The Art & Science Of Conscious Success
The Big Shift is a podcast, a community, and a movement. It is our aim to help those who want to make a difference, have success in carrying out their mission. The goal of our podcast is to inspire heart-centered entrepreneurs to create their dream business, do what they love, and make the world a better place in the process.
We will help you get there by sharing with you the best marketing, sales/enrollment and mindset practices known to humankind today… All of these practices are tested and come from the people who are the very best at utilizing and teaching them. These will be some of the most extraordinary people on this planet. Get ready for your Big Shift!
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“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” — Howard Thurman
This is a good reminder to move towards what energizes us in our business. The rest will follow!
I would like to urge you to do a quick 2 to 3 minute experiment. This is an invitation to create a simple declaration of how you want your business to be.
Here is my personal example:
“I, Bill Baren, solemnly publish and declare that I shall build a Entrepreneur Prosperity Program that generates a profit of over $150,000 per year and moves hundreds of businesses and entrepreneurs towards more money, more time and more energy. I declare that I shall do whatever it takes to make this happen and will give myself all the support I need to make it happen.â€Â
This exercise only takes a few minutes, but it can create a lot of energy you need to take our business to the next level. Declare this with certainty and share this declaration with as many people as possible. I invite you to do this today.
I want to thank Christian Michelson for this idea. This is what he wrote:
“If the colonial rebels who wrote the “Declaration of Independence”, didn’t send it to anyone, it would NOT have had any effect. By sharing it with the King of England, a whole chain of events went into play.
The written word has power. I know most people will never actually write a declaration (or type it) and send it to anyone. Why? Because most people don’t actually DO a lot. But, there are a few of you who will. These are the people that usually make things happen in the world.
If you want to be the kind of person that gets results, why not go for it?â€Â
David Batstone writes about young entrepreneurs in Peru, where kids have the desire to move from day laborers (getting paid for hours worked) to business owners (getting paid on the value you bring to your clients).
Frank Sales, a 15-year old who helps run a micro-enterprise fund for his peers, told me, We have the desire and the work effort; we just lack access to capital! Frank’s group helps nearly 15,000 kids get a start on creating their own venture. Over the past 18 months, it has experienced a 95% repayment on loans. In its program, children are required to pay 1% interest on principal, and put into personal savings 1% of their profits. The micro-credit agency provides workshops on writing business plans and operating a budget and charting cash flow, including putting into place a simple accounting system.
It’s sound like an amazing program that gives kids an opportunity by providing capital, by encouraging savings and by aiding the development of plans, budgets, etc. (sounds like entrepreneur coaching)
Have you seen this scene (or one just like it) on TV or in a movie?
The young detective really cares about solving the case. He is going above and beyond the call of duty to nab the killer. He doesn’t sleep nights. He is constantly thinking about what he can do to solve the crime. The pressure is starting to get to him. He makes a mistake, he cracks. The police captain call him into the office is says, “Take a week off. Clear you head.” “No, I can handle it,” says the detective. “This is an order not a request,” says the captain intensely.
When you work for yourself, who is going to tell you to take a vacation? How do you know that you need a rest?
I got that signal a few weeks ago, when my hard-drive crashed. Yes, it was time to take a few weeks off from thinking, from the routine, from my prioritization, from my systems, from my to-do list and from my email. Wow, what a time it has been!
This timely excerpt from Seth Godin inspired me to further look and change my systems and my agenda:
At work, where does your list come from? Do you answer emails by date received, by urgency, by sender? Who decides that? Which blogs do you read, which tasks do you do?
The biggest challenge, by far, is one of agenda. What do I do now? What do I do next?
What tends to get done is what’s urgent, not important–you’ve heard that before.
I think, though, that with the new tools and new leverage available to us, the decisions get even more important.
Because we do it every day, we tend to take it for granted. We assume our agenda is exactly the right one, and we tweak it, we don’t overhaul it.
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How about placing the overhaul of your systems and of your agenda at the top of your agenda?
Conscious Capitalism is based on the triple bottom line of people, planet and profit. Seth Godin reminds me today that it’s also about integrity. It’s not enough for integrity to be part of the personality of your business. Integrity must be a part of its essence.
Systems are always going to be manipulated by some. That’s inevitable. What’s happening today is that manipulation has become part of the system. How unfortunate it is that the people that choose not to manipulate are the ones going against the grain. Integrity is going against the grain. How sad is that?
We don’t have to play the game, we can, we should, we must create a new game. Integrity is a choice. It’s not an easy choice. Conscious Capitalism is about making conscious choices.
*** Thank you Andrea for such an appropriate post…
Business is unpredictable. Sometimes things happen that will blindside you. It’s inevitable. At the same time, it’s important to do what you can to minimize the risk of a disaster occurring.
Over the past weekend, my computer hard-drive failed. And yes, there was no recent back-up. I had not realized, until I spoke to a few drive doctors, how often this occurs in the business world. The on-line version of ER docs often have to go to extraordinary measures to bring back not only computers, but entire businesses back from the dead.
We are living in the information age. This weekend I was reminded that my business IS information and that perhaps I should protect it just a bit more.
What I learned is simple. Now let’s work on the execution part of it.
© The Big Shift