I stumbled upon this from MindValley. And I liked it.

Short and sweet… Check it out:

I received an email today, random stuff really. But just as if the universe wanted to tell me something, the lesson I learned in the past three weeks hit me hard. And here I use the main ideas from the email and elaborate them a bit further…

You might already have heard about the fact that extraordinary results come from doing something different… from challenging the status quo and shaking things up. So for quite a while now I have been trying to figure out what that really means… what does get me on a path to innovation, extraordinary progress and extreme success? Here are five things that I stumpled upon over and over again

1) Uniqueness

The ultra successful companies and people are aware of their difference. In fact they even use it to their full advantage. As long as I tried to please most people it did not only hurt myself, it also made me look beige. I am different - so what?! Being afraid that by being polar will alienate your friends, family or market is like killing your most valuable sales point. Only if you are true to yourself you start attracting the most specific group of people around you. The kind of people that make each other feel comfortable and focus their power on the facts and energy that can move mountains.

I don’t want a one size fits all, “canned” solution. I don’t want to be surrounded by people who want that. “Meike, you are annoying sometimes”, someone told me. “I know.” I answered. Maybe this is also because I am never to afraid to

2) Ask Better Questions

Many people think that super successful people have all the answers. Maybe - but they didn’t get them from just divine intervention or from guessing. They get the answers from asking better questions.

Finding what to do takes asking hard questions to yourself, your friends, your co-workers, boss, peers and family. I read that average people tend to shy away from asking the tough questions because they are afraid of the answers they might get. I was compared to not going to the doctor because being nervous about what he might find out. Most successful people face new challenges head-on, ask the tough questions and tackle them regardless of the answers. If that makes me annoying - that’s good…

3) Take Risk

Risk tolerance is a success trait that is hard to ignore. You know about the saying: “no risk - no fun”. That makes so much sense… Who takes great risk can loose a lot… can also win a lot. Now don’t go overboard with risk. Hedge your bets with high quality information and research. Put the work and time necessary to plan for and research the viability of a risky decision. This way, risk becomes calculated and you won’t loose it all…

And in case you don’t win (simply because life isn’t a wishing list) you might understand that with every failure comes a learning experience. Make it a lesson leaned experience and gain extremely valuable information from you mistakes and failures. Do so by analyzing the situations and extract as many lessons as possible from the disaster. Then synthesize this information and create better plans for going forward. The super successful people don’t wallow in the misery of their failures and stick their head in the sand to hide. They pick themselves back up and move ahead again. This time armed with new information.

4) Fight

… as if you were right. But listen as if you were wrong. Most average people try to avoid confrontation at all costs. They hate to cause trouble, make a scene or have to get in someone’s face. This happens even to the point of missing out on something they are entitled to, paid for or are owed just so they don’t have to confront the situation. They’re happier practicing avoidance than strength. The overachievers on the other hand don’t follow that thinking. They make it a point to engage in battle to get what they want, deserve or are passionate about.

The successful people are not afraid to hurt some feelings and be open, honest and blunt about what they think, want or need from anyone. They are willing to fight for what they believe in, their passion and their ideas. This is a leadership quality that allows them to achieve more, accomplish more and have others working for them and with them to accomplish everything they need to give achieve high degree of success and happiness in life.

Truth been told: that all reads very easy but is hard to actually turn into action. It is true though. Think about it. A few weeks ago Khailee sent me an article about practicing brutally honesty. And I can tell you: it feels darn good…

5) Leverage Time

We all have the same amount of time in a day. Some people just do more with it than others. I am not talking about the g-t-d tricks or force of being extra efficient 24/7. I believe that just doesn’t feel natural to everybody. The “Trumps” of the world know the value of time and how to leverage it to get more accomplished. The average person thinks about time as a renewable resource not a precious raw material to

success.

So the next time, why don’t you leverage time and stop trading it for dollars? Stop buying into a tit for tat mentality when it comes to the exchanging of time for money. Instead create systems that you build one time that work for you for eternity. Do it like the super successful and seek out and get involved with opportunities that are scaleable and deliver returns for long periods of time. Action and ideas are the currency of the rich.

So the next time everybody jumps off the bridge… at least think twice before you jump, too.

A basketball in my hands is worth about $19. A basketball in Michael Jordan’s hands is worth about $33 mil’lion.

A baseball in my hands is worth about $6. A baseball in Mark McGuire’s hands is worth $19 mil’lion.

A tennis racket is useless in my hands. A tennis racket in Venus Williams’ hands is a championship win’ning.

A rod in my hands will keep away a wild animal. A rod in Moses’ hands will part the mighty sea.

A sling shot in my hands is a kid’s toy. A sling shot in David’s hand is a mighty weapon.

Nails in my hands might produce a birdhouse. Nails in Jesus Christ’s hands will produce salvation for the entire world.

As you see now it depends whose hands it’s in. So an oppor’tunity is only an oppor’tunity depending on whose hands its in.

So now this message is in your hands. What will YOU do with it?

“It Depends on WHO’S Hands it’s in!!”

Moral of the story: Opportunities don’t come often, but when they do, GO for it…

Ok… since today is “technically” a ‘holiday’ ekeke, here’s a little something for ya to digest…

Do You Need Technical Knowledge?

It’s very common for people to think that they need to be technically “savvy” to do this, but that could be further from the truth!

In fact, I’m technophobic myself. (For those who know me well, they’ll know how ‘useless’ I can be at these stuff sometimes hahhaa.. eh sorryla I know I not so brainy like you ppl k but at least I’m ‘trying’ k

Ok anyway back to serious-ness…

Well, the reality is, in order to be successful in this, one just has to understand how things ‘work’, as in how to drive traffic to your sites and how to convert those virtual visitors into paying customers in the best possible ‘friction-free’ process.

(It does not matter what business model you’re operating right now: PPC, Adsense, blogs, shopping carts, physical products, reseller, ebay, affiliate mktg, bla, bla, bla, the SAME principal applies)

Really.

Think carefully, it has it’s truths in it

Of course, there’s much more detail that goes into how to do that but simply put, you have to understand marketing; not just any form or marketing, but ONLINE MARKETING that works.

(Ok-lah, bluff you la.. actually it’s a little more complicated than that-lah hahaha… but if you don’t already know, under the sub-heading of online marketing is fu^king a lot of stuff k, so again, ‘technically’ I’m still telling the truth *tsk tsk*)

As for all the technicalities that comes with it, what we’ll usually do is to hire good people; tell them exactly what we want, how we want them to be done and they are the ones that gets the job done, simply because they’re the best at what they do.

We don’t see the point in spending hours of our time learning and doing something which may turn out to be a low quality, third-rated, lousy-ass job anyway.

Similarly, if you’re just starting out, you don’t have to do everything yourself either, just find someone who knows this stuff; fresh graduates, freelancers or anyone you know who’s web-savvy, pay them a small fee and that’s it!

Understand that as a business owner, your primary job is to MARKET and SELL your products & services to whoever who wants it in any possible way you can, which makes you, first and foremost, a marketer and NOT anything else. I’ve found that to be the fastest way to grow online.

[Side Note]: This is only meant for beginners. When one goes to the next level, it’s a D-I-F-F-E-R-E-N-T mindset for operations and directions. We’ll leave that bit for another day.

Common Mistakes Businesses Make:

One just has to be extra creative to be successful online.

I’ll give you a simple example. It seems that practically anyone you and I know are using Facebook to keep in touch with friends, family, kau lui, kau chai, etc but entrepreneurs can actually take this a step further.

They can use it to strengthen their relationships with their customers, drive tons more traffic and bring in added profits to their bottom line. We’ve tested this several times and the results from this one simple strategy alone was amazing!

What I see in most businesses (big or small) is they have a standard website which gives information about their products and services, the company’s history, the contact information, the basic things and that’s it, their web presence is no different from an online brochure.

*shakes head*

What they don’t realize is how much $$ they are laying on the table just by doing that because they are so many other creative ways to leverage and to monetize their web presence; be it to gather leads, gather vital customer information, to sell, cross-sell, up-sell (or whatever sell they call it these days) their products right there on the web itself because there IS a way to do it!

No, seriously, you just have a think a *little* harder, that’s all

The bottom line is, businesses aren’t leveraging on the potential of the technologies we have on the internet today to fuse them into their operations with customized CRM (customer relationship management) systems, blogs, social networking sites, social book-marking sites, etc. there’s a whole lot of upside potential there but unfortunately they don’t see it.

*shakes head again*

Oh oh… my favorite show’s coming on… lazy to write d-lah.. I’ll see ya around k?

Tip: Here’s a little nugget my mentor taught me:

“If you keep working on your weakness, you’ll be at most, average… if you keep working on your strengths, you will become great”

“Greatness” and striving for only the BEST life has to offer you and not just blindly follow what everyone else is doing deserves an entire post by itself…

By not going through the stages in life following the herd mentality, not doing and following the “stuff” other people are doing… it’s something not everyone can do, it requires a certain mental agility, persistence and s-t-r-e-n-g-t-h to get through and I will be having my own say on that in the near future here… but my show’s on now, so later…

Jay…