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The power of a group

Guest post by: Dan Miller

Article Overview: January 18th would have been Benjamin Franklin’s birthday. Now there’s a guy who saw opportunities that others did not. Ben invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, the odometer, and the glass armonica. He formed both the first public library and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.

The power of a group

January 18th would have been Benjamin Franklin’s birthday. Now there’s a guy who saw opportunities that others did not. Ben invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, the odometer, and the glass armonica. He formed both the first public library and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.

While it’s hard to say he “invented” electricity, he certainly harnessed it so we would have a way to use it. Can you imagine how much we take for granted based on the conveniences Ben made possible?

At just 21 years of age, Benjamin personally selected the additional members of a small group of about 12 guys he called the Junto. All of the members lived in Philadelphia and they represented a rather diverse spectrum of businesses. And they were not some elite, white-collar group. They were just regular working guys who wanted to enrich their lives in every way possible. The club met on Friday nights, first in a tavern and later in a house, to discuss moral, political, business and scientific topics of the day.

Here’s an important point: Clearly the Junto was Franklin’s creation, and he led the group by example. While he considered the other men to have similar intellectual interests, he recognized that the unifying force of this diverse group was “an inquiring spirit and devotion to self-improvement”. Franklin developed a series of questions to guide and focus their discussions. (I may share those in an upcoming blog)

Benjamin Franklin unleashed his amazing talents as a result of spending intentional time with others who were committed to self-improvement. Not rocket science – just a basic principle we can all use to amplify and accelerate our own success.

Ben would have been 306 today – how I wish I could have met him and been in that mastermind group he started. Of course, I do have such a group that meets every Wednesday morning. And strongly recommend that you find or create your own group as well.

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Article Tags: accountability, america, american, business, career, coaching, committed, committment, diverse, diversity, education, groups, improvement, inventors, mastermind, principles, selfimprovement, success, talent, think groups, work you love



Related Forum Posts
Warning for Facebook and MySpace users... - or indeed, any users of third party sites where you may host your groups. [quote:304u8tx6]I'm plugging away on my Facebook strategy and will update everyone as soon as I have some results to share. [/quote:304u8tx6] It may be premature to pass along this warning (as it might be just some dumb mistake that will be rectified shortly), but I just received an email from someone today on MySpace who had a group there for 3 years, with over 20,000 members and 100,000 posts, and it was apparently summarily deleted today. No explanation or warning given...it's just gone. This was a group that discussed fantasy and sword and sorcery novels - hardly something that deserved to be removed - especially when you consider the lascivious nature of the titles and purposes of some of the other groups there! It may perhaps have been just an administrative mixup - someone in power wanted to delete a group and deleted the wrong one, and it my be restored...or it may not. So basically what I'm saying is that if you start a group for business or what have you, don't just trust that it will always be there because there's nothing in it that violates TOS. Back up all files and save people's emails so you can contact them should the unthinkable occur!
Women Entrepreneur Tips - Thank you LeoOliveros, I found #4 particularly true in my case: 4. The Enterprise Must Include the Power of Power Networks. As a conductor of your own enterprise, you can not see yourself as a one-woman-show. You must choose to utilize the power people in your life, by asking for help when you need it, and effectively delegating in order to capitalize on your strengths and that of your power network. When certain experts are not represented in your power network, you must actively seek advisors or mentors and develop a team of specialists, so the benefits are received by everyone involved in the power network - the true Power of Power Networks.
Psychics & horoscopes! - I have never sought the help of a psychic and I deffinately do not believe in horoscopes. Although I do believe "some" psychics could hold a special gift (like the ones that help police) occassionaly, but horoscopes are not believable in my book. I I believe the power of suggestion (reading a horoscope) is the real power there. You read or hear how things should go for you and the power of that suggestion could make it happen. Your mind believes it will happen, so it does. It's Sort of like how if you fully believe you are sick (when you are not), your body reacts as if it really is, therefore developing symptoms.
Re: What Keyword research methods do you use? - It's a little outside the box approach, but I use Google's own Instant Search to pull up initial list of keywords. Then I click on each search result to go deeper. I use them something similar to forming Ad Groups for Adwords. If I want to build an authoritative site, and my niche happens to be "dog training", I will build pages for "dog training collars", which will be built on "how to use dog training collars", "dog training collars on amazon". Then start second group, which consists of "dog training schools"... This way, I will be building more authoritative and complete site for "dog training". I will build pages according to the structure I made up for each group, using WordPress. Start building links back to these pages, and over time, I can build a site that harnesses the power of organic search results. I have done this "tedious" process among a few of my sites and they have been proven effective.
Re: Social media question - Hi Rachel, I'm a member and active user of both Twitter and Facebook, but more so of Facebook. Yes, there is a lot of power between the two when used correctly. The nice thing is that you can link the two by having your Twitter tweets show up on your status updates on Facebook. This alone is powerful as my tweets get responses from my Facebook friends, who are potential business partners or clients. One thing with Facebook is setting up a group about you, your product, or your business. As you build up targeted friends you can invite them to your group and build a reputation for yourself. This is kind of the same angle you want to use with Twitter as you tweet about your niche. Another aspect of using Twitter and Facebook is setting them up to automatically post a link and description of your blog posts. As others have mentioned, you should set up a blog and post content relative to your niche. As you can see by setting both sites up like this, part of your marketing efforts are on autopilot. This is just a small example of what's possible, and do read over the other suggestions that you were given because they are great as well. Hope that helps and best wishes, Alan


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