The $1,000,000 dollar challenge! One great love, an enlightening dinner party, and two clarity defining breakfast meetings.

So I’m sitting here in a café somewhere in Melbourne contemplating the week that was and the weekend that still is. I know it’s Monday morning and I’m running behind with my blog and my Monday morning inspiration to my clients and its all for a good reason.

So I’m letting go of the anxiety that is building inside me that I have to meet expectations. Expectations of others, of what I think needs to happen and of the expectations that I have set up for myself. All playing into the great wounding, the great baggage game that we all carry from our childhood, past lives into our future hopes and dreams. In fact it is often the future that activates the past wounding and creates urgency, pain and unfulfilled dreams in the now.

Over the last twenty-four hours I have had an enlightening journey with my partner Stephanie, and enlightening dinner party with friends and finally this morning two enlightening business meetings with friends. Through all this I discover that I have allowed the dark to cover me yet again! It is funny how sometimes the dark comes disguised as the light only to appear as the dark right when you are in the middle of it. Now let me clarify the ‘dark’ as it is not some kind of spooky Hollywood Nightmare on Elm Street blockbuster but rather those things that we let get in the way of our success.

Maybe all this is not making any sense but right now I am just going with what is coming. The dark comes to show you everything that you are not! I have seen many hundreds of clients over my time as a kinesiologist, counsellor and coach and when I ask clients what they want they inevitably start by telling me all the things that they don’t want. In a funny way this is the purpose of the dark, to show you what you don’t want or in this case what you are not. In this way the dark actually appears to help you to see the light that you are. The dark is just energy like everything in the universe. All of which is aimed at growing the light of having us move into the biggest most beautiful and radiant version of ourselves.

Which brings me to today’s blog, how to turn a fake million dollar note into a real million dollars. It’s a challenge that was set for me last night by my beautiful friends Duncan and Fiona. I set Duncan a challenge for his blog a few weeks ago, which was to complete the title ‘greed is good’. Being a spiritual warrior it was potentially a challenge as sometimes we see greed as bad and certainly the popular media would have us believe so. Anyway Duncan did an amazing job, you can check it out at http://www.kidneycoach.com , so now to my challenge to blog about how to turn a fake million dollar note into a real million dollars! Well not actually just a blog but rather a real life challenged based on the guy who swapped a paperclip for a house.

Do I know how I am going to do it, no way, so where to from here? This is where I step into my power and become radiant and manifest the reality that this is possible. Money, like everything in the universe, is just energy and certainly not real. Money is just paper, or plastic and in most cases is just thin air travelling from one account to another never really seeing the light of day. So what is the reality of money? If money is not real and our society is just built on make believe, so to speak, then why not manifest a real million dollars out of a fake million dollars. The funny thing is that this fake million dollar note cost $7.00 to buy so someone is actually making money from that fake million dollar note. One of the reasons this challenge has come about is that part of my father wounding revolves around money and my limiting belief about not being good enough to have it, keep it and love it. So if money is not real then my wounding starts to disintegrate. This challenge was also manifested because of the gentleman who swapped a red paperclip for a house in 16 trades. He went onto ebay asking someone to swap a paperclip for something and a person swapped a pen. He then swapped the pen for something else and it got bigger and bigger until one day he had a house. If you have not heard of this guy, Kyle MacDonald, check it out at http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/ as he now has a web site, a book, he’s a speaker and the list goes on all because of one crazy idea. He broke through the mindset that his goal was crazy, not real or achievable.

So how to swap a fake million dollar note for a real million dollars, this is my challenge and I take it with both hands and move forward towards that reality. So anyone want to swap a fake million-dollar note, in pristine condition for something else? I have set up a blog site dedicated to this journey at http://themilliondollarnote.blogspot.com/ so you can follow me and I’ll also set up a web site so when it is up I’ll send you the link and lets see what happens.

At the end of the day the dinner conversation revolved around mindset and it’s power to influence how we succeed or don’t succeed in life. My recent mindset has lead me to fall back into the darkness, in an effort to help everyone else learn from the experience I am sure, so that I can now wake up again and move back into the light. So where is your mindset and how is it hindering or helping you to manifest what you want, deserve and need? Where is your baggage or the darkness hindering you manifesting the brightest future for yourself and your family?

This challenge is similar to the premise of manifesting a car space. I’m famous for manifesting rock star car spaces. I do it EVERY time without fail so why should a million dollars be any different? The short answer is IT’S NOT so here we go, want to come for the ride and see what happens?

Thanks for reading, have a great week and don’t forget to be radiant in everything you do….you might just manifest a million dollars!

Regards Marcus

P.S Thanks Stephanie, Duncan, Fiona, Karen and Chris for your wise words, deep questioning and loving challenge. 

Engagement - A Life Changing Experience

Well another week has gone by and this week I have been playing Mr Mum and Mr Dad as Stephanie has been away in northern NSW working as an assistant on the Shamanic Midwifery course. Thankfully I have had lots of help from my Mum, yea for mums, and what a great help she has been thanks Mum. Now trying to juggle family and the extra responsibilities with an already busy work schedule has not been easy and as I sit here on Sunday night I am a little tired.

I was watching Undercover Boss last night, one of my favorite reality shows, and I could not help but to be dragged into the emotion of it all. It was a particularly emotional show with a boss who connected deeply to his staff and had some very big awakenings. I can’t help but be moved by the deep connection that was felt by all and the life changing results that this connection achieved. It made me think about the whole connection and engagement theories that we talk about but often give lip services to. As I have said before, and no doubt will again, engagement is the key to success or more importantly how we engage. It makes sense that the more we engage and the deeper that engagement we have with anything the more success we are likely to receive. So how are you engaging with your business and your world?

If you are a sole trader or small business owner you might want to look at how you are engaging with each of the domains, or in our language, the pillars of your business. How are you engaging with the finances, the marketing, the sales or in the structure of your files and records? I can bet that the areas that you dislike engaging in are the things that need the most attention. Unfortunately when you are a sole trader you have to be the HR manager, the finance manager, the marketing manager, the sales manager, pretty much everything. Now if you just can’t engage with any of these areas because you just dislike them, like me with my finances, then get someone in who loves engaging in that particular area to help. If you can’t afford it then learn to engage by listing the benefits of engaging in that area and then apply that to your passion. So how is engaging with your finances going to help you to build a successful coaching practice, as in my case. Sometimes we need to segway our engagement so that we can engage in those things that at first thought we can’t stand.

Now if you are in a larger organization where you have employees who report to you or you happen to own a business that has employees then engagement becomes critical to the bottom line. Employee and staffing costs are often the most expense outgoings in any business, so making sure that they are performing is essential if you want to make a profit. It goes without saying, so I’ll say it anyway, that the more engaged employees are the better they will perform. Engaged employees also cost less from a sick leave and turnover point of view. A recent statistic that I read said that over 80% of employees do not like what they do. A scary statistic to think that 80% of staff are disengaged with what they are doing.

I have a theory called motion theory, which states that everything in the universe is constantly in motion. Employees are no different in that employees are either moving towards or away from your business. Those that are moving towards the business are engaged and therefore perform better, have fewer sick days, greater loyalty and have a happier and more enthusiastic demeanor. Now this has to be good for business as an engaged employee is more likely to engage with customers in a positive way. On the other hand those that are moving away from the business and disengaging are more likely to have higher sick leave, less company loyalty and will be less enthusiastic or happy. Now I don’t need to tell you how this comes across to customers just take the supermarket check out person, ‘Hi, how are you’ in a drool monotone voice reading from the employee training manual. Just for fun, change it up a gear next time you meet one of these employees, there not just in supermarkets, and give them a response that is not in the manual.

In all seriousness we have three categories that we place employees into, they are either - Advocates, Fence Sitters or Detractors. Advocates are those that are moving towards the business and engage. These are the employees that enjoy coming to work, are passionate about what they do and the company they work for and the group that we are likely to get the most out of. The second type of employee is the Fence Sitter, these are the employees who are there to do there job and rarely put in over and above but seem to like where they work. These employees are however easily swayed. The third group is the Detractors, these are employees that are in the process of or have disengaged from the business. These employees, depending on the distance of disengagement, don’t like where they work and at the extreme can become toxic to the organisation. These employees hate to be alone and will try to recruit other employees to join their cause. This is where the Fence Sitters can be influenced to join them, which can turn into a mutiny if not taken care of quickly. I am sure we have all been a part of one or all of these groups at some time I know I have. Now both the Fence Sitters and the Detractors, as long as they have not moved too far, can be turned around and encouraged to become Advocates. In fact it is possible to have a company full of advocates. If you don’t believe me check this site out http://www.zapposinsights.com/main/ Zappos is an online business, which started out selling shoes and has now moved into a wide range of merchandise. Their employees are primarily all call centre staff, but a call centre with a very big difference, all their employees are Advocates and moving towards the business. Some of the most engaged employees I have ever seen. They are so successful at employee engagement that they now take tours and run workshops for other organizations that want to learn their secrets.

Engagement is crucial if we want to have a more successful business and successful life. So this week I challenge you to take a look at how you are engaging with your world, identify where you could engage deeper and make an engagement plan. Learn how to love what you do and if you can’t go find and then live your passion, the world will be a better place for it…

Thanks for reading…

P.S: As the Gallup organization have found:

The world's top-performing organizations understand that employee engagement is a force that drives performance outcomes. In the best organizations, engagement is more than a human resources initiative -- it is a strategic foundation for the way they do business.

Research by Gallup and others shows that engaged employees are more productive. They are more profitable, more customer-focused, safer, and more likely to withstand temptations to leave. The best-performing companies know that an employee engagement improvement strategy linked to the achievement of corporate goals will help them win in the marketplace.

P.P.S: Now you don’t have to go to the USA to get extreme employee engagement you just need to call us. If you want to engage more with your small business or have your employees engage more with your organisation the benefits are far and beyond increased profit. Why not give us a call to see how our Engagement Success Technologies can help you to have greater success. It does not cost anything to get an evaluation…

The 10% of the 10% - overcoming fear!

Monday morning and it’s blog time…mmm I’m sure that’s a song, oh no that’s hammer time for all those eighties retro born individuals like me. I’m sorry for my eighties reflection, I spent a lot of yesterday with my band, playing eighties music (not Hammer Time I’m pleased to say), getting ready for another round of Weekend Warriors.  This is a program run by Allans Music for old farts that desperately want to be rock stars. It is made up of ammeters that can’t play very well but are willing the embarrassment and give it a go. The program runs for four weeks ending in a full on gig at a pub with a live audience. I’ve done it once before, not that I told anyone, which was a huge buzz and scary as hell.  This brings me to today’s blog.

Face the fear and do it anyway…

Now when you decided to go into business, whatever you are doing, I am sure there was fear present. Some of you transitioned from a big firm to your own thing. Some of you followed your destiny and fell into your own business. Others may have had a life changing experience that drove you to changing paths and into your own business. This was my experience when I came down with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. What ever your journey has been there was an element of fear that you had to push past to do what you are doing.

I often find that once you have pushed passed that initial fear, which is often overcome because of necessity and a need to make an income, we forget about consciously and consistently pushing through fears. Fear is a constant especially when you are running your own business. Whether it is a fear of making it work, a fear of putting yourself on the line or fear of pushing into areas that make you feel uncomfortable, it is imperative that we do it. Maybe business success all comes down to how comfortable we are at being uncomfortable. How willing we are to face the fear and do it anyway.

I used to snow ski for Australia, something I don’t tell many people, representing our country in international competition throughout Europe. During some of the most exhilarating experiences of my life I learnt how to face the fear and do it anyway. Imagine if you will placing two bits of wood a meter and a half long to your feet, then crouching down and be pushed down a mountain at 120 kilometers an hour. Imagine the wind in your face, the ground only centimeters from your nose and the chance of crashing and causing serious injury to yourself, or death, a constant reality. At the speeds that you obtain as a downhill skier the planks of wood attached to your feet are not actually touching the ground. As you look at them they rock from side to side as the ground rushes underneath them. What on earth would drive anyone to risk his or her life for such a sport? The rush of it, the adrenalin of it and thrill of it?

In some respects running your own business is like a downhill ski race. Once you leave the start line you are committed down the track. Sometimes it is going to be thrilling, sometimes scary and sometimes you will be racked with fear. At the end of the race you will be left with exhilaration unlike anything else. Now a downhill ski race only lasts a minute and a half and a business sometimes a lifetime. Regardless a lot of your success will come down to how you face the fear and do it anyway. Pushing through fear, overcoming those things that scare you most may ultimately be why you succeed or fail. In a ski race only the most fearless win as any amount of fear slows you down and when races are won by hundredth of a second there is no place for fear.

There is a statistic I herd somewhere which goes like this. 90% of all businesses that start today will not see their fifth birthday. Of those 10% that remain a further 90% wont make it to their tenth birthday. Not a very positive or encouraging statistic is it? So how do you become and remain in the 10% of the 10%?

There are lots of aspects to business that assist in its ultimate success, marketing, networking, having a needed product, identifying and reaching your ideal customers, finance, internet, management, the list goes on. There are also hundreds of guru’s on the Internet showing you many systematic ways to make a million and have a successful business. Even I have a systematic program to increase your business success. However maybe, just maybe it all comes down to one thing…your ability to overcome fear!

So what is your greatest fear? Public speaking, presenting, speaking with customers, dealing with finance, getting yourself out there, networking, managing, organizing the list goes on. The first step in overcoming a fear is to identify the fear. Then, and here’s the key, RUN TOWARDS IT! Summon all the courage that you have and run towards those things that scare you most. Public speaking, which is the number one fear in the world even above death, is an obvious one that most of us have (If you are going to have a successful business then this is one you definitely need to get over and quick). When we run towards our fear we always find it disappears. It is a bit like a fog, it looks thick and scary when you are on the outside however if you run into it you find that it is just a thin layer of mist.

I remember when I realised that for me to be successful I had to learn and be comfortable with public speaking. I had herd of a public speaking course offered by the Dale Carnegie group, Dale is the author of the famous best seller ‘How to Win Friend and Influence People’ a great book. It took me five years to summon the courage to do this course but I did it. Every week of the course, which runs for 12 weeks, you have to make two presentations in front of 100 people. Every week I sat in my car and said “I’m not going in, there is no way I’m going in” and every week I faced my fear and did it anyway. At the end of the course I was invited to become a leader and then a trainer and the feeling of success I felt as I overcame the fear was incredible. It helped me to have the confidence to do my MBA amongst other things. Now it did not cure my fear of public speaking but rather gave me the tools to do it. Every time I am asked to speak I feel the fear and do it anyway.

One of the tricks I learnt was to say yes before the fear kicks in, you see fear is all in the mind. It takes a few moments for the brain to realize and activate the feeling of fear so if you say yes quick enough the fear does not have time to stop you. I am sure you have all herd of the acronym for fear, False Evidence Appearing Real. It is just the brain reflecting on the past and projecting it into the future and leaving us with a feeling akin to fear in the now. Most of us have had negative experiences of public speaking, whether it was in front of family friends as a kid where people laughed at us, never in malice just how it was.  Even at school a lot of us where ridiculed every time we stood up and spoke. There is no such thing as a naturally gifted speaker just those who have learnt to overcome the fear and do it anyway.

So what is your greatest fear in business? Go run toward it and do what ever you need to, to face it head on. This one action may just change your business success forever. Get out and present to as many people as possible. Take every opportunity to speak in front of an audience. Face the fear of finance by getting someone who is not afraid or fearful of it to help you. What ever your fears get help to overcome them or face the fear and do it anyway.

If you need help call me and I will assist you to identify your fears and provide you with strategies to overcome them powerfully. For when you overcome your fears you take back your power and you move forward into greater and greater success…try it I dare you!

So run toward your fears, face them head on and I bet you will find them not so scary.

Oh and if anyone wants to come to the gig I’ll try and get over the fear and let you know in my upcoming blog’s.

Make Passion a Priority

Well it’s been a long two weeks since I posted a blog, I had planned to post every week however this last fortnight has been a little tough. Over the past few months I have done a great job of posting a regular blog every week. However last week I was recovering from my weekend workshop, Double Your Clients, which as usual challenged me as much as it challenged my participants.

After the weekend I did not have the energy or motivation to write the blog. I was drained and perplexed at the lessons the weekend threw me.  Now I am not going to go into all of them today I’ll save that for another post, suffice to say that on the Monday I wanted to give up. I wanted to throw the preverbal towel in and go back to my old corporate world, you know the one that is safe, secure and you get a regular income for a regular commitment week in week out. So what turned me around?

Well I started to read a book called The Passion Test by authors Janet Bray Attwood and Chris Attwood, it’s a New York best seller. I was reluctantly driven to read the book and I have to say I am glad I did as it has put me back on track. I had been getting more and more frustrated that things were not going the way I wanted them too. I began to push against the natural flow of my own intuitive nature and the universe itself. (There is a natural flow to the universe…) I was becoming a grumpy old man…not that I’m that old, not now anyway. It’s funny how books just appear when you need them. A friend and client of mine passed on an email that had appeared in her in box and she thought it might be of interest to me, and it was.

In the book they take you through a great process for identifying your passion and a systematic way of having those passions become a reality. Now some of the stuff that they talk about is stuff that I often ask clients to do, identify an inspiring vision or in this case passion, put together a vision board etc. However there are some very unique processes that Janet and Chris have developed that I found to be of great help. Identifying your top five passions and the way they question you to identify your real passions. Finding your markers so that you know it is happening, developing a vision board based on the five passions then writing a page on how life will be like when you are living your passions. Then they ask you to write out your 100^th birthday speech, which I found was a positive spin on the message to the world speech I often get clients to do, same objective just a little more positive. Then getting into action and trusting in the passion plus a lot more wonderful insights, quotes and stories. As they say:

'When you are clear, what you want will show up in your life, and only to the extent that you are clear'

Now this is just a small snap shot of some of the exercises in the book. The most inspiring part of the book for me is the stories of both Janet and some of the most famous authors on the planet, all talking about living your passion and the overwhelming benefits that come from living a life with passion.

For me the greatest benefit has been getting back to basics, the realigning of my self, getting back into a discipline and routine that I had left behind some years ago. I used to meditate every day and reconnect with my centre, to recharge and realign myself to myself. The book inspired me to go back to basics to first start with the most important thing ME! To reconnect and stay connected even in the middle of fear, anxiety, panic, anger and all the other things that go on in our day-to-day world. To not be dragged into the drama. Their saying of Intention - Attention - No-tension has led me to taking out the tension part. I have had the intention and have given plenty of attention but it was all with an enormous amount of tension. To the point that my family was ready to disown me… A grumpy, distant unhappy person was the general gist of their feelings. However and I am so excited to say that within a week I had the most wonderful comment from Stephanie. She said to me, that was one of the best weekends, speaking of the one just gone, I feel you are so much more present with the family, you did so much and did not mention being tired or complaining. It was music to my ears and I even went out socializing on Saturday night after spending a lot of the day gardening. This may not sound epic to most of you but for me who has lived the ‘I’m suffering from chronic fatigue’ story it was big. The big part was the fear that I moved through to actually go out. As I say in my workshop ‘choose’ to make it happen and as the fear appears keep choosing, and I did.

This process has helped me to find my centre again, to be able to sit in the fear but to do it anyway, to once again live the teachings I pass on to participants of my workshops and my clients. I feel whole again, connect and listening to the wisdom that is within me and within all of us. I actually feel a sense of happiness, which I have not felt for a while, even in the face of fear, maybe that is one way to conquer fear laugh at it....

There are many quotes in the book this one is one of my favourites:

‘Your life is created first in your mind, then in the world’

So when do you choose to live a passionate life…fully. I know there are a lot of people half living their passion in the middle of transition. I know that there has to be a practical pragmatic side to life of making sure the bills are paid and that there is food on the table. However when you get on track and begin to commit to living a life of passion all manner of things will show up to make it possible. So if you are not currently living you passion full time or at all, or you want to realign and get clear on what it is then I highly recommend The Passion Test. Oh and we are going to run some of the Passion Test workshops which run for four hours and are a great way to get started, aligned and in action to make it happen. I have been in contact with one of the amazing Passion Test facilitators in Australia, Ruth Donald and she has agreed to come to Melbourne and run a few of the workshops.

If you are interested please drop me a line.

Thanks for reading see you next Monday…

P.S. If you want to find out more or get a copy of the book just click here http://www.thepassiontest.com/?af=86141