Executive Mastermind

The Accelerated Learning Trainer Guy

I had a wake-up call recently.  Linked-In posted an anniversary for me for the world to see, one that I hadn’t considered…

“Congratulations for 30 years at Executive Mastermind”

Thirty years is quite a while, and it got me reflecting on all I had achieved over those years.  I decided I had amassed plenty and could certainly start to give it back, but how?  How do you put a lifetime of striving and searching and studying and experimenting together into something tangible that the world can access in a way that is useful and valuable?

I turned this over in my mind for a couple of weeks, before settling on creating a program of the most powerful learning modality I had discovered.  It’s Accelerated Learning – something which is as intensive and extensive and far-reaching as you wish to make it.  I’ve put everything I know and have researched about it together into an offering, so that I can teach a trainer, coach or counselor or anyone who needs to influence groups or even associates to higher levels of achievement, in just a single, intensive day.

WOW!  My whole life, summed up in a day?

Oh yes, but what a day!

I’ve become The Accelerated Learning Trainer Guy!

What does that mean?  What does the Accelerated Learning Trainer Guy do that no-one else can?

Accelerated Learning is an incredible teaching/learning modality, one that burst into prominence in the mid-1900s when Prof Dr Georgi Lozanov demonstrated its effectiveness by teaching students a whole new language over the course of a weekend, and other such feats.

The Accelerated Learning Trainer Guy

Prof Dr Georgi Lozanov

I first discovered it when I attended Money and You in 1990 and a little guy called Blair Singer stood up on stage and began to present in a way that reached me, and the hundred other people in the room.  To this day, I can put myself back in that room, and I can see and hear that whole weekend happening again, as vividly as it was back then, almost 30 years ago.

In the years that followed, as I attended and volunteered at more Money and You weekends, and then Creating Wealth seminars with Blair and then Robert Kiyosaki, that this was something I could use to great effect with my business and training programs.  At the time, I was doing part-time corporate rescue work, getting businesses back from the brink of bankruptcy, and as a full-time gig, running a Job Club, putting long term unemployed people back to work.  Both involved highly emotionally charged clients, some on the edge of despair and ready to check out – in a variety of ways.

Some of the incredible tools I learned about, components of Accelerated Learning, changed everything for me and greatly improved my results and effectiveness with my clients.  Let me tell you about just a few of them, and some of the spectacular results.

  1. The Emotional Tone Scale.  This places a person on a vertical scale according to their emotions. Look at THIS DIAGRAM on the Soft Skills Training Page and you’ll see what I mean. Emotions are on the left and when a person is experiencing a certain level of emotion, their ability to reason and think independently changes, as does their focus, whether outward or inward, destructive or constructive.  Once I understood this, it was simply a matter of learning to influence people into a positive mental state, “above the line” so that they could choose empowering directions to take.  Revolutionary, and literally life-saving for some of my clients that I’ll mention shortly!
  2. Sub-Personalities.  When you are at home, playing with the kids, you are a very different person to the one who might be called upon to make a hard-nosed decision at work, or a life-saving decision in an emergency.  You are the same physical person, but mentally, psychologically, you switch between sub-personalities for these different roles, as required. Mostly.  Of course, you know of some people whose legs go to jelly when they get a fright, while others are galvanised into action.  As a teenager, when that gorgeous person from the accounting department smiled at you, what did that do to you?  And why did it have a totally different effect on the person next to you?  Understanding that we all have these sub-personalities operating under the ‘umbrella’ of YOU is important.  Once we understand that this is how we operate, we can appreciate that it’s also how others operate and gaining cooperation might just be as simple as geting them to switch sub-personalities – which is something I also learned through my Accelerated Learning Training.  The Accelerated Learning Trainer Guy was starting to take shape!
  3. Instant Conflict Resolution. What if you could stop an argument and have everyone thinking of solutions, with just half a dozen carefully chosen words?  You can.  It’s all part of the program, and once you understand the sub-personality aspects that each of us carries, and the role of the Emotional Tone Scale in our lives, this can become part of your language and your way of life!  Imagine a life where conflict was only ever positive and a step on the way to multiple solutions that continuously presented to you?  All part of what the Accelerated Learning Trainer Guy is able to teach you.

 

Lets look at a couple of life-changing examples of how this has affected the lives of some of my clients.  Names changed of course…

Rob and Sally were Executive Mastermind Workshop Program clients – a very intensive Accelerated Learning training format. They lived down the coast on a banana farm. Rob was 58 years of age and had lived under the thumb of his tyrannical suger cane farming father all his life, except for a 6 year army enlistment period.  He had never been allowed to make a decision his whole life, not at home and certainly not in the army!  To complicate matters, his priest at the local church had abused him while he was in school and his family had either ignored it or chose not to believe him.  At age 58, when his father died, Rob suddenly had to start making decisions.  His wife Sally had seen all this happen and loved and supported him, but Rob was in a bad way.

Sally called me at 3.00 am one morning, crying. “He’s walked out and he has the shotgun – I am afraid of what to think and I’m not game to go looking for him!”

I called him and fortunately, Rob answered his mobile phone.  Using the techniques I taught in our Accelerated Learning workshop, as well as moving him between sub-personalities and up the Emotional Tone Scale, I was able to bring him round to conscious and rational thinking again.  No, I’m not a professional counselor, although I have studied it. I just understood where his heart and mind was at and was able to meet him there and walk him back to a shared reality.

Was that the end of it?  Of course not; it took a long time, but it was a starting point.  The end came when one day he called me, and Sally was in on the call, on loudspeaker.  They had been to church the weekend before and at the end of the service, instead of shaking the priest’s hand, he bopped him on the nose – it was the same priest who had abused him all those years ago!  The priest knew why he did it, and Rob felt a huge release as he walked out into the carpark and literally started his life all over again!

No, I didn’t advocate that path, but it was a decision Rob was able to freely make, and for him, it worked!  He exorcised all his demons at once, but only because he finally understood them and understood himself.

How about something on a lighter note, more relevant to everyone?

Jenny was looking for a job.  A part time job, as a highly educated and stylish married mother of three school age children, she wanted to work in school hours only.  She was going through my employment training course, also an intensive Accelerated Learning program.  One of the modules we worked on was how failed interviews and applications can be so devastating and disappointing.  We created a flipchart to represent it.  This was it:

The Accelerated Learning Trainer Guy

SOME WILL, SOME WON’T, SO WHAT – NEXT! is what the letters stand for.  It was all about understanding that it’s not all going to work for you every time, and to be prepared to move through the disappointment to the next opportunity.

Jenny presented to an appointment at a cheap retail shoe store for a position advertised as a casual retail assistant.  The very rude manager quickly interviewed and dismissed her during a transaction, over the cash register with just two or three questions.  Jenny felt humiliated and devastated.  However, she turned and walked out of the store and as she did, she said that flipchart appeared in front of her like a sheet of glass that she walked through and smashed into a thousand pieces.

She left that store empowered and with passion in her steps, on the way to the next job interview she had lined up. This was for a much better job and she nailed it – walked out with exactly what she had been looking for, with a great company and lovely team to work with.  All thanks to that empowering split second of Accelerated Learning magic.

That is what it’s all about.  Rob and Jenny both experienced what the Accelerated Learning Trainer Guy did and it went in and stayed with them.  Accelerated Learning ensures that the lessons are imprinted emotionally so that when you need them, they are triggered by the very emotions that cause the need!

I’ve created this one day intensive training program to pass on my Accelerated Learning Training experience for teaches, coaches, trainers, supervisors and counselors, in fact anyone who needs to train, teach or influence others.  It could be done as a company program or I’ll also be running public workshops where individuals can come along to have a powerful and fun-filled day learning from The Accelerated Learning Trainer Guy, how to boost your training results.

If you are reliant on tangible training results and graduations from your courses to gain the next round of contracts, this is for you.

If you deliver safety training, where it is imperative that your graduates remember and can access your training in the heat of a very scary moment, this is for you.

If you are teaching and working with people with emotional challenges because of their personal circumstances, this is really for you – your trainees now are not in a state where they can take in or act on what you are trying to impart and it’s vital you change their states so they can get what you have to offer.

If you are a counselor, there are aspects of Accelerated Learning that will revolutise the outcomes for your clients, whether you are a telephone counselor and never get meet them or perhaps even learn more than their first name, or whether you meet them face to face for a series of sessions.  They come to you for help at a crucial point in their lives, and this will make the difference.

To find out more, check out these pages, as well as reviewing the Soft Skills page with the Emotional Tones image above:

Accelerated Learning

Accelerated Learning Training

Then call me or message me.  I look forward to being The Accelerated Learning Trainer Guy for you too!

Til next time, take time to enjoy the life you live.

Ray Jamieson

Executive Mastermind

Firstly, just what is Soft Skills Training?

Soft Skills Training is the difference between qualifications and the maximum performance a person can deliver, either as an individual, or as part of a synergistic team.

Put simply, it maximises the return on investment in the education you paid for to get the qualifications that got you your job. That set the minimum benchmark for what you could do, like all the hundreds or thousands of other people with your qualifications.  Soft Skills Training is what can set you – or them – apart, and make you – or them – more valuable to your organisation than anyone else…

When you look at it that way, can you afford to ignore the potential that Soft Skills Training unlocks?

OK, so now you may be thinking, “Well, perhaps I should look at it.  But what really is Soft Skills Training?”

Soft Skills Training

Qualifications vs Real World Soft Skills

Soft Skills, in contrast to the qualifications and ‘hard skills’, are the skills that make you a better communicator, a better leader and team player, better at resolving conflict, coming up with new and creative ideas for marketing, problem solving, new products and services and new ways to bring business through the door and to increase profits.  Whilst some of these ‘topics’ are covered in traditional education and in the curriculum for certain qualifications, nowhere do those curriculums teach you how to think under pressure, to be creative when it matters, and to bounce back after setbacks and challenges that would leave most people and businesses floored forever.

How can you access Soft Skills Training?

There are a few ways.  Most people start in their library.  “How to Win Friends and influence People” by Dale Carnegie is one of the best reference books on almost everything covered under the umbrella of ‘soft skills’ and the title pretty much says it all.

Soft Skills Training

Ready for a new idea?

However, the reality is that we learn through experience and through emotional anchoring.  You can read through Mr Carnegie’s book and be fascinated by it, but not necessarily become emotionally aroused by it. However, during a presentation on exactly the same topic by a brilliant presenter, you can feel and experience what he meant in all those wonderful examples in the book.  It’s not just about reading it and learning to remember the wording; it’s also about experiencing and feeling it and anchoring it in your psyche for when you need it!

Emotional anchoring?

If you look back into your memory banks, the most vivid memories are always the ones where you had an emotional experience – either good or bad.  It’s much harder to recall a boring day than one where you were excited, thrilled or just plain scared out of your wits!  That’s because those events emotionally anchored in your subconscious.

Soft Skills Training

The best Soft Skills Training is done this way, through Accelerated Learning, and using the principles of the Emotional Tone Scale.

First, lets consider Accelerated Learning. 

Whole brain learning, utilising left and right brain capabilities, as well as Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic learning modalities, and utilising subtle NLP techniques to communicate the lessons in an experiential learning environment where whole mind and body learning is possible.  This just means a training environment where sound and colour and experiential exercises are included as well as the lectures and handouts and theory.

Now, the Emotional Tone Scale. Follow this link to open the scale as an image on the page you get, and consider where you spend most of your time. Are you an “under the line” or “above the line” person?

Human beings move through a linear emotional range as they go through their day.  When high on the range, in areas where they are interested or excited, they have the potential to learn, think, create and rationalise.  However, if something upsets them and puts them ‘below the line’, they enter the world of anger, fear and reactive thinking, where logical response and learning are not possible.

The key point about the emotional tone scale is that once we know it exists and understand how to move ourselves through it to where we are most productive – and that’s not hard – we can have incredibly better days.

We can also help other people have ‘above the line’ days too.  And this is where synergistic teamwork becomes evident. Leaders appear, performance explodes off the chart.

And all of this is gained through Soft Skills Training.

The question to ask, is whether you can afford to wait any longer to further investigate Soft Skills Training for your team!

Soft Skills Training

Experiential, Soft Skills Learning

Follow the links in this post to learn more…

See you on the other side…

Ray Jamieson

Soft SkillsTraining Specialist!

Real World Partner Education Program

Executive Mastermind Posted on by

Put an RTO inside your business!Real World Partner Education Program

In these days of more sophisticated and educated clients, what could be more powerful in its message or valuable to your clients than offering them accredited training and qualifications through your business? Not a just certificate of attendance but a diploma or advanced diploma in areas such as Business or Project Management or Marketing and Communication, or perhaps to enable them to operate their businesses better, a Certificate IV in Business Administration?

And what if on graduation, they became Alumni members with  valuable real world benefits as well as articulation to a reputable Australian University?

Now you can, and you don’t need to be a qualified trainer and assessor or an RTO to make this happen – you just need to call me and let me help you set it up!

I have been a leader in corporate and soft skills training in Australia for over 25 years, pioneering innovation in training in fields such as accelerated learning and NLP based training, and now we are taking it to the next level.

This is where you provide the opportunity for your valuable and trusted clients, employees and associates to advance themselves and the business through relevant quality business education tailored to their needs in our Real World Partner Education Program!

Let’s look at an example and see how the Real World Partner Education Program could benefit both you and them.

Let’s say you are a Master Franchisor or Master Licensee, or accountant or law firm or a similar business with a client base that relies on you for guidance or leadership, or perhaps a major employer with dozens or hundreds of employees, all of whom would benefit from real world relevance in a business qualification. One of the challenges you face is maintaining relevance and a value proposition to all those people who rely on your advice, guidance and leadership.

If you could offer them this opportunity through the Real World Partner Education Program and be there on a regular basis, providing guidance and tutoring as required as they progressed through their accredited training, not only do you increase engagement but you enable them to make that training relevant to their specific needs, business and your relationship with them!

Think of the loyalty this builds with your client and your team!

Are all your clients utilising all of your services?

This is a challenge for many professionals, offering a wide range of services but having many of their clients only using one or two of them. Accountants are a great example here but certainly not the only ones. You offer taxation services as well as often SMSF, audit services, financial advice and perhaps mortgage finance, risk insurance and investments through a financial planning division, business consulting advice and more, but really – how many of your clients access all of these services? How many have another firm or financial advisor doing at least some of them? That could all change, fast! Positioning yourself as a business educational authority with your clients elevates you to a new level of respect with them and it’s certainly worth developing that relationship.

Does the Real World Partner Education Program have to be just business diploma courses and qualifications?

Not necessarily. Related and accredited courses of all kinds are possible and if you have the volume and demand for a particular course, we can look at putting it on scope for you and your business. Perhaps your industry has a particular qualification required for your team or employees to operate – such as franchising or real estate. Cert III in Franchising or perhaps a qualification in Property Management might be what your company needs. Perhaps you are in Hospitality and have a specific high volume training need such as Kitchen Operations.

Let’s talk. Our Real World Partner Education Program is changing the game in corporate education delivery. It provides quality, accredited training as well as corporate and soft skills training in a way that makes it relevant to your people and hugely beneficial to you.

The Real World Partner Education Program really is a game changer! Let’s talk soon.

Til soon,

Ray Jamieson

0411113110

 

Executive Mastermind

The Innovation Incubator

There are times when having a good think about a problem is not enough to solve it; we need more resources.  That is when the Innovation Incubator model can be of incredible value.

The Innovation IndicatorWhat is the Innovation Incubator?

This is a problem solving model in essence, with a number of very important distinctions.  Yes, it’s for solving problems, but it’s also for commercialising the solutions wherever possible. And it uses a very specialised method of reaching those solutions.

It came out of a Soft Skills program I was delivering for Queensland Transport. Part of their brief was to look at the problems the regional offices had and that needed exploring.  We created a model then that provided amazing outcomes through a very specialised process of questioning to uncover the real problems, not just the stimuli that was creating the immediate issues, and further innovative methods of selecting the options to solve the problem.

Over the years, the model was refined further and through the period of the Executive Mastermind workshops, we began to harness the process for creating solutions which could be commercialised.  That meant protecting the intellectual property so that the commercial value of the solution could be protected.  Our final program was the Innovation Incubator model we now have, with the features of:

  • Specialised questioning processes to uncover the real issues
  • Further processes to examine and choose the most suitable solutions or options
  • Commercialisation filters
  • Intellectual Property Protection
  • Commercialisation processes
  • Marketing

It took time for the model to be distilled down into a unit that was scalable, suiting every situation from a consultancy model, to a small problem solving model for a specific challenge in a small business, to a large stand-alone model inside a major corporation, or a whole section within a council or government department.

the innovation incubator

What can be achieved with the Innovation Incubator?

Let’s look at a City Council model, for an example.  City councils are at the coalface of where employment statistics and regional economic development are measured.  They are usually under-funded, reliant on charging rates from residents, and government funding for shared projects. Yet each council has social and infrastructure challenges and responsibilities that fall outside any of the areas where funding support is available from.

By installing an Innovation Incubator, a City Council could:

  • Create a Council of Elders Think Tank
  • Create a Technology Think Tank
  • Have a panel of experts on hand with an external facilitator
  • Take their local problems into the Innovation Incubator think tanks, create solutions and commercialise the outcomes. Commercialising the outcomes is a business development opportunity, creating employment and economic development.
  • Take other non-council problems into the Innovation Incubator, specifically for business development through commercialising the solution and creating a new business and employment.
  • Community involvement and input can be encouraged into the innovation Incubator program, by incorporating a community centre environment and actually encouraging community input. This engages the community more and reduces social problems also.

The final outcome could include:

  1. Employment increase.
  2. New businesses registered and operating in partnership with the council.
  3. Income generation from the commercialisation of the IP in the solutions.
  4. Community engagement, reducing social issues.
  5. Council seen as being more ‘in touch’ with the community.
  6. A sense of prosperity, hope and confidence emanating from the Innovation Incubator environment.

the innovation incubator

What about small businesses and the Innovation Incubator?

Similarly with small businesses, the Innovation Incubator can be installed either wholly within the business with an external facilitator, or facilitated with the business as a partner in the process, sharing the IP and the benefits of the solutions found.  In this case, the small business might request support with a challenge and the facilitator will arrange the panel of expertise required for the problem solving process.  When a solution is found, if it can be commercialised, the business and the experts involved share in the IP values and commercial outcomes, whether it is a licence fee or royalty basis.

There are many models and variants of the core concept of the Innovation Incubator.  However they all have one thing in common; they need an external facilitator, for the benefits of objectivity and the specialised questioning processes.

“You cannot do your own brain surgery!”  Ray Jamieson 1997

Objectivity is greater than just not being blind to what has been done that way for ever, it’s also the ability to see beyond ‘sacred cows’ and ‘raging bull’ that often abounds in mature business models – practices that have long outgrown their useful lives and are now problematic in themselves.

If you feel this is something that could have a value in your organisation, do some more homework on it by looking HERE, on the Executive Mastermind website.  I will be delighted to speak with you more about it and help you take it to the next stage.

Til next time, take time to enjoy the life you live.

Ray Jamieson

Executive Mastermind Posted on by

The Bicycle Shop Marketing Lesson

Marketing Lesson

Once upon a time there was a shop that sold bicycles. The owner was asked who his ideal client was and he gleefully said:”We sell bicycles to anyone who is happy riding a bicycle!”

Marketing Lesson

However, when he stopped to think about it, he realised it wasn’t totally true. He sold many different types of bicycles and had many different types of customers, and they all liked riding their bicycles!  He realised it was time for a marketing lesson for he and his bicycle sales team.

There was the really fit person, who rode their bicycle for exercise and fitness. Lean and Lycra clad, they were out on the roads at daylight each morning, and their machines were the lightweight, road racing bikes.

Marketing Lesson

Then, there were the commuters, who had a more sturdy bicycle with bigger tyres and more tread on the road, with a little rack, somewhere to lock up a helmet and a place to tie on a bag to carry their shoes to change into when they got to work.  The seats on these bikes were more comfortable, and the people sat up a little more straight too.

The weekend bikers bought mountain bikes, a very sturdy, strong framed machine that could handle jumping over rocks and logs all weekend, had big knobby tyres for off road riding, big springs to absorb the shock of jumping and rough trail riding.  And of course a great, comfortably padded seat.

The most fun of all were the BMX trick bikes, with their crazy teenage riders, doing tricks and pirouetting on the back, and sometimes front wheels – you couldn’t do that on any of the other machines.

Marketing lesson

Finally, there were the little kiddies bikes, the ‘first bikes’ and trikes that toddlers and tots got as Christmas and Birthday gifts, and rode around their back yards, and sometimes living rooms when Mum wasn’t aware!  The kiddies didn’t buy the bikes, their mums and dads did, but it was the kiddies he needed to satisfy also.

marketing lesson

He realised that his marketing lesson was going to be a little more extensive. He didn’t have just one customer, he had many totally different customers, and to sell each of these bicycles in his range and make his shop more profitable, he would have to get to know and understand every one of them, very well!

Each of his bicycles had an ideal purchaser, someone exactly suited to them.  And each was very different.  Formerly, he promoted himself as the best bicycle shop in Brisbane, but now he knew he’d have to do a lot better than that!  Each of these special people, his ideal clients, deserved a special message from him, and deserved the time it took to get to know them properly, so he really could be the best bicycle shop in Brisbane for each of them, in their very own way!

What marketing lesson can we learn from this bicycle shop?

How many ‘bicycles’ do you sell in your product or service range?

And how many ideal clients have you identified and are marketing to?

If you, like Mr Bicycle Store owner, have a single mass marketing message, you are losing a huge amount of business to the shop up the road, which is just working on targeting the specific clients they want for exactly the solution they provide, with their particular product or service!

Marketing Lesson

Target your Ideal Client

Every different product or service in your range has a different ideal client.  For you to market effectively, you need to firstly understand and accept that, and then learn how to identify them and what they really need, to solve the problems they have when they go shopping for their solutions.

Fortunately it’s no longer a huge challenge to access this marketing lesson.  The opportunity to educate yourself in how to target your ideal client is now available, both in online, self-paced form and facilitated workshops.

What is the benefit of this ‘marketing lesson’?

You get to understand and identify your ideal client so well, that you can reduce your marketing budget, and go precisely to where your clients are, to present the exact solution they need to the problem they want to solve.  And you can learn to do that for every ideal client, for every product or service you provide!

Some people go shopping for the feel-good effect, but most go shopping for a solution to a problem they have.  Your product or service is specifically designed to solve certain problems, and provide specific solutions to those problems for the people who are experiencing them.

Your challenge is to get your precise message, which is simply that you have the best solution to their problem, right in front of them!  If you have been broadcasting to the four corners of the world about the features and benefits of your widget and not getting results, then perhaps there is your answer.  They were not looking for that, nor were they looking in those four corners.

They were right here, looking for a solution to their problem.

Here endeth the marketing lesson.

To get your solution to this vexing problem, you can access an incredible marketing lesson with Target Your Ideal Client at this link.  If you want to take time over Christmas to examine and rethink your marketing strategy, this is your opportunity.  The self-paced online program is there with 15 step by step exercises to enable you to get up close and personal with your ideal client, to find out all about them so you can literally identify them right where they are.

If you want a facilitated workshop, click here and we will include you in the next Small Business Target Marketing Workshop, where in a group format, we will deliver this program for you, 3 sessions over 3 weeks, so you can develop your strategy within the program, with our support!

Til next time, take time to enjoy the life you live.

Ray Jamieson

Executive Mastermind

Are you wasting your marketing budget?

One year I spent $40,000 on marketing one of my seminars.  I had radio advertising, hundreds of spots at specifically advantageous listening times, local and broadsheet newspaper advertisements, TV spots, the works. If it was available, I had some of my marketing in or on it.

Fortunately I maintained my other promotional efforts, and critically, I tracked all my marketing efforts and results.

What was the outcome from this expensive marketing budget?

marketing budget

Is this your marketing budget?

I had three, only three, sales from the $40,000 investment, and 47 from other methods of marketing.  Net result; I was $30,000 worse off by spending all that money in my marketing budget.

What went wrong?

I was the perfect, ideal target client for an advertising executive.  I was an uneducated small business person with a lot of money to spend.  They perfectly assisted me in my endeavour to spend a lot of money on marketing.

Marketing Budget

Me and my old Marketing Budget

What could I have done better with my marketing budget?

Fortunately I had maintained my regular marketing efforts, but what would have made my marketing budget investment more effective was learning to target the perfect, ideal client for the product or service I was offering at that time.

You and I have this thing in common – we are both the absolute best person to know the problem that our product or service solves for our clients, and we are the best placed person to educate them on it!

The only reason we would pay another person who didn’t know our product or service as well as us, was that we hadn’t yet learnt how to present the education of our solution to the people who need it.

Effective marketing budget outcomes result in people with the problems we solve, self-selecting when they experience our marketing and recognising the solution they have been searching for.

Marketing Budget

Exactly what I was looking for!

Regardless of the product or service we provide, it means nothing unless the people out there in the community realise that it provides a solution to their problem. Our marketing budget must be used to educate them that we have that solution.  The solution may look nothing like the problem they think they have, but our education will make the difference.

Marketing a specific product?

There is an ideal client for every product or service; this is a fact that many marketing experts don’t accept.  We are told, especially in a multitude of online marketing trainings, that we must first ascertain what the market wants, and then tailor our problem to suit.  That is a brilliant theory, but only if your situation permits.

What if you are an agent or dealer for a product from an external provider, that can’t really be tailored?

What if you have a unique talent or skill that thrills you to perform, and it is what it is?

How do you market something which doesn’t really offer you the flexibility of adapting it to a broad market sector?

The answer is to really understand what problem it solves, and for whom. Then get to know those people so well that you can go right up to them and introduce them to your solution.

Now that is a really effective use of your marketing budget!

Marketing Budget

Target your Ideal Client

Rather than spending a fortune on broadcasting a message of dubious value, perhaps a better investment of your marketing budget could be in self education on the two fundamental questions that really are the key to an effective marketing budget:

  1. What problem do you solve with your product or service?
  2. Who needs and is willing to pay for the problem to be solved?

Once you have clarity on exactly what problem your product or service solves, you can proceed to develop a profile on who has the need for that exact solution.  The more clearly you identify that person or business, the more easily you can present your solution to them in the way they understand. You can educate them into asking you for your product or service. They self-select you as their solution and seek you out for it.

Isn’t that a better investment of a marketing budget?

If you don’t have that level of clarity yet, it’s time to work on it. Until then, your marketing budget is pretty well wasted.

How do you get this clarity around the solutions you provide?

Perhaps I can assist with my solution to that small business problem.

“Target Your Ideal Client” is both an online education program and a workshop series, teaching you how to identify and target your perfect, ideal client so completely that the only information you don’t have will be their name, email address and phone number, which they will happily give to you when you ask them!  You will know them so well that you will even know where to locate them, through your marketing, and how they like to be educated on what their problem is.

Perhaps it’s time to take a step back from your current marketing budget and re-evaluate it.  Educate yourself about what it is that you really solve for your clients, and learn how to get your solutions to more of them, faster.  This program, either in the self-paced form, or a facilitated workshop, may be the solution you need for this vexing problem of how to get the most value from your marketing budget.

Take a look now – I’d love to know your thoughts!

Til next time, take time to enjoy the life you live.

Ray Jamieson

Executive Mastermind

Post Election Business Opportunities

Post Election Business Opportunities

Australians didn’t get to vote in the recent US Presidential Elections, but we stand to benefit more than most countries around the world from the change in government and president there, with some surprising post election business opportunities.

How could that be?

In Mr Trump’s acceptance speech on the night of the election, he talked about building bridges, as has almost every election winner since time immemorial; however, he also talked about literally building and rebuilding bridges as well.  This is where we stand to benefit.

Three decades ago, I was involved in R&D in the manufacture of a cement additive product, which had massive concrete spalling repair abilities and global applications.  One of the statistics then, was that in the USA alone, there was an estimated urgent cost factor of $3 TRILLION USD in repairs to just the most urgent bridges and roadway structures across the USA.  And that was at dollar values 3 decades ago!

Post Election Business Opportunities

Concrete Spalling Damage

Let’s think about this.  The USA is a country approximately the size of the land mass of Australia, but it has way more than 10 times the population spread over that land mass, including in the desert and semi-arid regions on the mid-west.  It has a much more harsh climate in general, with incredible cold and snowy winters, requiring salt to be laid on the roads to prevent icing and enable driving conditions to be maintained.  Many roads require snow ploughs through winter, and they create their own road damage issues.  In the centre and south, there are massive annual hurricanes and tornadoes – they even have a land area called Tornado Alley!  The snow and salt applications, the hurricanes in the south and the flooding rains that result from these storms, also cause havoc with their roads infrastructure.

Post Election Business Opportunities

Tornado Damage – Before and After

How does this turn into post election business opportunities for us?

In the last 3 decades, no US president or government has come to power planning to spend money on this infrastructure.  The USA has gone on being a super power – spending big on defence, on climate change, on medical programs, on international relations and donations, but not on this critical infrastructure.

Until now.

Since Donald Trump made those commitments immediately after his election, our iron ore price has surged to $80 per tonne – it’s even been nicknamed the “Trump Bump” – up 17.5% since the election and still rising.  The futures market has it over $90 per tonne and rising still.

Coal prices have risen 10% since the election and coal futures are soaring also.

The share price of BHP rose 8% and the share market soared to its highest values in years for both the USA and Australian Stock Exchanges.

How do post election business opportunities manifest to the Australian families?

Our declining mining and resources sectors have been thrown more than a lifeline – they have a decade long commitment from the biggest shopping basket on the planet to buy lots of iron ore and coal.  Whether it comes from Australia or not doesn’t matter; the market overall has been given a massive injection of confidence, meaning our Australian resources sector comes alive again.  Our national debt levels, the budget deficit, could be wiped out years earlier than estimated.  Our own economy could be trading without debt, and therefore without paying massive sums of interest to global lenders, in just a couple of years, rather than a decade.

That means tax relief is possible.  It means our own infrastructure investment becomes possible.  Government spending on our own economic growth, which is where a massive amount of employment and job security comes from, suddenly has life again.

But let’s get specific.  Where are the post election business opportunities for small businesses?  After all, these are the major employers in this country.

What does it take to build a bridge?

Post election business opportunities

Bridge Under Repair

It takes design and planning, engineers, architects and road building and construction teams and subcontractors.  It takes machinery manufacturers and maintenance teams.  It takes fuel supplies.

It takes people being employed!

Where previously, USA companies were out looking for work around the world and competing with our companies because there was little happening for them in the USA, now they will be busy back in the USA, meaning two things for our companies.

1.     Less competition for our jobs here in Australia

2.     More opportunity for us to compete for work over there and elsewhere in our region

In addition, the flow-on and support businesses that were in decline, such as the mining equipment maintenance and support businesses, mechanics, fuel providers, mine road maintenance crews, railway engine drivers and more, all have futures again.

When our resources sector unemployment goes down, our hospitality and holiday industries peak – with the aviation and accommodation industries expecting a boost from the mining and resource sectors boost, our local economies, from the little towns in Central Queensland and Western Australia that house the mining communities, to the destination on the coasts where the FIFO workers fly to on their days off, we all experience a boost.

Think about it now – exactly how will your industry, what you do in your business, benefit from this boost to our mining and resources sector resurgence?

Post Election Business Opportunities

Hmmmm!

If you need assistance mapping out how to take advantage of this surprising outcome, contact me and I’ll see how I can help.  There may be a whole lot more in these post election business opportunities than anyone expected!

Til next time, take time to enjoy the life you live.

Ray Jamieson

Post Election Business Opportunities

Hi Ho, it’s off to work we go!

PPSR Asset Protection

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PPSR Asset Protection

PPSR Asset Protection

Small Business PPSR Asset Protection

We live in changing and challenging times for small business.  The society we live in has become increasingly litigious and insurance companies are either charging exorbitant amounts for insurance protection against litigation or other claims, or refusing to provide insurance at all.  Once it was a case of putting structures and complex asset protection strategies in place to shelter assets from predatory creditors, but even that has its limitations.  However, PPSR Asset Protection has suddenly changed the landscape back in favour of the small business owner!

Consider the example of an equipment hire business, where it provides, for example, a loader to a landscaping business loading gravel or topsoil.  One would think that the ownership of the loader was with the equipment hire business that purchased it and then hired it to the landscaping business.  However, if that landscaping business got into trouble, the fact that the loader was on the premises at the time the creditors took possession may mean that the equipment hire business loses its equipment!

PPSR Asset Protection

PPSR Asset Protection can change that, and much more.

PPSR Asset protection stands for the Personal Property Securities Register and was established recently by the Federal Government specifically to deal with these challenging situations.

It is a very simple and inexpensive matter to register equipment and much more for PPSR Asset protection.  When used in combination with common sense business structures and asset protection strategies, it can assure that your assets, earnings and property will remain yours, regardless of the circumstances.

What difference does PPSR Asset Protection make?

In the case of the loader above, when the business is liquidated, we all hear about how the liquidators rape the accounts and pay themselves first.  Well, they aren’t actually first.  Assuming that there is no PPSR Asset protection in place, the Employee Entitlements are first, so their wages and superannuation are paid out before anyone else gets a look in.  Then the liquidators take their pay.  The owner of the loader in this case, would be last as an unsecured creditor, to receive anything from the disposal of their own equipment.

However, with the correct PPSR Asset Protection strategy in place, our equipment hire business could actually go to the top of the list of creditors and legally take back their loader, before any other payments are made, to employees or the liquidators.  It’s only fair too – the equipment didn’t belong to the landscaping business, and was never on their balance sheet.  It always belonged to the equipment hire business!  PPSR Asset protection can ensure that.

PPSR Asset protection can be used to secure personal property of all forms, including machinery, cars, equipment, boats, livestock, crops, as well as intangible items.  These include loan accounts, trading stock and retention of title, accounts receivable, plant and equipment, hire of goods and licenses and intellectual property.

In the simplest of situations, you can check for other security against a car you are thinking of buying with a PPSR check – look here!

This is such a critical area of small business that PPSR Asset protection will actually be taught by an expert in the field to all members of the Executive Mastermind Diploma of Business program.  We believe it is absolutely critical, to the extent where we are modifying the curriculum schedule to make room for this new material to be provided to the business owners in our Diploma of Business, free of charge.

PPSR Asset protection

Protect yourself and your business

For more information on PPSR Asset protection or the Diploma of Business program, please contact us immediately.  You may not realise it but there could be crucial areas of your business unprotected right now, leaving you vulnerable to predatory creditor attacks, when simple asset protection strategies can minimise or even eliminate that risk.

Contact us now, to have an expert assess your risk, or to enrol in the Diploma of Business program for education in this and many more essential business structure and strategy tips – the ones that can make a massive difference to your life and business success!

Til next time, take time to enjoy the life you live.

Ray Jamieson

Passion For Your Business

Executive Mastermind Posted on by

Passion for your Business

Passion for your Business

What would life be without passion?  If you are in business, and your business is your life, as it is for most small business owners, what would life be without a passion for your business?

Think about it:  All the greatest stories in history have been created around people who did what they did for passion.

The movies – Gone with the Wind, The Sound of Music, Zorba the Greek, had passion as a theme.  But look further, to the heroic actions of the people made famous by events in history.  Joan of Arc, Abraham Lincoln, Dr Albert Schweitzer, Nelson Mandela, and you see the passion running through their lives.  And it needed to, for their lives were no ordinary lives.

But what about us?  What about you?  Why do YOU need a passion for your business?

Look at it in reverse. Strip away the passion for your business, and what have you left. A place where you are required to spend 40-60 or more hours each week, sometimes taking home less income than the people who work for you, stressed about the bills, the marketing, the flow of work, the time away from your family.

What is there to make all this worthwhile for you, unless you have a passion for your business?

Passion for your Business

What could give you a passion for your business?

What if your business was something you believed was making a difference?  What if you were a printer and you knew that your work made it possible for hundreds of other small business people, working just as hard as you, to be successful in their businesses that also made a difference in hundreds or thousands of other lives?

Suddenly, it seems worthwhile, doesn’t it?  The hours you invest are an investment that touches the lives of perhaps thousands eventually.

Or maybe you have a restaurant, with the long and often odd hours that operating a restaurant requires.  What keeps you there, while everyone else is out enjoying and celebrating, what keeps you out in the heat of the kitchen, doing the hard work, and don’t tell me it’s the money.

Money is fine but as a motivator, it only goes so far.  There has to be more than the money…

And there is more.  The passion for you in your kitchen could be the delight and joy you experience both personally, from producing amazing dishes, and also from the patrons, whose eyes light up when they see what you place before them.

What gives me a passion for your business?

Passion for your Business

Just like you, I operate a small business, doing some wonderful things in the areas of support for other small businesses.  For example, business coaching, and we also deliver an amazing Diploma of Business.  Check it out here.  Just like you, we have downline support for hundreds and possibly thousands of people, just by offering our services to you, and assisting you to be the best you can be in your business, so you can assist all those businesses you work with and for.

But none of that matters, if you don’t have a passion for your business, in fact, if you didn’t, you would not have read this far!

But passions can flag, and we get tired and we forget why we were once so passionate.  This is where I can really help.  I can help you rediscover your passion for your business, and then put a business plan around it to make sure you keep it alive always.  And it’s all free!

Just go here, to the FREE BUSINESS RESOURCES page on my website, and download the PROSPER FROM YOUR PASSION worksheet.  In a few minutes, you can perhaps rediscover a passion for your business, or discover a new one.

It gets better!  Prospect from your Passion – Business Development is a FREE business plan template that focusses on building your business around your passion.

You might know someone else whose passion is flagging. Perhaps your good deed for today will be to forward this blog link to them, so they can reignite their passion for their business.

Business can be hard, unless we are driven from within by our passions.  Everyone deserves a chance to live a life of passion, and that’s what I offer to you here.  My wish for you is that you rediscover your passion for your business!

Til next time, take time to enjoy the life you live,

Ray Jamieson

Business Coach and Trainer at Executive Mastermind

Passion for your Business

Executive Mastermind

Opportunity cost, lost or gained

In a group conversation with Robert Kiyosaki over 25 years ago, he said to us:

“If you are working IN your business, be there in it, 100%.  But if you are OUT working your business, be there 100% instead!  Wherever you are in your business, really BE THERE!”

What did he mean?

So many small business operators multi-task, and find themselves doing a whole lot of the operational tasks that they don’t enjoy and are often not good at, either because they don’t enjoy it, or because it is so removed from what they are good at!

They are most inefficient in these areas.  Hence the ‘opportunity cost, lost or gained’ title.

Let’s look at an example.  You are a technician in your business, but 5 hours a week, you do the admin. A common situation. But you are like me, and don’t like it and are possibly not good at it, or as good as you should be.  And it costs you five whole hours each week!  If you only billed your time at $100 per hour, it’s costing you $500…

Solution?

Outsource this, and you’ll probably find someone who works 5 times faster than you and will handle your admin at $50 an hour.

Suddenly, it’s all very different.  For $250 per month, your admin is handled, and you have 20 hours freed up – what could you achieve in an extra 20 hours?

Opportunity cost, lost or gained?

That 20 hours, if you only billed it out, it’s $2,000 extra income.  However, you might use it to generate new clients, quote on more jobs, create new business relationships and collaborations that bring in an absolute fortune in new business! So was it an opportunity cost, lost or gained, by investing in some additional talent and resources.

Opportunity cost, lost or gained

So many things to do, and only one of me!

Think about a competition athlete, perhaps a swimmer, cyclist, car racer or marathon runner.

Why do they bring their head up after each stroke in the pool?

There are a few reasons, all very relevant to us in business.

Firstly, air is good and deep breaths are vital.  You need to fill your lungs with fresh air from time to time, instead of the air you get with your head down in the work all day.

Next, it’s good to check, see where you are going, whether you’re on track or not. Crossing the rope lanes in the pool gets you all tangled up and it’s easy in business to lose focus and get tangled up also.  So it’s to watch your direction.

It’s also to look at the competition, to see how you are doing in relation to them.  If you are way out in front and there is no competition in sight, are you in the right race?  There’s probably always going to be a competitor somewhere nearby.  Or are you looking at their wake, from a long way behind.  That’s valuable to know also.  It gives you something to aim for and to perhaps consider that a better strategy might assist you.

There is also your team to consider. You know, the ones who hold up the “Last Lap” board, or the sign that says “Pit Stop Next Lap” or “Dinner is at six!”  These are the people on your side, all the time, who keep an eye out for you when your head is down in the business.  You need to take time to check in with them often.

So many businesses have sunk into the morass of their problems, lost forever, when right next door, the solution to all their problems lay untouched.

Why?  How could this happen?

The business either:

  1. didn’t know the solution existed
  2. didn’t know it was available
  3. didn’t think they could afford it
  4. they didn’t take the time out of their business to look around and actually realise they had a problem!

Isn’t that a tragedy?  Opportunity cost, lost or gained!

With your new found 20 hours a month, how about investing a little into just looking around, taking some deep breaths and considering that there might be some things you didn’t know about, or didn’t realise you needed them and could afford them, or considered that a little objectivity and advancing your education might highlight for you some issues that were more important or critical to your business than you realised?  Even a couple of hours out to breathe could make a world of difference.  What could your opportunity cost, lost or gained be?

This blog will come out on a weekly basis from now on. It’s produced by Ray Jamieson, a corporate advisor with almost 3 decades of business experience, ranging from corporate rescue, to coaching, consulting, finance and financial planning, life and business coaching.

Ray delivers an innovative Diploma of Business program, a combination of advanced Diploma of Business curriculum along with almost a year of business coaching, giving you access to both a group coaching and individual business coaching environment, as well as access to a vast network of professional business problem solvers and collaborators, any or all of which could help take your business to a whole new level of results and profitability.

Click on the FREE BUSINESS RESOURCES link at the top of the page for a thank you for reading this post, and to ensure you get the copy sent directly to you next time.

Should you feel this is good value reading for the time you invested, please forward it to other business associates also – it might just be what they needed too!  Their opportunity cost, lost or gained!

Til next time, take time to enjoy the life you live,

Opportunity cost, lost or gained

Ray Jamieson, business coach and corporate trainer at Executive Mastermind

Ray Jamieson

Business Coach and Trainer at Executive Mastermind