Every Thursday morning I attend a BNI networking group in Carmel. After the meeting I head over to the Subway next to Jason’s Deli and Office Depot. I get the $3 breakfast combo, which includes a 6-inch breakfast sandwich and a regular drink. I then sit down with my laptop and get online using the local Wi-Fi. LePeep, La Hacienda, and Jason’s Deli all have Wi-Fi so I encourage you to try any of those during lunch.

If the seat by the outlet in Subway is taken, I head down the strip to Starbucks. This particular Starbucks is loaded with outlets and many coworkers, commuters, sales persons, and solopreneurs hang out here during the day. I believe this is primarily because of a) the size of the Starbucks – it’s unusually large for a Starbucks, b) the sheer amount of outlets to plug in your laptop or mobile phone, and c) it’s central location to Indianapolis and Carmel.

After attending meetups and other networking events, I’ve started to know a lot of people around Carmel and Indianapolis. Usually, whenever I’m in a Starbucks I’ll run into someone I know and because of that, these cities have started to feel more like a community. I don’t know everybody, but my chances of running into someone I know are now greater than not running into someone I know. And although I check into Foursquare, it doesn’t ever seem to help me run into people, which is odd.

As I am an Indianapolis web designer, my meetings are sporadic and sometimes far in between. I use these ‘holes’ in the day to work out of various locations such as Starbucks, Subway, or Panera Bread. After doing it a while, you start to learn what other business professionals have chose to use as their personal office. There is a dog walker and an oil salesman at the Starbucks at 96th and Meridian and of course there is my habitual use of the Starbucks at Meridian and Carmel Drive.

The greater Indianapolis area is large in size, but it’s a small community. The people you actually want or need to talk to is relatively very small compared to the population of the whole city. For me, it’s business owners who can make a decision to buy from me direct, can be a referral partner, or can be a connector to someone I need to talk to. This is really what networking is all about because you also want to be those same characteristics to other people in your network. You want to be that power connector.

Robby Slaughter, a business process consultant in Indianapolis, has made it his goal in 2012 to help 1000 people. Because Robby is a power connector, he’s able to help a lot of people and I actually took him up on it and Robby had a one to one with me over the phone. Robby is a fellow BNI member of another chapter and he helped me figure out what would be some good referral partners for me and how to tweak my 60-second asks, some of which I’ve implemented. Thanks, Robby!

I’ve actually mentioned Robby Slaughter before as being one my local heroes. I ended up finally meeting Robby last August at Blog Indiana and then immediately saw him again when he spoke at Linking Indiana. Robby also wrote a guest blog post on my web design site entitled, Increasing Productivity In Website Maintenance, which was appropriate since he’s a productivity expert and I design websites around a CMS called WordPress. Thanks again, Robby.

It’s been a wild ride, scary some times, highly enjoyable at others. I’m not sure how long it/I will last though. It always seems like I’m on the brink of going out of business and so I start applying for jobs, then more work comes in. Right now is like that.

I may have to start selling some of my affiliate sites to make ends meet. I’m developing some new products (like custom email signatures) as a way to get people ‘in the door’ and have had some success with those, but they don’t pay the bills.

I’ve invested in BNI and considered Rainmakers, but referrals from that are slow, far between, and lower-dollar than I’m used to getting on my own. I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining – I get to sleep in, spend more time with my kids, and have a loose schedule, but I’m afraid I’ve kept it too loose. I may have not worked ‘hard enough’ and now am in a bit of a pickle. Here’s what I’m doing to dig myself out:

Creating Work Habits

• Waking up at the same time everyday
• Eating breakfast everyday
• Shaving and showering at night
• Exercising during breaks between computer work

Focusing on Revenue

• Making sure all client requests are processed
• Proactively looking for opportunities to help clients and asking them for their business
• Working on affiliate marketing as a valid revenue source
• Applying for jobs that use my skill set

PS. I got all of my monthly client reports out today AND mowed my yard. Next I have a phone interview with a guy to discuss online marketing in Indianapolis.

Recently I’ve been rethinking how I feel about work and jobs. As you may or may not know, I help business owners solve technology and marketing problems, which gives me some freedom to choose who I work with and when. I don’t have fixed hours and if I work more, I can get paid more, but it’s not all roses and cherry blossoms.

When you run your own business, while you may earn more, much of your work is doubled or even tripled. Not only do you have to do the work, but you have to go earn it, and then process all the finances, documentation, and taxes on the back end. In a traditional job environment the work is handed to you and you just do it. When it’s done, someone else processes it. Your work is finite and so is your pay.

A Paradigm Shifts Again

For ten years I worked full time jobs in banking and technology, and I always would told myself I’d be happier running my own business until one day I did. I started off running it on the side in 2007 and in 2011 I finally went full time. I do web design with HTML, CSS, and WordPress, email support with web hosts and Google Apps, and computer and network support for Microsoft products like Windows and Server 2003/2008.

While I have been successful at running my own business, there are two reasons why I’ve recently began applying for jobs in the Indianapolis market. The first reason is because I realized that the ideas I had about working hard now in order to do much less later were not realistic. I didn’t even realize I had this mentality until after a couple of months had gone by and I discovered that there will never be a time when I’m doing ‘nothing’. I’ll always be doing something, so why not just spend some time figuring out what I want to do, not just what I can find a job doing.

The second reason I began looking for jobs in the Indianapolis area was because I realized that it didn’t matter who I was doing the work for, as long as I was enjoying what I was doing. Even as a business owner, I have a boss. I have clients, my wife, and my Lord to report to. It’s not just willy nilly around here. I have to meet or exceed all of their expectations just as I would have to in a traditional job scenario – only more so because while the rewards are higher, so are the risks. There are no written warnings with clients, just lost opportunities in the future.

You Are a Startup

A friend of mine, Jason Cobb, recently coined a term, “You are a startup,” meaning that whatever you’re doing, do it like a startup. But what is a startup? A startup is traditionally a software company that is rapidly trying to create a product that is useful and monetizeable as fast as they can. It normally involves a small team consisting of a leader, a technical co-founder, and a marketer. These roles could all be one person, or it could be five people, but the point is that it’s a small team pushing out useful iterations of a product with the hopes of expanding very fast once a market can’t live without it.

So how does a startup mentality apply to you? Whether you are working for a client or for a company as an employee, you must be producing stuff that matters, you must be a leader, and you must be marketing yourself. This means listening to your customers and getting feedback, getting to know your fellow employees, and continuing your education (via meetups, books, or traditional training).

As I wrote about in 13 More Books for Every Entrepreneur, Reid Hoffman, (co-founder of LinkedIn) together with Ben Casnocha (entrepreneur and author) have written a book about managing your career as if it were a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you. The thesis is that the same skills startup entrepreneurs use, professionals need to get ahead today.

Now that I’ve experienced running my own business, I no longer look down on the traditional 9-to-5 job because I know that I can have impact either way and still accomplish my goals of learning, growing, and taking care of my family.

12 Month Goals (and Roadmap)

I recently subscribed to a blog I’ve been reading since 2008 called I Will Teach You to Be Rich by Ramit Sethi. Today he sent out a link to a PDF with a 12 Month Goals Roadmap worksheet, very similar to Michael Hyatt’s Life Plan. I’d like to share my answers here.

1. What will you be doing for work? – Editing HTML, CSS, and PHP; Converting static HTML web pages into dynamic CMS blogs; converting clients from POP email access to Google Apps; training users on how to use WordPress; Affiliate Marketing; Computer Network Troubleshooting and Repair

2. What’s your boss (or the person to whom you’ll be accountable) like? – Gives me feedback; Challenges me; Considers me an expert in what I do; Trusts my decisions; Considers my feedback

3. Where will you be working? – The Greater Indianapolis area, preferably along US 31, Keystone Ave, or 465; In an office with time allocated to work in blocks without interruption,  the ability to get up and walk around or go outside for a walk; And good Mexican, Chinese, and Thai food nearby.

4. How much time do you spend working? – 10 hours a day, 70 hours a week.

5. What does your Monday look like? – Reading and sharing emails until noon, viewing reports, and responding to client requests.

If anyone is interested in using my services or would just like to get together for coffee, please don’t hesitate to email me or follow me on Twitter.

This is one of those personal blog posts, if you’re interested in reading more about me specifically, try this one next or not, it’s your life.

Master the fundamentals of entrepreneurship at every stage in your career

Previously, I wrote about 13 books every entrepreneur should read, but if that was the baseline, this is the update: 13 more books every entrepreneur can benefit for reading:

The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha.

Reid Hoffman, (entrepreneur, investor, and co-founder of LinkedIn) together with Ben Casnocha (entrepreneur and author) have created a revolutionary new blueprint for thriving in today’s fractured world of work. Traditional job security is a thing of the past. Hoffman and Casnocha show how to accelerate your career in today’s competitive world by managing your career as if it were a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you. The same skills startup entrepreneurs use, professionals need to get ahead today. This book isn’t about cover letters or resumes. Instead, you will learn the best practices of Silicon Valley start-ups, and how to apply these entrepreneurial strategies to your career. Whether you work for a giant multinational corporation, a small local business, or launching your own venture.

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

Eric Ries, entrepreneur and author of the popular blog Startup Lessons Learned, co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU, his third startup, and has had plenty of startup experience along the way. The Lean Startup is a new approach to starting a business that is changing the way companies are built and new products are launched. Ries defines a startup as, “An organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.” This is just as true for one-person company to a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. The mission is to discover a repeatable, successful path to a sustainable business. The Lean Startup approach encourages companies to leverage human creativity more effectively. Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, and a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress with significant metrics, and learn what customers really want. It’s what makes a company agile, regardless of it’s size, by altering plans inch by inch and minute by minute. Businesses are asked to test their vision continuously, adapt, pivot, and adjust – before it’s too late.

Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins and Morten T. Hansen

Jim Collins (student, teacher, and author) and Morten T. Hansen (a management professor at University of California) have teamed up to write Great by Choice, which asks, “Why do some companies thrive in uncertainty, even chaos, and others do not?” Based on nine years of research, buttressed by rigorous analysis and infused with engaging stories, Collins and Hansen, explain the key principles for building a great company in unpredictable, tumultuous, and fast-moving times. As with Collin’s prior work, he uses a team of researchers to study companies that rose to greatness by beating their industry indexes by a minimum of ten times over fifteen years. That would be a feat in and of itself, but these businesses also had to do it in environments that experienced rapid shifts that leaders could not predict or control and other extreme environments. The best leaders were not more risk taking, more visionary, and more creative than the comparisons; they were more disciplined, more empirical, and more paranoid. Another surprise: Innovation is not as important as the ability to scale innovation and to blend creativity with discipline. Contrasting to Ries’ agile movement, Great by Choice states that, “Leading in a ‘fast world’ always requires ‘fast decisions’ and ‘fast action’ is a good way to get killed.” The great companies, Collins and Hansen argue, changed less in reaction to a radically changing world than the comparison companies.

Unusually Excellent: The Necessary Nine Skills Required for the Practice of Great Leadership by John Hamm

John Hamm, author and leadership expert, explains why leadership can’t be mastered as a single concept or tool. Instead, excellent leadership is composed of actions, ideas, emotions, cultural forces, history, and expectations that work together in an interconnected system. This system forms the core of the winning combination of superb character, skill-based competence, and professional reputation. Hamm demonstrates that any leader can excel by consistently putting into action the Necessary Nine skills: being authentic, trustworthy, and compelling; leading people, strategy, and execution; communicating, making decisions, and making an impact. Unusually Excellent offers powerful, unforgettable leadership lessons, reinforced empirical evidence, and logical analysis. Treat it like your personal coach – one that will prepare you for the lifelong and ongoing journey towards exceptional leadership.

Do the Work by Steven Pressfield

Steven Pressfield, author of The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, and The War of Art, asks, “What is this terrible thing called Resistance — and how can I overcome it?” Do the Work probes further, “Could you be getting in your way of producing great work? Have you started a project but never finished? Would you like to do work that matters, but don’t know where to start?” The answer is to do the work. It’s not about better ideas, it’s about actually doing the work. Do the Work is a weapon against Resistance – a tool that will help you take action and successfully ship projects out the door. “There is an enemy. There is an intelligent, active, malign force working against us. Step one is to recognize this. This recognition alone is enormously powerful. It saved my life, and it will save yours.” When I used to be in Amway, I used to ask how to make money. The response was, “Show the plan.” When I’d ask how to show the plan, the response was the same, “Show the plan.” Sometimes you just have to do the work. Read this when you’re feeling resistance. I did.

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries by Peter Sims

Peter Sims, author, speaker, and entrepreneur, found that successful people in different industries achieved breakthrough results by methodically taking small, experimental steps in order to discover and develop new ideas. Rather than believing they have to start with a big idea or plan a whole project out in advance, trying to foresee the final outcome, they make a series of little bets about what might be a good direction, learning from lots of little failures and from small but highly significant wins that allow them to happen upon unexpected avenues and arrive at extraordinary outcomes. This is similar to Ries’ agile method in The Lean Startup. Based on extensive research, including more than 200 interviews with leading innovators, Sims discovered that productive, creative thinkers and doers (Do the Work) from Ludwig van Beethoven to Thomas Edison and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos practice a key set of simple but ingenious methods. Fail quickly to learn fast, tap into the genius of play, and engage in highly immersed observation to free minds, opening them up to making unexpected connections and perceiving invaluable insights. These methods also unshackle them from the constraints of overly analytical thinking and linear problem solving that our education places so much emphasis on, as well as from the fear of failure, all of which thwart so many of us in trying to be more innovative.

Everything Is Obvious: *Once You Know the Answer by Duncan J. Watts

Duncan J. Watts, a professor of sociology at Columbia University, a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research, and a former officer in the Royal Australian Navy, holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Cornell University. He is the author of Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age and in Everything Is Obvious he asks, “Why is the Mona Lisa the most famous painting in the world? Why did Facebook succeed when other social networking sites failed? Did the surge in Iraq really lead to less violence? How much can CEO’s impact the performance of their companies? And does higher pay incentivize people to work hard?” If you think the answers to these questions are a matter of common sense, think again. As Watts explains in this book, the obvious explanations we give for life’s outcomes are less useful than they seem. Drawing on the latest scientific research, along with a wealth of historical and contemporary examples, Watts shows how common sense reasoning and history conspire to mislead us into believing that we understand more about the world of human behavior than we do; and in turn, why attempts to predict, manage, or manipulate social and economic systems so often go awry.

The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators by Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton M. Christensen

Jeff Dyer (Professor of Strategy at the Marriott School, BYU), Clayton M. Christensen (Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, co-founder of Innosight, a management consultancy; Rose Park Advisors, an investment firm; and Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank), and Hal B Gregersen, (Professor of Leadership at Insead; a co-founder of The Innovator’s DNA, a leadership consultancy; and a Senior Fellow at Innosight, a management consultancy) wrote The Innovator’s DNA: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators. The book proposes that you could be innovative and impactful if you can change your behaviors to improve your creative impact. By identifying behaviors of the world’s best innovators—from leaders at Amazon and Apple to those at Google, Skype, and Virgin Group—the authors outline five discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers: Associating, Questioning, Observing, Networking, and Experimenting. The authors state that once you master the core competencies (ability to generate ideas, collaborate with colleagues to implement them, and build innovation skills throughout your organization to sharpen its competitive edge) innovation advantage can translate into a premium in your company’s stock price—an innovation premium—which is possible only by building the code for innovation right into your organization’s people, processes, and guiding philosophies.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell, a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine since 1996. His 1999 profile of Ron Popeil won a National Magazine Award, and in 2005 he was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People. He is the author of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, both of which were number one New York Times bestsellers. In this stunning new book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of the best and the brightest, the most famous, and the most successful people. Gladwell asks the question, “What makes high-achievers different?” His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Poke the Box by Seth Godin

Seth Godin is the author of ten international bestsellers that have been translated into over 30 languages, and have changed the way people think about marketing and work. His Unleashing the Ideavirus is the most popular ebook ever published, and Purple Cow is the bestselling marketing book of the decade. If you’re stuck at the starting line, you don’t need more time or permission, to wait for your boss’s okay, or to be told to push the button; you just need to poke. Poke the Box is a call to action about the initiative you’re taking-–in your job or in your life. Godin knows that one of our scarcest resources is the spark of initiative in most organizations (and most careers)-–the person with the guts to say, “I want to start stuff.” Poke the Box just may be the kick in the pants you need to shake up your life.

Anything You Want by Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers, entrepreneur, programmer, avid student of life, went looking for ways to sell his own CD online and ended up creating CD Baby, once the largest seller of independent music on the web with over $100M in sales for over 150,000 musician clients. Since 2008, Derek has traveled the world and stayed busy creating and nurturing creative endeavors, like Muckwork, his newest company where teams of efficient assistants help musicians do their “uncreative dirty work.” Derek writes regularly on creativity, entrepreneurship, and music on his blog. In Anything You Want, Derek Sivers chronicles his “accidental” success and failures into this concise and inspiring book on how to create a multi-million dollar company by following your passion. In this book, Sivers details his journey and the lessons learned along the way of creating CD Baby and building a business close to his heart. “[Sivers is] one of the last music-business folk heroes,” says Esquire magazine. His less-scripted approach to business is refreshing and will educate readers to feel empowered to follow their own dreams. Aspiring entrepreneurs and others trying to make their own way will be particularly comforted by Sivers straight talk and transparency -a reminder that anything you want is within your reach.

The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business by Josh Kaufman

Josh Kaufman, an independent business teacher, education activist, and author, brings a multidisciplinary approach to business education that has helped hundreds of thousands of readers around the world master foundational business concepts on their own terms. His work has been featured in BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Fast Company, as well as by influential websites like Lifehacker, HarvardBusiness.org, Cool Tools, and Seth Godin’s Blog. Getting an MBA is an expensive choice-one almost impossible to justify regardless of the state of the economy. Even the elite schools like Harvard and Wharton offer outdated, assembly-line programs that teach you more about PowerPoint presentations and unnecessary financial models than what it takes to run a real business. You can get better results (and save hundreds of thousands of dollars) by skipping business school altogether. Learn the essentials of entrepreneurship, marketing, sales, negotiation, operations, productivity, systems design, and much more, in one comprehensive volume. The Personal MBA distills the most valuable business lessons into simple, memorable mental models that can be applied to real-world challenges.

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Sir Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica

Ken Robinson (an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation and human resources) and Lou Aronica (author). Robinson has worked with national governments in Europe and Asia, international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, national and state education systems, non-profit organizations and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations. He was knighted in 2003 for his contribution to education and the arts. The Element is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion. When people arrive at the Element, they feel most like themselves, most inspired, and achieve at their highest levels. With a wry sense of humor, Ken Robinson looks at the conditions that enable us to find ourselves in the Element and those that stifle that possibility. Drawing on the stories of a wide range of people, including Paul McCartney, Matt Groening, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, and Bart Conner, he shows that age and occupation are no barrier and that this is the essential strategy for transform­ing education, business, and communities in the twenty-first century. The Element is a breakthrough book about talent, passion, and achievement from one of the world’s leading thinkers on creativity and self-fulfillment.

I thought I’d answer these questions Michael Hyatt asked of himself about being overwhelmed and I encourage you to as well. My name is Erich Stauffer and my answers are below the questions.

1. Are you ready for a change?

2. What is it that only I can do? Where do I add the most value? What is really important as opposed to merely urgent?

3. What are your three biggest productivity sinkholes?

4. Record your most common activities and tasks into categorized lists and determine what can be eliminated, automated, or delegated.

5. What do you make an hour (inside and outside of your 8-5 job)? Could you be more financially productive (and a better steward of your time) if you delegated to a paid assistant or service? Have you ever considered a VA?

6. How much of your calendar this week is dedicated to high payoff activities/important tasks? Are you putting the big rocks in your metaphorical jar before putting in the sand and water?

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you love what you do? Are you passionate about it? If not, why are you doing it?

Most people, if you ask them these questions will respond with excuses which on the surface sound very good:

“I’m just doing this until I can find something better.”

“I’m just holding out until I retire in a couple of years.”

“If I didn’t have my family so early in life, I could have done it, maybe, but that’s in the past now.”

“I can’t take a risk now. I’m too old and my family depends on me.”

What they are really saying is, “What if I fail and someone gets hurt along the way – someone like my ego and my family’s lifestyle?”

No one can predict the future, but you can take calculated risks. A planned move into an area where you are better suited is actually less risky than staying in a precarious, but ‘secure’ position at the job you think you ‘have to have’ to get by.

It may sound flippant, but you do only have one life to live and all of this is temporary. What are you doing with your life? Do you ever wish there was something better or more rewarding you could be doing? What if you could provide for yourself and/or your family AND be doing your passion? Are you even looking?

The first step is to decide that the current path you are on isn’t working for you. As the old metaphor goes, you’ve got your ladder leaning on the wrong building – that’s all. Just move it to another building and go. Take action and be prepared for others, but primarily yourself to tell you it won’t work and that you will fail. Overcome these thoughts and you’ll be well on your way to doing what you are passionate about.

Need help finding out what you are passionate about? Sir Ken Robinson has written a book that might help titled, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. It’s less than $10 on Amazon and it could change your life – for the better.

In January of 2005 I started my first Meetup called Indy Game Dev. One person joined and together we started to code a game. I didn’t know how to code a game. I had just graduated college with some Computer Science classes where I had to make a few small games in Visual Basic.NET, but I didn’t really know how to make a game.

We started out meeting once a month, and then weekly at his house in Noblesville. He didn’t even have his own computer so we had to use the computer in his mother’s bedroom. I researched gaming engines and different programming languages, but we ended up going with a type of game similar to the NES game, Shadowgate.

We had agendas and a group logo. We created the first screen in the game and started working on the story line, but then that’s when things started to fall apart. In April of 2005, Meetup began charging group owners a fee for hosting a group and the bottom sort of fell out as far as my desire to make games. What I realized is that I didn’t want to make games, I wanted to learn how to make games. Once I did that, my interest level was gone. My partner continued the group and the game for a while after I left, but I didn’t really start going to Meetups again until three years later in 2008.

A Brief History of My Career

I worked full time for the last two years I was in college and then immediately after helped a friend start a computer repair business on the side while continuing to work full time. It was during this time that I started going to Meetups, but I didn’t start going again until I left that job I had through college, started my own business, and got a new job in IT in October of 2007. This is when having a day job and going to meetups felt like I was living a double life. During the day I was a computer technician for an IT company and by night I was a web designer wanting to learn more about Adobe products or PHP.

Through web design and SEO work, I was introduced to the world of affiliate marketing and started making money that way too. Eventually my web design customers started using me more for their technical needs and I began acting as their outsourced IT firm, or simply, their “computer guy.” Eight months after doing IT full time, I became a business analyst at a mid-sized, regional bank. By August of 2011 I was making enough from all of my side ventures to go at it alone so I quit my day job and went full time on my own. That’s when I really started to take advantage of meetups.

Why Go to Meetups?

To Socialize

When I worked for other companies I was around other people all day long. We had meetings. I sometimes got to go places on the company’s dime. Some of these times were good. Most of them were not noteworthy. However, once they were gone, I started to miss that in my life. Sure, I met with clients occasionally, but for the most part I stayed in my office at home. While my family is a joy to me, there is a certain need to go beyond that and meetups can help with that. I wouldn’t go as far as to say I’m lonely, but there is a certain amount of Edward Norton’s Narrator that goes through my head when I visit a group for the first time.

To Form an Identity

What consistently meeting new people does to you is to help define who you are. This is partly because of the amount of times you have to explain who you are and what you do to new people, but also because simply by going to a particular group, you are associating yourself with that type of person. I’m currently a member of 16 meetups: Affiliate Freelancers Indianapolis, Affiliate Summit Indianapolis Meetup, AgileIndy, Central Indiana Entrepreneur’s & Vendors, Coaches, Consultants, Authors, Speakers & internet marketers, Esri Dev Meet Up Group – Great Plains, Geeks with Swag, Indiana Small Business Networking, Indianapolis Lean Startup Circle, Indianapolis Marketing Group, Indianapolis Search Engine Optimization & Internet Marketing, Indy Cowork, IndyDevHouse, TechLunch, Verge, and the WordPress – Indianapolis Meetup Group. I recently spoke at the affiliate marketing group, which gives me credibility with the speakers group, even though I already am a consultant.

To Learn

While I have been encouraged to get my masters and have gone back to school for Microsoft, A+, and Network+ certifications, meetups allow a different type of continued education in a wider array of fields. They are also the fields you’re most interested in learning about, or else you probably wouldn’t have signed up or gone to the meeting. Even though I’m profitable with affiliate marketing I still learn things from my affiliate marketing group, but a better example may be the Agile Indy group I attended last night. I had no idea what Agile was, but I kept hearing it and seeing it so I wanted to find out more about it. I wanted to learn. I can’t say I’ve gone to a traditional classroom much with that mentality. If you’re interested in what Agile is, review the Agile Manifesto or visit David Christiansen’s blog, Technology Dark Side. Speaking of affiliate marketing, David makes $2000 a year from advertising Rally Software on his blog. Rally sponsored last night’s meal, which brings me to my next reason.

To Eat

Most meetups either serve food or meet at a restaurant where there is an opportunity to eat food. If you enjoy breaking bread with your fellow man around a topic you love, what better place than at a meetup. The early Christian church would call this their communion time, while the modern church might call it “small groups”. What are meetups, if not small groups of people, passionate about a topic? One exception to “small” may be Verge Indy, which currently has 1,280 members and regularly has to limit members to their events at Developer Town. Most meetups who serve food serve pizza and most of the time it’s free, but there’s no such thing as a free lunch so be prepared for the corporate sponsor to pitch their goods to you. Don’t worry if you’re not interested, maybe one day you will be. Maybe one day you’ll be the sponsor.

To Travel

You probably can’t just walk into Miles Design or Allegient‘s offices, but that’s exactly what I did when I attened Joomla Indy and Agile Indy, respectively. While Joomla Indy isn’t an official meetup, it still meets regularly, in-person, around a topic, which is what meetups are all about. Tonight I’ll be attending the Lean Startup at Green is Good off 86th and Zionsville Road and the Esri meetup at Harry and Izzy’s on Illinois Street, downtown Indianapolis. When I was a business analyst I got to visit the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce’s board room once, now I’m visiting new board rooms every month.

To Network

If you’ve ever been told that you need to get out of comfort zone to grow, meetups are a great way to do that. Most of the people at the meetup I attend, I don’t know before attending. In fact, it’s actually rare for me to know someone there at all. However, once I’ve gone once, I do at least recognize them and can start to get to know them. Networking is a natural result of getting to know other people and meeting new people. Sometimes business cards are passed around and sometimes they are not. Meetups that are specifically setup to network don’t seem to be as popular as ones that are setup around a specific topic. What makes Verge so popular is that it brings together inventors, startups, and venture capitalists with those interested and willing to help. The energy there is intense and the barriers to entry are low. There is no fee for most events, food is provided, and those attending get the chance to pitch and network with others. It’s a great mix.

To Succeed

Whatever you’re trying to accomplish, there is probably a meetup out there to help you do it. Whether it’s meeting like minded people for encouragement or collaboriation, or learning from others who have paved the way before you, meetups can help you become a success. As Eric Willke, agile adviser and speaker at Agile Indy said, “Know you can succeed,” and to that I add – “and you will.”

I wrote this in one of my notebooks back in 2008 and recently re-discovered it while doing some housekeeping. Apparently one or more of my children had taken it to draw in, but after reading what I wrote I thought I’d share.

Ironically, words are the most powerful weapons or tools that we have, yet they are used most carelessly, wasted most often, and sometimes not said at all.

Words have power.

Once spoken or written down, words take on a life of their own.

Then I start to offer the reader (myself) advice, each one longer than the first:

Speak what you want to happen.

Write down your goals, your plans, your loves, your life.

Speak the words out loud. Talk to yourself when you so that when you talk to others you can speak with authority. You know it to be true because you spoke it so.

Then a bit of opinion-as-knowledge sharing:

Those with bad luck have it because they pronounce it every chance they get! Those who want change, who have hope, speak change and preach hope.

Choose your words so that you can choose your life.

The next page reads with a slightly different tone, but on a similar topic:

Yes, we are being tested. The question is, will we pass?

Who speaks words? Who hears or reads words? Who is affected by words? Why do we speak, hear, understand, and be affected by words?

People. People is the who. People is the why. Words are the what. They are a medium. The point is people. The purpose is people. People who use words change the world, one person at a time.

I close with the following paragraph:

We write down our goals and we begin to speak them out loud and we begin to do what our God has asked us to do and then, alas! A roadblock. A problem. What is this?! We followed the steps. We did what you asked! What did we do wrong? God is allowing us to be tested to see what may happen if we were granted what we asked for. The question is, will we pass?

It wasn’t long before I would be tested – and then I was tested again, and again – and will continue to be tested until the day I die. I believe that this whole time on earth is a test of our mettle, our personality, and our faith. Like the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14-30), we have been given opportunities here on earth during our time. How we use this time is up to us.

Here’s Mathew 25:14-30 in full:

The Parable of the Bags of Gold

14 “Again, it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted his wealth to them. 15 To one he gave five bags of gold, to another two bags, and to another one bag,[a] each according to his ability. Then he went on his journey. 16 The man who had received five bags of gold went at once and put his money to work and gained five bags more. 17 So also, the one with two bags of gold gained two more. 18 But the man who had received one bag went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
19 “After a long time the master of those servants returned and settled accounts with them. 20 The man who had received five bags of gold brought the other five. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with five bags of gold. See, I have gained five more.’

21 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

22 “The man with two bags of gold also came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘you entrusted me with two bags of gold; see, I have gained two more.’

23 “His master replied, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!’

24 “Then the man who had received one bag of gold came. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. 25 So I was afraid and went out and hid your gold in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.’

26 “His master replied, ‘You wicked, lazy servant! So you knew that I harvest where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered seed? 27 Well then, you should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest.

28 “‘So take the bag of gold from him and give it to the one who has ten bags. 29 For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. 30 And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

How I went from being a map blogger to a map maker by just realizing that I love to make custom maps for myself and others.

I always thought of myself as an urban planner anytime I encountered something while driving that didn’t make sense. I used to wish I could change city streets the way you can in Sim City or Sid Meier’s Civilization.

When I worked for other companies I’d make maps of where people sat, where restaurants were located, or branch locations. I was rarely, if ever asked to do these things. I just did them.

As a business analyst, I created many intricate spreadsheets to turn data into usable information that could be shared. Our output was often compared to a map, maps being Edward Tufte’s standard of visual simplicity and design. When I visualized spreadsheet data, I was really making customized maps.

As an IT worker, I created intricate network diagrams of all of our client’s computer setups, which were really just customized maps.

When I finally came to realize that making maps was what I was most interested in, I learned that it was also the lens through which I viewed the world. I created maps in my mind to help me understand the world.

This past weekend I attended The Combine in Bloomington, Indiana. Merlin Mann of 43 Folders was the headliner. Before I left I created the map you see below:

It’s nothing special, just some information from a schedule laid over a Google Map screenshot. The reason I’m showing it is because no one told me to make it, I made it for myself to use at the Conference. I made a map so that I could better understand the material. It’s the same thing I did when I was a business analyst in the banking industry. I made maps of information so executives could make better decisions. In IT I made maps of information so that problems could be solved faster and so everyone could be on the same page as to how a system was setup. No one argues that the United States is located in between Mexico and Canada because maps tell us this is true. Maps make data obvious. They tell a story. They matter. And I care about them. That’s why I like making custom maps.

Map Design Resources

For those interested in map making design, you might enjoy reading Gretchen Peterson’s blog. Gretchen also wrote GIS Cartography: A Guide to Effective Map Design. I’m currently in the process of learning TileMill from MapBox, but may also try MapTiler.

In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, when Stephen Covey is going over Habit 3, “Put First Things First,” he tells a story about “big rocks,” which I wanted to share:

In the middle of a seminar on time management, recalls Covey in his book First Things First, the lecturer said, “Okay, it’s time for a quiz.” Reaching under the table, he pulled out a wide-mouthed gallon jar and set it on the table next to a platter covered with fist-sized rocks. “How many of these rocks do you think we can get in the jar?” he asked the audience.

After the students made their guesses, the seminar leader said, “Okay, let’s find out.” He put one rock in the jar, then another, then another–until no more rocks would fit. Then he asked, “Is the jar full?”

Everybody could see that not one more of the rocks would fit, so they said, “Yes.”

“Not so fast,” he cautioned. From under the table he lifted out a bucket of gravel, dumped it in the jar, and shook it. The gravel slid into all the little spaces left by the big rocks. Grinning, the seminar leader asked once more, “Is the jar full?”

A little wiser by now, the students responded, “Probably not.”

“Good,” the teacher said. Then he reached under the table to bring up a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in the jar. While the students watched, the sand filled in the little spaces left by the rocks and gravel. Once more he looked at the class and said, “Now, is the jar full?”

“No,” everyone shouted back.

“Good!” said the seminar leader, who then grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it into the jar. He got something like a quart of water into that jar before he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the jar is now full. Can anybody tell me the lesson you can learn from this? What’s my point?”

An eager participant spoke up: “Well, there are gaps in your schedule. And if you really work at it, you can always fit more into your life.”

“No,” the leader said. “That’s not the point. The point is this: if I hadn’t put those big rocks in first, I would never have gotten them in.”

In both our business and personal lives, we have big rocks, gravel, sand and water. The natural tendency seems to favor the latter three elements, leaving little space for the big rocks. In an effort to respond to the urgent, the important is sometimes set aside.

1. Choose positive thinking friends. Lift each other up!

2. See problems as challenges. Successful people overcome!

3. Say “I can” more than “I can’t”. You can do it!

4. Expect good things to happen. Set yourself up for success!

5. Find the good in any situation. Look on the bright side of life!

6. Stop worrying and start enjoying. Live your life to the fullest!

7. Think happy thoughts. You own your thoughts! Make them great!

8. Live a happy, healthy lifestyle. Take a deep breath!

9. Picture yourself a winner. And you will be!

10. Give yourself a pat on the back. You deserve it!

Not all avoidance is bad. Sometimes it can be good so long as the timing and time spent allows us to evaluate our circumstances, brainstorm, and/or review technological changes like we wrote about in Determining Your Purpose in Life or Process.

Sometimes creative avoidances can not only be justified, but altogether useful.  For example, avoiding an assignment by taking a walk can be good for your health. And doing chores that need done anyway before doing the the thing in which you are trying to avoid can be good as long as the chores actually needed to get done and you don’t spend your entire allotted time doing them.

Usually, creative avoidance involves choosing one activity over another that might be deemed worthy by an outside party, such as joining the military, but inside you know that the real reason you joined was because you had just broken up with someone and you wanted to get away.  You will still benefit from the military, regardless of the motive.

But, sometimes creative avoidance involves a guilty pleasure in the act of choosing. For example, Jake goes out dancing to avoid doing his homework, and then is unable to complete his homework the next day because he is hungover. We might question if that avoidance choice was creative or dysfunctional, in other words, what was the intent or motive?

How to Know the Difference Between Creative and Dysfunctional Avoidance

To help determine if you or someone else is using avoidance creatively or dysfunctionally, ask the following questions:

1. Is the activity freeing or binding? Does this activity allow you to avoid something you don’t like?

2. Is the activity beneficial or empowering? Does this activity produce anything that will help you or anyone else?

Answering the question restates the avoidance, which helps us be aware of what motivates our actions.  In this way we can better manage our actions. An en example of a restatement is:

I’m choosing to do this instead of that right now, so that I can return to that when I’m ready with clarity, courage, and a fresh set of eyes.

It is possible to change our thought process in order to change our actions. We can stop dysfunctional avoidance completely if we pay attention to what is real and less of our intuition. If it helps you, start a journal recording when you begin to think of something to do instead of what you’re “supposed” to be doing – and your motivations for doing so or reasons why you didn’t give in.

Creative avoidance can be an adventure, but it can also cost you valuable time and energy. Learning to manage our thoughts and actions helps us see the patterns we can develop in our lives, which gives us the tools and ability to change.

People at the top of every profession share one quality — they get things done. This ability supercedes intelligence, talent, and connections in determining the size of your salary and the speed of your advancement.

Despite the simplicity of this concept there is a perpetual shortage of people who excel at getting results. The action habit — the habit of putting ideas into action now — is essential to getting things done. Here are 7 ways you can grow the action habit:

1. Don’t wait until conditions are perfect – If you’re waiting to start until conditions are perfect, you probably never will. There will always be something that isn’t quite right. Either the timing is off, the market is down, or there’s too much competition. In the real world there is no perfect time to start. You have to take action and deal with problems as they arise. The best time to start was last year. The second best time is right now.

2. Be a doer - Practice doing things rather than thinking about them. Do you want to start exercising? Do you have a great idea to pitch your boss? Do it today. The longer an idea sits in your head without being acted on, the weaker it becomes. After a few days the details gets hazy. After a week it’s forgotten completely. By becoming a doer you’ll get more done and stimulate new ideas in the process.

3. Remember that ideas alone don’t bring success – Ideas are important, but they’re only valuable after they’ve been implemented. One average idea that’s been put into action is more valuable than a dozen brilliant ideas that you’re saving for “some other day” or the “right opportunity”. If you have an idea the you really believe in, do something about it. Unless you take action it will never go anywhere.

4. Use action to cure fear – Have you ever noticed that the most difficult part of public speaking is waiting for your turn to speak? Even professional speakers and actors experience pre-performance anxiety. Once they get started the fear disappears. Action is the best cure for fear. The most difficult time to take action is the very first time. After the ball is rolling, you’ll build confidence and things will keep getting easier. Kill fear by taking action and build on that confidence.

5. Start your creative engine mechanically – One of the biggest misconceptions about creative work is that it can only be done when inspiration strikes. If you wait for inspiration to slap you in the face, your work sessions will be few and far between. Instead of waiting, start your creative motor mechanically. If you need to write something, force yourself to sit down and write. Put pen to paper. Brainstorm. Doodle. By moving your hands you’ll stimulate the flow of ideas and inspire yourself.

6. Think in terms of now - Focus on what you can do in the present moment. Don’t worry about what you should have done last week or what you might be able to do tomorrow. The only time you can affect is the present. If you speculate too much about the past or the future you won’t get anything done. Tomorrow or next week frequently turns into never. As Ben Franklin said, “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”

7. Get down to business immediately – It’s common practice for people to socialize and make small talk at the beginning of meetings. The same is true for individual workers. How often do you check email or RSS feeds before doing any real work? These distractions will cost you serious time if you don’t bypass them and get down to business immediately. By becoming someone who gets to the point you’ll be more productive and people will look to you as a leader.

It takes courage to take action without instructions from the person in charge. Perhaps that’s why initiative is a rare quality that’s coveted by managers and executives everywhere. Seize the initiative. Be a crusader. When you have a good idea, start implementing it without being told. Once people see you’re serious about getting things done they’ll want to join in. The people at the top don’t have anyone telling them what to do. If you want to join them, you should get used to acting independently.

For a healthy psyche and the accomplishment of your life’s purpose, creative avoidance can be helpful. Jesus said to turn the other cheek when you’re angry, but that is not the avoidance I am talking about today. In Psychology, avoidance means the passive act of not doing something that is good for you and using or doing something else instead that is harmful, or that hinders your personal growth and healing. Procrastination is a first cousin to avoidance, though usually of shorter duration, and with an end result of ultimately doing what is good for you after some delay.

When It’s Dysfunctional to Avoid

Take Jamie for example.  She is hypersensitive to disapproval and rejection, she fears the possibility of being shamed or ridiculed, and these feelings lead to limited interactions with her peers. Jamie”s social avoidance stems from feeling deeply inadequate. As a result, she finds it difficult to have easily satisfying interpersonal relationships. Avoidance in this sense is highly detrimental not only to her personal success, but also to a good quality of life.  If you’ve got to the point where you are avoiding paying your  bills because doing so triggers irrational feelings of scarcity and insecurity then the avoidance may be dysfunctional.

Dysfunctional avoidance are activities that harm or hinder clear understanding and longevity in relationships, feeling good about oneself, and having normal effectiveness in the world. These types of thought, feeling, and behavioral avoidance actions are patterns that can create enormous stress, anxiety, and depression. These patterns can be detected in the self-judging, self-blaming remarks we make about ourselves, and in some of the false beliefs we have about what we can’t do.  Be very careful about the way you talk to yourself.  Learning to manage your thoughts will help you manage your actions.

Dysfunctional avoidance is sometimes a faulty coping mechanism that kicks into gear, often without conscious intent. The more they travel that unconscious path, the deeper the “habit ruts” in their brains become. Once in this rut, it’s easier to get stuck in the negative “I can’t” frame of mind, which is often self-fulfilling.

Dysfunctional avoidance is often fueled by patterns of unconscious denial of actual realities. If you find yourself creatively avoiding something, regardless of your motive or intent, ask yourself if what you are doing is justified or for a greater good.  If the results of what you are doing harms yourself or others, think twice about doing it.  One of the biggest avoidances is conflict, but as Garth Brooks said, “The greatest conflicts are not between two people but between one person and himself.”

How do you feel right now? Are you tired? Maybe a little hungry? Do you need to use the restroom? Are you reading this because you are bored? These are all reasons I have used to get out of working or doing whatever it is I was supposed to be doing at the time. In school I would wait or arrange for conditions to be perfect before ever starting on a homework assignment, which meant that I hardly ever did them (or at least did them well).

How comfortable do you think your muscles get when you work out lifting weights or when you run or jog? How comfortable does your mind get when it is forced to think new thoughts, create new solutions, or solve problems? Before your muscles can grow, they have to expand and rip. And when your mind learns a new thought, it creates a little ripple in your brain. It has to ripple because its expanding, just like your skin gets rippled when it soaks up water in the tub or the pool.

In the same way, getting out of your comfort zone will help you expand and grow your self as a person. You may have heard preachers or motivational speakers talk of going out on a limb, having faith, trusting in yourself, or pushing the envelope. T. Harv Eker says that if you are not growing, you are dying. This may be an extreme example, but it helps set the tone of what I am trying to convey to you.

If you never try anything new, how can anything new happen to you? If you don’t like where you are now, then get moving and do something else. You are probably not being forced to do something or live somewhere. It may be your current situation, but it does not have to be your future situation. T. Harv Eker talks about the “corridor,” which is the area just inside the field in which you would like to enter. Even if you don’t get exactly where you want to go, it begins by getting your foot in the door, or simply put, taking that first step.

Sometimes the first step is the hardest. This is when your mind is filling your spirit with lead by pouring out it’s unlimited supply of limiting thoughts. Learn the mechanisms to recognize and let go of limiting thoughts. Your thoughts are your own and can be manipulated how you see fit. Nothing has meaning unless you assign it meaning. Just because you have a thought does not make it real or valid or worth keeping. Learn to let it go and start to cultivate the thoughts that support the position you want to be in. Get out of your comfort zone.

Try Something New

Tomorrow, take a different path to school, to work, or to the public library. Make it a point to talk to one person you’ve never met and ask them at least three questions about themselves. Pay attention to your thoughts. Only allow thoughts that support whatever your goals are. Thoughts that work against you, realize that they are not true, then let them go. If you do these things you are on a path towards a life that is closer to your new reality and your goals. You have taken the first step.

Converse to magnetism, in life, like objects tend to attract like objects. Good attracts good that the same way bad can attract bad. Trips to the doctor beget trips to the hospital and so on. Have you ever heard the expression that the more money you have, the more money you’ll make? That’s because money also attracts more money.

Pay attention to the thoughts you have right now. Are they good thoughts or bad thoughts? Are they thoughts of growth and improvement or limiting thoughts or thoughts of despair. How do we know what thoughts in our head are true and which ones we just placed there? Just because you have a thought in your head, doesn’t mean it’s true.

If you follow this thought out a little further you can see that if your thoughts are not true, then you can place thoughts there that are more fitting to your desired outcome. Some self-help books call this “self talk”. Some people view this as lying to yourself. I am proposing that your mind is always lying to yourself, so why not use the thoughts that it is telling you for good instead of detriment?

Let’s take a moment to go back to the thought about like attracting like and view some specific examples in science, nature, and in social settings.  If you grab a glass of water, then drop some oil in it, watch as the oil at first dissipates, then collects back together as the molecules are more attracted to each other than to the water.  Now, go outside, find a lake or pond and watch as the fish congregate together or how the “birds of a feather flock together”.  And lastly, visit a high school cafeteria and see how the children naturally segregate into various groups among the tables.

It’s the same way with adults and in life.  Rich people are more comfortable hanging around rich people. Poor people are more comfortable hanging around poor people.  It’s not that they can’t or don’t mix, but there is a level of uncomfortableness with this mixing.  I’ll be discussing comfortableness in a following post, but for right now I just want you to see how like objects are naturally attracted to like objects.

Now that you can see how it is naturally occurring, can you see how money naturally attracts more money?  Let me give you some practical examples by starting with nothing.  A man goes out and offers his services in return for pay.  This person is now considered experienced at what he does and can advertise this fact in either a resume or in an advertisement.  The man is now able to offer his service for a higher pay or in higher volume, thereby making more money.  This is active income, but if he manages his money well, the money will begin accruing passive income through savings and investments.  This man has now gone from having nothing to having something by doing one thing well and attracting more of it.

You may have heard of Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball.  Well the snowball is an example of like attracting like.  Paying down debt begets paying down more debt.  And once the debt is gone, the snowball can then turn into a snowball that instead of “beating debt” begins to “build wealth,” as Dave would say.  I highly encourage you to check out Dave Ramsey’s books.  They have helped many people create a plan for how to get control of your personal finances.  Dave likes to say that if you don’t manage your money, your money will leave you.  This is akin to the idea of what you don’t manage, you don’t value, which is what I recently blogged about in The Law of Focus.

The Law of Focus is much about like attracting like. Because you are focusing on something, measuring it, and valuing it, when you come across more of it, you will collect it or because you are so fond of it, others will bring it to you. This could be in the form of more work or just word of mouth (free advertising). For example, just like in the story of the man who had nothing and began offering up services, once you start down a path, people around you notice your path, and start to help make it straight for you. This is only natural. For those who don’t know which path to go down, that is the subject of a future blog post.

Cheers!

The “con” in con-man is short for confidence.  Con-men are successful because they are confident.  They “fake it until they make it” one might say.  This same confidence can and is used by successful law-abiding citizens every day.  What I am suggesting is that there is such a strong connection between success and confidence that once one enters the loop through solid work, the loop begins to feed itself.

Lets talk for a moment about what I have identified as the entry point, “solid work”.  This is the preparation, the due diligence, the hard data gathering that backs up the confidence.  Yes, you can “fake it until you make it”, but those who make it eventually create solid work to back up their confidence.  Without it, the faking can only last so long.

Now, if you’ve heard or read Jim Collins talk about “the flywheel concept”, you can see how this kind of applies here.  In the beginning, it takes more solid work to get your confidence up, but once you have it, the past successes will make you more confident.  Confidence will then lead to more success, but if you don’t keep backing it up with solid work, the flywheel will eventually stop spinning.

Danielle Franklin of ForexExplore.com says that “Once you earn new experience, the confidence increases,” and I would have to agree. Whether you are in stocks, sales, teaching, politics, or management, managing your confidence-success loop is critical.