What’s my history with this person?” “What is my relationship with this person?“, and the one that causes the largest problem is “Why is this person asking?“

All these questions assume that there is probably a negative reason for your being asked the question, and your immediate response will be emotional and probably evasive which will be problematic, no matter why the question was asked.

How can we respond such that both the negative and the positive are handled? My approach is based on the three key steps in success (Goal, Plan, and Team).

1. Take the question at face value – its almost impossible to fully comprehend why you were asked and what the potential ramifications of the answer would be.
2. Set the standard with the goal, plan and team and what didn’t happen:
   “I goal was to complete the 1/2 Marathon in 2:20, I trained using the Running Room Method but, I completed it in 2:45.”, Or
   “I expected to be here at 2:00 using the 401 and 409, but I got here at 2:20″.
3. State what was missing -
   “My training didn’t include training for unusually high temperatures”, or,
   “In my experience that routes takes me 20 minutes, but I don’t check for construction.”
4. State what you will do in the future (and only if something needs changing)
   “Since the temperature was unusually high, I am not going to change my training at all”, or,
   “This high temperature is starting to become common, so I am adding Heat Training to my schedule”, or
   “I am going to add another 20 minutes to my trip here until the construction is completed”.

If you notice the answers were all short and to the point.The examples I have used are very simple and for illustrative purposes only. The approach works for larger problems with big implications as well.

With the greatest respect, I would like to give the Columbia and Challenger shuttle failures as examples of how answers to the question of “What happened” were answered. As we know the causes and the resolutions of the these two disasters are based in thermodynamics, advanced engineering and complex manufacturing processes. The average person would be lost in understanding any of the details.

However, we were all able to understand the big picture. “The Shuttle blew up because The O-Ring/Foam Insulation failed. We have reworked and reviewed our programs and procedures and do not expect it to happen in the future.“

Here are some of the thing you will achieve by approaching the problem this way:

1. You and your listeners understand you have reviewed your performance.
2. You have demonstrated that you have learned from the experience and the lessons will improve your future performance.
3. You have demonstrated your understanding that the goal wasn’t met.
4. You looked at the plan and other items to understand why the goal wasn’t met.
5. You may have adjusted your goals, plan or added or changed your team so that future issues are resolved.
6. You have identified what changes are needed to meet the the goal in the future.

I think the above accomplishments are pretty positive and certainly have turned a negative situation into a positive one.

How To Avoid The Situation Of Giving Excuses

The best of course is to avoid the situation of not meeting a goal. But the reality is that we miss goals all the time.

Meeting or missing goals usually has an impact on the people around you and their ability to meet their goals.

There are a number of strategies that work well to reduce the impact of missing a goal. While my points below are well known, it seems a review of them is necessary because of the number of senior executives I have met that have forgotten them.

1. When your goal is dependent on 3rd parties, ensure that you make it clear to all interested parties that your are unable to make a solid commitments because your commitments is dependent on 3rd parties. It is amazing how often people fail at this.
   Rather than saying “I will deliver the papers on Thursday”, say “I hope to deliver these documents 2 days after I receive them from my lawyer. My lawyer has told me that he expects to get them to me on Tuesday. However, I cannot commit to Thursday as the date is dependent on my lawyer delivering the papers on time.”
2. You must share with people as soon as you are aware that you will not be meeting a goal. In our example, call when the papers do not arrive on Tuesday.
3. Keep people informed of the progress to meet a goal. The greater the importance of the goal to them, the more frequent the updates should be. If the papers do arrive on Tuesday, call and tell them you are on schedule.

I thought it would be interesting to let everyone in my York Mills Running Room Clinic see the Toronto Marathon in Google Earth.So one day, I traveled the Toronto Marathon path as best as I could in my car. The results are fairly accurate.

Here is an article about Networking At The Toronto Marathon.

What seemed like a simple task on a Friday afternoon became an exciting adventure including:

• Closed roads
• Wrong Turns
• One Ways
• Discovering how beautiful High Park is
• My car’s alternator died
• Meeting a fellow down just out of jail – but I was able to give him some ideas for finding a job
• Met Mohamed who looked after my car while I was prepared for Shabbat – How is that for Tikkun
  (Repairing the world)
• Had CAA helping me get home in time for Shabbat

Any and all mistakes in the route are mine. The people at the Toronto Marathon were very helpful in creating this.

The majority of the map was created using a Garmin Forerunner 305.

The Forerunner file was converted into a Google Earth file using the GPS Visualizer Software.
Enjoy!!!
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1. Personal Growth – Continuously improving oneself
2. Health – Making sure that they look after their physical and emotional being
3. Appreciating What You Have – This can be interpreted many ways – one core is volunteering
4. Relationships – Enjoying Moments With Friends, Children, Parents, Siblings, Relatives, Co-workers and strangers
5. Finance – Ensuring there are enough funds to do keep the balance

My philosophy merges the wisdom expressed by The Talmud, Maimonides, Zelig Pliskin, Andrew Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, Phillip . C. McGraw (Dr. Phil), Henry Ford, Jeffrey Gitomer, The Secret, Daniel Goleman (Emotional Intelligence), Andy Grove, Warren Bennis, Micheal Hepworth, Willard F. Harley, Philip Crosby, Edward de Bono, and many, many others.

To be successful, you must be committed to your own success.

My philosophy on success is separated into different components each contributing to the whole.

Understanding Success – A person must spend time understanding what success is. Who is successful? Why are they successful? Who teaches about success and what is their formula?

Choosing Your Success – This is all about setting and understanding goals. Short term, medium term and defining lifetime goals.

Creating Your Success Team – Absolutely nobody becomes successful on their own. I feel it is very important that each person understand who is on their team to become successful. The team stretches from the obvious (parents, siblings, spouse, accountant, lawyer, boss, employee etc) to the non-obvious such as the strangers who help you when you trip, to the government, the police, etc..

Working For Success – Everybody has heard the term – Work Smart – Not Hard. What does it mean to work smart? How does somebody work smart? How can a person with limited education work smart? What does it mean to work hard? This is all about creating and using a plan.

Positive Mental Attitude – A positive mental attitude is the single most important thing a successful person has. A PMA can potentially unlock every door in the world so that nothing will stop a person from being successful.

The Power Of Time – What does Bill Gates, and George Bush and me have in common? We all have 168 hours in a week.I spend a lot time trying to understand the value of time and learn how to trust in time.

Growing Emotionally – Emotions are wonderful things, they can keep you out of danger and they can lead you to success, but only if you let them.

Growing Intellectually – A successful person is always growing intellectually.

Marketing Yourself – A successful person must market themselves. By marketing, we mean making sure that the appropriate people become aware of you. There are numerous ways to make the world aware of how wonderful you are.

Turning Challenges Into Opportunities – Sometimes it seems that everyday some thing new stops us from getting what we want. This is how to use the PMA with practical thoughts.

Handling Your Success – How do we handle this success? How do we ensure the success keeps coming? What do we do to improve the rate of success? How do we help others meet the same challenge?
To help me understand create my philosophy, I packaged all this “stuff” and teach it as a course to others. The course is offered free through the YMCA Business Centre in Markham. I charge a fee for corporations who wish to use this material to help their employees. See the Speaking pages.

You choose your attitude.

It is unbelievably frightening how much your success or failure in life is dependent on your attitude and your attitude is dependent on the choices you make each and everyday.

This is not a new concept, the most famous is the book called The Power Of Positive Thinking. You may have heard of it called Positive Mental Attitude and have learned about it from Napoleon Hill, Anthony Robbins, or Earl Nightingale to name just a few.

Simple reading of most writers gives the impression that a Positive Mental Attitude is a stand alone thing that only needs to be brought out only in times of adversity. This is wrong. The attitude must be applied even to the most mundane things.

Attitude effects absolutely everything that happens to you. A well chosen attitude towards life must be integrated into everything that you do and every facet of every interaction. It is core to having a life that you choose rather than a life that happens.

My approach to choosing a successful attitude is an application of the Tell Me The Secret To Success.

1. Choose the attitude you are going to project in life. (Set the goal)
2. Study those people in your life that have that attitude (Create your plan)
3. Behave with that attitude and see who responds (Find your team)

I want to warn you – the above rules will ensure you your are successful at choosing your attitude. This choice will result in you becoming a certain type of person. But you may not like some of the things that happen along the way. I want to be a person that helps others. I want to be a kind, nice person. I want to be a good father. Everyday I continuously make choices that reflect this. Many days these choices negatively effect my financial well being and my immediate personal happiness.

These are the choices I make, and I am happy to make these choices.

In your life, you also make choices. However, not everyone is aware of the choices they make or they feel they are forced into certain choices. Not making a conscious choice is simply silly. Feeling you are forced to make certain choices is almost as bad.

Let’s make this real.

Typically people stay at a job they hate because they say they need the money. The reality is that they have made some choices. They have chosen a certain lifestyle that requires a certain amount of income to maintain. The choice to change their lifestyle and the subsequent upheaval is too great to imagine. Therefore, they have made the choice between a job they hate and a massive disruption in their life.

This is all about your attitude and choosing the attitude you want.

You can choose to face life looking for the goodness each and every day, or you can choose to look for the slap in the face.

You can choose to use your time to ensuring financial success or you can choose spending your time in other ways.

You can choose to improve yourself each and everyday or you can choose to live your life with the same knowledge you had yesterday.

If you choose to look for opportunities you will be busy all day working with people who want to help you grow wealthy.

If you choose to look for the bad, you will see each car that cuts you off, how people are all trying to take your money, or how they are insulting you.

You can choose to remember everything that didn’t go the way you wanted, or you can choose to learn lessons from everything that didn’t go the way you planned.

I choose to be an obnoxiously energetic person who does his best to spread happiness and good cheer as much as possible.

I try my best to help others meet their goals whenever I can. This attracts people who do this at a level I aspire to. Today was a perfect example. I met with one of my business partners and he surprised me with a lovely tie from Harry Rosen. Why? Because last week, I was wearing a tie that had a little pull in it. He went out a bought me an expensive tie just because he thought I needed one. I wish I was able to think like that.

Somebody from the Marathon Clinic I teach, bought me an eload to help with my cramping. She did it just to be nice. Me – I would have told the person what to buy, and left it at that.

I meet so many people like this every week that I am embarrassed. My point? Because I have chosen in everyone of my efforts to be a a good person – good people show up to teach me how.

Each of these people are very successful in their careers. What they did was nice and kind. I know their success comes from choosing each and every day to make the world a better place.

One last story about choosing a great attitude.

The last couple of weeks of December is an amazing time in Toronto. Despite the fact that people are extremely busy and stressed with shopping, finishing projects and planning vacations, everything is exciting and fresh. People say Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to perfect strangers.

I am convinced that the joy is because the New Year is around the corner. People are choosing to look forward to a Positive and Successful New Year. They believe that the coming year will be different than the existing one and many of their hopes and dreams will come true. They make New Years resolutions and all sorts of other positive promises.

They are choosing to believe the coming year will be good and their attitude reflects this.

Looking from the outside at a person whose has achieved a success it seems to have happened overnight. If you know anybody who has completed a marathon, you will know is very far from the truth.

If you care about success – then you want to know about marathon running.

Only in very rare circumstances does success happen overnight. Even, when a great success happened in a instant because of being in the right place at the right time – the long term success requires growing the opportunity.

The easy examples of what I call call Large Visible Successes are those young people who win or even just appear on a television show like American Idol. These are people who seem to have achieved their success in a relatively short amount of time with little effort. But, as anybody who looks deeper into their success, realizes that just getting the chance to appear on one of these TV shows takes a large amount of effort, hard work and focus. What I term, small invisible successes.

It is my firm belief that there is no magic for success. Rather there are just a sequence of invisible small successes each leading to another success. Any success is just slightly larger than the success before. We rarely see or know the invisible tiny successes of our most intimate companions, from the outside looking in – we only see the Large Visible Success.

I will even go farther than that – people rarely see their own invisible successes. Such as the small emotional or mental insights or the small changes in habits that make it all work together.

I had a small invisible success when I first discovered the hobby of marathon running.

I had a further small invisible success yesterday in a discussion with people about running a marathon.

The Large Visible Success is this article.

The discussions followed the a familiar path. About 1/2 dozen people were sitting around enjoying the perfect weather. The discussion drifted to a talk about somebodies daughter just having finished a 1/2 marathon. Lots of comments came in amazement of the feat. Then there was a discussion about marathons, how long they are, how far, how many people attend, etc. The amazement and respect for daughter was clear in the entire discussion. However, there was only a sentence or two about the effort taken to prepare for the marathon. The amount of time and interest in that part of the discussion was smaller than the all other parts.

This is typical of most discussions about marathons with people aren’t involved.

Back to the Metaphor.

To be successful at anything, there are a number of core elements that are important. Completing a Marathon (or a 1/2 Marathon or a 10k or 5k or 2k) requires all the same elements of success.

First of all you need to set a Goal. It must be clear. In the metaphor – the goal is stated about a marathon and with a time to complete. “I will Complete The Toronto Marathon In 5:45” or “I will complete the Sporting Life 10km in 90 minutes“. The goal is clear. The goal is measurable.

The second core element to success is The Plan. The plan maybe as simple as “I will run everyday” or something more complex and refined, such as joining A Running Room Clinic and following a detailed plan.

The Running Room Marathon Clinic plan is 19 weeks long with 5 runs per week. So in essence the Large Visible Success is completing the marathon. The invisible smaller success include finished the clinic. The smaller invisible successes for the goal is completing 18×5 =90 smaller successful runs. (The 19th week is the marathon) Each of these runs, require a whole number of invisible successes such are Selecting clothing, picking shoes and other equipment. Lets not forget scheduling ones life, making the emotional and time commitment, and then following through on the commitments. The plan may not be followed exactly – but it gives direction, context and knowledge. As the plan executes, its changed to take into account circumstances. In our Metaphor, this would include vacations, bad weather, etc. – however, these changes generally should not effect the goal, unless executing the plan makes it clear that the current goal is not achievable with the resources available. The common problem with meeting a marathon goal is that there is not enough time to prepare or an injury.

The third core element to success is having The Team in place. The team is everybody who is involved in the success of the goal. The team is crucial to the small invisible successes . It may appear that only the runner is involved in the success of the marathon. But this is not true. The runner may have one or more people they run with. The runner has a family who is impacted by the time commitment. The runner buys shoes and equipment from somewhere. Every person who helps with selection of the equipment is part of the team and contributes to its success. There are other runners who provide encouragement and advice. They are part of the team. The runner probably has a job – these people are effected and effect the runner. Let us not forget the organizer’s of the marathon, the countless volunteers, the people at the sides who cheer and provide fruits to the runners. I would even include the patient motorists who are effected by the road closures. They all contribute to that runner’s Large Visible Success.

So for your personal drive to success, please remember the lessons of the Marathon Runner.

1. The Large Visible Success is really just one of a sequence of small invisible success that come earlier.
2. Success requires a measurable and tangible Goal.
3. To be Successful – you need a Plan.
4. Every successful person – has a Team behind them. Some members are obvious, and some are not. But, they all contribute in some way.

marathon

[Email Flora (at) Access-Group.ca to request an invitation, contact me directly if you would like to be a host or partner.]

Our process for preparing for the event has many steps. Including posting one or more questions on LinkedIn Answers, strategy sessions with vendors, conversations with people who attend, online surveys, the event, and a white paper add the end of the event.

This post summarizes my results from the LinkedIn Answers part of the process.

I like LinkedIn Answers because my database is so large now, I get answers from all around the world. The Answers provide some good content which is used to increase the value of the strategy sessions as well as the Round Table event itself.

The first thing to understand is who Canadian’s think of as a Canadian Bank. The list is short and includes RBC, BMO. Scotia, TD, and CIBC.

All the other financial institutions are considered a foreign bank or a credit union or something else. So banks like ING and HSBC are not considered a “Canadian Bank” even though they operate and work here and are perceived to provide significantly better service.

I think this is a good thing for them – because Canadians don’t like Canadian Banks.

They don’t believe that the banks are customer oriented and they feel the banks are only interested in increasing revenues.

However, the Linkedin Responses did give a whole number of positive suggestions that can help the banks.

While these banks are far from being in trouble today – as “foreign” banks are given more freedom to operate in Canada, and as the Canadian mindset changes – the banks will see a progressive eroding of their market share.

(This is not unique – remember Eatons and Simpsons? And how about Bell Canada’s market share?)

Canadian Banks employee the smartest people in Canada – but because of there immense size, government regulations, history, moral obligations, and culture, they have many huge challenges.

Now about a recommendation?

Strategically – if you want to sell to the Canadian Banks – position your solution such that it provides the bank with a competitive advantage with their customers.

This appears like a simple recommendation, but, it is not easy to implement. It may require partners and it must be true and accurate, not just nice words.

When you position your solution this way – you must be able to answer some hard questions:

1. Where are the risks (from the Bank’s perspective) about implementing my solution?
2. Will I need to change the Bank’s culture?
3. Will there be regulatory implications?
4. What will the effect be on existing bank customers?
5. Which Silo’s in the bank do I need to work with?

I approached the LinkedIn Answers part of the question from two different angles. One was from helping the Investment Analyst side and the other was a more general question about improving the business processes.

I received very little that can be shared publicly on the software vendor question.

But one response was amazing – it came from an Investment Analyst and I am able to quote it without naming the source.

I find lacking the software provided by my company and my experiences from other industries indicate that the software is below standard and hinders my ability to achieve top performance.

Ironically, just stating that opinion could get me fired by some managers in my present company. And there is your problem. The financial industry seems to be the last bastion in America of ego based management.

The best way to identify these people is that they have daily comments on the need for “trust” and “trust” is all that counts. (the reality is that there is little need for blind trust as safety checks are in place every step of the way so that no one has to blindly trust one another due to audit trails, state and federal regulations with stiff penalties etc.) They speak the mantra that it’s all about me and my clients “trusting me” and no one else as opposed to the clients having trust in competency of their IA or company of the IA. Making the issues completely intangible by making the issue always “trust” denigrates all other issues.

If the issue is trust instead of service delivery, product line, business processes, etc. they win the “political game” every time to survive one more day in their job.

The executive management often has thought processes such as:

“Life is hard. I struggled to get to the top of the heap in this industry! The CRM we provide them is better than I had. I only had paper 3×5 cards! I made three hundred phone calls a day and didn’t even get paid my first year. They should not complain and say “negative” things about the company by “criticizing” the company. Only bad people criticize the company and thus disrespect me their esteemed manager! We need to get these bad problem causing people out of the company.”

As you know the correct thinking standard in most industries is:

“What is the ROI of this new software? Suppose we enable instead of make life hard for the new hires and existing employees? What would be the productivity increase by this new software? Would our clients be happier? Would the productivity gains increase employee morale and increase employee compensation? What to our own employees think about these ideas in the task force that was formed? etc”

My experience with management of several finance companies is such that the thinking of the management is the problem! Also, there is some claim that govt regulation is a hindrance driving up the cost of new software.

Click here for my annotated and edited copy of the LinkedIn Answers on Helping Make Canadian Financial Institutions More Customer Centric

Click Here are The LinkedIn Answers about helping improve the business processes of Financial Institutions.

Here are The LinkedIn Answers about Software Vendors helping the Investment Analyst.

The first is the high Canadian dollar.

The second is low cost manufacturing in China and other countries with low Real Wages.

What are the various choices that Canadian manufacturing has to compete?

As part of my preparation for The Access Group October Round Table, I went out to my LinkedIn Database and asked some experts what they thought.

Answer after answer makes it clear that there are many opportunities for Canadian Manufacturing.

Here are the three best lessons I gleaned from the answers

1. Canadian Manufactures must take a fresh look at how they currently doing things.
2. Focus on Innovation. It is Canada’s greatest strength – lets use it to its full potential
3. Other countries have overcome this 1-2 punch.

The most positive thought came from the writer who pointed out that the Japanese Yen Increased by 50% and now the Japanese have the best Automotive Industry in the world.

What kind of future does that provide for Canada?

Edited Review Of The Answers: Helping Canadian Manufactures Compete Globally

Click here to see all the answers

Published July 2007

How do you connect up with a network of 28,000 hi-tech movers and shakers? The fastest way is an e-mail to my buddy Barry Gander at the Canadian Advanced Technology Alliance (CATA).

Barry’s is the Executive Vice-President of CATA and works closely with CATA’s President John Reid to grow and guide CATA. CATA is a 30 years old organization that has grown from simple technology networking group to a powerful organization providing help to all members of Canadian society and advocating for Canadian technology companies in Canada and around the world. When you become a member of CATA, you can learn their heartburn issues and find the companies and people to buy your goods and services.

The CATA membership starts with who’s who of technology companies and ends with relationships with all the other major associations in Canada. Joining this powerful organization means that everyday you will have a new business opportunity.

A small sample from the last couple of weeks provides insight into what can happen to you and your company. BASF was looking for companies to invest in, Tuscon AZ was looking for wireless proposals, the Chinese government wanted to help companies expand in China, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were looking to increase trade, and the Canadian Aboriginal Council needed help growing the entrepreneurial spirit in Canadian aboriginal communities. For the right person or company, each of these projects represents thousands of dollars of potential business.

This is just the tip of the CATA iceberg.

CATA participates in Face-to-face events of all types occur across Canada, including golf tournaments, award ceremonies, and different types of knowledge sharing events. Once in the CATA orbit, the number of networking opportunities is only limited by the days in the week. Through CATA you can meet anybody and everyone in high-tech.

CATA’s network extends around the globe.

CATA’s focus on technology pushes the edges of technology by using one technology to highlight another. A fourteen hour Webinar looked at the state of healthcare around the world. The leading edge Webinar technology enabled people to watch multiple speakers to see and interact from Canada, India and Pakistan.

With so many opportunities and so many projects, how does one navigate it all? That’s where Barry Gander comes in. For a new member, Barry or one of the CATA team will act as your personal mentor in the CATA world. They guide new members, provide some of your first introductions, and help you understand the various opportunities available in CATA. Once you start receiving the various announcements, you learn how to get connected without Barry.

Once you understand the nature of the CATA network, the next step is to create your own programs and if they provide real value to CATA members, Barry will help CATA partner with you and make your dream a reality.

I strongly believe that Barry’s success comes from his pleasant nature, his warm smile, his gracious manners, and his great sense of humour. As you can probably tell, I just like being in his presence. And since he is so popular, I don’t think I am the only one with this opinion.

First things first, cruise the CATA web site, spend time seeing the kinds of projects that CATA is involved in. If they are a fit, join CATA and send Barry an e-mail saying Hi and don’t forget to tell him Zale sent you.

Till Next Month!

My clients sell complex B2B solutions which means they sales process requires a number of steps and the final decision is usually done by one person based on the input of a number of different individuals.

One of my major deliverables is new customers. People who may buy are called Prospects, when they become interested in the product, we call them a lead, and if they have Budget, Authority, Need, and Desire they are called a Qualified Lead. This is Lead Generation and most clients want to initially focus on this.

My discussions follow a typical path. They are very concerned with Return On Investment (ROI) of any marketing program that we design But, when I ask about how they measure ROI, things get interesting. While they may have CRM systems, they usually don’t have a rigorous measure for lead generation.

I was wondering if this experience was limited to the people I deal with or was a general problem.

So as is typical when researching something, I posted a question on LinkedIn to see what people had to say. I have a large LinkedIn network – almost 5,000,000 people. So the question was seen by lots of different people.

LinkedIn Answers works like a knowledge base that gets added to by different people. The flow is great, because each answer adds to the previous answer and people add to the content with their own personal experiences and stories. While their are sometimes differences of opinion, but only if you ask the question in such a way as to request choices.

The results are in keeping with my experiences. While lead generation information seems to be captured by most companies, the ROI is difficult to measure for two critical reasons.

1. There is a question about the reliability of the data. The general feeling is that if its left to the sales person, it may or may not get entered. If its is entered, the data frequently is adjusted to reflect positively on the sales person rather than on its accuracy.
2. The number of touches and the value of each touches made in the sales process effects the result. It is almost impossible to track all the touches and then to decide which are the key ones.

Now that we have decided ROI can’t be measured with current systems – what should companies do today?

• Lead Generation programs should only measure the cost of new leads in the system.
• Lead Generation programs should have a built in system to qualify prospects.
• Lead Generation systems should have non-sales people managing and entering the data.
• CRM should focus on qualifying each leads rather than stressing the number of leads
• A separate process should ensure that qualified leads are followed up and not lost.
• Everything takes time – you can not measure the success of an effort in the short term

If we take this approach, the ROI measurement becomes measurable and obvious.

1. Measure how qualified the prospects were.
2. Measure how long a prospect took from the touch to the sale.

This insight came from the expertise expressed in the LinkedIn Answers. I have summarized the best answers in this report Lead Generation – What do people do? The raw answers can be found here.

1. This is not the current state of world. I believe that companies thcomIn any case, the lead generation system must

LinkedIn Answers has a number of ways of being useful. It can be used to answer those questions that have been troubling you, it can be used to touch your network, and it can be used to let people know about you, thus expanding your network into specific areas.

I sometimes read questions, I sometimes answer questions, and I sometimes ask questions. I am neither consistent nor stable about my use of it. That reflects my feeling about the utility of the tool. But what I am consistent about, is that I totally astounded by the insight it provide about people, what they think, and how they approach problems. The answers range from real and insightful, to practical and useful, to amazingly shallow.

I have asked over a dozen questions and received hundreds of answers. I have answered a few questions and have received a Best Answer or two. I have read tons Based on the kinds of answers I have read, I have created a few suggestions that can help your maximize your time invested in LinkedIn Answers.

Realize The Size Of Your Network

Some people get that when you ask or answer a question, everybody else gets to read your answer or your question. And that there 10′s of 1000′s of people who read LinkedIn Answers. You can rapidly create a wonderful reputation for yourself, or make yourself look like a total fool. (I think I have achieved both)

My LinkedIn network is large and grows by roughly by 50,000 people a week, so I am constantly bombarded by LinkedIn questions on my LinkedIn account and from my e-mail. When I put out a question, I get several answers within minutes.

Its not just the people looking for stuff to waste time doing. The size of the network means its people who have just logged in after months away, its people whom you are friends with and its people who are customers or suppliers.

Even if you have a small number of direct connections, your network can still be huge. For example, if I am the only person you are connected to – your LinkedIn Question shows up on the desk of 650,000 people. If you answer one of my questions – that can be read by over 5,000,000 people.

Think About What You Are Trying To Achieve

To be effective and successful, you need to have specific goals. Once you have the goals, you can create a plan, adjust the plan or even throw out the plan. But the goals remain the same.

For LinkedIn Answers, each time you ask a question, its very important that you are clear on your goal. Is it obtaining the answer? Is it to to do look lead generation? Is it publicity for yourself?

Talk From Experience

Make sure when you answer a question, make sure you don’t look like a person with far too much time on their hands. Don’t answer a questions where you have no experience. Its suprising how intelligent and articulate people can seem to make sense. However, once somebody with real experience answers the question, the person with theory and no practice looks like a fool.

Anybody with intelligence and business experience can come up with theoritical solutions to business problems. Practical real world experience blows away the theory in two or three lines.

Think About Your Reputation

The larger the network the greater the noise in the Signal to Noise Ratio. In plain English – anybody with a decent size network gets lots and lots of questions asked. The noise are questions or answers that don’t add to the body of knowledge or could be answered with simple Google search.

Worse are the answers that the writer of the question clearly has stated they have tried already.

There are many that you cannot contribute to. There are some questions that are better not asked – or they need to asked in a manner that is useful and helpful to all readers.

Frequent or inappropriate questions or answers will mean that your reputation with your contacts will get trashed or ignored. That means your important questions or your other efforts in networking will get lost.

I love LinkedIn. I think of it as a Board of Trade on steroids.

I tell everybody I meet all about it.

My goal is to be directly connected to 1/2 of the people on LinkedIn in about two years.

Currently, I am directly connected to 2,600+ people. At the next level I am connected to 660,000+ and at the final level another 4,700,000+  giving a rough total of 5,400,000+.

Why do I care about the numbers….

Pro – Quantity

• each person you are connected to – means that you are also visible to each of their friends. That means, that while the direct relationship may not be fruitful, the secondary relationship can be.
• There have been a number of relations where I have been able to help people and have gotten nothing for it, other than good will and the sense that I have helped make the world a better place.
• People sell on trust. People only purchase if they trust I will meet their expectations in quality, cost, and time. That takes time to build. People need to see/hear me and I have to be their when they feel the need. Therefore, I need lots of opportunities.

Con – Quantity

• Some people bog me with silly promotions – so I drop them from my connections. I love my delete key Its happened once.
• I use Defender and AWG I scan daily and so far I have not any viruses and I don’t think I have caused any yet.
• Its difficult to continually touch people and not bug them
• There is only 168 hours in a week. It takes me at least an 1 1/2 hours to get to know the surface facts about a person. Therefore, if I didn’t sleep, work, play with my kids, learn, work out, do hobbies, read a book, etc. etc. etc. I would be able to get to know 100 people a week.!!
• I have thousands of contacts . Therefore I physically do not have enough time to get to know anybody well. So what happens is, I let people know what I am doing and what I am interested in. If it excites them – they then contact me and we work on improving the quality of our relationship. Of course, I do the same.

One last thought….

The open networker model is good for certain people.

My long term goal is the creation of “The Cult of Zale”. The “Cult Of Zale” are people who like what I have to say and when then hear it and implement some of the ideas I share, their lives are tangibly better. To be successful in this goal, I need to be able to help lots of people. Linkedin is one of keys to help people find jobs or connect up.

I also do business development  (Sales) so the larger my reach the better.

Another example is a Headhunter. They need a large network for candidate search.

You need to have a goal for why you are networking. Say for example you are a security expert. You want a large network, but only people in security and networking. Therefore, you are looking for quantity, but in a very small target market. ie: 2,500 contacts who all think about security on a daily fashion is not the same as 2,500 people in 30 different businesses.

Bottom Line

Through LinkedIn I meet the most amazing people.
My philosophy is a Quality relationship with lots of people.

Published June 2007

I would like to introduce you to my good friend Michael Hepworth, author, teacher and visionary.

My fascination with success was triggered by Michael through a few sentences in one of his seminars. Michael was discussing Napoleon Hill’s book “Think and Grow Rich”.

While sometimes it seems I was the only entrepreneur person in Toronto who had not read this book, I do know it’s not true. For those of you yet to discover the wonder of the Napoleon Hill, the book was written in 1937 is the standard for all success based books.

The concepts presented by The Secret, Anthony Robbins, and many of the other great success writers can all be found in works of Napoleon Hill. And Napoleon Hill credits all of his ideas to Andrew Carnegie. This is important because Andrew Carnegie has become one of my personal heroes. Andrew Carnegie effectively founded of the American Public Library system and the well known institutions of Carnegie Hall and Carnegie Mellon University. Carnegie’s wealth came by creating the greatest steel companies in the world His wealth was greater his time than Bill Gates is in our time. In fact, just one of the charitable foundations he founded still has over 2 Billion dollars in assets 90 years after his death.

Napoleon Hill stated one of the most important keys to success was the creation of a MasterMind group. A MasterMind is a group of individuals formed around a single concept working for the success of the group. These people may or may not be friends. In fact they may not even like each other, but they are working together for a common purpose. A MasterMind group is intensively personal, each person is responsible for their own Mastermind group. While you may be part of mine and I may be part of yours and we may have many members in common, each mastermind is separate and distinct.

Now let’s chat about Michael. Michael has written a book, produces a bi-weekly newsletter of marketing tips, and lectures publicly for trade organizations. However, the core of his business is the Rapid Growth Mentoring Program. The program is multi-year training program designed to help entrepreneurs to grow their revenues. The training starts with a free morning marketing training seminar. Once accepted into the Rapid Growth Mentoring Program, the entrepreneur attends intensive full day training session, monthly mentoring calls, and a mastermind group that has a full support mechanism. The program is so powerful, Michael guarantees that members who do all the work will increase their revenues by five times the cost of the program or he fully refunds the entire program cost.

Networking opportunities occur during the public seminars and are ratcheted up during the quarterly sessions. There is nothing better to grow relationships than shared learning. And everyone of Michael’s sessions are an intense learning experience which I expect will create life long relationships.

Each Mastermind group is organized by Michael based on some combination of business experience, type of business, personality and physical location. The group works together as a team to grow each member’s business using the concepts taught in the program. Because the members all share the same training, their language and understanding is consistent which means the result is greater than the sum of the parts. Each MasterMind group meets regularly to track the progress of each of the members and the members become accountable to each other’s business growth.

For those of you who are looking to expand your business and want to attend one of Michael’s free seminars you can do it here. For those of you who don’t want to attend a lecture but want to receive a free regular marketing newsletter can sign up here. And for those of you have not read the Napoleon Hill’s book – you can find it here.

Connect up with Michael here.

Zale

You can read all about the content of the Governor’s speech in many of the Toronto newspapers. My role is to share with you the many things that I saw in the Governor ‘s speech that may explain his extraordinary success.

To appreciate how great his success we need to look at some of his accomplishments and understand the greatness of them. The Governor has had successful careers in body building, movies, and in politics. Very unrelated fields. The only one close to this is President Ronald Regan.While I am sure there are lessons from some of the challenges for him in body building and acting, I will just focus on his success in politics.

To date, he has a strong reputation as a person and as a family man. He is a Republican married into the Kennedy family. The Kennedy’s and the Roosevelt’s are the royal families of the Democrats. Being able to marry into the Kennedy family and keeping his own politics is another amazing accomplishment. I know of no others with this kind of accomplishment.

While people like to make fun of his accent, in reality this is an amazing challenge for the Governor to overcome. His off the cuff communication skills were demonstrated during the question and answer period. It was clear, that he isn’t capable of speaking like a native English speaker because of his choice of words. As an actor, there can be multiple retakes any time he makes a mistake, but in front of a live audience or under the pressure of reporters questions he must be clear to have his message delivered. While the United States is called the land of opportunity, it doesn’t generally like or support foreigners, the pressure must have been amazing when he first started speaking publicly on issues of consequence, rather than his role in a film. The only other American politician that comes to mind is Henry Kissinger. But, Henry Kissinger never had to get elected.

His politics are also a demonstration of his success. He is known as a friend of the environment, which is ok. But this is the same person who is famous for driving Hummers!

While you may or may not agree with his politics, we can agree that he is clearly a successful person. I believe just some of his secrets to success were delivered in yesterday’s speech.

(I don’t have a copy of the speech, there might be slight paraphrasing of any quotes I make.)

The first thing the Governor did when coming up to the podium, was to make everybody feel at comfortable with him. He made a joke about the introduction, “Just the way I wrote it”. He created a bond with us by spending a few minutes relating to the audience. One of his best jokes was what he felt Canadians wanted to say to Americans lecture us – “Two words – Shut Up”. By the end of this part of the speech he connected with the audience. Another part was to show respect – he didn’t make it long, just short and to the point.

At no point during the speech did I hear him say “I accomplished this by myself” He only showed respect for others and their accomplishments. He showed tremendous respect for the people who helped him . Several times he spoke about the Weider brothers )who brought him to the United States). He invited them to the speech, talk about their accomplishments and introduced Joe Weider to the entire audience. It was clear he totally appreciated what they had done for him 30 years earlier.

When he got into the details of his speech, he made a couple of statements which I believe are core to the strengths of the man.

The Governor spoke about the environmental lobby and was saying that they are using fear to make change in society. He felt that would never change anybody or anything. He said you must work on the positive for success. You must look for solutions and positive change will occur. He totally believes that the problem will be solved if you start with the premise that the problem will be solved, but we just don’t know how. In my world, I call it PMA (Positive Mental Attitude).

The second thought I saw expressed, was the Govenor’s total complete faith in the American people. There was absolutely no question in his mind that Global Warming will be solved, and that capitalism will solve the problem. It was clear the audience had two choices. Join in the wealth that will be created in solving the problem or be left behind.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is a successful man.

Zale

—

www.ZaleTabakman.ca

Published May 2007

I would like to introduce you to my friend Taimour Zaman who is the consummate networker. Taimour is the principle of the Access Group.

I first met Taimour in and around the turn of the century (2000). That was back in the Internet mania with frequent networking events in Toronto funded by all that capital raised during the stock market boom. There was a least one or two big events a week, with free liquor and hundreds of people showing up.

At the time I was developing my marketing reputation and running a company called 3dOnThe.Net. To help raise money for the venture, I worked on building my reputation by writing short articles (500 words) in the AIMS online newsletter about marketing and the Internet.

Taimour read my articles and then called me up. His approach was unusual; he said liked my articles and wanted to take me out for a beer and get to meet the fellow behind the articles. He did just that. He didn’t try to sell me anything or ask me for anything. He just paid for my beer. We have been friends ever since. Taimour’s approach to life is simple. He looks for how he can be selflessly of service to others. It’s an amazing approach to life. And it works. Taimour has developed his reputation to such a point he can call up CEO’s and executives of almost any major technology company in Toronto, and they will take his call and meet for lunch with him. Everybody who knows him is continuously amazed by his sincerity and selflessness.

The Access Group is his baby and it follows his approach to life. He focuses on helping solve the problems that keep CEO of large companies awake at night. Taimour then uses his networking skills to help these CEO’s and others solve their problem. His focus is on problems that are shared by many CEO’s in a specific sector.

This month (May) he’s helping Oil and Gas executives in Calgary and Manufacturing Executives in Ontario. The oil and gas executives are kept awake because they cannot hire enough people in Calgary to work. In fact, Calgary is suffering so badly for lack of people, they are expecting drop in economic growth. Manufacturing in Ontario is losing business on a daily to China and other foreign countries with lower people costs. It is getting so bad that manufacturing companies are folding and people are losing their jobs. These are problems that Taimour wants to help solve.

So how does the Access Group use networking to solve these problems? Since this article is for The National Networker, you can be rest assured that he solves it by networking.

Each of his events is peer-to-peer networking. It starts with a leadership round table at which industry leaders discuss the issue in a format reminiscent of a kitchen table conversation. These conversations are guided a moderator with experience of countless such round tables. The conversation is unscripted and creates a powerful sharing of ideas, experiences, and expertise. While no bread rolls have yet been thrown during a kitchen table conversation, conflicting approaches to the problem are encouraged. The results are strategic understanding of the problem and practical solutions.

Eavesdropping in on that conversation are 80 executives from the target industries, Oil and Gas in Calgary and Manufacturing in London. At different times in the event, the executives provide input and share their ideas with others around their own table.

In effect, 80 people are encouraged to talk and network about a common problem. This creates the basis for important relationships.

After the initial leadership discussion, the executives separate into breakout sessions with audience members to discuss the major ways to solve the problem. The knowledge from the break out sessions is shared and discussed with the entire group of executives.

After the event, a white paper is written and distributed to the industry through different trade groups.

Taimour fills the room with CxO and Vice-Presidents by bringing on different sponsors. There are corporate sponsors, universities, and trade associations. The Corporate sponsors love these events, because in several hours they are able to create relationships that normally take months to create. The Universities love the events, because they kept to be on the leading edge of business thinking on a specific problem. The Associations love the events, because they get to provide real value to their memberships. The white paper is distributed by all the sponsors. So even people who do not get to attend the event, get to understand the solutions discussed.

The Access Group and Taimour are a major force in creating solutions to major problems.

Take Care

–Zale

Published April 2007

Everybody has heard of Facebook. But, how many people over the age of 30 have gone onto the site – or taken the next step and actually created a Facebook profile? I have and I am glad I have.

My kids spent a lot of time talking and working on their Facebook profile. They talk about the number ofFacebook friends they have and all sorts of comments like that. I tried to out do them by telling them about the the number of LinkedIn connections I had. With 2,500 versus 200, I figured I had blown them out of the water. In reality, I showed that I absolutely had no clue what Facebook was about.

They spend so much time on their Facebook profile and interacting with their friends, it finally dawned on me that maybe Facebook and LinkedIn were not the same beast. Like a good detective, I throw up my hands and begged one of my kids to give me a tour. I was totally and completely awed by what I saw. It is personal networking in a way that is totally amazing.

A Facebook profile is about who you are and what you are doing as a person. While LinkedIn is about working and connecting, Facebook is about living and breathing..

Facebook is about people you all ready know and care for while LinkedIn is about people you would like to meet. Facebook provides multiple ways to express your personality and what is important to you as a person. The feature set is so rich and powerful that it encourages networking and interactions.

My kids use Facebook to network with friends and relatives whom they have an emotional attachment to that live around the world and down the street..Facebook is that phone call from your kids or meeting that long lost friend and going for coffee.

I can only touch the surface of some of the ways Facebook encourages these interactions.

The core concept is that anything you place or change on your profile is reflected on each and every friend’s profile page..

The critical way to let people know what is most on your mind is your Status. It is used as an emotional beacon to the world. Creating it is simple – fill in a form that starts with “I am” You can fill it with one word or a whole sentence. For example “Bored” or “Writing his National Networker Monthly Article”. All your friends will get a note on their page saying “Zale is Bored” or “Zale is writing his Monthly National Networker Article”. They instantly know what is happening to you.

You can speak to another person so that the whole world hears you through “The Wall”. Each person has a wall, each group has a wall , each picture has a wall. You can write on your own wall and you can write on somebody else’s wall. And its just like a wall – every one of your friends can see your wall and you can see every one of your friend’s wall. Therefore when you write on Jack’s Wall – all of Jack’s friends can see what you wrote and respond to it. Don’t worry – you have the ability to delete what is on your wall.

Adding friends is easy and fun. You find somebody and you ask them to be your friend. Then you tell the world how you met them. Categories and details include work, school, family and a whole slew of others.

Photographs are another way people to connect up with people. You can post any picture you want. They you can “Tag” all your friends in your photo. They can post pictures of you and “Tag” you. Imagine the possibilities for family photo’s.

Speaking of families – Facebook has a feature called groups which I used for collecting my family and close family friends. A group profile is almost the same as a personal profile, you can have pictures, it has a wall and you can invite friends into it.

There is a blogging capability – on your profile its called notes. Its also kind of neat, because you can have other blogs automatically feed into it. So every time I make an entry in my business blog (www.ZaleTabakman.ca) it shows up in my Facebook profile.

The bottom line – Facebook is for adults.

Take Care

–Zale

Published March 2007

The focus on this month’s article is LinkedIn. Since you are reading The National Networker, then you are most likely one of the 9.000,000 people that are members of LinkedIn.com. (If you are not Shame! Shame! But LinkedIn is still growing, you can join and flourish. And many writers, including me, provide advice on using LinkedIn.)

All The National Networker writers agree that Networking is about creating long term personal relationship with other people. It is never about the number of business cards you have nor is it about the number of e-mails you have collected. It’s about who you can help and who can help you. A personal network is grown by six or seven people a networking event. It takes years to grow it to a 1,000 people. An international network takes even longer.

Contrast this to growing a LinkedIn network. People start cautious and only invite their friends and only accept invitations from people they know. Then they invite everyone they possible can. Then they advertise their e-mails to the world and beg for invitations. The last stage is the understanding that the network will start growing without doing any work. When you reach this stage – you will have over 1,000 different direct connections. This takes six months at the max.

But because it is so easy to create a big network – when you are growing it, it feels worse than being the “Business Card Collector”. You know the fellow. He is the one wearing a plaid jacket only feels he is successful when he has collected 30 cards at an event.

Here is my sad confession. I know both sides of the fence because I am guilty of doing both. My direct LinkedIn network is 2,400 people. My second level is 593,000 people. And my third level is 3.8M people. My business card collection is about 1,000 cards. Don’t worry, I have hung up my plaid jacket. I am growing my LinkedIn direct connections by ½ dozen a day and my personal Linkedin connections at the same rate. But there is a difference. By just joining LinkedIn people are saying– “Here I am and this is what I do.” The profile says “Here is who I am and what I am interested in.” The size of the network provides an indication of “I want to meet new people”.

Let’s start to put it altogether by asking some more questions.

What makes Zale different from the guy in a plaid jacket? How can Zale possibly have a personal relationship with 4.8M people?

The answers are obvious. Zale cannot have that many relationships. It would take him the rest of his life just to say “Hello, How are you doing?” to everyone in his network.

The answer to all these questions lies in changing how you view your LinkedIn network.

I think of LinkedIn as a giant networking event with signs around the room saying things like “This area is filled with people job hunters.” “This area is filled with experts” “This area is filled with customers’ “This area is filled with Employers” “I am interested in this topic”.

But, you are still left with how to approach the people in the room to create the personal connections. The telephone, the profile, introductions, and LinkedIn Answers are the methods.

A story about how I use LinkedIn for a client will connect all remaining dots.

The Access Group creates networking events to help answer the questions that keep C-level executives up at night. The networking events are attended by the C-Level executives. Companies who have solutions to the problem sponsor the event.

To get an understanding of what the solutions can be and to provide background, I post the problem on LinkedIn Answers. All 4.5M people see the question and Qualified individuals get to pontificate on the question. When they think through their answer– they get a way of advertising their expertise. I get the background material I need for the events. This is true networking in a shared manner.

The next stage is to contact companies that have the solutions. Using the Linked Answers as a start, I identify companies who have suitable solutions. This is done through Google and LinkedIn. LinkedIn provides me the name of a person who is suitable and open to my call.

The next stage is to contact these people and discuss the event with them.

At that point, I have created a personal relationship.

So the answer to my question is complete.

LinkedIn Is For True Networkers!

I can’t forget my shameless invite request – Please feel free to invite me into your LinkedIn network using ZaleT@TheNationalNetworker.com. Expect a “yes” and few articles that will help you grow your business by 25% annually. See my profile at www.LinkedIn.com/in/zaletabakman.

See you next month!

–Zale

This posting is a little different than most as it requires you to go to an event to learn something. Its about exchanging a morning for breakfast, networking, and some excellent marketing training. I am so confident in the value of this event, that I will personally guarantee your time. If you leave the room and you believe it was a waste of your time, I will provide you full day of my consulting to replace the time you invested.

If you are an Entrepreneur looking to significantly increase your revenue, this seminar is for you.

The seminar will introduce 14 ideas from the Rapid Growth Mentoring Program^© which guides entrepreneurs in in growing their business and guarantees the results if you do the work.

The seminar features strategies that are:

• low cost,
• time efficient,
• effective, and
• and doable by you with your limited time.

The seminar is led by Michael Helpworth whose has founded and sold five success businesses.

The seminar covers 2 techniques from each of the 7 stages of the Rapid Growth Mentoring Program^©.

This seminar will immediately improve your business.

Some of the topics covered:

• What it takes for high business growth;
• How to create qualified leads;
• How to add an additional $200,000 in revenue for every $1,000,000 in revenue;
• How to get existing customers to buy from you more frequently;
• How to make existing customers more profitable for you;
• How to get better spend your limited marketing dollars
• How to increase revenues from each hour you work;

The seminar is free and at the conclusion Michael will present the Rapid Growth Mentoring Program^©.

There is no obligation nor is there any pressure. Breakfast is served.

Space is limited to be full time business owners, entrepreneurs or independent professionals who are actively engaged in increasing their sales.

Please do not forget business cards, because you will be meeting other successful entrepreneurs.

Click here to register now!

Our research indicates, for Canadian Manufacturing organizations to compete, they will need a better access to good leadership/talent.

In a recent article by Strategy Business, the author states:

“The same is true for corporate leadership where manufacturing is concerned. And that’s where the opportunity lies. In rethinking the responsibilities of the manufacturing head, many companies have an opportunity to revitalize their operations and to bring new capabilities to their strategic focus.”

http://www.strategy-business.com/press/article/06308?pg=all

As part of preparing for the event – I placed a Question on LinkedIn Answers and received some very interesting results.

The question was asked:

Competing against foreign competitors? How are Canadian manufacturing executives creating value for their customers? What do we need to do differently?

I am working with the Canadian Manufactures Exporters Association, Microsoft Canada and Sheridan college to put together a unique executive roundtable event (March 6th) in the manufacturing sector.

The main theme of the results was – Canadian Manufacturing Companies can compete. But they need to use the special talents that are unique to Canada.

If this topic is of interest to you please contact me at zale@access-group.ca

For a more detailed summary click here: Canadians Can Compete Against Foreign Manufactures

Published Febuary 2007

If you’re an avid networker and entrepreneur, you’ve probably considered creating your own personal networking group. You can imagine it, can’t you? Inviting people, greeting them, getting into deep conversations, and growing your own network.

But how do you build the group, manage the invites, get the word out, hold the events? And—my worst nightmare—what if you throw a party and nobody shows up?

Well, now you can just do it—or, rather, Meetup.com will do it all for you. It’s a web engine that lets you create a networking group, manage the group, send out invitations and manage responses, post notes to all members, and in general have a great time. And the coolest thing is that when you’re just starting, it contacts people whom it thinks will be interested in your Meetup. Instant friends—you’ve got to love it.

Meetup.com groups get together around the world. Canada has Meetup.com groups in almost every city and on almost every topic. For instance, Sarnia has five different Meetup.com groups just for dog lovers. Toronto has a huge number of Meetup.com groups (Toronto is a very friendly city).

Each Meetup.com group is run by an “organizer” who pays the fee ($15.00 or less per month) and registers the group. The organizer is effectively the owner of the group. Once the group is up and running, the organizer can use assistant organizers.

Although Meetup.com is a for-profit organization, the expectation is that the group is focused on a topic and that those attending are interested in the topic and won’t be getting a sales pitch. On the other hand, business Meetups are business Meetups. People go expecting to sell and be sold to.

One thing I love about Meetup.com is that you can find a group name and then be alerted when people are interested in joining that group. If you have an idea for a Meetup.com group, just create an “Alert”—when people are interested, you’ll be contacted. If you think the interest is good enough, create the Meetup and boom! you have instant members. Meetup.com gives all sorts of interesting advice on how to create your Meetup and attract people to it—everything a newbie would need to know.

The Toronto Meetup.com Queen must be Janet McGinty. Janet is a busy mom of two young girls, a financial planner working for BMO Nesbitt Burns, and a community activist who participates on the board level of several organizations. If a woman of Janet’s talents is involved in Meetup.com, it must be the thing to do.

Through her four Meetup.com groups, Janet merges her personal loves while at the same time meeting potential clients. She runs Boomer Group (for the “sandwich” generation); The Coffeehouse Group (social conversation and coffee); and Toronto Hip Momma (cool, sexy moms). Janet is the assistant organizer for The Toronto Entrepreneur Group, through which I met her. Her activities are as eclectic as she is: in the same week she’s taking one group tobogganing and helping people with business ideas.

If Janet is the Toronto Meetup.com Queen, Shawn Tedder is its biggest addict, attending events three or four times a week. Shawn was a few minutes late for the Toronto Marketing Meetup run by David Yao because he had just left the Toronto Social Media PR Meetup. I wonder if there’s a 12-step Meetup.com group for recovering Meetup.com addicts….

David Yao did something I thought was an excellent idea. All Meetup web pages have a file section where users can upload files and information. David added a scan of all members’ business cards to this file section. Attendees can put up a visual ad without worrying about email addresses being grabbed inappropriately.

Are you a Janet, Shawn, or David? Go onto Meetup.com for your city or town and find the networking event for you. If it’s not there, create it—and don’t forget to invite me!

–Zale

The core of the issue was The Brain – A Users Guide with articles on consciousness, stress and memory. The article which I find relevant to The Secret is called “How The Brain Rewires Itself’ based on the book “Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain”

I am not a believer in the concept of vibration or that the world changes for me. However, I do believe that by continuously focusing on what you want, your brain starts working unconsiously on the problem.

It happens in the shower, it happens as you are driving, it happens everywhere.

You start seeing opportunities everywhere. You start raising what you want in conversations. Then people respond to it. They tell you about things and people they know which can help

You start looking at every action that you do. You start asking yourself “Will this move me closer or farther away?”

What you want becomes your a non-stop focus. As Andrew Carnegie says – it becomes your obsession.

The article starts with a simple description of a simple piano teaching experiment. One group does the piano exercise – another group “thinks” about doing the exercise. The results were amazing. Both groups changed their Brain in exactly the same way. The lesson I take away – focusing and imagining what you want – the brain learns what it is like to have it.

The article describes phantom limb syndrome – and using your nose to scratch a missing hand. The Brain is able to create a reality for you. Then you can live in this new reality. Once you are there – everybody you meet and touch will enter into your reality. If you try to change natural laws – say by jumping off a building and expecting to fly – then you have gone too far. But in most cases – you can create the reality you live in. Just by changing your view of the world and what is to happen to you.

The author tdescribes a type of therapy called “Cognitive Behaviour Therapy” for people with mental illness. In this therapy patients are taught a form of meditation. The results in some cases were as good as those people taking drugs. But brain scans showed that the changes in the brain were different. The Cognitive therapy provided the support from the emotional and thinking parts of the brain. This is similar to the results promised by The Secret. And what is the process suggested by “The Secret” – mediation on the things you want.

What about regular people like you and me? The article describes an experiment comparing Buddhist monks and undergraduate students with no training in meditation. I quote:

“For the monks as well as the patients with depression or Obsessive-Compulsive Order, the consious act of thinking about there thoughts in a particular way rearranged the brain.”

I understand that I am making conclusions beyond the facts presented by the article. But these results are in keeping with what Andrew Carnegie stated in 1908 as quoted in the Andrew Cargenie As Told To Napoleon Hill:

“All Riches and all material things that anyone acquires through self-effort, begin in the form of a clear concise mental picture of the thing one seeks.”

To me – the statements are equivalent and the implications on my actions obvious.

The can be found here – “How The Brain Rewires Itself”.

Have another great day!

Zale

The event is entitled

Calgary: Exploding Staffing Costs, Scarce Facilities
Understanding 3 Choices For Growth

As part of my preparation for the event, I sent out a question on Linkedin Answers.

Here is my question:

What solutions are available to address staff and facility shortage in Calgary?

Calgary has a significant shortage of staff and facilities.
We are running a seminar in May, in Calgary Alberta, for 75 C-level Oil and Gas executives.
We have identified Outsourcing, Relocating facilities, and bringing in foreign staff as possible solutions.
Other solutions include helping staff on sick leave return to work sooner and more automation.
I am interested in hearing other potential solutions.

I am disapointed in the first results. Other questions I have asked has provided a large number of varied responses with a lot of detail.

Here is a link to a PDF version of the results: Calgary – No People, No Space – What are some of the solutions?

Click here to see the full LinkedIn Answers. 

If this topic is of interest to you please contact me at zale@access-group.ca

Revenues = ((NumberOfProspects x CloseRatio + ExistingClients) ) x AverageSale

New Business Development starts with increasing the NumberOfProspects.
(See Networking web pages and LinkedIn in The Blog for some ways of increasing these)

Excellence in New Business Development ensures those prospects are properly qualified-
Increasing your CloseRatio. The better you Network the more qualified your prospects will be.

Creating new business relationships increase what you can offer clients -
Increasing your AverageSale. The more you network – the more offerings you can provide your clients.

Zale

A New Business Development program requires that you focus on the business needs.

This sounds simple but has a whole slew of questions that need answering. Each question requires significant thought and effort. Usually I find that clients answer the questions in a waves. The first wave of answers are interesting, but superficial, the second wave maybe starts thinking about the problem. The third wave of answers gets interesting and and the focus starts.

Understanding Who Your Customer Is.
Start with demographics and ends cycographics

Understanding the Numbers
What are the targets, how many, when are they going to show up, where are they going to come from.
When you start doing the math – it gets harder and harder. This is not the first challenge but is is the most important question – it drives everything else.

Understanding What The Correct Resources Are
Without even knowing you, I know you don’t have them. Otherwise you would already be doing 25% annual increase in revenues.

Executing The Plan
The more you think about it, the harder it seems.

But – the more you work it, the easier it gets.

The event is co-sponsored by Schulich School of Business and York Region.

The event is titled Relocating for Growth – What are the hidden challenges?

As part of my preparation for the event, I sent out a question on Linkedin Answers.

When a company wants to do a major relocation (over 250 employees) what are the major issues of concern?

In April I am running seminar for executives in 50 enterprises who are planning a major relocation. The answers to this question will provide the kinds of information to stimulate the conference. I am looking for answers from people with experience doing this. Please include a line or two about your experiences.

I received 39 answers which were varied and had some great insights. The results were quite interesting. The majority of the people were concerned about the employees. There were quite a number of suggestions to assist in the planning.

I have organized and edited the results. I removed as much duplication as possible. I think the results provide an interesting insight into how large a problem relocation is.

What is missing is the corporate strategy level, the details that are important at the CEO and Board Room level. This information will come out at the Round Table followed up by a White Paper.

Please leave your name in the comments if you would like receive an invitation to the event.

Event registration is limited to senior executives (Director level and above) of companies with more than 20,000 sq. ft. of space.

E- mail me at zale@access-group.ca

The summary below is not complete – the complete results can be found here: Relocations – LinkedIn Answers Summary

Somebody asked the following question here.

If you were able to go back in time, where would you go and what would you do?

There are no rules to this one – it’s up to you.
I would like to go back and learn to play the saxophone along side Kenny G, he has the right techniques and as a beginner I’m just not there yet – not even close!

It seems to me that there are two approaches to this question.

a) I can focus in on what would be good for me

b) What would be good for the world.

If I would go back and choose something for myself. It would change me and it would change my experiences. Therefore, I would be a different person and want something different.

If I would choose to go back and change something that would improve the world – how could I select that thing. If I changed something such as Hitler’s rise to power – then who knows what else would happen? I might save the world from World War II. But, some people say that somebody else would rise to power who would be even more evil. Some say that Hitler stopped Stalin from his world conquest goals. So that may have even been worse.

I think the most effective answer is that. I wouldn’t go back and change anything. Sometimes, I do wish I would have done something different in the past. But then, I think about all my blessings I have today and then ask myself a simple question.

If I were to go back in time – which of my blessings would I want to give up.

Because if I change something in the past – something in the present will be lost.

There is no free ride – you must give something up to get something.

Published December 2006

According to Wikipedia, the first Chamber of Commerce was founded in 1599 in England. Chambers were started to help local businesses connect with and help each other. It was the first formal attempt at organized business networking. In Canada the term Board of Trade is more common than Chamber of Commerce, but they are the same thing.

Many times in my career I have been asked to join a Board of Trade. About ten years ago, I even attended one even—and was quite disappointed. My ideal customers were large corporations, and it seemed that the only attendees were real estate and insurance agents and tiny one-person companies. I didn’t bother perusing it further—a big mistake. Real estate and insurance agents are common in Boards of Trade, but as with an iceberg, only a tiny part shows on the surface.

In search of business growth

Back in the spring of 2006, I was looking for new ways to grow business for Hydrogen Creative. After considering advertising and cold calls, we decided the most cost-effective way would be—surprise!—through networking. Because Hydrogen had been located in Markham for many years, we checked out the Markham Board of Trade (MBT), located in Markham, Ontario, on Toronto’s northeast corner.

Markham is Canada’s High-Tech Capital and has more than 850 high-tech firms, including IBM, Lucent, Pfizer, Sun, Lucent, and Wyeth. But it is also diversified with small and large manufacturing plants, large areas of green space, several golf courses, farms, an airport, beautiful homes, access through several highways, and lots of very nice people.

Markham is also a key part of the York Region. The region is made up of a confederation of nine municipalities and provides services to almost a million people, including 25,000 businesses and 395,000 employees. Efforts made with the MBT open up lots of other relationships.

The MBT is led by effervescent Keith Bray. Keith’s team of business development managers guides each member through various opportunities provided by the board. Says Keith about why a company should be a member of a Board Of Trade, “If your company is any good and you truly want to grow your business, your local Board of Trade or Chamber of Commerce is the most cost-effective way of doing it.”

The benefits of a Board of Trade or Chamber of Commerce

As regular readers know, I love networking groups that provide benefits beyond simple introductions. MBT benefits include discounts on insurance, gas, merchant credit cards, and of course member-to-member discounts.

So where is the networking in all of this? Almost every week’s calendar holds more than one event bringing out different types of people. Regardless of your business need, you’ll find something for you. As is typical in every Board of Trade, there is a monthly breakfast; Markham’s is attended by 60 to 100 people. MBT also brings out the beer at an after-hours event. The MBT scope is large, and there are nearly a dozen committees.

Annual events include a Christmas lunch, a rodeo with a B2C trade show, a B2B trade show, and a hanger party at the Buttonville airport. In addition to the music, the beer, and the networking, all sorts of interesting people show up. My favorites last summer were the CSI van and the police helicopter. I got to talk to a real live CSI guy and a man who chases criminals in a helicopter. How often do you get to network with people like that?

Special events provide all sorts of unexpected opportunities. MBT invited its members to the signing of an agreement between Markham and the city of Wuhan in China. The Wuhan delegation included a dozen senior executives all looking to do business here in Canada. Locally, MBT has a regular stream of trade delegations composed of companies from all parts of Canada and the U.S. who want to do business in Markham.

MBT will host the Annual General Meeting of The Canadian Chambers of Commerce in September 2007. This will be an amazing opportunity to let local members connect with people across the country. In only a few days, avid networkers will be able to expand their reach across this nation.

In a Board of Trade, you will meet people who have been members for years and years. These are the people who volunteer in the community. The Board of Trade works both ways: giving and getting.

As one long-term member explained, a Board of Trade is like a private club that is open to everyone. Long-term members wait to see if you are really committed to the success of the club. Once they see the commitment, they will help you succeed. So expect the payoff to take time. Attend the regular breakfasts and some of the special events. Sometimes it’s not who you meet, but who sees you attend.

So what’s the bottom line?

The Markham Board of Trade generates business and can reasonably expect to continue doing so for years to come. So the answer to the headline question is: local Boards of Trade are more relevant now than ever.

To find a Board of Trade in Canada go to Canadian Chamber of Commerce. In the U.S., go to www.chamberofcommerce.com.

–Zale

They have lied to you.

The glass is full.

Its got some water in it and its got some air in it.

If you are in the dessert – you are interested in the water.

If you are under an ice flow – you are interested in the air.

The cup is always full!

Have a great day.

Zale

My friend and business partner Taimour from The Access Group gave me a copy. It came just when I needed it.
(a small joke)

To make a powerful and involved process simple, The “Law Of Attraction” states that anything that happens to you comes because it is attracted to you through your thoughts. Practically speaking, this means if you expect trouble – you get trouble. If you expect good things to happen, good things happen. The main explanation to “The Law Of Attraction” is that the universe changes to provide you what you attract. Hence my small joke.

Before we go to far – I believe in The Law Of Attraction and believe you should too.

However, many people who see a contradiction with “The Law Of Attraction” and reality.

There are those who are at odds with its existence. For example Ming The Mechanic, Naoshi on Vox, and The Scratching Post. Basically, they believe there is no way to prove “The Law of Attraction” works or doesn’t work. Simplified, the proof for “The Law Of Attraction” goes like this – If you don’t believe in it, that’s why things bad things happen. If you do believe in it and good things don’t happen, then you didn’t have complete focus. Effectively there is no proof.

A criticism was mentioned by Steve Pavlin (who is a fellow believer) says: If a child is abused, does that mean the child intended it in some way?

One of my friends criticized it by stating – What happens if somebody focuses on something totally impossible? For example, a fifty year old over-weight guy wanting to play in the NBA?

Many Bloggers give deep metaphysical answers to this quandary. Since I can’t understand most of what they are writing – I prefer a practical solution that will work for me today.

The problem with the above complaints about “The Law Of Attraction”, is that they take it too literally, meaning its a “Law” or they don’t have enough faith in themselves.

The first is easy to explain. Any physical law, such as “The Law Of Attraction” is only a theory that explains our current understanding of reality. For example, “The Law Of Gravity”, “Natural Selection”, “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”, E=MC2. All these “Laws” are theories that explain natural phenomenon. They are not proven in any literal sense. Experiments are performed, results are observed, and theories are agreed upon. We can “trust” these laws, because it allows engineers to build buildings, it allows man to fly, it allows us to study nature. Science uses this approach to move forward. Many scientific “Laws” have been discredited over the years. Its doesn’t discredit science – it just demonstrates that these laws enable society to advance.

The “Law of Attraction” is the same. Its a theory that works in our world with our current understanding of the world.

So why does it work and why should you take it to heart?

a) You will continually make the choices that gets what you want. For example: if your focus is on getting a Saturn Sky (a great boy toy), instead of going to see a movie you will put in the time to make a few more sales calls, send a few more e-mails, or put another entry into your blog.

b) Your mind will open up to new choices. When a new or different opportunity comes along, you will ask yourself the question – “Will this get me what I want sooner rather than later?” It will push you beyond your comfort zone.

c) Your friends can help you. People are wonderful. I am continually amazed at how helpful people are in helping me achieve my goals. If I tell them what I want to achieve, they will many times help in different ways that I couldn’t have imagined. The larger the goal, the more they are willing to help. But be careful, simply tell people what your goal is, not how they should help you. That way they will feel ownership in helping you achieve your goal.

d) You won’t give up in the face of challenge. Each and every one of us has faced challenges on achieving our goals. And whenever you have met your goal – you can always look back and see that no matter how bleak things looked at some point, you were successful because You Did Not Give Up.

d) A bonus for fellow religious types. It says in Pirkei Avos [2:21] (“The Ethics of Our Fathers”) “You are not required to complete the task, but yet you are not free to withdraw from it” This Mishna refers specifically to the study of Torah – I also take it less more metaphysically – it is my responsibility to start everything – if its important to be completed the Master of the Universe’s will ensure it finishes. If I don’t take my responsibility to start – he won’t help.

So, the first step in achieving your goal is to start believing in “The Law Of Attraction”.

Have a wonderful day.

Zale