Travel is BIG Business

Vacations benefit everyone. Whether they’re modern-day Marco Polo trips traversing thousands of miles through unfamiliar lands, business people meeting face-to-face with important partners, or weekenders escaping to a lakeside or coastal retreats, travel reduces stress and enhances relationships. By seeing how others live, travel can open our minds, teach us how to adapt and help us understand the ways of the world. In short, travel makes us better people.

But travel is also good for businesses and governments dependent on visitor spending. Travel/tourism is one of America’s largest industries and biggest employers, according to the U.S. Travel Association (USTA). In today’s economy, people can really make a difference by doing something as simple as taking a vacation. Not only will they prioritize time for themselves and the people they care about, they’ll also contribute to job creation and the economic well-being of the places they visit.

What could be more meaningful than helping the U.S. economy? Thinking beyond the front desk, the pool and Twitter, see yourself as an economic driver, not only a traveler marketer. It’s a powerful concept.

2012 GLBT Travel Expo Tour Starts in Florida, February 9th!

The 2012 Travel Expo Tour is an exciting event where you can learn about new travel destinations, rediscover old ones, find GLBT friendly travel providers and get information to plan your next vacation. FREE ADMISSION

Exhibitors will include:

Airlines
Hotels
Trains
Cruise lines
Car Rentals
Resorts
Exotic Destinations
Convention & Visitors Bureaus
Travel Magazines

Every one of them reaching out to the glbt consumer.

Attendees will be able to get the latest travel information, get special travel packages and great deals from the very best travel providers as well as win great prizes.

Face to face promotions still represent one of the best ways to promote your services. This afternoon event will draw 500-1,000 elite consumers from a great demographic group. This is the third year Steven Levenberg Productions, LLC has been producing these events. Each year these shows have had an ever expanding exhibitor base and attendance.

THE TOUR

Ft. Lauderdale, Florida - Thursday – February 9, 2012 - Pride Center of South Florida.

Miami, Florida – Sunday – February 12, 2012 – Moore Building.

Chicago, Illinois - Tuesday – May 1, 2012 – Center on Halsted.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Thursday – May 3, 2012 - The William Way Center.

New York , New York - Saturday May 5, 2012 - The LGBT Center.

5 Questions to Ask Yourself as You Grow Your Business in 2012

New business success starts with improvements in YOU. These questions will get you started

by Felicia Joy

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! I love this time of year. It represents a fresh start. It gives people and businesses a symbolic moment in time to assess what worked well last year, what didn’t and wipe the slate clean and start all over.

It is easy and requires no effort to think about what we’d like to do differently in business. The tough part is making and sustaining changes—and even tougher than that is realizing you can’t move your business to the next level or fix a struggling business by simply focusing on the business. You also have to focus on fixing yourself.

Entrepreneurship is literally a self-improvement obstacle course. In launching and growing a business, all your strengths will be tapped and all your weaknesses will be revealed. The business gets better when you get better. If not, the business fails. So any business planning you have done or are doing for the New Year should include taking stock and improving you.

Here are five questions you should ask yourself to

make sure you grow as a person in the New Year and therefore grow your business too:

1. Am I well? Anxiety, stress and physical disease zap your energy. One of the easy traps to fall into as an entrepreneur is saying and believing that you’ll pay more attention to your health once you make your business successful. That’s a fallacy. Burnout is real. Vitamin deficiency is real. Depression is real. Diabetes, hypertension, emotional bondage and all the other preventable health ailments that come from ignoring your body, eating in response to problems and avoiding issues instead of facing and resolving them are real. That also includes sitting at the computer or working in the business from the moment you get up until you pass out at night with no exercise, quiet time or focused loving interaction with your significant other or family. If you don’t have the stamina to run the business without running yourself down then you must make a conscious choice now to change. You don’t have to be a body builder or love guru but you do need to be well. Try a retreat or another means of pulling back to check in with yourself and make sure you are.
2. Do I have strong relationships? Every success in this world comes out of some kind of relationship. What’s the quality of your relationships? Think about how connected you feel. Do you feel like you have people who genuinely support and love you—do you support and love them? Check in with your friends, family, employees and business partners to find out how they really feel. These are people who know all your “stuff” and love you anyway. These relationships are a safe haven through tough times and an inner circle to celebrate with during great times. Make sure you make a concerted effort throughout the year to give focused time to your relationships.

3. Do I have the skills I need to succeed?

It takes a lot to make a business work. If you have not taken an honest look at where your business keeps getting stuck and figuring out what skills you need to move beyond that recurrence now is the time to do that. Once you brainstorm a list of skills select one or two of them that you will intentionally focus on improving this year.

4. Am I 100% committed? Successful entrepreneurship does not result from half-hearted efforts. You’re either completely committed or your business is on the way out. Some people believe they are committed because they are still doing business every day. Time in service doesn’t mean you are committed. Being committed means you are willing to show up and make the changes that will consistently improve the business and make it profitable, or move you on to a business that will. Have you had an executive meeting with yourself regarding commitment? Check in with self to make sure you are completely committed.

5. Do you execute? The most talented people with the best ideas and best plans don’t win unless they execute. Do you accomplish the daily, weekly and monthly tasks that are critical to your business success? That’s a yes or no question. If your answer is no, you have to be totally honest and determine within yourself why you do not execute and how to move to the point that you do. In business, there is no trying. Your either are getting it done, or you’re not.

Answer these five questions to find out what you need to work through to hit your targets in 2012.

Black and Gay in Corporate America--Black Enterprise

By Sharon J. Lettman-Hicks, Executive Director of National Black Justice Coalition

This week, Black Enterprise (BE) magazine, the most respected business journal for Black America, released an eight-page article on being Black, Gay and in Corporate America that is sending shockwaves through Black communities. The teaser article started with:

“We’re not going to pretend this was an easy topic for Black Enterprise to consider. Let’s face it—the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community is one of which our society whispers, mocks, ignores, and, in extreme cases, vehemently rejects. For Black members of this community, the emotional backlash can be even more intense.”
- Sonia Alleyne, Editorial Director, Careers/Lifestyle, BE

CALL TO ACTION…We need our members and supporters to:

· Purchase a Black Enterprise magazine today (it will be a piece of history)

· Post the Black Enterprise cover story on your Facebook page to share with your network:
www.blackenterprise.com/2011/07/13/black-and-gay-in-corporate-america/

· Facebook “Like” the BE special features at:
www.blackenterprise.com/blacklgbt/

· Add your voice to the many comments (positive and negative) regarding BE’s coverage about our community on the BE website: www.blackenterprise.com

Nicki Minaj’s Branding Power Decoded

By BlackEnterprise.com

Most may view Nicki Minaj as just another rapper/singer/performer; but the multi-faceted entertainer is much more than that, she’s a bankable brand that’s only just begun to blossom. In a few short years, Nicki has influenced trends through her music and unmistakable fashion sense, and her involvement in cosmetics, television, hair and even the floral industry (Nicki has exclusive pink collection bouquets available on flowers.com for Valentine’s Day) has helped spike sales and visibility for a number of ancillary brands. Whether her detractors like it or not, Ms. Minaj is a one-woman marketing guru. BlackEnterprise.com takes a look at some of the brands the young starlet has—directly or indirectly—helped bolster by association.

Huffington Deal Raises Question: What Site Will Be Sold Next?

By EVELYN M. RUSLI

In agreeing to buy The Huffington Post for $315 million, AOL is putting what appears to be a significant premium on the ability to attract and build a community of readers.

Yet as more and more advertising dollars flow to the Web and to mobile devices, demand for popular and prolific online content producers like The Huffington Post, is rising. The market for online advertising is expected to increase 14 percent, to $51.9 billion, this year, according to the research firm Borrell Associates.

With that kind of growth, the deal for The Huffington Post is expected to raise the bar for other independent online media companies whose audiences have surged with the help of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.

Speculation is now turning to what prices others could fetch should they ever go on the block. Among the biggest is Gawker Media, home to a collection of popular sites, such as its flagship property and technology blog, Gizmodo, which attracts about 19 million users a month, according to comScore. Glam Media, a group of beauty and fashion sites geared toward women, boasts 87.8 million visitors a month.

The three-year-old Business Insider, something akin to a business version of The Huffington Post, with its mix of breaking original content and aggregation, attracts 3.5 million visitors a month, comScore says. And companies like AOL and Yahoo have been on the prowl for content providers.

“Right now, the macroeconomic turnaround and the explosive growth in mobile, is causing Internet companies to accelerate their investments and there’s a question of what is content,” said Ben Schachter, an analyst with Macquarie Securities. “Companies like AOL and Yahoo are in a battle to make themselves relevant.”

For that reason, analysts barely blinked at a valuation for The Huffington Post that by most measures was a lofty one. The price is 6.3 times The Huffington Post’s projected revenue of more than $50 million for this year. That’s more expensive than the $25 million AOL paid last September to acquire TechCrunch, which claims to generate about $10 million in annual revenues.

If one uses AOL’s projections for revenue growth and costs savings in 2012, the price for The Huffington Post comes to 10 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization or Ebitda, wrote Mark S. Mahaney, an analyst with Citigroup. “Not cheap, but not outrageous for a relatively high quality asset with strong top-line growth, current profitability and margin expansion potential,” he wrote.

Read the entire issue here: www.NYTimes.com

Playing The Bigger Game - PART 7 & Final Step

Step 7: Invest Even When It Seems Scary, (Especially When It Seems Scary)

I once worked at a place that was cutting back and micromanaging things, cutting the sales force and scouring phone logs to catch people making 50 cent long distance calls. One experienced worker shook her head and said “If the company’s having trouble, they should spend more on the sales force, not less. My last company did that, and it saved them.”
This company didn’t. 6 months later, *poof*, they were gone (I got out of there well before then, though).

The point is, it’s scary to invest time or money when you don’t have enough of either. But you have to if you want to play a bigger game. And no, I’m not trying to sell you something today. (Though I make no promises to what the future holds). Ask anyone who has made a major leap in their life or business and you’ll find that they either invested a sizable amount of time or money in growing.

Let’s talk about time first, because that’s essentially what I’m urging you to do right now so you can play a bigger game. I want you to start the PLAN and write it down.

You have tons and tons of time to invest in yourself, but you’re just not doing it. Seriously, I wasn’t kidding when I told you to put LOST on your TiVo instead of watching it live. You have pockets of time you’re not leveraging everywhere – TV, web surfing, lunch, 30 minutes before bed / before work … if you were committed, you’d make the time happen.

Time, when invested regularly, changes your game. If you’re harried and overworked, you’re harried and overworked. That’s how you see yourself. But if you spend 30 minutes every Tuesday at lunch improving your game, then you’re not harried anymore. You’re seeing yourself as a player who is going places – and perception becomes reality. One 30 minute appointment with yourself can transform your life. Don’t believe me? Ask the people one level above you and they’ll agree with me.

Time lets you leverage assets you already have. Yeah, you’ve got books / tapes / programs / whatever. But are you using them? No, because you’ve fooled yourself into the idea you don’t have time. You have it, you’re just not committed to using it. Make that sliver of time, keep that appointment with yourself and start using the resources you already have.

I’m not going to lie to you – I want you to make time for your Investment. Hey, I’m going to continue with my Investment, making sure I’m playing the biggest game I can. If you’re not going to invest in yourself, then you’ll never play a bigger game. Start by investing time so you’ll have a container to put new training in as you acquire it.

30 minutes at lunch, one day a week. If you won’t do that, what will you do? Remember, “Nothing works until you do.”

Now I get to the sticky part – the part where I talk about spending money (No, I’m not selling you something today. Easy, tiger). I’m going to be very specific about how you need to consider spending money when you’re moving to the next level.

Your money, like your time, is a resource. You must invest (not spend, invest) it incredibly wisely. Scared money, don't make money!!!

Here’s my advice to you.
Only invest when you can see a return that makes sense for your business. Just because some type of training or product exists does not mean it makes sense to buy. Whatever it promises may not apply to your business, even if it’s touted as having made other people money. Look at the thing you’re about to buy and say “Can I see myself making a solid return on this investment in 30 days or 3 months or 6 months or whatever?” If you can’t, then it’s likely not the thing you need to invest in.

Protect yourself by investing when there are guarantees. My first big-ticket purchase was a $1,000 training course with a 60 day guarantee. I bought it with the express intent that if I didn’t make my money back (and more) in 60 days, I’d return it. I made my money quickly, and kept the product. But if it hadn’t been able to deliver, I would have been safe knowing I could return it.

Take cues from those who are playing a bigger game. Those people you’re networking upwards with? Find out what they’re doing. Find out what they’re buying. Find out what they approve of. Don’t just take other people’s word for things – model the people who are getting the results you want to get. This gives you the highest chance of getting relevant training that will apply to your situation.

Don’t think about price – think about value. Would you trade a dime for a dollar? That’s a no brainer question. Would you trade $1,000 for $10,000? You think you would, but then you balk at training that costs that much. Don’t feel bad, we all do it and it takes time to get out of that mindset. But all that matters is return on investment. If you’re getting 5 times or 10 times what you invested back, what you paid for was free.

Value is the biggest take-away I want you to think about here. When you see these public relations agents charging $20,000 a year or these consultants charging $100,000 for working for a client, you bet your ass it’s because they’re helping the other person get 5 or 10 times that amount in return. They only buy when it’s going to end up free in the long run.

Warren Buffett said “Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.” Never forget that when you’re on your quest to play a bigger game.

Yeah, that’s a direct quote from the second richest person on this planet. I think he’s playing a pretty big game.

If you missed any of the steps, you can search on The Future. Please follow me on Twitter.com/LilMogul.

Thanks for your time. I hope you found it valuable.

Lil Mogul

Playing The Bigger Game - PART 6

Step 6: Surround Yourself with People Playing A Much Bigger Game.

Once you realize that intimidation is for suckers, it’s time to use that newfound knowledge to surround yourself with people who will force you to play a bigger game every single day.

If you’re not actively working to add more of these people to your social / professional circle, then you’re in trouble.

Here’s why:
As humans, we tend to live up to the expectations of our direct peer group. In fact, for the most part, it’s a limit – an average of maybe our five closest connections. Don’t believe me? Rich people hang out with rich people. Overweight people tend to have an overweight social circle. Health nuts chill with health nuts. We tend to hang around with people who reinforce our current set of behaviors, and we don’t deviate much.

Because of that, a small-game crowd can actively pull you down. Yeah, this is the sad part. Hanging with struggling business people? See what happens when you tell them you’re taking a daring risk. (”Are you crazy?”) Trying to lose weight? See how people react around you when you try to eat more sensibly. (”C’mon, live a little.”) If you decide to up your game, you’re rocking the boat for your own crowd, and they will – with the best of intentions – try and draw you back to “safety.”

It’s a tough world for those hanging with small-game crowds. But don’t get me wrong, I’m not advising you to ditch your friends and associates – far from it. Instead, you I’m saying that you need to be working on expanding your own circle to include more bigger-game people and be open to helping your current peers come along for the ride.

If your current peers aren’t willing to play a bigger game, be gracious and understanding. It’s not easy. You may even be squirming thinking about it. But nothing motivates like a good example, so focus on being one.

How do you find people who are playing a bigger game? It’s simple. Look for the people at the top of the food chain in your niche and consider their type of game. Does the thought inspire you or terrify you? If it’s the latter, there’s no shame in that. Maybe it makes no sense for a one-person operation to try and jump to the game of someone with a staff of hundreds.

So go one level down. Who’s one tier down from them? Can you play your game on their level? Inspired? Run with it. Terrified? Drop down another rung, and lather/rinse/repeat until you get to a point where that feeling of terror softens into the sense that “Oh crap, I might actually have a snowball’s chance of pulling this off.”

A snowball’s chance is good enough. It’s a start. Find people at that level and start networking your way onto their radar (more on that in upcoming Tuesday’s when I’ll give you notes on networking). Start stepping out and risking some public failures and they will do what they can to keep you from failing.

There’s nothing a successful person loves more than giving a boost to someone with chops, because they remember when someone a little higher up did the same thing for them. Leverage the hell out of that.

When you hang with people who play a bigger game, they actively pull you upwards. To continue hanging with them, you’ll feel a positive pressure to push yourself in all the right ways and to stop making excuses. They’re not going to accept your excuses and fears of failure. They’ll understand them, and they’ll empathize with them … they just won’t tolerate them.

And when that happens, you’ll push past your limiting beliefs and play that bigger game to the max so you can keep hanging with that group of real players. I’ll step you through how to start the ball rolling on. Game on.

I LOVE NY 23 of 28 Places to Visit

Wall Street

Wall Street is a street in Lower Manhattan, New York City. It runs east from Broadway to South Street on the East River, through the historical center of the Financial District. It is the first permanent home of the New York Stock Exchange; over time Wall Street became the name of the surrounding geographic neighborhood. Wall Street is also shorthand (or a metonym) for the "influential financial interests" of the American financial industry, which is centered in the New York City area.

Several major U.S. stock and other exchanges remain headquartered on Wall Street and in the Financial District, including the NYSE, NASDAQ, AMEX, NYMEX, and NYBOT.

The name of the street derives from the 17th century when Wall Street formed the northern boundary of the New Amsterdam settlement. In the 1640s basic picket and plank fences denoted plots and residences in the colony. Later, on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, Peter Stuyvesant, in part using African slaves, led the Dutch in the construction of a stronger stockade, a strengthened 12-foot (4 m) wall against attack from various Native American tribes. In 1685 surveyors laid out Wall Street along the lines of the original stockade. The wall was dismantled by the British colonial government in 1699. In the late 18th century, there was a buttonwood tree at the foot of Wall Street under which traders and speculators would gather to trade informally. In 1792, the traders formalized their association with the Buttonwood Agreement. This was the origin of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).

Ashanti Rings the Opening NYSE Bell with Lil Mogul

As a figure of speech contrasted to "Main Street," the term "Wall Street" can refer to big business interests against those of small business and the working of middle class. It is sometimes used more specifically to refer to research analysts, shareholders, and financial institutions such as investment banks. Whereas "Main Street" conjures up images of locally owned businesses and banks. While the phrase "Wall Street" is commonly used interchangeably with the phrase "Corporate America," it is also sometimes used in contrast to distinguish between the interests, culture, and lifestyles of investment banks and those of Fortune 500 industrial or service corporations.

Lil Mogul Rings the Closing NYSE Bell with Emmanuel Jal

Success Stories of Blacks in Finance

Success Stories of Blacks in Finance
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
nytimes.com

A QUICK history quiz: Who was the first black American member of the New York Stock Exchange? Who founded the first black-owned brokerage house? Who was the first black stockbroker?

Before berating yourself too much for not knowing the answers, substitute ''white'' for ''black'' and try to answer the same questions. No? That's not surprising. For whites, the answers are buried in the equivalent of the Mesozoic strata of financial history -- there were merchant bankers in America before the stock exchange was born in 1792, and countless, nameless stockbrokers had come and gone before anyone thought to keep track of them.

But for blacks, these hurdles were cleared almost within the lifetime of today's senior generation on Wall Street. It was only in February 1970 that Joseph L. Searles, a young lawyer who was a protégé of John V. Lindsay, then the mayor of New York, was acclaimed as the first black to have full membership on the Big Board. The first black licensed stockbroker? Either Thorvald McGregor, a Virgin Islands native and former Marine, or Lawrence L. Lewis, a back-office clerk from San Francisco who finally landed a front-office job in New York City, depending on which 1949 media account you accept. The first black-owned firm to be licensed by the National Association of Securities Dealers was McGhee & Company, whose Georgia-born founder, Norman McGhee, hung out his shingle in 1952.

That their stories -- and the larger landscape of racial barriers that riddle America's financial markets -- have been so neglected is reason enough to cheer the appearance of Gregory S. Bell's first book, ''In the Black: A History of African Americans on Wall Street'' (Wiley, $24.95).

One glance at Mr. Bell's footnotes, heavy with newspaper and magazine clippings and personal interviews but almost devoid of other books in the field, underscores the importance of his groundbreaking effort.
Multiple biographies are tricky, and some flaws of Mr. Bell's book are inherent in the genre. How do you find a driving theme? How do you avoid simply stringing little cameos together on a time line?

In most cases, ''In the Black'' strikes a sensible balance between the general and the particular. The vignettes are colorful and engaging but do not slow the story. Most of the people he dwells on at greater length repay his attention by adding significantly to the texture of his story.

The language of these tales is often awkward, and the chronology is sometimes a bit confusing. These are largely first-book flaws, and do not distract much from the story. However, Mr. Bell made an organizing decision as he began his research that greatly alters the scope of the book and leaves a reader hungry for a broader picture.
Perhaps because of his personal vantage point -- he is a son of Travers J. Bell Jr., a co-founder of Daniels & Bell, which until its demise in 1994 was one of the most prominent black-owned securities firms -- he decided to focus on black Wall Street entrepreneurs. And they are, without a doubt, a fascinating crowd.

Besides his father, they include Wardell R. Lazard, who founded W. R. Lazard; Reginald F. Lewis, the financier who built TLC Beatrice International; Harold E. Doley Jr., the New Orleans native who built a successful brokerage firm; and Raymond J. McClendon, who helped build Pryor, McClendon, Counts, once a municipal bond powerhouse. MR. BELL gives a thoroughly engaging account of the history of many of these firms. For the ones that have risen and fallen, he traces the early cold-shoulder days, the brighter prospects that came with the election of notable black American mayors, and then the bleak, often bitter sunset of the firms' existence. But by not tracing the experiences of black Americans who rose within the ranks of big Wall Street firms, he has left out a large, important part of history.

He mentions early the first blacks hired by Merrill Lynch but does not pursue how the future unfolded for them or those who followed them into the cubicles of institutional Wall Street. Only in his final chapter, ''The New Breed,'' does he catch up with some who took the corporate road, not the entrepreneurial one.

There, we meet E. Stanley O'Neal, picked two years ago to run Merrill Lynch's brokerage unit, one of the world's largest armies of brokers. It is entirely possible that Mr. O'Neal, now Merrill's president, oversees more stockbrokers than have ever worked at all the black-owned brokerage firms in the country.

Our introduction to Franklin D. Raines, the chief executive of Fannie Mae, is even shorter and more tantalizing. And Kenneth I. Chenault, chief executive of American Express, is barely mentioned.

While it is not fair to criticize an author for not writing the book one wishes he had written, Mr. Bell's decision results in a slightly lopsided look at the topic captured in his subtitle. But given the scarcity of other material on the role of blacks on Wall Street, this is definitely a case of half a loaf being far better than nothing.

Playing The Bigger Game - PART 4

The MEGA World of Lil Mogul

by Lil Mogul

STEP 4: Reduce The Number Of Steps It Takes To Get To Your Goal
Scary food for thought: How hard are you going to have to work to get to where you want to be? Think about it, seriously. With your current business model, how much time and effort is it going to take you to hit your goals? If you want to make 6 figures or 7 figures and you’re starting out with no audience or REAL plan.

Maybe you have a $50 an hour consulting business and want to make $500,000 a year … not going to happen unless you change your business model.

At the first marketing conference I ever went to, I remember talking to a “big shot” who was selling $20,000 a month worth of products. He asked me how much money I wanted to make with my business, and I told him.

He then asked me this question:
“How many steps do you want it to take to get there?”
That’s a game-changing question if I ever heard one. If you truly want to play a bigger game, you need to ask it at EVERY step in your business. If you don’t, you’ll be using small strategies and trapping yourself in the prison of limited thinking.

If you want to make $500,000 a year, being a $50 an hour consultant means it takes 10,000 steps (hours) to get there. Not good, considering there aren’t even that many hours in a year. Sure, you could try and raise your rates to $100 an hour, but 5,000 hours a year is still a 100-hour work week, 50 weeks a year. So what if you didn’t want to take 10,000 steps, or even 5,000? What if you wanted to take … 50? Well… you’d have to change your entire strategy and completely alter your way of doing business.

Yeah, that’s what the bigger game is all about. $500,000 / 50 = $10,000 a step. So how do you get that when you’re used to making $50 an hour?
Maybe you create a product.
Maybe you hold workshops.
Maybe you start a certification program and train people you can outsource.
Maybe you look for affluent clients.
Maybe you … do something crazy … like pick a more profitable industry entirely.

Here’s the insanely powerful effect of reducing the number of steps it takes to get to your goal: It forces you to ask questions that open up opportunities you would have never thought of at the 10,000 step level.

10,000 steps = tiny steps. 50 steps = big steps, requiring a bigger game.
What if you looked at your current business model and cut the number of steps by a factor of 10? In other words, if your average sale is $25, what would you have to do differently to make it $250? If your average client is worth $1,000, what would you have to do differently to start bringing in $10,000 clients?

Chances are you’d have to do a lot of things differently. But if you shorten your journey by a factor of 10, isn’t this question worth asking? Oh, one important thing: This process only works when you reduce the number of steps by a factor of at least 5 or 10. If you just try and reduce the number of steps by a factor of two, you’ll probably just try to work harder at the game you’re already playing. You want to open your mind to a whole new game.

This whole process is kind of scary, kind of fun, and extremely liberating. I’ll walk you through it. Game on.

Until the next time, have a GREAT Week.
Lil Mogul

Playing The Bigger Game - PART 2

The MEGA World of Lil Mogul

by Lil Mogul

STEP 2: Get Honest with the Truth of Who You Are (And The Value That You Provide)
Maybe you’re not playing a bigger game because of fear about who you are – you’re stuck in the “I’m not good enough” or “People are going to think I’m a fraud.” Let me tell it to you straight:

Unless you are committed to being a quitter, “I’m not good enough” is BULL you’re hiding behind. First of all, you’re better than you give yourself credit for because I know you’re taking yourself for granted. Second, you can’t tell me you can’t get better. Maybe you’re not willing to, but that’s “won’t,” not “can’t.” Practice and training can make anyone with a pulse better.

Unless you actually trying to defraud people, you have no reason to see yourself a fraud. You have certain skills you can offer the world, and whether or not you don’t appreciate them, other people can. You may not see yourself as a 10 on the old sliding scale, maybe you’re a 5, but let me tell you this: To people who are a 0, 1 or 2, your 5 might as well be a 10. You have value they need.

So let’s talk about value: It all comes down to what you can do for other people, and it has absolutely nothing to do with all that emotional baggage and drama you’ve wrapped yourself in. I don’t care who is a better __X___ than you are. I don’t care if ___X____ has a bigger following than you, more credentials than you or whatever.

If you can provide value (which you can), you need to get honest about that. Honest with yourself. Because that’s the only way you’re going to get other people to see it, and pay you for it. The MEGA Motto: People Believe What They See and Buy What They Believe!!! You may not be good enough for you (oh, the drama!), but if you’re good enough for them, freakin’ give yourself credit already.

Imagine: You know CPR well enough. Someone stops breathing, and what do you do? Do you start asking yourself if there are better CPR practitioners than you? Do you wonder if your certification came from a prestigious enough teacher? Or maybe you have no certification at all, someone just showed you how to do it (correctly)? Are you going to dredge up every loser feeling you’ve had about yourself and dwell on that while that person slips off into the great unknown?

No!!! You’re going to get on your knees, do that CPR thing, and save that person’s life. Without a second thought, because the situation calls for value, and you have value to offer. Even if other people are better at CPR than you are, you could possibly save a life TODAY. Now quit imagining, and get real. You can do things other people find valuable, but since they come naturally to you or you’re just used to having the skills and hanging around people with the same (or better?) skills than you have you’re feeling sorry for yourself. Dra-ma. PLAY A BIGGER GAME!!! It’s not about what everyone everybody else is doing, it’s about what you can do for people who need what you can do. Don’t make it more difficult than that.

You can build a six-figure business catering to people who need 5s. Why are you worrying about being a 10. It’s not worth it. Be the best 5 you can be, serve the people who need 5s, and if you want to go upwards, do what it takes to become a 6, 7, 8, and so on. But quit with the drama already. Your skills are not worthless and you can absolutely add value. When I started out as a model talent agent with my small entertainment management company, could I compete with Ford Models, William Morris or Bad Boy Productions? NOPE and sticking with that drama killed my bottom line for years. But once I realized “Hey!!! , I don’t have to compete with them. I still know how to scout, develop and manage talented people and get them to be more productive,” I was able to go out there and fill my talent roster (faster than I thought). Was it because I was a 10? Absolutely not. I was a 5, and believe me, the people who were 2s and 3s got a lot of value out of what I provided. Now they are 5s. Win.

Seriously, if you want to play a bigger game than get a bigger view of who you are and what you offer. Start defusing the lies you’ve been telling yourself about why you’re not good enough and everyone is better than you are. Draa-maa.

I’ll walk you through this process in so you can get into gear so you can appreciate what value you truly have to offer and ultimately get people to pay you what you’re worth. Game on.

Until Next Week… Have a most valuable week.

Lil Mogul