Transformations

Back in November of 2008 I was fortunate to attend the amazing gathering of our Million Dollar Club in Naples, Florida. Headed and facilitated by Dr. Alan Weiss, nine of us from the US, Australia and Germany, spent three remarkable days discussing and analyzing our business models and how to reach higher successes. The first key recognition for me was the realization that what made us successful in the first place is actually holding us back from reaching the next level of success. The second was the development of the accelerant curve chart and concept from an idea shared by one of our club members, Mark Smith. More on that in the next newsletter so please stay tuned. The third was the fact that during our three days together, no one said: “yes, but!” All of us were there to openly learn and share and challenge our own thought process while quickly creating the trust to receive powerful feedback from each other.

Below are the 30 traits of a million dollar mindset that we have discussed and developed:

1. Focus and Discipline: Determine what’s important and be ruthless focusing on achieving and surpassing your goals.
2. Market: Identify your key markets and exploit them.
3. Leverage and Scalability: When can 1 + 1 equal 1,000? Constantly seek to leverage products, services, markets, and relationships.
4. Database Intelligence: Create, nurture, grow, and cleanse databases so that they are of high quality and generate powerful returns.
5. Branding: Create, nurture, and develop strong brands (if appropriate, your name) to draw people to you and enhance firm equity.
6. Cogent Sales Process: Understand the steps, sequence, scope, and symmetry of your sales process to maximize acceleration and margins.
7. Great People: Suffer no fools greatly, and ensure you have a team that believe it has a vested interest in the business; do not create a “corporate welfare state.”
8. Act: Move rapidly and be prepared to adjust to compensate for moving early.
9. Personal Relationships: The best support system is the one closest to you.
10. Belief and Faith: The client doesn’t tell you how to consult and you will insist on the right way or walk.
11. High Fees: Buyers have egos and believe they get what they pay for, but the first sale is to yourself.
12. Inspiration and Intuition: Allow yourself to free up your potential, create new approaches, and be willing to fail in the good cause.
13. Fun and Passion: You have to love what you do if you’re going to do what you love.
14. Reinvention: The antidote to boredom and staleness is to be unafraid to change and radically metamorphose.
15. Opportunism: Being nimble and light on your fee enables you to exploit new events and ideas.
16. Time Management: You can make another dollar but you can’t make another minute, and the real wealth is discretionary time.
17. One Life: Understand that you don’t have a “work life” and “personal life” but simply “a life.”
18. Simplify: Occam’s Razor is correct, in that the easiest approach is usually the best.
19. Intensify Market Gravity: Continue to add value that is manifest, so that more people are drawn to you.
20. Empathy: Understand what the other person feels (without necessarily feeling it yourself) to gain maximum influence.
21. Speed Learning: Maximize your ability to process information, especially in reading with comprehension, writing with expression, speaking with influence, and listening with discernment; adapt a learning mindset.
22. Boldness and Candor: Life is short, get to the point; act rapidly, with conviction.
23. Intellectual Firepower: Breadth and depth of knowledge sets you ahead of the crowd.
24. Communication Structures: Put in place optimal channels to talk to, and listen to, the client.
25. Excellent Delivery: Always deliver with energy and adaptability, and stack the deck in your favor.
26. Network Focus: View your market as a network or web in which you want to lure people at least barrier to entry and allow them to partake of additional value at higher and higher fees.
27. Sense of Humor: Be willing to laugh at yourself first and also the situation to retain perspective and put everyone at ease (including yourself).
28. Don’t Fear Failure: If you’re not failing, you’re not trying; have the faith in yourself to create resiliency.
29. Innovation and Creativity: Never be content because processes and structures of past success can become obstacles to future growth.
30. Avatar of Success: Demonstrate to others that you are successful and become the person who both walks the talk and talks the walk.
31. Big fish die in small ponds. Think very big.

© Chad Barr 2010 All rights reserved.