1. Don’t pick a fight.  Don’t even enter the ring.  Set your next day’s critical success factors the night before and complete those before even starting anything else that day (including opening email and social media).  Remember that the world wide web can be a world wide waste of time! 
2. Constantly reprioritize.  Rate the current task based on if it meets an immediate business objective.  If not, push it aside.
3. Entertain questions and doubts infrequently.  It is necessary to question your actions.  But set aside time to do that and stop the daily ongoing dialogue like what is listed above.
4. Wrong action beats right thinking every time.  Stop thinking and start doing.  Actions give the ability to get unstuck, learn what you can and then get another chance of success.
5. All of this is hard to do on your own.  The inertia isn’t on your side.  Recently, when I have met fierce resistance, I pick up
   Steven Pressfield’s Do The Work…It gives me the kick in the butt that I need.

Tim has got a new book out that really made me think. Many of us think a lot about the food we put in our bodies. We realize that if our bodies does not have good fuel, it can’t perform well.
 
Tim Sanders, in his new book, Today We Are Rich asks if we similarly think about the information that we put in our mind. This is critical because we are what we think about. How can we have the resiliency to ride the daily business roller coaster up and down if we feed our minds junk? This includes the horrors of the nightly newscasts, sitcoms and reality TV shows. What shape is our mind in after answering a barrage of emails or aimlessly surfing the web? What about the negative people, gossip and nasty attitudes that we are exposed to every day?
 
Tim believes that we need to go on a “mind diet” in order to radically change our attitude and therefore our level of confidence. He says that “When good stuff goes into your mind, good thoughts emerge. People who maintain purposeful mind diets of positive stimuli think healthy thoughts”.
 
Tim suggests for this “mind diet” we log everything we are reading, listening, watching, and people we meet. Log the source, the tone, and how much time we spent on each activity. I followed Tim’s instructions for a day to label the negative and positive tone of the information I consumed. I was astounded how much negative information I pumped into my mind and how it affected my productivity for the day.
 
Tim doesn’t mean that we should hide away from current news coverage or only consume spiritual materials while living on some mountain top retreat. Instead, he prescribes a steady diet of newspapers, books and other media with editorial styles that “enrich your point of view and…is relevant to your life”. Tim also suggests that we ease into the day and not check email right away. After reading Tim’s book, Today We Are Rich, I now start my day by doing two things:
 
1. Focusing on the single most critical business task I need to accomplish that day.
2. Read something that I am very interested in (inspirational, spiritual or instructional).
 
When I am able to begin my day in this manner, my confidence and productivity skyrocket for the remaining part of the day. We have what it takes to live our lives with confidence. Today We are Rich covers the principles to teach us how!
 

I have teamed up with best selling author and soon to be reality TV star, Carol Roth for 10 video episodes of "Business Boxing".

Exclusively available on AllBusiness.com, Carol and I duke it out to give your small business a fighting chance! We talk about issues such as "Is the customer always right ?", "Should you be partners with your spouse?" and "Should you take money from your family?"

Watch the two minute video now.

You pick the winner: Did I land a knockout punch?

The Book and Action Hero!

There are a lot of entrepreneur books out there. I even wrote one! However, this new book from Carol Roth is special. The Entrepreneur Equation discusses the questions you should ask BEFORE starting.  She takes a step backward and talks about:

Should I be an entrepreneur ? Why do you want to be an entrepreneur?

Carol talks about the risks and rewards based on your personal situation and how to stack the odds in your favor.  Better yet, you can order a business action hero doll to go with the book! Watch my video review.

Click here to view the embedded video.

1. Rework by Jason Fried.  I don’t agree with many people’s business philosophies but I love what Jason Fried stands for.  As the co-founder and President of 37signals, he knows there’s real value and beauty in the basics.

2. Attention! by Jim Kukral.  This book has specific actions that all small businesses can take.  It includes 26 ways to market your business differently, including holding a grudge and wearing funny hats!

3. Engage! by Brian Solis.  He talks about how your personal social media network is becoming a key value in the future of your business.

4. The Referral Engine by John Jantsch.  Most of us know how important referrals are for our business, but have no system in place to get them.  John shows how to form a strategy that drives customers and partners to market for you.

5. Fascinate by Sally Hogshead.  She explores the 7 universal triggers of fascination that increase client loyalty, profits and employee retention.

6. Defy Gravity by Rebel Brown.  This book is a guide to capturing your best opportunities for sustainable and profitable growth.

7. Drive by Dan Pink.  After reading this book, you will rethink about how people are truly motivated.

8. UnMarketing by Scott Stratten.  This guy just makes a lot of sense.  He talks about how to build your business through social media and how people don’t read crappy content.

9. Never Get A Real Job by Scott Gerber.  He shows how to build a business on your own dime and how a sense of entitlement is holding back Gen-Yers.

10. The Zen of Social Media Marketing by Shama Kabani.  She shows about how to truly use social media and why it comes last!

What were your favorite small business books of 2010?

I am glad that the idea that you have to be crazy to start a business resonates across every culture!

Success means tying your destiny to your customers.  They discuss that if you can establish trust and valor, the company will grow.  The book solves the most difficult growth challenges by unlocking the secrets of the customer chain.

The in-depth framework shows comprehensive and foolproof go-to-market and get-to-market implementation plans—as well as examples of successful Customer Chain Maps, Market Maps, Decision Matrix, and Relationship Maps.

The book covers:
• Top Ten Tips for Successful Strategy Implementation
• Understand Your Customer Chain: Your Customers Want to Pay You More
• Five C’s: Commoditization, Competition, Consolidation, Channels and Collaboration
• Business to Business Strategy: Three Approaches for Creating Value
• Best New Market Entry Strategies
• Globalization and Innovation
• Value Creation Through Acquisitions, Partnerships, Pricing

On Business Insanity Radio today, award winning web consultant, Jim Kurkal has his first book hitting the bookstores next week.  It’s called Attention!  This Book Will Make You Money: How to Use Attention-Getting Online Marketing to Increase Your Revenue (affiliate link).  This is Jim’s first book after 15 years of experience.

I loved this book since it is full of actionable items for the small business.  On the podcast, this is what we talked about:

1.  Twenty-six ways to free your mind and market your business differently, including holding a grudge and wearing funny hats!

2.  The  universal truths of selling on the web and how to take advantage of them.

3.  Developing a compelling hook and why we are in the content business.

4.  How to make money from online videos and social media.

5.  Why easy always wins: People only come online for two reasons – to solve a problem or get entertained!

6.  Why Mark Cuban hates Jim Kukral (actually, we did not talk about this so you need to look it up in the book).

Listen to the podcast and read the book!

My two other guests were Ren Carlon with his book, “Profitpreneurship: Creating a business that produces outstanding financial results” where we talk about how profit is sanity and sales are vanity.  Ren discussed how to create a company that is focused on making a profit rather than just building something bigger with more employees.

Lisa Canning, who is the founder of Entrepreneur The Arts talks about how she teaches artists business skills so they can make a living from what they love doing.  This is very important work since most artists (and doctors) really lack skills in this area.  Also, many artists give up their passion because they are unable to financially support themselves.  Listen to the podcast !

Sramana Mitra

1. What is 1M/1M?

2. What is the Infant Entrepreneur Mortality?

3.  How to validate your ideas before you invest.

My next guest was Ron Koss, who founded (with my twin brother Arnie) of Earth’s Best Baby Foods and the co-author (with Arnie) of “The Earth’s Best Story.”  We talked about:

1. Why take on the big companies with organic baby foods.

2. Why you need to be a Mutt Entrepreneur.

3. What it’s like to work with your identical twin.

4. How not to become the Master of Dilution.

My last guest was Ben Hollis who is best known as the pith-helmeted, khaki clad original host and co-creator of the PBS hit shows Wild Chicago and Wild Chicago’s Illinois Road Trip.  He has 8 Emmys.  What you may not know about Ben is that he also applies his communication skills in the business world as a facilitator with his “What’s It Like to be You?” employee engagement program, and as a producer and host of high energy, unconventional corporate videos.  Ben talks about to combat loneliness as the hidden killer in companies.

Listen Now!

On this night, Brian talked about:

1. How the sheer number of posts and tweets are becoming unmanageable.  We need to understand the context of those bits of information we are communicating, and this probably means separate tweet streams for different people you are connected with.

2.  How your personal social network is becoming very key to your future value in business.  Brian suggested your Twitter “Klout score” is almost becoming like a FICO score for the web.

3. The importance of a businesses in “promoting the shit” out of their content and sharing it with the community.  The content needs to be passionate, human and consistent.

4. How company’s mission statements are running far behind what people are saying about them on the web.  Everyone now is an influencer in their own right.

Where you there last night?  Have you heard Brian speak in other cities?  What do you think about Engage?