Important Notes

Call #3 - The Anatomy of Mind

We are all the same, but we are all different. Just as we recognize the sameness and individuality in our clients, it’s important to realize each of us has unique thought patterns, motivations, and internal dialogues. With that said, we all have the same brain parts (or “mind” parts). We can understand how the human mind lands at decisions, since the mechanisms are the same, but in order to utilize what we learn, we have to identify individual uniqueness.
The Reticular Activating System (RAS) is the center of awareness and arousal. It serves as a filter for sensory messages and allows things in to conscious awareness based on what it believes to be important at a given point in teim.
We have power over our own "will" ( "We desire to feel, to have, to do, all sorts of things which at the moment are not felt, had, or done. If with the desire there goes a sense that attainment is not possible, we simply wish; but if we believe that the end is in our power, we will that the desired feeling, having, or doing shall be real; and real it will become, either immediately upon the willing or after certain preliminaries have been fulfilled." - William James)
Conclusions:
- Human will is the conscious process that can lead us to that which we desire
- The reticular activating system allows us to notice things relative to those issues that are impportent at a given point in time
- If we apply conscious will to directing the RAS, the path to achievement seems to unfold. It almost feels effortless.
Identify two words in your language and in the language of your clients that are “shut down” words, and recognize them. Let your RAS start dismissing "but" and "can't" from your internal vocabulary.
Your Emotional Experiential Memory (EEM) is a mechanism reinforced by dendrite connections in your brain that link objects, thoughts, or triggers with avoidance emotions. It’s intended to protect you.
The PFC can smash the walls that the EEM builds. The Pre-Frontal Cortex is sort of an eye into possibility.
Allow your RAS and PFC to drive you toward new visions of possibility and don't get caught up in trying to create a tagline or a Unique Selling Proposition suggesting you're "best." There can only be one best, so as soon as the marketplace gets cluttered with claims of being best, all of the fabricated USP’s become worthless. They’re no longer unique.
Identify your unique traits. When determining what makes you unique, be honest, not creative.
The word "de-serve" comes from the Latin for “to serve” or to provide a service. If you provide a valuable service, and you are compensated in line with the value of the service you delivered, that is fair compensation.
If you determine that your “worth” exceeds “what you presently collect for an hour of your time” by more than $4, increase your hourly rate by $4 immediately . . . with every client. The apprehension you feel is FEAR (False Evidence Appearing Real). By challenging FEAR, you change the restrictive limits of your EEM.

Directives:

· Identify your own self-talk. Note how often you use “can’t” and “but.”

· Raise your rates by $4 per hour (provided you are not presently receiving the fees you de-serve)

· Begin to list your unique traits and gifts

Call #4: High Machs, Low Machs, and Your Unique Personality

A simplistic study of human nature

Primary Goals of the Call:

To Realize the Impact of Identifying Both Your Uniqueness and Your Connection (Sameness).

To Begin the Process of Enhancing Confidence, Self-Esteem, and a Sense of Worth (Value).

People are the Same, People are Different. The “sameness” in behavior might be defined as human nature.

Human nature is to pursue certainty and then, to trade it for discontent or a new uncertainty.

If you know that, it can serve you.

People, due to some innate element of human nature, are prone to, in their own mind, push you down and push down your achievements, maybe to find some sense of affiliation. If you fail to recognize the power others have to shift your perspective, you’re at the mercy of every negative thought and accusation that gets imposed upon you. When you start to question your own worth, your own value, and your own ability to charge what you honestly believe you’re worth, there’s unintentional influence taking place.

The personal training industry doesn’t yet do what we do. It is human nature to want to lead, but it appears that more common is the tendency to follow.

The mind initiates decision and action and literally dictates how brain chemistry changes to accommodate moods, needs, and wants.

There are two things that control how far we go . . . and that is human nature and perspective.

Personality might be defined as a pattern of thoughts and behavior combining the sameness of human nature with the uniqueness of perspective.

Just as, if we want to change someone’s body we have to understand their uniqueness and their sameness, if we want to change someone’s perspective and ultimately their behavior we have to understand the sameness of human nature and the uniqueness of perspective. Machiavelli, in the 16^th century, addressed personality and the elements of sameness and identity.

Machiavellianism is primarily term psychologists often use to explain a given person's tendency to deceive others so that they can achieve more.

“... as Nature has given men different faces, so she has given them different dispositions and different imaginations.” -- Machiavelli, in a letter dated January, 1513.

Machiavellianism is a perspective, a view of things, and a recognition of sameness and uniqueness. High Machs tend to take a more detached, calculating approach in their interaction with other people. Low Machs are passive, submissive, and highly agreeable.

Machiavellian principles to consider

By nature we are social. Our self-esteem can only be hindered or reinforced by social bonding or perceptions of social bonding. Self Esteem is based on (1) what we think other people think about us and (2) how we compare ourselves to them.

The human is remarkable as a learning animal. We learn by imitating the speech, appearance, and actions of others. Excellence in imitating others is the great genius of our species.

Human nature, upon broad consideration, must include the tendency of human beings to be contradictory, inconsistent, self-deceiving, pretentious, and selfish.

Your world is composed of all the things that can influence your life.

Human happiness is produced by a life of meaningful activity. . . . and “meaningful activity” is a perspective

A Machiavellian thought process makes someone accountable for his or her outcomes and rather than making someone submissive to “what is,” it allows you to consider that you have the ability to change things.

When things go wrong, the Machiavellian can only say one of these four things:

“I didn’t plan well enough.”
“I didn’t execute my plan skillfully enough.”
“Bad Luck overwhelmed my efforts.”
“My opponents were too numerous or too skillful.”

Human nature that hasn’t been influenced by a Machiavellian perspective leads people to bypass rational evaluation of outcome to accept, to rationalize, and to hold tight to some emotional need to follow.

If we are going to really make a change, and clearly establish our uniqueness, our self-esteem, and with that our value, it becomes important that you focus not only on others, but on “self.”

STEERING THE RAS

The RAS is science, not mystical wish fulfillment. It’s driving you to notice the things you want. The PFC allows you to notice opportunities and it can push you beyond the limits of your EEM.

Questions steer the RAS . . .

Trainers Ask – what else can I do? It’s a bad question. It takes the focus away from mastering the foundational elements that make a training business successful.

Your story is unique, your relationships are unique, your powers are unique, your likes, dislikes, passion, and pride are unique

Here are the three things you should right now concern yourself –

· Your world is made up of people

· You have the power to influence the people in your world

· What you need most is a confidence – a Firm Belief that you are the Best Option

Confidence as it relates to career comes from an absolute belief that you are worth whatever you’re going to ask each customer to part with, an absolute certainty that each client will find extreme value, and a firm belief that you are the best option for helping each client achieve his or her goal. That’s why it’s vital, before coming up with a slogan, a marketing hook, or even a USP, to identify what, about you as a person, will allow you to confidently conduct your business. Once you start to recognize your uniqueness, it’ll become simpler to turn the accurate elements of your unique ability into reasons why others should connect with you.

There are three primary reasons most trainers can’t legitimately guarantee results. They fail to recognize the elements of human sameness and bioindividuality. They fail to employ a strategy. They fail to identify sticking points, false beliefs, obstacles, and they have never learned to identify the motivational triggers that allow people to get past them.

If you have a strategy that you know works, and you’re willing to explore more than the physical elements that make each client a unique organism, and you have the patience and wherewithal to extract emotions and perspectives and modify them, you are easily in the top 1% of the field.

The Current Directives

First Directive: Follow Through on Finding Your Uniqueness:

Second Directive: Create your ideal calendar. Be sure to block off time for each of the following:

Client Time
Time You Own (not to be altered)
Flex time
Marketing Time
Planning time
Follow-up time
Workout time (not to be altered)

Third Directive: After you’ve created your calendar, multiply your number of client sessions by the hourly value of your time. QUESTION FOR CONSIDERATION (after creating the calendar): Does the result make you feel adequately compensated for the service you’reproviding, and, projecting yourself forward, does it make you feel good to know you’re earning precisely what the calendar you designed is earning you?

Call #5 – July 7, 2011 - Myths, Beliefs, Illusion, and Influence

The definition of Gullible is not alert to danger or deception.

Don’t think of gullible as an adjective. Think of it as an outcome. In other words, rather than calling someone gullible, recognize that someone or something impacted their RAS, EEM, and PFC in a manner that led them to believe something untrue to be true.

In order to bring about gullibility, master marketers have learned to use and modify tools and traits to stimulate “want.” Those would include:

Illusions

Myths

False Beliefs

A Renewed Sense of Possibility

Possibility is the activation of a potentially different outcome than you’re presently headed toward.

People make decisions based on available information, both in front of them and stored in memory. Why do people buy what you know to be ridiculous products sold with ridiculous claims? Because somebody somewhere cleverly used a mix of illusion, myth, belief shifting, and possibility to create a flawed perception.

If the power exists to create flawed perceptions based on mistruth, you should realize you have extreme power, if you can understand how or why the mind makes decisions and what emotional buttons can be pushed to facilitate decisions that you know will lead to desired outcomes.

Here’s what we know. People act and decide based on belief and emotion, and personality individualities combined with unique experiences make everybody different in their emotional responses.

In order for someone to commit to an action . . . they have to:

Believes something to be true or possible
Feel that the action will or might alleviate pain or move them toward personal gratification

If we can learn to make the kind of money we deserve, and do it by making lives better in the process, we never feel as if we’re working, and it becomes incredibly blissful to recognize that there aren’t those rigid lines between work and passion.

Love what you do, do what you love, and prosper.

Rules of Profitability for Trainers

Get paid what you’re worth – always
Never unjustifiably give away the service you are typically paid for
Do not discount in reward for client commitment – commitment is expected
If, after a predetermined chaos / organization effort, if something isn’t clearly contributing to profit – stop doing it
Spend the most time on whatever brings you the greatest return
Never focus on money – instead position yourself where you prosper at a greater level with each person you touch

Live with the passion of your work (and tell 5 people a day what you do for a living)

Recognize that you’re marketing - always

DIRECTIVES:

1. Build some new customers. Ideally four that you wouldn’t have had otherwise.

2. Consider building your revenue by hiring. If you already have a staff, consider adding one, but think about who the ideal would be. Don’t hire yet. Just start to look, to tune your RAS, toward an apprentice.

3. Set up a forum and charge for it.

4. Make yourself portable . . . rent is simply rent . . . not “the business”

5. Learn to evaluate EBITDA

6. Make it a point to talk to 5 people a day about what you do. Start a new database beginning now, and commit to add 5 people a day to it

7. Choose a unique object that you can carry with you and have it with you for the next call.

Call # 6

Did you ever have a relationship where you try to discuss something and it summons up uncomfortable feelings? From that point on, every time you begin to broach the topic, even just in your mind, those same feelings will emerge. You've created an association.

If you avoid uncomfortable feelings, you avoid ever asking for the outcomes you deserve.

If trying to think about what makes you unique makes you uncomfortable, you don't have to change your uniqueness as much as you have to change the feelings you associate with the discovery process. In connecting with others who have had similar frustrations and overcome them, try to make the questions that you ask more selfish - not because you're selfish or greedy, but because you better people's lives by being better yourself.

Once you change either your beliefs or your emotions, you've changed your potential outcome.

When you attach emotion to something, even a word, it becomes a trigger for emotion, and emotion will determine how far you go to achieve any end. We know that people make decisions, not rationally, but emotionally. If you're going to excel at influencing others, than you have to be selfish enough to get good at bettering yourself.

Choose an object, hold it in your hand, and squeeze it as you close your eyes and envision whatever you now believe to be the ideal future. This exercise, if it's done with vivid images, sounds, and feelings, will link the emotions you associate with achievement to the act of squeezing the object. This gives you the power to summon up the empowering emotions at will.

Your ESP = Extraordinary Service Potential

In order to raise the bar further, to find comfort and positive emotion in pursuing those things that will lead you to a greater sense of fulfillment, you're going to first identify what you offer that others don't. When you're looking for your unique value you looked for experiences and traits specific to you. Now you want to expand that to thinking to include identifying what value you bring to your clients that is EXTRA-ORDINARY.

Everything a fitness professional needs to do in order to be successful falls under one of two headings.

Influence-Ability and Response-Ability.

When we or our clients face obstacles, we have a response-ability, an ability to assess, to choose a course, and to move forward.

A part of your influence-ability will come from your ability to change other people's beliefs and emotions, and it starts by helping them understand what you have to offer specifically for them. They have certain emotions and perceptions that exist now, and whatever they perceive that a trainer is or does is their idea of an ordinary trainer. You begin to compel them and open the door for shifting belief and emotion when you get comfortable in communicating what makes you above ordinary, and a part of that has to involve your abilities and their potential. We can combine those into your ESP, your extraordinary service potential.

I am the best fitness option for you because I (ESP). I can make that promise because I (UV).

Your assignment is to decide what you'd like to achieve over the next 90 days, get excited about the outcome, and then link those positive emotions to an object. Then, squeeze that object as you try to zero in on your UV and ESP.

Call #7

If someone tells you they have $100 per month budgeted for assistance with their fitness program, can you work with that person, without compromising your value in any way, over the course of a year?

Effortless prosperity is a concept that lies as a foundational structure upon which all of you want to build your careers.

Effortless, as I use it in this phrase, effortless prosperity, has nothing to do with an absence of effort.

I’ll also tell you that prosperity, as I use the term, has less to do with money than it has to do with a sense of being.

Effortless prosperity for Personal Trainers is simple:

Touch, Compel, Capture, Thrill

Touch – emotionally touch – people are responsive because of their emotions

There is a way to strategically find greater comfort with the 5 a day rule.

First – get to 5 – just engaging in dialogue

Second – get to 5 that you walk away feeling as if you really expressed a benefit of your service

Third – get to 5 that you’ve touched by sharing something about your unique value or your extraordinary service potential.

After you touch, you have to Compel.

Once a commitment (financial) is made, you’ve completed the Capture.

The next part we love. Thrill people.

Customer satisfaction is ordinary . . . so you don’t want to stop short of thrilling.

Salespeople stall at the capture part. They believe the capture is the victory. I believe the capture is the opportunity to thrill and to use the experience to get better at touching people.

Now that we understand the link between Effortless Prosperity, and Touch, Compel, Capture, Thrill, if you integrate those four simple steps into your daily habits, your business has no choice but to grow.

To prepare for limitless growth, you’ll ultimately have to create your “spillover” . . . to replicate yourself . . . to hire.

Find your apprentice. Someone you trust, someone who wants to learn from you, someone who appreciates the relationship because they benefit from it every bit as much as you do if not more. You can focus on the touch, compel, capture part and develop a confidence that your team will handle the thrill.

The Mindset Shift:

You can only have the experience of thrilling people if you touch them first.

You can only have the experience of thrilling people if you compel and capture some of the people you touch.

Therefore, you are doing those people who you can help a disservice by failing to reach out to them when they’re near you.

If you can adopt this mindset, if you honestly believe that you’re hurting people by not giving them an opportunity to understand your unique power, the touch part becomes so ingrained into who you are the sense of effort goes away completely.

5 a Day
Build a Forum (one marketing directive)
Replicate
Learn to add in profit centers which further escalate prosperity.

Money is representative of power, or more accurately, of the energy to make something happen.

If you believe you de-serve $20 for your orientation, and you believe you can deliver more value than people expect, and you believe most of the people you meet have enough in their pocket to afford a $20 commitment and access to enough energy to afford $100 a month, shouldn’t you attempt to thrill as many people as you can?

You have to begin to believe, beyond any doubt, that you deserve to be compensated in line with the value you deliver.

These are subtle thoughts and theories that should combine to help you form some new beliefs.

Exercise #1

Write down the one outcome that would be most rewarding for you within the next 3 – 6 months.

Compare the desired outcome to your To Do list.

Make action changes based on the new thought process this exercise facilitates.

Exercise #2

Write down the ten (if you have that many) pursuits / activities you spend the most time on and number them 1 – 10 in order of time spent (1 being the one you’re most occupied by).

After you have your list, remove the numbers and re-order the list based on how much of a financial return each activity brings (1 being the one with the greatest return)

Next, take that same list and revisit the hierarchy based on order of “the greatest promise of achieving the desired outcome.”

You might find these two exercises lead to a new awareness, better use of your time, and a shortened path to Effortless Prosperity

Call # 8: Responsibility & Influence Ability

The two categories every professional action taken by any fitness professional falls under:

Responsibility

Influence Ability

Responsibility is a willingness to own commitments to given outcomes and a certainty that you can achieve despite unexpected challenges and obstacles

Influence Ability comes from two-way communication, and mastery of influence ability requires a thorough assessment of mindset, beliefs, emotions, and comprehension.

Your business should be the source of your prosperity

Your business and you are two separate entities

Your business should thrive and prosper because of who you are, and you should enjoy life immensely because of the power and joy your business brings . . . but you and your business should not be "the same."

If you introduce your RAS to "tasks" under the guise of "these are things I HAVE TO DO," you bypass the driving force that leads to an emotional charge. You bypass the focus on the desired outcome and eventually you define yourself with adjectives and your self talk takes those things that were simply ideas related to your career and turns them into assaults on, not your business, but on you.

Separate who you are from what you do.

You should drive your business, but you can’t immerse yourself so deeply that it doesn’t exist without you feeling as if you’re at work.

There are three ways to create a valuable relationship between who you are and what you do.

Create a process where people enter your business by feeling as if they met you without an excessive demand on your time

Create and manage a spillover system

Recognize the distinction between who you are and what you do but find a comfortable overlap, days you love producing when you’re being yourself

If you're going to effectively tune your RAS every morning and every night, you have to attach it to specific outcomes.

I've developed a three-part systemized view of growing and operating your business.

The Reach
The Funnel
The Spillover

Think of the Reach as 5-a-day plus expert positioning

Think of the Funnel as your forum

Think of the spillover as your apprentice and service support system

AN IMPORTANT EXERCISE:

Plan days you love.

Start with one within the next 21 days and another within the two week period that follows

Call# 9 - September 22, 2011 - 18 Motivational Types

We're going to construct 18 categories considering: (18 Motivational Types)

• Motivational Preferences
• Learning Preferences
• Experience and Psychology

Three Categories
• The Thoroughbred
• The Phoenix
• The Chrysalis

The Thoroughbred race horse is a gifted animal bred for performance. Even thought by nature that horse is fit above most, if the thoroughbred is going to win competitive races and stand out in a crowd of other thoroughbreds, he has to train harder and more strategically than other horses. This is the analogy for the Thoroughbred mentality applied to a human being. The Thoroughbred is fit but has a goal to be better (leaner, faster, stronger, more muscular. The Thoroughbred’s Body has well adapted to exercise, and in most cases has been overtraining for an extended period of time. The Thoroughbred understands and in many cases loves the connection between exercise and outcome. This individual typically wants to be challenged and driven.

The Phoenix is a mythological bird that has beautiful plumage. It ages slowly over the course of 500 years, and then, instead of dying and turning to dust, the Phoenix returns to the very nest in which it was born. The nest bursts into flames and the Phoenix is reborn as a beautiful bird to live out another 500 years.

This analogy serves to represent the individual who has a memory of being in the body he or she remembers. The Phoenix wants to be reborn in a sense, to return to a prior condition. The Phoenix has a point of reference, and wants desperately to get back what was lost.

The Phoenix is identified easily in listening to language related to the pressing desire, describing something that "used to" exist. The Phoenix was there once, is presently moving toward a less desirable outcome, and want to go back.

The Chrysalis represents the transitional stage between caterpillar and butterfly.

The Chrysalis wants to live in a well conditioned more attractive body, but has never proven it is possible in his or her unique case. The Chrysalis, in conversation, often reveals a sense of despair and resignation. You'll typically hear stories of attempts and failures. The Chrysalis is willing to accept that he or she simply lacks something, and needs a gradual push and steady reassurance to prevent program abandonment. A Chrysalis can be given hope, but because they've never been at the desired destination, they're not really certain that it's possible.

To The Thoroughbred say:
• Work hard
• Challenge Yourself
• Do More

To the Phoenix say:
• One step at a time
• We're going to get you there
• Remember

To the Chrysalis say:
• You can
• Just do this
• You're doing great

We will now expand this into 18 distinctive types without having to commit 18 unique categories to memory.

The next area of categorization addresses preferred pathways for learning and for communicating.

We learn and communicate through vision, which is what we see, sound, which is what we hear or say, and sensation which is what we feel.

We'll use the terms visual, auditory, and kinesthetic to describe these three modes of learning and communicating.

• Visual - vision

• Auditory - speech

• Kinesthetic - feeling

While we all use all three, vision, sound and sensation, every individual has a sort of unique code, or a unique preference.

Visual people are most stimulated by visions
(here's what you'll look like)

Auditory people are most stimulated by voice
(let me tell you what others will say)

Kinesthetic people are most stimulated by feelings
(imagine how you'll feel)

Nine possible categories

Thoroughbred
• The Thoroughbred - Visual
• The Thoroughbred - Auditory
• The Thoroughbred - Kinesthetic

Phoenix
• The Phoenix - Visual
• The Phoenix - Auditory
• The Phoenix - Kinesthetic

Chrysalis
• The Chrysalis - Visual
• The Chrysalis - Auditory
• The Chrysalis - Kinesthetic

The final distinction, the "split" that takes 9 categories and creates 18, is based on preferred motivational stimuli

• Some people are more motivated by the prospect of Moving Toward a goal

• Other people are motivated by the prospect of Moving Away From threat or pain

Once you remember people are either toward or away self motivators, you really need to only memorize 9 specific categories.

(V=Visual, A=Auditory, K=Kinesthetic)

Thoroughbred V * Thoroughbred A * Thoroughbred K

Phoenix V * Phoenix A * Phoenix K

Chrysalis V * Chrysalis A * Chrysalis K

Rather than trying to memorize a list of 18, get comfortable with these 9.

Once you fit a client into a category, simply determine if they move toward or away from.

EXERCISE:

Look at your existing clients, ideally the two you identified at the beginning, and try to determine where each one falls. See if you can plug each one into one of the 18 categories.

Call #10 - Effortless Prosperity

"Effortless Prosperity"

The three stages of business growth.
Chaos
Fun, you put out fires but you laugh, if you have a team you connect at a high level as you deal with disasters and manage to muddle through. It's the most emotionally charged time in a business and serves as a necessary step toward growth.

Organization (Independence)
Every department or every single responsibility is handled. If you're an independent trainer, your client schedule is firm, your money management is habitual, you can predict most of the challenges that emerge, and you have a confidence that you're in control.

Excellence (Interdependence)
Clients continue to refer new clients, your reach includes referrals from strategic alliances, you build your team with others who replicate your services, and those who work for you make you stronger, more effective, and radically increase your reach.

The Four Monsters are emotional attackers that have the power to steer you away from goals, hopes, aspirations, and outcomes. Identifying them is a step toward defeating them.

1. The Distraction Monster
2. The Pro-Monster - Procrastination
3. The Money Worry Monster
4. The Negative Voice Monster

To challenge the monsters, you need heroes you can call on. The heroes gain strength the more you call upon them, so at first, while they easily defeat the monsters, they simply push them back just below the surface, unharmed, just defeated in the battle. If, however, the monster tries again, and you quickly call upon the appropriate hero, it gets harder and harder for the monster to emerge

The Four Heroes

1. Focus
2. Clarity
3. Planning
4. Discipline

The four heroes operate by linking with your RAS. When you call upon a hero, your RAS kicks right back to locking in on goals, dreams, and aspirations . . provided of course that you have goals, dreams, and aspirations.

Developing a mindset of abundance
Personal Trainers are giving and altruistic. They aren't typically conditioned to find comfort in asking for things. It's vital, in order for a trainer to find prosperity, to achieve a sense of balance integrating gratitude with reward. You deserve to achieve your dreams, every bit as much as your clients deserve to get the results they want, and it's important to prevent any sense of guilt from summoning up the monsters.
If you do not have a combination of a sense of sharing combined with a sense of abundance, you will never feel prosperous.
Conversely, if you can keep the four monsters at bay, and you establish a balance between abundance and sharing, a sense of prosperity abounds.

Your Micro-Goal and the Big Picture
In the long run the micro-goal you set should be nothing more than a point on the needle of the compass pointing toward your dream. Even if you're not yet clear on the big picture outcome, by selecting a micro-goal that is measureable and somewhat compelling, you have selected a point that proves to be a milestone along the course to your dreams.
Micro-goals are minimally compelling, may at times be taken for granted, and simple intervention by the monsters can give you a list of reasons why those goals weren't important anyway. If you are going to achieve the micro-goal, you, must identify the monsters, keep them away, and to reinforce the heroes look past the goal at something larger, something more compelling.
To grow beyond anything you previously believed to be "realistic," you have to align your RAS with dreams. The dreams should be so compelling, so far beyond the micro-goal you set, the heroes swarm, the monsters vanish.

The term "dream" equates for most with fantasy. When you link your dream with belief, it becomes an outcome. Goal suggests a hope that may or may not come to fruition. By linking dreams with outcomes we create a sense of certainty. The process of turning a dream into a sense of certainty requires that we crystallize it, we attach it to a trigger, we link it with the emotion we know as belief, and we tune our RAS on a vision, voice, or feeling so intense it feels real.

The Evolution of Turning a Dream into Certainty
• Step 1. Develop clarity as to where you're headed (where the compass needle points) and be able to articulate one difference you will see in your business and your life 90 days from now.

• Step 2. Be able to express The Dream (big picture) in a few sentences, and in the context of the dream, express how the committed micro-goal fits into the outcome.

• Step 3. Crystallize the next step in your business condition, and explain what it will take to get there.

Once these actions are completed, a sense of clarity will develop as to the tie-in between the course of business growth and an enhanced sense of prosperity. From that point forward it becomes simple to program the RAS to make dreams come true.

Call #11 - October 6, 2011 - Dream Fulfillment

Dream Fulfillment

You must become fully engaged in making your dream a reality.

Ten Steps:

1. Indentify the Dream

2. Crystallize the Dream

3. Sum it all up at will

4. Identify the four monsters

5. Call on the heroes to shut down the monsters

6. Ask, "What can I do right now to move one step closer?"

7. What is the best way to respond to adversity?

8. Build relationships selectively

9. Capitalize on your relationships

10. Get noticed! Drive people towards your funnel.

Prepare to discuss "assessment" of our clients and ourselves. Recognizing the difference between entry-level clients, team players and partners

Call #12 - November 3, 2011

Speed - Stress - Distance

Topics to discuss:
Money
Human Nature
Utilize the Relationships you Have the Power to Cultivate
Prosperity

Imagine you have a speedometer (gauge #1) on your forehead. The second gauge indicates how much effort your putting forth (stress exerted), the third gauge represents the distance traveled. The goal is to travel as far as possible over the course of a year. Gauge 1 (speedometer) should be steady and Gauge 2 (stress) should not shoot up too high. If you're determined to meet this goal something internally will work at helping you increase your speed without stressing your system. There is a delicate balance. If Gauge 1 goes too high, Gauge 2 will go out of control and then you'll need to lose time recuperating.

Gauge 3 helps you judge your success by how far you traveled.

How would you manage things keeping these three gauges in mind? (You want a continued sense of growth.)

Gauge 1 = Prosperity Gauge (Speed) A sense of fulfillment equals sense of growth. Instead of pushing this gauge, just give it a little nudge. This strategy will bring you the greatest outcome. If you imagine that there is a Prosperity needle on Gauge 1 and you strive to just nudge the needle in small increments to move forward towards your goal without stressing your system.

Remember that we never arrive at prosperity. We simply strengthen it within in ourselves - it is not a destination; it's a "condition" most effectively achieved by nudging the needle forward.

Suppose you can figure out a way to get one new client per month 2x week at $50 per session. Recognize the financial return with nudging the prosperity needle just a little bit. Over the course of one year how much would you increase your revenue? By focusing on this goal you can increase your revenue by $31, 200. If you consider the virtue of the spillover, you would not be limited and could potentially earn over $150K over the course of 2 years by adding one new client per month. In simple terms slowly grow your reach and drive people to your funnel and you develop greater capacity for spill over. Nudging the prosperity needle with ease. The more you invest in your spillover the more value you add to your services which helps you reach your goals.

Full Engagement is a directed action which includes shutting down the 4 monsters and keeping the mission/vision alive. When we recognize Synergy as a single concept, you need to recognize the components to embellish it.
Identify the value in assessment - personal assessment, outside assessment, constructive criticism... do you do a thorough assessment of your clients? Can you assess your own performance in your business? Sometimes ego gets in the way. Honesty will help you grow.
The success of your business is intimately tied to your prosperity. This connects back to the 10 Steps to Dream Fulfillment which we discussed last month. How can you assess your ability to meet these steps?

Your Prosperity Report Card: Use a Rating System
http://www.bebetterproject.com/reportcard.html

Question: What have I done to find betterment in this specific area?
1. Nothing
2. Less than I'm capable of
3. I'm definitely growing in this regard

Your task: Each week at the same time that will reoccur Spend 15 minutes assessing your steps to Dream Fulfillment.

Define:
RAS Focus/Control element
EEM Fear that holds you back
PFC The drive that moves you forward

Mindset = RAS + EEM + PFC

Increase your intuition.
Growth and recognizing your potential allows dreams to become goals and then reality.
Your Plan: Intention, Mindset, and Intuition are very powerful teammates. Start to really attach to your dream.

The topic of money can be unarming and unsettling. A common mistake that trainers make is that they think prosperity is money- and it is NOT! Prosperity is ENERGY. It is not the accumulation of things. It is a trait and a state of being. It's the trait that allows us to effortlessly attract the things we want. If you maintain the trait, prosperity continues. Money is the energy source that transpires to make the trait come to fruition and grow. Money is positive energy flow in your life.

Call #13 - November 17, 2011

Talent is not a ticket to success. “Greatness” is the result of “practice with a dual intent.” Violin prodigy Vanessa Mae (http://www.vanessa-mae.com), Eddie Van Halen, Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, and chess champion Bobby Fischer share a commonality. The each respectively racked up 10,000 hours of practice before they were ever considered great.

Practicing by simply doing what you do isn’t enough. These greats practiced with the aforementioned dual intent. They practiced firstly to enjoy doing the thing that they do, and secondly, to get better. The “get better” part is essential if practice is going to lead to greatness.

THE INFORMATION AGE?

The quest for more information ad infinitum is a destructive symptom many 21^st century entrepreneurs display. They get so caught up in the want to assimilate every piece of available, they drown themselves in far more information than they could ever hope to utilize. Focus suffers, and when focus suffers it’s difficult to practice “getting better.”

The bookstores are crammed with self-improvement titles, and no sooner will you read a book than a new one will be released. The thought process that leads people to believe that “more is better” is the mindset that leads to information overwhelm. Virtually every credible self-improvement book can be summarized by the following quotes, each one a variation of its predecessor:

“We become what we think about” – Earl Nightingale

"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve." - Napoleon Hill

“Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself. Man, therefore, as the lord and master of thought, is the maker of himself, the shaper and author of environment.” – James Allen

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. What we think we become.” - Prince Gautama Siddharta, 563 BC

The principle of directing thought and the idea of “the power of mind” are skills that require practice and effort.

The RAS draws what you focus on toward you, and with the effort of practiced focus, the RAS can manifest virtually any outcome.

QUESTION: Why doesn’t everyone master control of their RAS?

EEM resistance
PFC inactivity
Negative Talk
Procrastination
Distraction
Money Worry

TOO MANY BUSINESS BOOKS!

Unlike fitness “solutions,” where contradiction is usually representative of misinformation, business books shouldcontradict each other. Every business is unique, has its own lifeblood, its own set of rules, and unlike the human machine which is consistent in terms of its biochemistry, the DNA of organizations runs across the board.

If practiced focus is the goal, once you have a strong foundation of necessary knowledge, continued contradiction leads to confusion and distraction and can slow the process of achievement.

Outcome is preceded by action, and action is preceded by clarity, planning, focus, and determination. So, while continuing education is important, recognize that you know enough to grow, and right now an inward focus on your thoughts without inviting conflicting ideas in is going to be your best ally.

The key to business growth for a personal trainer focused on excellence is continued development of an attempted balance between the reach, the funnel, and the spillover. When you internalize this, when it becomes a part of your present mindset, you’ll come to think of these three elements as summed up in a single conceptual entity, Betterment.

So in summary, apply synergy, remain aware of the direction you provide for your RAS, and master Betterment. That’s it. That’s the summation of every book you’ll find value in.

This month you’re encouraged, not to immerse yourself in conflicting information, but to gain power by reading a single book. The key word that you’ll come to understand after reading the book is insight.

Find a link to purchase “Then We Set His Hair on Fire” by Phil Dusenberry under Recommended Reading.

Then We Set His Hair on Fire is a marketing book, and the approach it takes to marketing runs almost counter to the flawed and questionable long form copywriting that relies so heavily on exaggeration and omission of facts.

It’s a book about innoviation. It’s a book about insight. It’s a book about real talent . . . which brings me full circle.

RELATIONSHIPS

Reminder: There are three types of relationships that will contribute to your growth.

Clients and entry to clients
Your team players
Partnerships

Using a Personality Profiler developed by author and relationship expert Gary Smalley, we will work toward identifying ideal partners for our future ventures and pursuits.

	L	O	G	B
1.	Likes Authority	Enthusiastic	Sensitive Feelings	Likes Instructions
2.	Takes Charge	Takes Risks	Loyal	Accurate
3.	Determined	Visionary	Calm, Even Keel	Consistent
4.	Enterprising	Likes Talking	Enjoys Routine	Predictable
5.	Competitive	Promoter	Dislikes Change	Practical
6.	Problem Solver	Likes Popularity	Gives into Others	Factual
7.	Productive	Fun-Loving	Avoids Confrontation	Conscientious
8.	Bold	Likes-Variety	Sympathetic	Perfectionistic
9.	Decision Maker	Spontaneous	Nurturing	Detail-Oriented
10.	Persistent	Inspirational	Peacemaker	Analytical

Click here to go to your Be Better Report Card.

Call#14 - December 1, 2011

From: ”Then We Set His Hair on Fire”

Today, the marketplace is so desensitized, that if an ad says, “Here’s our latest miracle” . . . the consumer thinks, “big stinking deal.”

Offers for hot new amazing weight loss pills barely get a glance, but the consumer is so conditioned that they don’t even have to be compelled in order to act. The emotional irrational thought process becomes, “I tried so many things that didn’t work, why don’t I try this one in the hope it might?”

People make decisions based on impulse, and impulse can be stimulated by viewing or hearing about the habits of a friend. “Word of Mouth” marketing has been long recognized as superior and with good reason. It allows “the habits of a friend” to develop a contagious quality.

In the world of Advertising, effective marketing translates to massive revenue shifts . . . but . . . in personal training, effective marketing translates to CONTAGIASM.

Your reach has to be electric.
Your funnel has to be powerful.
Your spillover has to be reliable.

The pressing question of advertising and mass marketing becomes, “How can we penetrate the consumer market and reach those who fail to consider us as an alternative?” Even when you identify your unique strength, you have to figure out how to communicate it to impact people who didn’t know they were looking for it.

Too Much Marketing is Built Upon a Platform of Imitation

If you simply replicate . . . you’re not really identifying your uniqueness. Just as Dusenbury’s team came up with “it’s not TV, it’s HBO,” if we were going into a mass marketplace we’d have to say, “we’re not personal trainers . . . we’re ________.”

Good News: The challenge of getting a marketplace to act need not affect you at all. It exists, but you don’t need to ever figure it out.

On Page 47 of Then We Set His Hair on Fire, Dusenbury simplifies the process of impact. He says, “we want consumers to say, in the most rational way, “I get what you’re saying.” Then they have to say “In my gut I like what you’re saying.” They have to accept our logic and then feel it.

Now that we know so much about how to influence people, we don’t need mass marketing to keep our reach growing. We just need to impact people every day.

We have to get 5 people a day to listen in an attempt to get them to accept our logic, and then to feel the power of it.

The reason compelling people is so much simpler in face-to-face meetings than in mass marketing is . . . we can create two way dialogues. We get unique insights every time someone shares their goal, their experience, and their frustration.

The two most powerful questions:

What are you looking to achieve?
What have you tried in the past?

This month we’re going to implement a profit center. . .

Profit Center - A segment of a business for which costs, revenues, and profits are separately calculated. A second definition for our purposes is, “a new revenue stream that generates more money that it costs to implement. “

A profit center should align with your core business, exist without you having to do anything to take your attention away from the Reach, the Funnel, and The Spillover, and it has to net some money.

Think of revenue streams

a product to sell to consumers (not trainers)
a program to offer for a set fee with a start and a finish
an additional paid service (car washing, telephone consultation, massage)

THE EXERCISE: Partner up with somebody else in the group

I told you that you’re going to partner up with someone on this.

If you’re an extreme L, and you have a strong idea, you might want a G or a B to partner up with.

If you’re a G or a B and you have ideas but you fall short in having the courage to leap forward you want to connect with an L.

If your idea requires social interaction, which at some level they all should, it would be in your best interest to make sure one of the two of you, or two of the two of you, have an O as a primary or secondary.

The profit center idea that you come up with should be replicable, so two of you can either connect on it, or so two of you can run the program or offerings independently using each other’s experiences to make it better.

30 days from now I’ll ask the groups to report on efforts and outcome.

The next project will involve connecting with your partner to interview your clients or prospects, to gain some insight through conducting Focus Groups. There are many ways you can do this, but you need 8 – 12 people to make it work

You can do it in person, parallel (each conduct “the program” in his or her own location”)
You can do it by phone as a teleconference (if you request it, we can get a conference line available for you.
You can contact each other’s former clients and conducted telephone interviews
You can find a corporation with a cafeteria and meet immediately before or immediately after the lunch rush

My Purpose Loop

I’m “On Purpose”

My purpose is to grow, continuously, by using my extreme talents, resilience, and my wealth of experience to find ever-increasing reach in empowering people to achieve physical and emotional excellence and limitless personal growth. The more people I genuinely help, the more I am “in-service” to others, the greater my own personal, financial, emotional, and spiritual ascension. I create abundance in all valued areas of my life and that abundance creates greater power to fulfill my Purpose.

Summary of Exercises:

Connect with a partner
Work with your partner to establish a profit center
Prepare to conduct a focus group
Commit your Purpose to paper

Call # 15 - December 15, 2011 - Balance

Balance = a coordinated symphony of movement.

Balance, whether perceived that way or not, is hard work.

The nervous system works hard to maintain homeostasis, as well as to maintain muscular stability.

When you attempt to improve your body’s performance ability, balance is being challenged. In order for performance to be enhanced:

The nervous system has to become involved at a higher level in controlling muscular interaction

The output has to feel as if its achieved with greater ease than prior efforts

Optimal performance is high output feeling effortless

In striving for balance, any performance or physique athlete is moving, changing, and growing, and he / she can never reach a point of true stagnation. Performance stability (maintenance) can only be achieved by continuous recruitment of agonists, antagonists, stabilizers, and assistors. If said athlete fails to provide the necessary muscular activity, atrophy begins.

Transfer the idea of “balance” from the muscular system to the Prosperity Plan (The Reach, the Funnel, the Spillover) and you’ll realize that you can’t stop movement aimed at betterment or your business starts to atrophy.

Stability (stillness) is a state of being where any business (or living entity) begins losing ground, despite the fact that it isn’t immediately obvious.

Business growth can only be achieved by continuing to make shifts and adjustments with the intention of achieving or staying at your “prime.” For an entrepreneurial personal fitness trainer, this translates to a necessary balance between awareness and adjustment of the reach, the funnel, and the spillover.

Growth or betterment will always come from directing a heightened focus to the component that needs the most attention.

Balance becomes an intuitive process, when it becomes analogous to a high level of kinesthetic awareness.

TENSION AND STRESS

Stress (tension) cannot be defined as good or bad. The determinant is kinesthetic, an emotional interpretation of stress.

In order to grow, and improve balance ability, we must face and respond to tension and stress.

Creative tension is present in all thriving companies and is in part a driving force leading to progress.

Emotional tension is stress that leads to a negative drain on energy and ultimately it can destroy a being or a business.

How you interpret stress and tension is in great part a conscious choice.

Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, describes creative tension it as the gap between your vision and your present reality.

Lowering goals for a short term sense of achievement is the beginning of a company’s demise.

Rather than reducing tension by lowering goals, effective companies thrive on the momentum sparked by creative tension

EXERCISE: Take 2 minutes and identify one source of negative stress in your life (it must be specific). You’re looking to identify one thing that drains your energy.

After you identify one source of emotional (negative) tension, ask the question. “Is it changeable?”

If the answer is yes, stop the exercise. You are already recruiting possibility thought patterns and with a bit of focus and effort you’ll dismiss the source of emotional tension.

If the answer is no, then ask a follow up question, “What would have to change in my life for this stress to be lessened?”

THE KEYS TO ADHERENCE SIMPLIFIED

Adherence comes from:

Connection (rapport)
Belief
Trust
Evidence
A sense of potential

Lose any of the above and you’re going to lose a client.

Consider that these elements of rapport building require focus and are all areas that can be improved upon to lead to a strengthened balance between your reach and your spillover.

TWO EXERCISES

1. Creating or strengthening the Profit Center (requires interaction with your partner)

Identify a gap between something you want to achieve from your profit center and your present reality. Compare notes with your partner, agree on the elements of the structural tension (positive creative tension), and then choose a step and a deadline that you absolutely must follow through on.

You don’t want to eliminate tension, but with growth you’ll find that as a goal becomes closer, your sense of potential increases and the goal becomes greater.

2. After the practice exercise, where you identified one source of emotional tension, take some time to list 10 sources of tension.

After you have your list, categorize them into “creative” or “emotional.” If you have more than 4 emotional drains, determine what you’d have to do or change to remove their power or eliminate them.

CONCLUSION

Always seek a heightened sense of kinesthetic awareness as to where you stand between the reach, the funnel, and the spillover, and then implement a single profit center that contributes to a greater outcome without becoming a negative source of tension.

Call #16 - January 12, 2012 - Affiliation

Affiliation

Marketing can be accidental. Be careful who you affiliate with and who you attach yourself to as those decisions can lead to perception of affiliation. False perceptions can cost you and damage to your reputation is difficult, at times impossible, to repair. Everything you do impacts people’s impressions of you in the future. Balance Review In striving for balance, you’re always forced to contract some muscle somewhereThe nice thing about the prosperity plan is we only have three major muscle groups:

The Reach
The Funnel
The Spillover

The goal in moving forward (being better) is to strive for balance at a higher and higher level, knowing you’ll never arrive at true balance, but also knowing that the things that feel like work today will become intuitive in a matter of weeks, months, or in extreme cases years.

Keep Proprietary Elements Proprietary

Share information that achieves your end without limit, but protect strategy that allows you to excel This project isn’t intended to become an explosion of new information that finds its way out to everyone globally. When that happens, the information gets watered down, the power of it gets lost, and you weaken your own position. Protect the information on RAS, the 18 Motivational Types, the Prosperity Formula (Prosperity Plan), and the Adherence system.

The Keys to Forming a Strong Trainer / Client Relationship

Be able to say No
Gain Mutual Clarity of achievement guideposts
Gain Mutual Clarity of impending obstacles
Know and Respect the Boundaries of your Scope of Practice
Establish Expert Status and Rapport
Acquire Motivational Triggers and Test Them Continuously

Mastering The Adherence System

Connect
Compel
Assess*
Evidence
Potential
Relationship Power

* Establish a mechanism for (every 12 weeks) evaluating every clients “Stick Likelihood” (Stick Factor). Each time you plan on assessing or evaluating Stick Factor, establish or re-establish the client’s Primary Focus and the Secondary Focus (Sub-Focus), a “learning directive” that you creatively impose

Rotating Sub-Focus

·        Mindset
·        Performance
·        Aesthetic
·        Nutritional

Expand upon your ability to control perception so you’re revered as an Expert for basic understandable truth As a part of strengthening perception of expert status, there are four items, presently newsworthy, that merit an investment of time in learning how to address in basic understandable terms

Leptin
Serotonin
Cortisol
Hoodia

Remember: Every relationship has power, including the relationships established as a part of this project. Use these relationships to establish accountability with your partner for unique agenda items with deadlines, beginning first with the committed establishment of a profit center and recognizing there is long term value in continued accountability.