Choosing one path has kept us from another. The difference is called “Opportunity Cost.”  As we reflect on our past, we may say, “Gee, I’m glad I did!” or “Gee, I wish I had…”  John Greenleaf Whittier wrote, “For all sad words of tongue and pen, the saddest are those “It might have been”.  Choices yield consequences and ramifications that may last a lifetime.

Socrates sought genuine knowledge. Even in debates,  he pursued truth open-mindedly, rather than mere victory over an opponent.  He famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

Karl W. Palachuk wrote an interesting article about the subject in his blog, “Relax, Focus, Succeed.” Here is an excerpt:

When you set aside time to examine your life,  You get to choose your destination;  You get to set the goals; You get to determine the path; You get to decide how long it will take; You get to decide whether you’re on the right path or the wrong path.

In other words, you begin to know your self and to take control of your life. You decide who you want to be and begin to become the person you want to be.

Robert Frost wrote in one of my favorite poems,

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;
For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.
I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid.

As I examine my life, I consider these quotes with some regrets and some satisfaction, but mostly with determination to make the most of the time I have left. I am consoled by the Pareto Principle (80/20 Rule), because I estimate that I have at least 20% of my life left and therefore I can potentially accomplish 80% as much as someone could in their whole life!

Image via CrunchBase

Enough is Enough!

Information overload and overwhelm are two terms that have become active in my vocabulary in the 21st century. I am a curious intellectual and a glutton for knowledge, and the internet is a smorgasbord of information.  I guess I learned this from my father, who bought encyclopedias and subscribed to annual “Information Please Almanac.” As a boy I read most of the books on our home library shelves.

The Age of Overwhelm

Hunger for knowledge seemed like a good thing in the mid-20th century, when one had to physically go to the library (offline). Going to college was taken for granted in my family, and I went on to post-graduate school. In hindsight, considering the path (less traveled by) that my career has taken, college would have been more than enough.

If I read for 16 hours a day, it would take me decades to read the 1000+ books on my shelves at home. However, they sit on the shelves and gather dust, because I have fallen in love with the internet — the ultimate information overload.     

On the web, you can find out more than you ever wanted to know about anything and everything. I feel like I am almost drowning in the quicksand of information overload! I do use Evernote, and I recommend it for those who want to store ALL KINDS of information, including notes, webpages, URL’s, and multimedia. Benefits include cloud storage and synchronization with multiple computers and keyword search and tags.

Social networks and blogs constantly compete for my attention, and email — fuh-gedda-bout-it! Opt-in email “newsletters” have swamped my email accounts, and it would take many years to read all the content that is already stored on my several gmail accounts. Unlimited storage on Google and Yahoo has spoiled me. In the old AOL days, email would be automatically deleted after limits of time or storage capacity. I used to make folders and filters for email. Now gmail says, “Don’t worry about deleting anything. We will store it all and you can search for it whenever.”

For years I have created thousands of browser “bookmarks.” It is VERY rare for me to go back to look at the bookmarked content, and when I switched from Internet Explorer to Google Chrome, I didn’t bother to export the bookmarks. When I follow a tangential link and stumble upon an interesting webpage (which happens a lot!) I tend to leave the tab open so I will not forget to go back to read it “later.” It is common for my computer to bog down with up to 20 tabs open while I continue to move on, trying to stay focused on the original topic.

“Tip for Getting More Organized: Don’t.”

The most refreshing advice I have read lately was in an encouraging article in Harvard Business Review by Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, called, ”Tip for Getting More Organized: Don’t.” Michael says, “When it comes to investing time, thought and effort into productively organizing oneself, less is more. In fact, not only is less more, research suggests it may be faster, better and cheaper.” Basically, his advice is to use search instead of filing.

Please help me and others who may be drowning in information overload. Please share your suggestions for coping in the comments below. They would be greatly appreciated!

Texting Love

The fact that True Love endures long after the death of one of the lovers is evidence that proximity is not essential to feeling love.

In a previous post, Social networking may lead to love, I explained that:

Love begins with contact, online or offline. I have several personal friends who met strangers online, developed relationships, and have been happily married for a decade or more to persons they met online. One happy couple met playing cards online. Those relationships are worth a thousand other Facebook Friends. The key is that they turned contacts into relationships.

Love is more precious than any material things. My parents set a wonderful example of love for each other, for their children, and for many other people. I will always remember the passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, quoted at my mother’s funeral…Three things endure, and the greatest of these is Love.

Relationships begin with communication and continue to be nurtured with communication, including social media messages.

Keeping “in touch” is relatively easy to do, but all too easy NOT to do! Little reminders that “I’m thinking of you,” or I notice you, mean a lot. Attention and recognition are often “Better than Money!”  Give, and you shall receive…

Interdependence versus Independence                                    

Interdependence is a concept that is so important, and so complex, that I have been putting off writing this post for quite awhile, because I wanted to do it justice. Independence, financial and otherwise, has been an ideal of mine for decades. Naively, I thought that freedom comes from “independence.” The dream of passive residual income actually became a reality for me for long periods of time. But in hindsight I realize that it was interdependence, not independence, that provided financial “independence.”

For 35 years I have chosen self-employment, ”the road less traveled by,” in pursuit of freedom. In the words of Frank Sinatra’s song, “I did it my way!”  ”Yes, there were times, I’m sure you knew, when I bit off more than I could chew…” I discovered the meaning of these words from Janis Joplin’s song, Me and Bobby McGee: ”Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

In a previous post I broached the subject of Interdependent Relationships. Dr. Stephen R. Covey, in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, wrote: ”Independent thinking alone is not suited to interdependent reality. Independent people who do not have the maturity to think and act interdependently may be good individual producers, but they won’t be good leaders or team players. They’re not coming from the paradigm of interdependence necessary to succeed in marriage, family, or organizational reality.”

In his blog on March 19, 2009, during the great recession, Dr. Covey wrote a post on  Managing Fear and Insecurity:

Much of our world is gripped with a sense of fear and insecurity—fear of losing jobs, homes, or our future. In such a state of insecurity and vulnerability, it is easy to see why people might resign to being in survival mode and looking out only for themselves, at home, at work or in the community. In this environment people tend to respond by being more and more independent. The mindset becomes: “I’m going to focus on ‘me and mine.’

Certainly, independence is vital; however, the problem is that we live in an interdependent reality. Our most important work, the problems we hope to solve or the opportunities we hope to realize require working and collaborating with other people in a high-trust, synergistic way—whether at home or at work. Having an interdependent mindset, skills and tools are vital, especially now as we work through challenges unlike anything most of us have ever seen in our life time.

The principles found in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People are all about helping people learn how to understand and build interdependence.

In the movie Funny Girl, Barbara Streisand asserted in song that “people who need people” — that is, people who love others and are not emotionally cut off from them — are the “luckiest people in the world.” Lovers need lovers.  I have been thinking of many others, besides lovers, who need other people.

Examples of Interdependent Relationships

Entrepreneurs need capital and capitalists need investments. Landlords and tenants need each other. Doctors need patients who need doctors. Teachers need students and vice versa. “Issue number one” in American politics in 2011 is “Jobs.” Employees need employers who need employees.  Sellers of houses need buyers who need houses. Leaders need followers who need leaders. In network marketing organizations, the “downline” need “upline” for training and support and assistance with presentations. Upline leaders need downline followers to expand their network.

It is an understatement to say that the internet is full of examples of synergy and leverage. The image above is from the Interdependence Project blog. What are YOUR THOUGHTS about interdependence vs. independence? Please share your comments below. (Bloggers need comment love

Personal branding has become crucial to success in business. Circles on Google Plus, Google+ if you will, along with SEO and social media profiles, are replacing the old school Rolodex in the internet age.  Perhaps it was always true that people did business with those they knew, liked and trusted. Actually, we are all branding all of the time. It has always been less about what you know than who you know, but in the age of the internet, it is who knows you and what is known about you that counts.

David Avrin wrote a book entitled, It’s Not Who You know — It’s Who Kows You! : the Small Business Guide to Raising Your Profits by Raising Your Profile. In his book he says, “Your brand resides in the minds of your customers… Your brand is the images, thoughts, recollections, and emotions that come to people’s mind when they hear your name…Your brand is what your customers think, remember, and feel about your business and doing business with you…”

It’s Not Who You Circle; It’s Who Circles You

Chris Brogan wrote a post on his blog called , “It’s Not Who You Circle; It’s Who Circles You.” Here is an excerpt from that post listing some ways to get circled:

 

Some Ways to Get Circled By People You Follow                                      

• Comment with meaningful and useful information or ideas. Someone shared a link to a related video to one that I had posted, and I found it useful, so I circled them back.
• Share and add commentary to posts of that person, explaining why you find it interesting. Everyone loves a little boost of promotion.
• Comment with relevant links to your own work, if it makes sense.
• Have a well filled-out profile. The better your profile, the more likely someone is to want to connect with you.
• Post interesting things worth seeing, should this person decide to look at what you’ve shared publicly.

In fact, opportunities to meet potential friends online are so plentiful that the challenge becomes sorting among thousands of candidates. Dating sites offer a catalog of possible mates, Linkedin enables business and professional connections, and Facebook allows us to see the likes, interests, and activities of “Friends,” as well as their photos.

Offline, there are ample clubs, organizations, churches, and networking “after hours” events where we can mingle, meet, and greet. Most of these can be found by a simple search online or by directories at the local library or chamber of commerce.

Making friends, however, is a bit more challenging than finding prospects. The situation sort of reminds me of a dog chasing a car; one wonders what he would do with it if he caught it! Or the old Boy Scout motto (paraphrased here): “If you should meet a Girl Scout while marching through the woods, don’t be bashful, don’t be scared — be prepared.”

Seriously, the art of winning friends and influencing people is such an important topic that Dale Carnegie’s book is still a best seller after sixty years and about 50,000,000 copies sold. Although the opportunities mentioned above in this post are greater in the twenty-first century, humans have not changed much in thousands of years.

An article on the blog, SucceedSocially.com, called How to Make Friends and Get a Social Life, has helpful advice for lonely people. Here is an excerpt from that article:

Once you’ve met some people you get along with, ask them to hang out. This is the most important step in my experience. You can meet all the people you want, and they can think you’re great, but if you don’t take any actions to do something with them in the future, then you won’t form many new relationships.

I think it is about the same online. To build a real relationship, you need to engage and interact somehow. It can begin by “Liking” their comments, and it can be enhanced by syndicating their content. Basically, people like to be liked, they like to be helped, and they like to be respected and appreciated.

A very valuable article called, “7 Ways To Make More Social Media Friends Who matter,” is on the AimClearBlog.com  Here is an excerpt:

When it comes to social media friend, we believe that quality, influence, loyalty and relevance overall outweigh quantity. There are tons of ways to locate cool people and vet their levels of influence.

Leadership involves synergy, i.e., the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The fundamental role of the leader is to serve as a catalyst to initiate actions which go way beyond anything the leader could do by him (or her) self.  *

One of the most profound principles I have learned in a lifetime of leadership is that leadership itself can be leveraged. In network marketing I learned to multiply my leadership exponentially by the leadership of thousands of others who were self-motivated by their own entrepreneurial spirit.

One of the “secrets” of my success was encouraging my downline as a cheerleader. In a sense I was leading from behind, like teaching a child to ride a bicycle. It was not so much about training them exactly what to do as it was about allowing them to discover the joy of creativity and self-reliance. That is how I developed a truly passive residual income;  it was about them, not about me.

One of the great leaders and philosophers whose words have stood the test of time is Lao Tzu, author of the Tao Te Ching in the 6th Century B.C.  He is still quoted in business schools after 2600 years! One of my favorite leadership quotes is from Lao Tzu. I am here referencing the Holden Leadership Center at the University of Oregon:

“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worse when they despise him. But of a good leader who talks little when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they (his followers) will say, we did it ourselves.“

* Credit for the image in this post goes to http://coachedtosuccess.com/coachthee/Archives/BusinessEthics.html

image credit: HCI.org

Knowing is not enough. Being known is not enough. People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. It is not just a matter of who you know. What matters is how many people like and trust you and appreciate what you have done for them.

Being a connector and a valuable resource for others is one way to win friends and influence people.  My success in both traditional business and in network marketing came largely from networking, which I define as leveraging trust and influence.

Both “attraction marketers” and “old school” network marketers agree that people prefer to buy from those they know, like, and trust. Both agree that networking is about relationships.  Both schools of thought agree that “the money is in the list,” i.e., the more people who know, like and trust us, the more potential for sales.

Both schools agree that MLM is a sorting business — not a convincing business. Despite the popular marketing ploy used by attraction marketers, the most successful old school leaders do NOT recommend begging or “chasing” anybody. The old school saying is “some will, some won’t, so what, someone’s waiting (SWSWSWSW).  But both schools also say that “the fortune is in the follow-up.”

There is a common misunderstanding about the so-called “warm market.” Experienced “old school” MLM trainers may suggest letting your friends know what you are doing and giving them a chance to join you first. However, they prepare their trainees to expect that most relatives and close friends will say no.

I have heard MANY “old school” MLM leaders quote the bible passage (Mark 6:4) where Jesus said: “A prophet is honored everywhere EXCEPT in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.” One reason three-way calls are effective is that “the expert from out of town” seems to have more credibility than the close friend or relative.

Everyone agrees that the challenge is to find prospects who like network marketing, and they are unlikely to be close friends and relatives — unless your friends and relatives are networkers. The main difference I see between the old school and new school is in the specific METHODS of meeting new strangers and turning them into friends. The internet has opened up new ways to meet people and to follow up with them to cultivate relationships and trust.

“Any fool can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the apples in a seed.”  The explosive power of exponential duplication is hard to imagine unless you have experienced it. Some internet marketers tend too think in terms of blasting emails or ads to thousands of “leads.”  They use a very wide “marketing funnel.”  They may miss the fact that the sales that drip out of the small part of their funnel are only the beginning.

If they are network marketers, they need to realize that the big money comes from a lot of people each doing a little bit – not from your own personal sales. You are creating a wholesale distribution channel.

In my experience I have had many (group) sales per prospect who ever entered my “funnel.” For example, in one case I only put into my “funnel” a TOTAL of about one or two hundred personal prospects over a three-year period, averaging less than two per week. In three years I recruited 25 personally, and helped them recruit. We grew an organization of approximately 17,000 people with many thousands of sales within those three years. In real network marketing the funnel was very skinny at the top and very large at the bottom.  That is the difference between network marketing and old fashioned marketing. See my blog post “Leads or Leaders; Your Choice”.

Social capital beats other investments in time of need.

Social media relationships increase your social capital.  Family and real friends are the best kind of “securities.” I love making friends for a living and for fun.

Attraction marketing and online personal branding have been hot topics for several years.  The concept of “social capital” is much older.  There is no question about the fact that relationships have practical value beyond their intrinsic emotional satisfaction.

Some of my favorite songs:  ”I get by — with a little help from my friends.”  ”You just might have a problem that I’ll understand; we all need somebody to lean on…”

At every turning point or tipping point in my life, it was a relationship that made the biggest difference.

In most cases the relationships were formed long before their practical benefit.  They were formed for other reasons —  like pure friendship or the happiness that comes from helping other people.  There was no expectation of future benefit to me.  Truly it is more blessed to give than to receive.

But time after time, as I needed a friend, the friend was there.  The importance of interdependence is proven by the survival of the following quotation from the 3rd century B.C, which is still quoted (24 centuries later) about a million times per year:  “A friend in need is a friend indeed.”

During my long lifetime of entrepreneurial  ”independence” and “self-sufficiency,” interdependence was what REALLY counted.  Dig the well before you thirst.

Credit for the images above goes to the VideoConferencings blog, which states that, “Video Conferencing allows participants to see each other. Eye contact is essential to building trust among colleagues working in different geographical regions…“

Non-Verbal Communication

The bigest advantage that I see is non-verbal communication.  Certainly we can get more cues to the meaning and the feeling behind content from body language, facial expression and tone of voice, etc.  Especially emotion and conviction are conveyed better through visual cues than through mere text.

I have been surprised, however, when some young friends of mine said that they think video is “faster” than text.  That baffles me, because I can speed read or skim text much faster than I can patiently wait for someone to say what they have to say on video.  In an era of information overload, I usually prefer to get most of my information in text form.

Another big difference between the two modes of communication is active involvement versus passive reception.  I call it “leaning forward” vs. “leaning back.”  Some people are accustomed to leaning back to let television (or videos) speak to them, while others prefer to actively engage in the process by searching, clicking, reading, and commenting.

This difference relates to the changing trends in media from “push” (TV) to “pull” (internet) and now back again to “push” (video).  Mostly, I prefer to pull the information I want from search engines and skimming text. But I do recognize the advantages of more complete communication through non-verbal cues.