How To Be Successful


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Hi Lance Tamashiro here, and today I want to talk to you about something that is going to be a lot different than you probably heard, probably studied, probably been taught about being successful. I am not talking about being successful online, I am not talking about being successful in business, I am not talking about being successful in school. What I am talking is about is something way more important than that and it’s this – it’s how you can be successful at absolutely anything that you want. Literally, anything that you want.

I’ve studied a lot of successful business people, I read a lot about successful sports players, a lot of athletes. I really-really enjoy trying to figure it out what it is and what makes the difference between some people who seem to always be able to succeed in no matter what it is they set out to do, and then some people who seem to fail no matter what it is they try to do.

Before we get into that, I want to tell you guys a really funny story that led me into thinking about all this. Here is how it goes – the other night, well actually seven days ago now. Today is day number seven, you will understand what that means here in a little bit. My parents were in town, and my wife who is this absolute health nut, if you haven’t had a chance to meet Marty yet, I am sure you will at some event that I am attending. She is crazy, she is a lot of fun, she’s very personable and the one thing about her is she’s got this weird way of constantly motivating me, pushing me out of my comfort zone. My parents are here, my wife’s here and normally what we do after we have dinner is we watch some kind of movie, do something just as a family, just sort of hang out and talk. My wife puts on this show, I believe it was called Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead, something like that.

Basically it’s about this guy who is about 300 pounds, successful business person, but not successful in some area of his life, which was his health. Basically went he did was he went on a juice and vegetable fast, in liquid form – he did it for 60 days. Throughout this movie as we are watching it, he is challenging all these people, and I was really interested in how somebody could put their body through that. How they can stay away from pizza, and for me Wendy’s and hamburgers, and beer and all that other good stuff that we all love.

We are watching this movie, and I happen to make the comment, and again this is on a Sunday – I think we had chicken wings, I had drank probably six to twelve beers, and I say well that looks easy I can do that for ten days. I didn’t really think much of it, my family was thinking wow, you would do that for ten days. I wake up the next morning and my beautiful wife Marty, got to love her – I come downstairs in the morning and she’s got my breakfast ready. What she had done is gone to the store, bought lots of spinach, lots of bananas, lots of apples. In fact, what I am drinking right now some fresh squeezed apple juice. If you have never had fresh squeezed juice, I don’t know if you can tell on video, it looks a lot different than most apple juice that you see.

It is totally different, it tastes different. Basically she put me to the test. I said what are you doing, she said you said this would be easy, so you are going to do it. Silly me, right. That is the first thing, one thing that we all need no matter what we are trying to succeed with is somebody that can push us and motivate us to do the things we know we should do, and to actually follow through on them, accountability.

Here is what’s happened, like I said today is day seven. I have had nothing to eat except for vegetables and fruit in liquid form, kind of crazy right. This has been one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. Here is what I think is really important about this, what most people teach you about setting goals and about being successful, is to pick this huge “pie in the sky” goal. For me on this it would have been fast, drink nothing but juice and green smoothies and vegetables for ten days.

Believe me, almost every day I call my business partner Robert, I call my mom, I tell Marty I am quitting this all I want is a Whopper, all I want is a Double with Cheese. This happens constantly throughout the day. What I noticed is that this craving, this choice of whether I am going to continue on the path that I am on to success or veer off onto another path, happens literally hundreds of times a day. Now here is my point with that, all I think about is what I am doing, what I am supposed to be doing, concentrating on it and when that craving comes up, when that choice comes up in my life daily, hourly, sometimes every couple of minutes as to am I going to continue onto the path to success, or am I going to quit.

I immediately choose which one I am going to take, it becomes very easy to know where you are going. Now if I would have started this process, all I was saying is I am going to go for ten days, it’s not how I approached achieving the goal and I think there is a big difference here. Most people tell you, set a big goal, set a goal to have a million dollar company or ten thousand dollars a month, or run a marathon. They sort of leave you with that, and that is why so many people when they make things like New Year’s Resolutions.

They are too big, they are a good “pie in the sky” but there is no practical way to actually get there. My point with all this, whether you are building a business, whether you are trying to lose weight, whether you are trying to get healthy – here is the way you approach it. Set your big goal, that’s fine, but your big goal is not your focus. Your focus in on the small little steps that you are going to take in order to reach that goal, and if you just focus on what is the next step that you need to take. For me, it’s every single meal, every time I get hungry what is the next thing I need to do?

I need to make a choice, do I go to eat fast food or do I continue on the fast. If I look at as it’s the next choice, it’s amazing how fast this “fast” has gone. I really encourage you to look at your business that way, I think so many people get caught up. They don’t have a plan on how they are getting to where they want to go, and they are naive in thinking that you just set this goal and in a year you are going to be there.

Unfortunately, they don’t do the steps that are necessary in order to get there. Just a little thing that I wanted to share with you guys today. I hope that this helps you, and I really hope that no matter what it is that you are trying to achieve, or succeed in, in your life you set that goal and then remember it’s a constant bunch of tiny little steps. If you take those tiny little steps it will be absolutely impossible for you not to achieve your dream and goal. It will happen, take small steps, stay focused and just focus on the next task at hand and you can’t help but succeed.

I hope that helped you, thanks for stopping by.

Let me know what you think is the key to succeeding in life, and the key to achieving your goals. I can’t wait to hear from you and I will talk to you very soon.

Have a great day.

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How To Be Productive

I have always been amazed at “productive” people.

In school, I wanted to know what the best students were doing to get good grades. It seemed like they had a secret to getting their homework done on time while I was struggling to throw something together at the last minute.

Turns out after watching them they all had some kind of system. Some had day planners, some just did their homework as soon as it was assigned and some were in study groups.

Rewarded For Being Unproductive!

Then I went to work in corporate America, I was shocked to see that most productive people are actually “punished” for being productive and everyone knew it.

The most successful people in Corporate America also had ‘systems’. They would spend time getting coffee, organizing 2 hour meetings and having lots of ‘client lunches’.

I even had one boss that told me he waited to go to the bathroom in the morning until he got to work (in not so nice words). His system was called the “$120 sh**!” (no joke)

Anyone that has worked in the ‘system’ knows that you get paid for time, not for productivity.

Retrain Yourself To Be An Entrepreneur

As a small business owner, you no longer get paid for your time, per se.  If you sit at your computer for 8 hours and do nothing or worse, the wrong thing… guess what?  You make no money!

When I started my own business online and soon discovered that there were thousands of productivity and time management systems. I even found a ton that actually worked for me from my now business partner, Robert Plank.

No matter what you want to accomplish having a ‘system’ to follow makes it way easier. Especially online since so many of us are completely new to marketing, technology and even running our own businesses.

Systems Aren’t Everything

But even with the best systems I have found there are some days I sit at my computer and just stare. I know I should be doing a system. I know I should be productive, but for some mental reason I just can’t.

Here are 2 things that I have found dramatically improve my mental state so and actually make me able to change my mental state instantly so that I can move forward and follow traditional systems.

1) Motivation Wall – A couple of months ago, I recieved a few nasty emails and it really put a mental block on me. My wife just laughed and said, “what about all the nice things people have said or done for you online?”

I couldn’t think of any… (funny how one or two negative things can over ride a zillion positive ones at the time)

So she pulled out cards, letters and other ‘trinkets’ that customers, friends and students had sent to me. You know what? It changed my mental state immediately!

Now I hang up my favorite ones right in front of my computer. This is the first thing I see when I sit down every day and it makes me feel great about what I am doing right away.

How To Be Productive

2) Quiet – Normally, I love things quiet. But recently I have found that while working online as entrepreneur this can be extremely bad! Most of us sit at the computer for hours on end reading blogs and forums, building websites and sometimes getting frustrated because a piece of software or site isn’t doing what we think it should.

If you spend too much time in this kind of isolation and quiet, you will not only decrease your productivity, but you will eventually condition yourself to be in a bad mood.

I started using a free service called Pandora, that actually tailors music to my liking. It took a while, but now almost every song they play is something I love.

Here is the thing. Don’t sit in silence. Listen to interviews from people you want to be like, listen to music, put something on. You will notice an immediate change in your mood and productivity.

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Facebook Fan Page – Do You Have Yours Yet?

It took me forever to give it a try but I finally did..

What do you think?

How many fans will you have in the next 30 days?

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