“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.” – Albert Einstein

It’s tempting to tell a little white lie.

We’ve all done it at some point. Fudged on our SAT scores, the salary of your latest job offer or the time you got up last Saturday.

This week, a successful client of mine, told me that what differentiates his team from the competition is that they are brutally truthful in all matters, even when it leads to a major financial setback.

Your life is built upon a foundation of fundamental values. One of these is honesty.

How solid is your foundation?

C.J. McClanahan
Reachmore Strategies
317-576-8492
cjm@goreachmore.com

“One of the reasons that people can’t find four leaf clovers is that they are too busy looking at all of the three leaf clovers” – Marjorie.

Over the last several years I have been having fun taking pictures of four leaf clovers when I find them and posting them on my Facebook page. It’s exciting for me when I do find them because I was one of those people who couldn’t find one if it was staring me in the face. To add to the pressure, my Mom is a four leaf clover aficionado and finds them all of the time. It was not until my good friend, Dr. Sue Morter, taught me to slow down … just sit down, actually and “be the clover” that they began to show up everywhere. (My first ever five leaf clover is pictured above)

Dr. Sue Morter, my four leaf clover teacher and owner of Morter Institute & Health Center in Indianapolis, wrote a beautiful blog about the experience that opened her up to SEE-ing and listening within. Take some time to “just sit down”, read on and learn. You’ll be glad you did.

”There is a purpose for every event that occurs in our lives: Service. Everything that occurs serves as an opportunity for us to come to know ourselves more fully as an empowered co-creator of our experience. No exceptions.

In the first three months after my mother Marjorie’s passing, I found 69 four leaf clovers. This was not because I was particularly gifted in any way, but rather because I simply slowed down enough to see them. And when I did see them, sometimes three or four at a time, a deep and overwhelming sense of joy slipped in between the crushing grief and reminded me that there was more to the moment than the obvious.

So what was different? I sat down. I stopped from a pace of running a private practice, managing a staff, traveling to all corners of the country and abroad teaching professional seminars, being one of her primary care takers on the weekends and catching a flight back home in order to return to work and begin again on Monday. I stopped with the notion of everything having to get ‘done’. I just sat down. I ‘had’ to.

In that sitting down, in the despair of what felt like losing such a beautiful and rare relationship, my mind stopped and it felt as though all that remained was my breath. Literally all I could focus on was my breathing. Everything else fell away. And something shifted in me. I felt an actual physical, shift. Something let go, and something else ignited. A feeling — (rather than a philosophy) that it really was OK to fully accept my state, trust it, take action from that space or take no action at all, and let go of the outcome — was born.

“One of the reasons that people can’t find four leaf clovers is that they are too busy looking at all of the three leaf clovers”, a favorite quote of mine, offered by Marjorie.

Part of the reason that we have a hard time getting to what we want is that we are so indoctrinated into what we ‘don’t want’. But by allowing ourselves to sit down enough to listen within, our perfect path can be known. My business/speaking opportunities and revenues doubled in the year following my ‘sitting down.’ And the results I see in private practice are like I have never seen before.

The Mind/Body/Spirit connection is a very real thing. The body responds to our thought forms and beliefs. We can proactively program the body to respond in a healing manner. Shifts occur when we are ready to say yes to something different. Healing happens in the body when it is allowed to. We have choice. In fact, our highest purpose in this life is to come to know ourselves fully as the powerful creators of our experience that we are. And most importantly: four leaf clovers are everywhere, waiting to be found. Just sit down.”
Dr. Sue Morter

Deseri Garcia
Vida Aventura
317-362-4898
www.vidaaventura.net

When you introduce a new baby into the family, you are immediately flooded by a handful of companies wanting to get you to ‘try’ and to continue using their products.

When Cecelia was born, we got hammered with coupons, samples of pedialyte and similac, as well as baby nutrition books from a number of other companies. Gerber is the only company that has continued marketing to us, and therefore, they are the winner! Well, they also win because their marketing pieces have ROCKED!

I got a great piece of direct mail a while back (PS – I thought direct mail was dead, but not when it’s part of an integrated online/offline drip campaign), that included coupons, ‘tear-away’ information cards, and connections to Gerber’s website, mobile app, Facebook page, and call center.

The most impressive part of receiving this ad was that not only was it timed perfectly to Cecelia’s age, its content answered a lot of the nagging questions I had in my head about how to feed my baby.

If you would like to design a direct mail piece that is as impactful as Gerber’s, use the following conventions:

1. Set up a drip campaign that follows your customers natural progress through the buying cycle or path-to-closure

2. Include a direct response “ask” so you can track the effectiveness of the campaign and compute your ROI (ex. coupons)

3. Make sure that your piece is content rich, and answers the primary questions that your clients have at each stage of the buying cycle.

4. Use a portion of the ad to move your clients up your permission marketing stream by including reasons for them to opt-in to your social network, blog, or e-newsletter.

5. Don’t overwhelm them. Time your marketing pieces so that they become an eagerly anticipated part of your prospects trip to the mailbox.

Please share some ways that you have implemented a similar strategy for your business.

Jamar Cobb-Dennard
jamar@jamarspeaks.com

Women business owners have reason to feel good. According to a survey, in the most recent 10-year period, the number of women-owned businesses in the U.S. grew by 44 percent (twice as fast as men-owned firms) and, women-owned firms added 500,000 new jobs.

Women are growing business twice as fast as men, they are employing thousands of people. It is crazy for men to neglect this market when they are hitting the networking circuit. It is not that men do not network with women, they just don’t do it well. Not that they really don’t want to and not that they don’t try, there are just little things that cause the connections to go south.

Here are 3 things that men can do to make their chances of connecting with women better.

When opening a conversation with a woman, don’t go straight to business. Ask them to tell you something about themselves. Women are looking for ways to connect, some common ground that will allow for a relational conversation.

Listen to the women that you meet at networking event. Yes women talk more than men, they have deeper conversations that men do, often sharing a great deal of information in a very storytelling way. Men can learn a great deal by asking questions and just listening.
Never underestimate how serious a woman takes her business. Just because she may be selling a product or a service that seems soft and fluff, like cosmetics, clothing, child care or any other personal service, does not mean she does not take her business as serious as any man may take his.

Women are creating business, they have a need for services, they know other women who need products and services but they are not going to share that information with someone whom they do not have a trusting relationship with. Building those relationships will take time and work, but if you are willing to invest both, men and women can connect and refer to one another very successfully.

Hazel Walker
Referral Institute, llc
BNI
hazel@bni.com