———

We all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. That is a limitation of our existence. So, the only way to achieve more success with the time you have is to make that time more productive. Over the years, I’ve found it so helpful to invest a few minutes at the end of each week to think about how I could have been more productive. The realizations that have come to me have truly made my life and my business better.

I was fortunate early in my sales career to take some advice to heart. The advice was that “poor people should take rich people to lunch – and listen.” Since the results of my real estate career at that point in time would definitely fall under the “poor” category, I started paying attention to who was doing better than I was. There was a man in business in my community who everyone looked up to because of his great success. I decided I would take him to lunch.

It took several attempts but my persistence paid off and he finally agreed to meet me for lunch. I had chosen a nice restaurant, and was so nervous that I was afraid to pick up my water glass for fear of spilling it all over myself. I hadn’t prepared well and didn’t even know where to begin with asking him questions. After a few minutes, he asked me why I wanted to meet with him. When I told him about the advice I had been given he asked if I was serious about wanting to achieve success. I seem to recall my voice cracking as I replied “yes.”

He leaned back in his chair for a moment, looking at me. Then he said, “Tom, I’m going to give you the best advice I’ve ever received. I’ve applied this advice to everything – my business, my family life, everything. I apply it every day, too – not just when I feel like it. Some days you’ll love me for giving you this advice. Other days you’ll wish you’d never heard it but it will always work for you.” I was so excited that he would help me this way. I started looking for something to write on. As a young, inexperienced businessperson I had failed to bring pen and paper. The restaurant had cloth napkins and I was afraid I would forget this precious advice. Then, the man leaned forward, looked me straight in the eye, and said twelve words that changed my life forever. I’ll share those words with you now: “I must do the most productive thing possible at every given moment.”

I was shocked. It sounded so simple. Could true success be gained just from being productive? Well, let me tell you it can. I have lived by those words ever since the day I heard them. And let me also tell you that it’s not always easy to follow that advice. There were times when I wanted to linger in bed rather than getting on my exercise bike. There were days when playing golf sounded a lot more fun than going into the office. But when I acted on that advice, I had better days and achieved greater success.

Please understand that living by this advice is not meant to turn you into a workaholic. Is playing on the beach with your loved ones a productive use of your time? Of course it is – when the money for the vacation has been earned. Is being present at your children’s sporting events productive? You bet it is.

Take those twelve words and start asking yourself, “Is what I’m doing right now productive as to achieving my goals?” If it’s not, make a choice and conscious effort to change what you’re doing to “the most productive thing possible.” You’ll start achieving both more balance and more success in your life.

To read more success tips and get access to 9 Free Selling Skills Videos from Tom Hopkins visit www.tomhopkins.com/blog.

 

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Audio Podcast: Advice for College Graduates – MP3 (click image)

Looking for a job? Get a routine and stick to it.

Getting a job is not a nine-to-five job. It’s a sixteen-an-hour-a-day proposition, from the moment you get up until the moment you go to sleep. With that kind of workload, you need a daily schedule to manage that routine and organize your time. No employer is around to police your time management, and that means the control burden falls squarely on your own shoulders. This doesn’t mean you’re being sentenced to endless rounds of self-punishment and drudgery. If you’re going to be at your best, you’ve got to have some fun too, so make room for a little downtime.

Start the week unofficially on Sunday night. You’ll want to scribble out a short list of things to get done the next week and check it against the list you had the previous week.

Set goals. To put them to work for you they must be:

Measurable

Identifiable

Documented

Attainable

Specific

And they need to be examined regularly.

Note the first letter of each word spells Midas, and I call this approach giving goals The Midas touch because it turns goals into gold.

How many new contacts did I make this last week? Did I stretch our geographically into new areas? Explore new job descriptions? Improve my presentation or appearance? Grade yourself, and don’t be too narrowly focused. A week without getting a job is not a week of failure. You may have accomplished other goals last week, things you’ve never had the time for or put in the effort to achieve in the past.

Think of what you are doing as a new do-it-yourself skill, like crafting a fine piece of woodworking or raising and grooming a bonsai plant. Why? Because you are going to need to use the same job-finding skill set twelve to fifteen times in your working life. You can and will become an expert at it. So good and efficient, in fact, that you will be able to methodically get a new job in your off-hours while you actually have one during the work day.

For my straight forward advice for college graduates click here for my 11 minute audio podcast. 

Mackay’s Moral: It bears repeating: Getting a job is a job.

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Photo Source: Wikipedia

Gordon Dean was a distinguished American lawyer and prosecutor. One of the original members of the Atomic Energy Commission, he became its chairman from 1950 to 1953. It’s said that when Dean died in a plane crash in 1958, among his personal efforts was an envelope with nine life lessons scribbled on the back. These lessons aren’t about the law or about atomic energy. They’re wisdom about his philosophy of life:

1. Never lose your capacity for enthusiasm. 
2. Never lose your capacity for indignation. 
3. Never judge people – don’t type them too quickly. But in a pinch never first assume that a man is bad; first assume that he is good and that, at worst, he is in the gray area between bad and good. 
4. If you can’t be generous when it’s hard to be, you won’t be when it’s easy. 
5. The greatest builder of confidence is the ability to do something – almost anything – well. 
6. When confidence comes, then strive for humility; you aren’t as good as all that. 
7. The way to become truly useful is to seek the best that other brains have to offer. Use them to supplement your own, and be prepared to give credit to them when they have helped. 
8. The greatest tragedies in the world and personal events stem from misunderstandings. So communicate! 

We’re all students of life. Want to get a head of the class? Pay attention and take notes. 

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Things are not necessarily as we always perceive them to be. 

Example: A mother is in the kitchen. She hollers upstairs to her son, who is still in bed. “You are late for school. Get down here right now.”

The son hollers back, “I don’t want to go to school. The kids don’t like me. The teachers don’t like me. Everyone talks behind my back. I’m not going to school.”

The mother rushes upstairs, opens the bedroom door, points to her son and says, “You get out of bed this very minute. You are going to school for two reasons:

1. You are 41 years old.

2. You’re the principal of the school.

The post The Principal of it All appeared first on Harvey Mackay Official Website | Bestselling Author of Swim with the Sharks.

You can’t make a connection with someone if you have nothing to talk about.

I have one simple tip to make so you are never at a loss: Get yourself a subscription to Sunday New York Times.

For a shy person or for someone who worries about running out of things to say, there is no better resource than the Sunday edition of “The Newspaper of Record.” 

• It’s an encyclopedia of the week’s events.
• The movie and book reviews alone are worth the price of the paper.
• If you ever have a talk intelligently about science, travel, sports, politics, or whatever, it’s the right there.

Oh, yes, the networking part.

They tell me that all the yuppies who summer at Martha’s Vineyard line up at the dock every Sunday morning waiting for the ferry to unload its precious cargo of newspapers. You could be in a lot worse company.

Mackay’s Maxim: Reading the Sunday Times is your ticket of admission to any conversation. 

Click here to read more networking tips from Harvey Mackay. 

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Have you ever wondered about questions to ask a job candidate?

In August 2009, John Chambers, the CEO of IT giant Cisco, was interviewed by the New York Times. He was asked to share the questions he asked a job candidate. His most interesting one:

“Who are the best people you recruited and developed and where are they today?”

Everyone gives lip serive to people being the biggest resource for business. Who doesn’t sing the praises of smart hiring and management development?

Chambers is saying prove it. This challenge works for any level of management in any company.

Does Chambers’ question apply to young people who are entering the job market?  Why shouldn’t it? If you ran the student newspaper or the debating society, how did you help develop the next editor or the chief debater who succeeded you?

If your next job interviewer doesn’t ask you the Chambers question, and you have had stellar results in finding and growing people, make it a major selling point. And if you don’t have a meaningful answer to the question, then make your own recruitment and development skills a #1 priority when you  land your next job.

The people who build companies are the people who build people.

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The ability to listen to others is not, typically, the entrepreneur’s greatest strength.

If you’re the oldest guy in the shop, if you’re the one others turn to when they want to hear about the “old days,” it’s time to find yourself an even older grizzly.

When I first bought Mackay Envelope, I was twenty-six. My lawyer, the one I hired after I fired the young hotshot who told me not to buy the envelope company, was sixty. My accountant was fifty-eight, and my banker would admit to being seventy, but I think he was closer to eighty. They didn’t know a thing about the envelope business, but they didn’t need to. They had seen enough business problems in their lifetimes to be able to deal with anything imaginable without knowing the ins and outs of my particular industry.

Though everything that happened to me in my first five years of business was new to me, nothing was new to them. And even when I didn’t take their advice—and often I didn’t—they were a calming and reassuring influence. And that’s something every businessperson, novice or experienced, has need of from time to time.

I’m a bit past twenty-six now and getting closer to old-timer status myself, but if I learned anything from those old-timers, it was that I didn’t have to shoulder the whole load alone. There are a lot of qualified advisers out there to help… if we only ask them. Try it sometime. Thinking of adding a new product line? Considering relocating your plant? Afraid to take a strike, but feel in your gut you should? Making an acquisition? You’re not the first person who’s had to wrestle with those problems. Ask an old grizzly. You may have to listen more than you talk, but that won’t hurt you either.

Excerpted from Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive

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One of the best ways to use your imagination is to visualize or fantasize success. Long ago I came to realize that projecting myself into a successful situation was the most powerful means of attaining my personal goals.

That’s what a placekicker does when he comes on the field to kick a winning field goal. Three seconds left in the game… 80,000 screaming fans… 30 million people watching on TV… and the game is still in balance. As the kicker begins his moves, he makes the hundred tiny adjustments necessary to achieve the mental picture he’s formed in his mind so many times—a picture of himself kicking the winning field goal.

The ability to project is a common trait among all great athletes. They have vision. They see things happening a split second before they actually do.

Jack Nicklaus, one of the greatest golfers of all time and a PGA Tour Hall of Famer, was asked about his tremendous success, especially in making crucial tournament-winning putts. He thought about it for a bit and said, “I never missed a putt in my mind.”

Nicklaus is not considered to be the best at hitting his woods, long or short irons, or even at chipping and putting. But almost everyone considers him the greatest thinking golfer of all time. There has simply been no equal at the mental part of golf, which for me is half the game.

Thomas Watson Sr. was 40 when he took over as general manager of a little firm that manufactured meat slicers, time clocks and simple tabulators. He had a vision for a machine that could process and store information long before the computer was a commercial reality. To match his lofty vision, Watson renamed his company International Business Machines Corporation. Toward the end of his life, Watson was asked at what point he envisioned IBM becoming so successful. His reply was simple: “At the beginning.”

Fred Smith’s vision for a nationwide overnight express air-delivery service was first unveiled in the early ‘70s in a term paper for an economics class at Yale University. Unfortunately, his professor didn’t share Smith’s excitement, and gave him a C. Smith, however, took the idea and created an exceptional company known as Federal Express.

The renowned religious leader Billy Graham prayed, “God, let me do something, anything, for You.” That attitude allowed Billy Graham to find a vision that drove his life.

The ability to visualize something better in the world is the cornerstone of countless other success stories. For example:

• Henry Royce was unwilling to accept anything but automobile perfection, and the Rolls-Royce remains an emblem of the exceptional today.
• Orville and Wilbur Wright were inspired at a children’s birthday party when they saw a toy with a wound-up rubber band take to the air. They turned that inspiration into a reality.
• Marie Curie held high her commitment to scientific excellence in spite of doubters, and she made important discoveries until the day she died.

Such successful people were able to visualize—above and beyond the majority of folks—a condition that was just right. They taught us that a vision begins with imagination coupled with a belief that dreams can one day be realized.

And a man by the name of Viktor Frankl owed his 92-year-long life to his ability to project himself. He was a renowned Viennese psychiatrist before the Nazis threw him into a concentration camp. I heard him speak some years ago, and he held the audience spellbound.

Viktor Frankl’s words: “There’s one reason why I’m here today. What kept me alive in a situation where others had given up hope and died was the dream that someday I’d be here telling you how I survived the concentration camps. I’ve never been here before. I’ve never seen any of you before. I’ve never given this speech before. But in my dreams I’ve stood before you in this room and said these words a thousand times.”

Mackay’s Moral:

People begin to become successful the minute they decide to be.

Excerpted from: The Mackay MBA of Selling in the Real World

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If you ask the attendant at your health club what the busiest day of the year is, he’ll tell you it’s the day after New Year’s. That’s when all the New Year’s—resolution types pour in. By February only a handful are left. Now that New Year’s Day is well over, tell me, how many of those resolutions have you kept? How many can you even remember?

Maybe you could use a new set. This time, you won’t have to fight the crowds.

1. I will improve my listening skills.

I will remind myself that I can’t learn anything when I’m doing the talking. I will abandon my phony “open door” policy and establish specific meetings and set aside specific times so that others can have real access to me. I will break down barriers. I will try to end the “not invented here” syndrome and encourage the free flow of information across departmental and hierarchical lines. I will answer my own phone… well, I will answer it more often.

2. I will improve my professional skills.

I will cease to be a pothole on the information highway. I will not allow myself to become one of these old fuddy-duddies who brag about their inability to operate modern business equipment. I will get up to speed in computers and communications equipment. Nobody should come into the twenty-first century without being computer literate.

3. I will improve my reading skills.

Unfortunately, my reading ability has slowed down over the years and it is taking me longer to absorb less. I will take a speed-reading course. Instead of reading what merely confirms my existing prejudices, I will search out material that introduces me to new ideas and new ways of thinking.

4. I will waste less time.

I will use my computer time to read more or to listen to audio tapes that can help me improve my skills and broaden my understanding.

5. I will exercise regularly.

I will do so to the point where I become “positively addicted.” I know exercise not only improves my health but helps me maintain a high level of performance on the job.

6. I will encourage risk taking.

I know that many businesses fail from lack of boldness rather than from trying something new. I will not punish or ridicule honest mistakes. I love my work. I want others to feel the same about theirs, so I will try to make my workplace fun and exciting, not just a paycheck.

7. I will put into practice a plan to become the sole source of supply to my largest customers.

The most important element of my plan is to treat my customers as though I were their most dedicated employee and consultant, ready to serve them in every way, so they feel my company is practically a division of their company.

8. I will be committed to growing and improving every facet of our business.

I want every employee in my company to know we are open for hire eight days a week, 13 months a year. I want them constantly to be on the lookout for good people to become part of our team.

9. I will contribute to my community.

I will be a giver. I will give money. I will give time. I will try to make a difference. I want to help make the place I live become a better place for everyone.

10. I will not neglect my family in pursuit of the almighty dollar.

I will never forget that they do more to keep me on an even keel and bring more genuine happiness into my life than any business success I can ever achieve. So Carol Ann, David and Virginia, Mimi and Larry, Jojo and Michael, make room for me. I’m on my way home.

Mackay’s Moral:

Start your new year today. And remember, anyone can make a resolution. Very few people can keep one.

Excerpted from Pushing The Envelope All The Way To The Top

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Knowing something about your customer is just as important as knowing everything about your product. Take politicians, for example. A politician will support your proposition only as long as it is politically popular or uncommonly rewarding.

That isn’t to say that pols are any less honest or reliable than the rest of us. It’s just that politicians must shift positions constantly to keep up with the people they are supposed to be leading. Legislators, particularly in faraway places such as Washington, tend to be a little less reliable than governors, who are under closer local scrutiny, but the same principle holds. It is the duty of someone who wants something from a politician either to (a) create the public climate that makes supporting that position attractive, or (b) do whatever is necessary so that a politico will return a favor from time to time—like fundraising or even organizational work.

Before you choose one tactic or the other, you had better be certain with whom you are dealing. In this case, the governor was the type of politician who thought he had something his constituents would truly want. The Ghermezians and the governor both went public together, and when it became rapidly apparent that the brothers had not created the proper climate of public opinion, the governor backed off.

To the Ghermezians’ credit, they finally got the message, hired local lobbyists, and put the pieces back together. After having asked for several hundred million dollars at the legislature and getting completely skunked, they got help at the municipal level. The current scaled-down version—call it a mini mega-mall—could have been even bigger. In fact, the Ghermezians created the 5.3-million-square-foot West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, the largest shopping center in the world, starting in 1981.

Identifying the customer does not mean that you make your pitch directly to that customer. Selling the governor in this case was easy… too easy. What the Ghermezians should have done was first build a support structure of “influencers” around that governor—the press, the unions, popular opinion, his own party, and so on—before pitching the main man. That involves a professional PR effort: stories extolling their already successful mall; leaks about competing cities plotting to sweep the Ghermezians into their fold; orchestrated demand for the product from leading opinion-makers. None of this groundwork was laid. Unfortunately (for the Brothers Ghermezian), once the governor discovered he had no crew, it was time to abandon ship.

At Mackay Envelope Company, you wouldn’t believe how much we know about our customers. The IRS wouldn’t believe how much we know about our customers. All our salespeople on our staff fill out a 66-question profile of each one of their customers. We’re not talking about the customer’s taste in envelopes, either. We want to know, based on observation and routine conversation, what our customer is like as a human being, what he feels strongly about, what he’s most proud of having achieved, and what the status symbols are in his office.

When you know your customers, some of their special interests or characteristics, you always have a basis for contacting and talking to them. I have a customer who’s a devoted Chicago Cubs baseball fan. The Cubs’ failure to make it to the top continues. That’s usually good for at least half a dozen condolence messages a year. I don’t sit there scribbling notes about the latest fashions in envelopes. I write about the Cubs; he writes about the envelopes.

I have another customer who’s a stamp collector. No matter where I go, all over the world, I send him unusual and exotic stamps. I think he must like that. He’s been a customer for nearly forty years, and in all that time, I’ve met him only once.

Knowing your customer means knowing what your customer really wants. Maybe it is your product, but maybe there’s something else, too: recognition, respect, reliability, concern, service, a feeling of self-importance, friendship, help—things all of us care more about as human beings than we care about malls or envelopes.

Excerpted from Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive

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