Business Coaches

I attended our Advocis seminar last Wednesday we had a guest speaker who is a business coach. He talked about goal setting, establishing values and why you should hire him to be your coach. This may be the fourth or fifth one that I have heard in the last year or so. That coupled with the piles of books by others that I have read suggests that by rights I should be the smartest most successful financial advisor in the country.

I'm not suggesting that these guys don't do some good, they probably do. They probably help a lot of people get focused on what needs to be done to be successful. They make a living at it because the human failing is that we don't want to do the things that are hard or hurt, like making phone calls, planning our days, weeks and years in advance etc. It is much easier if you can get someone else to do that for you.

The other problem is that being a successful financial advisor is boring stuff, you have to be willing to do the same thing day after day. Over and over. It is not glamorous work.

I have achieved success in this business, it hasn't been easy, it has taken most of the last 30 years to finally get it right and it has been an application of many of the principles that the gurus teach. Set goals, develop a business plan and a marketing plan, follow the plan and measure the results. Manage time and resources to best meet the perameters of the plan. Just about the same as running any business, stuff they teach in business schools all across the country, in fact you can get an MBA in this stuff if you want to.

The interesting thing is that I discovered that all the goals and plans mean nothing unless you know the secret, and that is to keep a daily journal, write down everyday what you did, and what you are grateful for. It's that simple. When I started to do that all the other things began to fall into place, the goals were reached, the free time began to be more free and less work and the income went up.

Gratitude is an amazing thing, Christ Jesus alludes to this in Matthew he went on to describe how to pray, I suggest your read the book of Matthew, get a copy of a Bible written in modern day language so you don't need a professor of theology to interprete for you and read the book of Matthew, you will be amazed at what you learn and how you can apply it to you business. It all begins with being grateful.

Now you might say when I have something I'll be grateful, wrong answer, be grateful for everything, for the air you breathe, for life itself, for the world around you. Just be grateful everyday, start and end your day with gratitude and write it down in your journal.

Another thing you can do to help generate success and it doesn't matter what you do or what carrer path you choose the princple applies. That is to write out positive affirmations of what you want to achieve and read them dailly. One of my favorites I got from Jack Canfield. You may not recognize the name but you have read some of his books, he is the co-author with Mark Victor Hansen of the Chicken Soup books. One of the most successful author duos in the world.

Jack's affirmation, with some modification is, "I am happily and easily earning, saving and investing (put your own number in here) per year. God is my infinite supply and large sums of money come to me quckly and easily for the greater good of all concerned."

Does this work? Well let me tell you about my experience, which isn't much different than Jack's that he ralates in one of his books. I took this affirmation, put in a number, typed it out on 3 by 5 cards and posted it on my bedroom mirror, in th car, at the office, in my wallet and anywhere that I would see it dailly. I didn't put a big number in the blank but big enough. I read it everyday. When I hit my number my wife said to me, maybe you need to pick a bigger number because you just made the one on the card on the mirror. I should point out that my wife is the chancellor fo the exchequer, I make it but she manages it.

Of course I set a bigger goal, when I hit that one she said you better set a bigger number in the affirmation on the mirror. Now one of the keys to the affirmation is that is does not have a time limit. It is just a simple little phrase that you can easily memorize and the you read everyday. Your sub conscious hates a vacumn, God hates a vacumn and when you couple a positive affirmation with gratitude the forces of the universe are going to go to work to make it reality. You just need to be ready to receive the message and act on it. You don't necissarily know what you did differently but you will do things differently because that is what is necessary to achieve the goal.

You can't buy happiness, but you can create it, and it begins with being grateful and having a positive affirmation. When you are achieving your dreams its impossible to not be happy, and happiness means you will be healthier and you will enjoy your life more. You were not put on this earth to be miserable, you were put here to fullfill Gods affirmation, you'll find that one in the first chapter of Genesis, in the Bible. Remember the book you bought to read Matthew, well read the first chapter of Genisis as well, it's the truth.