Last Friday I did a photoshoot for Home Business Connection magazine.

They're doing an article about me in the October issue (okay I might have bribed them a bit... it's what they call an "advertorial").

So I spent the day having my picture taken trying to look "normal" like "everyday life" which is anything but possible when you're being told where and how to stand by a photographer.

I just got the pictures back and pulled a few out that I could live with.

So let me know what you think...  Cool? Or tool?  I admit I felt a bit of both...

There were a lot of people looking at me and I couldn't help but imagine them thinking "Oh look a famous person.  Wait, no it's just some dude who hired a photographer."

Which reminds me...

I was walking in SoHo the other day and this short dude was standing next to me wearing a Clash t-shirt.

So I start whistling Should I Stay or Should I Go, not on purpose so much as just overwhelmed by the power of suggestiion.  And the guy in the shirt looks over at me approvingly.

And guess who it was?

Who DOES # 2 Work For Anyway?Mike Myers!

As in Austin Powers, Touch My Monkey, So I Married An Axe Murderer, Party On Wayne...

Holy Cow Mike Myers just gave me an approving look.

Groooooovy Baby.

Okay enough stream of consciousness rambling...  Let me know what you think of the pictures.

Oh yeah, did I mention you can have anything you want out of life just STOP MAKING EXCUSES!

Okay now I'm done.

--

J

It's the only question that matters... and answering it may change everything for you, just like it did for me.

Here's an impromptu video I shot in my office about just that.

It's a little long (13 minutes) but the ideas herein changed my life so I get a little passionate talking about them...

Leave a comment, I'd love to know if these ideas resonate with you like they did for me!

Late the other night, when I just couldn’t fall asleep for some reason (hate those nights), I came across a really cool documentary about Peter Drucker. Drucker was a sort of... socio-business philosopher (if that makes sense?) He conducted studies, published and consulted for companies like GM in the 40s and 50s about things like management strategies and business efficiency (he also performed the ground breaking two year study that resulted in the book Concept of the Corporation, great read btw).

Drucker was brilliant, and was an absolute machine with presenting intellectual one-liners, but there was one particular quote in the film that really stuck with me.

Drucker: “The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”

What struck me most about the quote was the notion of “searching for change.” The idea that an entrepreneur is CONSTANTLY searching for opportunities to stop what they are doing - change course, revise his/her plans, especially preemptively. Preemptively?

It’s hard to make yourself change...what seems to already be working, right? But in reality, slowly but surely, you begin treading water; you stop moving forward.

I’m a big jazz fan, and for years I’ve found this parallel between the life of an entrepreneur, and a great jazz score. On one hand, there are the notes on the page...and then there’s the music that’s actually played and heard. Improvised.

I think Decker had a special understanding of how curiosity, a little fear, and just a couple unexpected right turns in life — can come together to make for one heck of a ride.


All the best,

Jeff Learner


...I was listening to music on my iPhone while walking through the Bridger mountains in Montana.

My thoughts turned philsophical as they will often do when walking in nature and next thing I knew I had paused the music and was recording a voice memo on my phone.

Talking to no one in particular with only the scrunching sound of gravel under my feet as an underscore my thoughts babbled out like the spring-fed creeks nearby...

So in true Internet exhibitionist fashion... here they are (below the picture), recorded for posterity.  Feel free to listen.

Top Ridge of the Bridger Mountains outside Bozeman, Montana

Let me explain that title...

It is not good practice for any kind of online professional, especially a marketer/trainer, to go 3 months without posting to his blog.  In Internet time that's an ETERNITY!

What was I thinking???

Hopefully once you hear what I've been up to you'll cut me some slack...

In November of last year I was sitting at my 3rd company awards banquet watching the usual suspects win the sales contest (again!).  And as happy as I was for my friends (Andrew C., Gregg D., and my mentor Michael F.) I couldn't help but wonder what it was that kept these same 3 guys winning sales contest after sales contest.

Anyone who's been in any sort of sales environment knows how common this scenario is... the top guys stay at the top, month after month, year after year, and they make it look so easy!

Now let me explain right up front (I know what you might be thinking)... I'm in Direct Sales, not MLM, and the sales contest is based entirely on individual production.  In other words, your "position" or "rank" or "entry date" has no bearing on your results.  No one has any advantage over anyone else in one of these sales contests.

It's literally "anyone's game" every time out so why do the same 3 guys keep winning?

What is it that separated them from me?  Or anyone else for that matter?

And I asked my mentor, Michael, that exact question later that night.

His answer may strike some as haughty, but it was brilliant in its honesty.  And once I had really processed it everything about my business had changed.

Michael F., my mentor"It's mental, we're competitive and we expect to win... It's not a question of if we'll be top 3, just which position..."

"We're not doing different things,  but we are thinking differently while doing the things.  While other guys aim to burn calories we aim to maximize leverage."

"It's all the same stuff... taking risks, conversations with people, placing ads, building our brands, and testing everything... but we are putting more in on the front end and slashing more on the back end."

"We put it all on the line... time, money, and energy.  Then if it's not producing it gets cut.  If it's a drain of time or energy it gets cut.  If it whines it gets cut.  If it gets outperformed by something else it gets cut.  If it's lazy it gets cut."

"At the end of the day we just take more risks than most are willing to, because there's really no risk at all when you already know you've won."

That last line...  Wow!  Such calm confidence.  Such clarity of thought.

And most of all...

Such simplicity.

What I was hearing him say was that being successful in this business is really not that complicated.

It's all about how you think and who you decide to be every day in your business.

JJ, the voice of our communityAnother one of my mentors, John J., describes it as "Who are you going to show up as TODAY in your business?"

I thanked Michael for his valuable time and said simply to myself "It's time to think as big as they do..."

In the next few months I began approaching my business metaphysically - leading with my thoughts.

Through additional reading and self-reflection I slowly became less and less attached to the results I was getting and more engrossed simply in the process and who I was within it.

The results, I decided, were already written (I was going to be a top 3 finisher!), so why worry about it?

I began trying to do just as Michael had said... seeking leverage, taking more risk not less, and demanding more from myself and others.  And above all, being brutally honest with everyone I met on or offline about what this business takes (just as Michael had been with me).

And I quit worrying about the numbers.  Whatever they were would be good enough.  It was already written.

The key was honesty, which is the core of self-mastery.

I could not demand more of others if I did not first demand more of myself.  And to demand more of myself I had to be totally honest about what was really going on in my head.

Being honest with ourselves - not the easiest thing to do!Why wasn't this or that project getting done?  Why wasn't my team duplicating like I wanted?  Why wasn't I meeting my income goals?

And usually the answers weren't pretty.

But I knew that if I was going to have a chance at achieving my real goals (which are bigger than I'll ever admit) then this process was just a warm up and I better do it right.

So for the next 4 months I put one foot in front of the other, avoiding the temptation to look out to the horizon, just focusing on walking a straighter line, because I knew the straight line ended on stage.

I was the mapmaker AND the navigator.

Unless I was wrong of course about all this grandiose metaphysical stuff... then I'd look sooo foolish.

There was this nagging temptation to second guess myself and my new outlook, and to worry about how it would appear if I fell short.

Maybe I should start preparing myself to not be up there?  Maybe I should be more realistic?

I realize that most people (myself included) are truly afraid to dream big.  Afraid to see themselves in the spotlight.  Afraid to aim too high.

4th place just wasn't cutting it...Because they might fail.  Or they'd look foolish if others found out.  Or they'll be the ones that others are gunning for if they win the prize.

For me it was this last one that kept surfacing... not wanting to be the one others are trying to knock off.

It's so much easier to come in 4th.  Or to win the peripheral prizes, rather than the the grand sales prize.

You still get some accolades but you don't end up with a target on your back.

But I had won those prizes - the leadership awards, the newcomer awards, the consultant of the month...  I had come in 4th and 5th and 6th place.

Every month it seemed to be the same top 3 guys plus a group of us "contenders" nipping at their heels.  And it wasn't cutting it for me...

It wasn't about beating them it was about what they showed me about my own business:

I knew they were achieving more than me by thinking bigger than me!

How could I demand more from others when I knew that I was not giving it my all?  The fact that others were taking the same opportunity that I had and extracting more from it was proof that I myself could be doing more.

Look, I want everyone to win... And I'm not a person that needs to be numero uno.

But the fact is in a business where consistency and determination are the primary variables, and the internet is the leverage multiplier, then if others are accomplishing more it means they are more consistent, more determined, or have more leverage.

None of these were or are acceptable to me!

"Just walk the line, do the work..." I told myself.  Every day.

And I began to figure out an important truth - when you focus on the work rather than the outcome the work becomes more fun.

Little things like getting a capture page just right, or writing a blog post, become rewarding in and of themselves.

You see the forest for the beauty of each tree.

You feel time in the effort of each singular moment rather than the weight of looking backwards.

And you stop obsessing about daily results.  The results come from doing the work, not the other way around.

And so went my journey... a slow daily metamorphosis from a Top 10 guy to a Top 3 guy.

It may not seem like much but the difference between top 10 and top 3 is a huge mental shift.

It took almost 5 months but it worked.  I placed top 3 in the 2 most important competitions in our company - one for personal sales and one for team sales (duplication).

3rd Place, Sales Contest, Spring 2010

3rd Place, Team Sales Award, Spring 2010

The second award held special meaning for me as it meant that my new attitude was contagious and my team was making more sales than ever...  There really is no better feeling than helping others!

Important note... I realize that by conventional wisdom I am saying things that are liable to get one labeled as a huge narcissist... ie, that placing top 10 in a company of 30,000+ consultants doesn't cut it.

But that's what I learned about taking a metaphysical approach - what seems crazy when viewed through the lens of reason is perfectly normal when thoughts are shaping reality rather than the other way around.

The existence of humans as a species is an infintesimally improbable reality.  That the entire universe doesn't explode or implode is only through a precise balancing of seemingly unrelated properties.  The fact is it's all a miracle whether viewed practically or otherwise.

So why shouldn't your life or mine be as well? 

To conclude, let me summarize what I learned in the last 5 months:

Being top 10 is about working really hard.
Being number one is about thinking really big.

So now the question... Who are you going to show up as for the next contest?

It's up to you and the time to decide is now.

See you there :)

Reporting live from the beautiful Boca Resort in Boca Raton, FL at the Wealth Masters International (WMI) M2 Conference...

I just had the opportunity to participate in a dinner with some of the top marketers on all of the internet at the WMI Executive Committee dinner. And as I looked around the room, wondering how I ended up in such company, I realized that all these people had 3 things in common.

Thankfully they were 3 things I had too (which is how I ended up in the room!)

I shot a little video that explains it.  I hope you enjoy it...

So I know I'm not the only one who has figured out that it's impossible to reply personally to every email one gets as an internet marketer.  Heck, nowadays it's impossible to reply personally to every email one gets even if they aren't an internet marketer!

So a while ago I set up an autoreply message (using gmail's vacation reply feature) telling people that basically it was impossible for me to keep up with the volume of emails I receive and to go to a Frequently Asked Questions page for more info.

Then inevitably a few people (not most, just a few) started getting ticked off about the autoreply message and writing back to the autoreply message (ironic!) that because I had an autoreply message I must be an uncaring scam artist.  Actually a lot of the messages were much more colorful than that (and unpublishable...)

So I had an idea... and now I'm sharing it with you :)

What if in my autoreply message I put a link to a video explaining why it was necessary for me to have such a message and showing people a screen capture of how many emails I actually get in that inbox?

It humanizes the whole process and hopefully shows me not as an unfeeling scam artist but rather as a successful marketer who simply can't keep up with the volume of emails he receives from lookie-lous and tire-kickers.

Once viewed in that light it's actually an enviable situation that hopefully people will realize they should aspire to rather than resist.

And that if they apply they can learn how... =)

(Lightbulb goes off again...!) And for further leverage I am actually going to send them to this blog post rather than hosting the video on another page... then they can see that marketers don't exist in a vacuum and that we share ideas and benefit from one another!

--->> IF YOU'RE HERE FROM A LINK IN AN EMAIL PLAY THIS VIDEO PLEASE <<---

It's good to be back.  Thanks everyone for the well wishes!

And remember... "What the mind can conceive it can achieve." - Napoleon Hill, based on research of the most successful businessmen of the early 20th century.

Feel free to leave a comment...

People in airports are so funny...

Have you had a funny airport experience?

Don't hold back... leave a comment.