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The Next Big Thing

Guest post by: Scott Wittig

Article Overview: In preparation for a talk I was giving to about 100 entrepreneurs, I asked the host to tell me about the makeup of the audience. I wondered if this group that gathers regularly was made up of business owners who had it all figured out, not even close, or somewhere in-between. His answer was the latter – many of the entrepreneurs have laser focus and many are still trying to figure out if they were really doing the right thing to best serve their talents and interests. How to figure ‘IT’ out is a challenge for all of us, whether we are already in business or still deciding if we want to take the plunge. One of the keys is quiet.

The Next Big Thing

"Life moves pretty fast," said Ferris Bueller in one of my favorite movies. Getting beyond the noise of the moment - the decisions to be made, the phone calls, the requests of your time from your team - is an art form. I call it "getting quiet" and I think it is one of the keys to figuring out what it is we really need to be doing. Whether you already have a functioning business or are soul-searching for your ‘IT,' you need to carve out time to just be quiet and think. As a very busy mortgage banker in the doldrums of the 2008 real estate meltdown and heat of the refinance boom of 2009, I found my time in the sauna. While maintaining a good life balance and actually getting to the gym to sweat the stress out, I made sure to take at least ten minutes to just lay there and think. It was during that time that I formulated the ideas that became my first book, Holy IT!, and the mastermind groups that I've created called ‘do IT groups^TM' [Which are designed to get you into action via input and accountability from your peers in a group setting - more info to come in another post].

You may be thinking, "I've already got IT and I'm running my business full steam ahead." That's great! But are you doing what you set out to do? Are you serving who you wanted to serve? Have you strayed from your initial purpose and passion?

From the light bulb moment for your business, you may have said that you were going to give 5% of your profits to charity or you were going to require your team to do ten hours of volunteer work per month to serve your community and help with team building. Have you strayed from that because you got busy with the business? Taking some time to get quiet and think about the inspirations you had for even starting your business will go a long way toward getting you back in sync with, well, you and your next big thing. Don't forget the towel and bottled water.

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Article Tags: Career planning, coaching, Holy IT, inspiration, Motivation, selfhelp



Related Forum Posts
Books that should be written - [quote:1m0dcpd7]"The Idiots Guide To Sticking With One Thing At A Time and Not Doing Something New All The Time" [/quote:1m0dcpd7] I myself am a 'constructive' procrastinator... I don't know if I'm alone in this. I have about six or seven projects I'm working on at any given time. I get one project almost done... then my interest is piqued by another project and I work on that... I get burnt out and move to another...I know I do this so I have it arranged such that once I get bored or burnt out with one project, I can step right back into project 1 - or 2 or 3, and get that a little bit more done before moving on to something else. As long as you're organized and know where all your reference material/idea sheets are when you're ready to get back to work on each project, it should be fine. I also find that by stepping away from a project - I still work on it in the recesses of my mind so that when I go back to it - it's with some good ideas that I wouldn't have had if I'd continued on with it originally. Maybe I should write a book on how to Procrastinate Constructively... I've actually thought about doing that...because most people procrastinate, don't they...and very few are ever able to stop.
Re: Who hates cold calling? - Have to say, cold calling is about 40% of my daily job. So calling up prospects these days is a walk in the park. However, it took me a long time before I was half decent at it. These days I'm quite effective. I tend to stick to the same guidelines. In a way, these guidelines have helped my career in a way. Firstly, I wouldn't dream of picking up the phone unless I knew my product. I'd hate to get caught out on a simple objections. Secondly, when I call up I ask for the decision maker. If they're not available, (in a meeting, out of the office) I will never pitch the person who takes my call. Normally its the secretary. I'll just say 'no problem, when would you recommend be the best time to catch him?' Thirdly, listen - listen- and listen. In the early days I used to talk over the prospect, and end up wondering why they often said no. Anyway, hope it helps. It's a bit of a knack but anyone can get it. There's a newsletter I've belonged to for a long while and they send you all types of stuff on cold calling. Thing is I've forgotten what its called. I'll have to check my emails and let you know.
My reading log - Hi OmnivoreInk, Before starting my business, I read the following books as research: -"The Art of the Start" by Guy Kawasaki -"The AdSense Code" by Joel Comm -"Don't Think Pink" and "Mind Your X's and Y's" by Lisa Johnson And since then I've continued my "research" by reading (in this order): -"Technical Tennis" by Rod Cross -"For One More Day" by Mitch Albom -"The Twits" by Roald Dahl -"Little Black Book of Connections" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne -"The Profitable Retailer" by Doug Fleener -"Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell -"Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" by C.S. Lewis -"Little Green Book of Getting Your Way" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" by J.K. Rowling And I'm currently reading and am in the process of finishing the following: -"There's No Such Thing as Public Speaking" by Jeanette and Roy Henderson -"The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell -"The Book of Tells" by Peter Collett -"Little Red Book of Sales Answers" by Jeffrey Gitomer -"Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing The Customer Experience" by Jonathan M. Tisch -"The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity" by Julia Cameron -"The Inner Game of Tennis" by Timothy Gallwey
The Way We Were - You have to be middle aged or older to get this but I thought I would share it with you and it's all about [color=#008000:22uc7wu6]THE GREEN THING[/color:22uc7wu6] The Green Thing In the line at the supermarket, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren't good for the environment. The woman apologized to him and explained, "We didn't have the green thing back in my day." The clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment." He was right -- our generation didn't have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the shop or off licence. They sent them back to the plant to be washed, sterilized and refilled and re-used. So it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled. But we didn't have the green thing back in our day. We walked up stairs, because we didn't have lifts and escalators in every shop and office building. We walked to the local shops and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go to a supermarket. We bought fruit and veg loose - and washed them at home. We didn't have to throw away bins full of plastic, foam and paper packaging that need huge recycling plants fed by monster trucks all day, everyday. But she was right. We didn't have the green thing in our day. Back then, we washed the baby's nappies (diapers) because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts -- wind and solar power really did dry the clothes. Kids got hand-me-down (mostly hand made or hand knitted) clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing shipped from the other side of the planet. But that old lady is right; we didn't have the green thing back in our day. Back then shops repaired things with funny things called spare parts - we didn't need to throw whole items away because a small part failed. Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of Wales. In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power and hand clippers for the hedges. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a brightly lit, air conditioned health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity and then drink millions of bottles of that special water from those plastic bottles. But she's right; we didn't have the green thing back then. We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a plastic cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new plastic pen, and we replaced blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole plastic razor just because the blade got dull. But we didn't have the green thing back then. Back then, people took the bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their parents into a 24-hour taxi service. We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest Macdonalds. But isn't it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the green thing back then? ------------------------------------------------------------ regards, Mal.


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