What’s the dream you’re working on right now?

You may know the answer to this straight away, but if you pause for more than 3 seconds to gather loose strands of thoughts about things you thought about days or weeks ago, you’re going to find this article the catalyst to moving the goal posts to a time, sometime sooner.

The first component is focus. You have to know clearly what you want long term. That long-term focus might break down into smaller steps.

Let’s say the long term focus is a great relationship that has thus far been illusive. That then might break down into daily tasks.

Each day I look at my 5 points of focus and decide what one thing I’m going to do on each of them. This means each day I move a step closer to my goal.

In the relationship example maybe the short-term goal is to do some self-work, book on a workshop, uncover what your ideal mate will be into, become a better kisser, dress better, feel better about yourself – whatever you feel is appropriate.

Once you have the clarity, the second thing to look at is your desire to make it happen. You’ve got to want it. It’s all fine and dandy thinking you’d like something, but do you really have a desire to have it happen. There’s little point in deciding you want something, then getting passive about it.

If the desire is there, then the third thing to look at is belief. You’ve got to believe you can do it. I believe I’m capable of pretty much anything I turn my mind to. I believe that when I come from a place of playfulness and fun, I double my chances.

Fourth element to consider is self-acceptance. Do you believe you’re worthy of what you want? To pull it off you have to believe this down to your core.

Be… do… have…

With clarity, desire, belief and self-acceptance in place, it’s easier to begin to “be” what you want – to act as if.

For example, if you want to earn £250,000 next year and you work that out, based on the hours you’d work during the next 12 months as roughly earning £200 per hour, you’d be clear on what you want.

When you look at why you want it, you build the desire. When you look for examples of where you are close to that value each hour, you build the belief. When you look at why you’re deserving of your goal, you build the references around you.

So when you begin to “do”, you’ll discover more evidence of when you’re earning your hourly rate. You may also notice when you’re not. When you start to move to lower then £200 an hour tasks from your way, you begin to get ever closer to the amount you want to earn.

When your focus, attention and behaviour have been honed long enough on what you want, your dream will come true.

Until next time

Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

In writing any good marketing copy there are 7 essentials you have to take care of – without getting overly technical. I’m going to give them to you here, because I want people reading this newsletter to write copy that engages readers and finds them a stream of clients.

So, let me take you through the 7 essentials:

1. Title – this has to make a promise about what you’ll deliver and it must speak to your audience

2. Sub-title – the subtitle builds the picture up more – it expands on the title

3. Rapport/Credibility piece – Speak in the language of the people who will buy from you and let them know why they should listen to you.

4. Benefits – put these in a bullet point list… it makes it easy to read and suggests value, value, value

5. Social proof – testimonials, show other people what they got from you. Use names where you can. Use pictures if you can get them. And the more specific you can be the better.

6. A call to action – this is about telling them what to do next.

7. Contact details (either get theirs using a contact form on your website or give yours if you are using flyers or another advertising method.

For an example of a webpage using these all 7 steps visit: www.communitysoulbusiness.com

When I first wrote the copy in the link above, I had it critiqued by a group of people I mastermind with. Then I rewrote it. I invested around £3500 in hard cash in that copy and then a further £1000 in my own time writing it.

So you can see, it’s not something I just threw together in a few minutes. The title took several attempts and yet when I look at it now it looks really simple. And that’s the way you want it to read. Simple.

The copy was hacked and rewritten. But that page has resulted in around 2000 people signing up for the offer we make.

Just using the seven essentials will give you better results in from your marketing efforts, but that’s not the be-all-and-end-all in copywriting. There is a lot more for you to learn… and it never stops!

Best wishes
Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

Sitting down, on the floor in my living room, with Jo and a dozen bits of scrap paper neatly placed around us, isn’t the way we always spend a Saturday night. But what a night it turned out to be…

I’d just spent the day with my favourite teacher, Dr. William Bloom, as he gave his take on Creating and Manifesting a great life. He’d been asking a question during his course: “Who is telling my story?”

I thought about some of my beliefs, behaviours and values and mulled over where those patterns had been instilled – at school, by parents, friends, work colleagues, sports team managers etc.

There were a few beliefs and behaviour’s that struck me, but one I particularly want to share with you, in case you have something similar to heal…

During my school days I was always picked for leadership – team captain, town, county and club, games captain and prefect. I loved lifting trophies, hated losing, and always led by example. In football – my favourite sport – it was a thrill to captain lads who went on to sign for Arsenal, West Ham and Northampton.

I missed out on trials for Leicester because of a back injury and never got another chance to fulfil my footballing dream. (Ahhh!)

I ended up playing for the second best semi-pro outfit in the town, doing a solid job at centre half, but hankering to play in my best position, fullback. When I asked the manager to switch me, he said he’d think about it. The next match, he gave me the only roasting a team manager ever gave me, and he did it in front of the rest of the team, just because I’d asked him to play me where I knew I’d deliver my best for the team.

If that humiliation wasn’t enough, he dropped me to the 3rd team reserves the following week.

Had I dug in, gritted my teeth and fought my way back, maybe I’d have eventually worked my way back into the team and gone on to fulfill my footballing dream… who knows? But it wasn’t to be…

So as a 17 year old, I chose not to roll up my sleeves and pull out the fire from within. My will broken, I gave up. Told the manger where to shove his team and entered a bitter loop.

With my old friends playing professionally, me missing my golden opportunity, ending up at semi-pro level and then being dropped to the 3rd team, I became trapped in the experience of “not feeling good enough” – a psychological drama that many people share, for lots of different reasons.

But what’s all this got to do with sitting on the living room floor with Jo on a Saturday night?

Well, I’d become interested with the differences that separate success from failure and I wanted to ensure I ditched this not-feeling-good-enough feeling. It was no longer serving me and the direction my life was going in.

So I wrote down, “not good enough and weak willed” on this scrap of paper. Then I sat back and wondered, if I turned this over to the Universe (God, the Tao, Spirit – or whatever you want to call it) how would this experience be used as a force for good.

The answer was simple. “By determination and excellence.”

When I read the life story of top football manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, I was left in no doubt that when he was faced with similar situations of being dropped as a footballer, he was tougher than me. Today, as a manager he buys only excellence and demands excellence from his team every time.

So I adopted his determination and pursuit of excellence and asked another question, “How would I express this determination and excellence?”

The answer: put in five times more effort. So I have.

I began by clearing space. I looked at habits and behaviours that were not determined and began changing them. When I do something that doesn’t match the new standard, I go back and do it again and again until it is.

You see, being in a flow of having more isn’t just about asking for more – it’s about matching up to what you want. Having more isn’t just about writing down a goal. It’s not making a wish. It’s about putting your soul into the thing you want and doing it with love, joy compassion and good grace that honours your journey and the new you that is emerging.

Who is telling your story? What holds you back? What would life be like if you changed that forever?

How about you change it?

With love

Neil

http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

What I’m going to take you through in this article is a technique I use to constantly close the gap between where I am and where I want to get to. I’m sharing this so you can use it too.

When I sit down to write an article or I’m mapping out one of the Insiders Secrets webinars or training session I always start with a visualisation.

I imagine that I am looking beyond the page and seeing everyone taking notes, and magical golden fairy dust passing down the phone lines, enveloping you – and as a result of what I share, you become more prosperous.

And I appreciate that might all sound a bit fanciful, but it’s a technique that I know inspires me to create information that helps people and gets great feedback.

In the grand scheme of things this might seem small, but if something you take notes from becomes a way you do business, or helps you create something that changes lives or leads to your prosperity or the prosperity of one of your clients, then that’s a very cool ripple.

A vision I hold for CommunitySoul is that whoever walks with us becomes increasingly prosperous as a result of the association. Our aim is to help 12,000 business reach more than a million people and change their lives by the end of this year.

Part of the vision for these newsletters is that it’s fluff free, so let me ground what I’m saying here, before you accuse me of going off with the fairies!

Knowing the vision allows me to sit back after our events and evaluate. I’m looking at the details. What will help us to achieve our vision faster? Where don’t we match up to the vision? Are the presentations right? Did people learn all they could in the time we had? Who else can benefit from hearing this speaker? Could people listen in comfort? Is everyone moving forward? Timings? Overall message? The marketing? What needs to improve? Who will do it?

So, when you have a clear vision, you can see how easily you can begin to constantly close the gap between where you are now and where you want to get too.

It’s simple. Know your vision. Know your starting point. Close the gap.

Best wishes

Neil

www.communitysoul.co.uk

Making money is a measure.

It could be a measure for how many people you helped, how often you helped them and how much value you and they feel you bring to their life for what you do.

So making money could just be about the difference it makes to you and the people you love to help.

And we’ve all heard the saying that “the journey is more important that the end result”, so making money is just part of the journey.

Imagine for a moment that you set a goal to make £250,000 by 31st December and you have an idea that is incredible and can make a huge difference in the lives of others. As a result, the demand for how you help people grows.

In your efforts to make the quarter million, you learn so much about people and philosophy and the way the world works. You meet the wealthy and the poor and you understand more about how they became that way.

And in making your £250,000 you now make a new network of people. Other  opportunities naturally come your way and you now make a million.

And remember it’s not just about the money – the money is just a measure of how many people you’ve helped and how much value they and you put on what you do.

Maybe through the money you earn, or through your network, or both, you can help remove poverty and create more prosperity. Maybe you can help to remove damage to the environment and reduce pollution…

I was once taught how to Karate chop a board in half. I was doing this live, for the first time and in front of an audience of about 50 people.

I was instructed to focus beyond the board, where my hand would hit, once the board had broken in two. This style of vision creating is just like that – it’s putting your attention not just on having what you dream of, but on what is beyond and even better than that.

Look at what you think you want. Then consider the journey beyond it. The one that is even better than you dare dream of.

Best wishes
Neil

How many of your decisions are made based on your past?

In the insurance industry, they use the past to measure the future. It’s a predictable way to assess possible future risk, but even the experts can never account for the unpredictable storm that comes out of the blue.

And then there is us… human beings, doing stuff… going about life in a predictable way. We get up, shower, breakfast, travel to work, work, lunch, more work, travel home, eat, watch TV, bed, sleep and then do it all over again.

Week after week, on we go. Some are happy in the rhythm, others find it frustrating and struggle with breaking out from the spell of the routine.

If you’re caught in the spell and finding it frustrating to break, the key lies in understanding what you believe about your own capability.

The mindset that unbreaks the spell…

Rather than look at feeling trapped, I want to go straight to the mind set that unbreaks the spell and ask you: What would a person in your circumstances do, if he or she believed they were infinitely capable of making a difference?

First, they come from the mindset of being capable. If you took away a billionaire’s money, I’d bet they could return to financial wealth very quickly. They believe they can.

In life we don’t always have the resources such as education and money and when we lack those we have to create the resourcefulness.

Four months ago I was talking to Lynne, a single parent, who complained at being overweight and struggling with finances. She said she felt miserable, working part-time and struggling by, and she couldn’t afford a nutritionist, or a gym.

I asked Lynne what stopped her from getting a book from the library on nutrition and what stopped her from exercising by, say, walking with the kids. She said the kids didn’t like walking. So I asked her what would make it interesting for them. She said having friends along or maybe taking a bike.

I bumped into Lynne two weeks ago. She’d been reading, biking and walking, and she lost half a stone.

While none of us suffer from a faulty future, we do suffer from faulty thinking. That thinking is often caused by making mistakes in the past, or not having things turn out well. This creates a belief system that we’re not good at stuff and we therefore stop trying.

We all make mistakes, but we don’t have to continue to live that mistake years later. We can break that spell now.

Imagine you’re a superhero and you’ve just arrived at the situation of your current challenge. You have some special powers, but none of them are going to help you here. So you have to look for the natural resources around you – you have to be resourceful. What will you do?

Where do you start? What’s the next step?

Until next time

Neil

Over the years I’ve heard variations of the same phrase many times. I used to think these variations had wisdom. But now I’m not so convinced.

When someone is at a crossroads they’re often quite vulnerable. “This way or that way?” is their question. At this vulnerable junction what people are often looking for is evidence of what is right or wrong to do.

It’s not a crime to think that what shows up is evidence of the right direction to take, but I suspect there is a little more to it than that.

A friend once gave up a golden opportunity because an obstacle was put in their way that they viewed as evidence not to go forward. The pain of not having done what they wanted still irks them today and I suspect they know they could easily have moved that obstacle.

As a result, when something happens to me and I tell the story to others and someone sagely says, “Ah… maybe that’s evidence that you should (or shouldn’t) go for it,” I have an impulse to say “Please, don’t be so naive”.

Rather than have a one-off moment and become the judge and jury of your future, I believe there is far more depth to be explored. In life we have desires for specific outcomes all the time. “I want my partner to say this or that”. “I want the children to do x, y and z”.  “I want more clients”. “I want to be happy..”. I want… I want…

So we have desires all the time. When we think “I want to be happy” and something immediately happens that makes us unhappy, our mental hard drive might be wired to select this as further proof we’re unhappy, that life is the pits or that maybe we should turn our back on a dream and run a mile.

Maybe we should run a mile. There are plenty of life and death situations where a good pair of training shoes and a sprint are just perfect.

But crossroad situations are not usually like this, and emergency operating procedure really shouldn’t apply – and to apply it may be nuts… and nuts are for monkeys!

More important than taking physical evidence as a judgement, it might be far wiser to view it as a greater opportunity. If you do this you can take stock and choose, rather than react and make an unwise choice.

Let’s say you want to be happy, but don’t feel happy in your relationship. You’re crossroads might be “Do I go home or go for a drink?” Then a friend offers to buy you a drink.

At first glance you could judge this as evidence to have the drink. But more important than the circumstances that manifest is what you feel about what happened on the outside.

Whatever goes on outside, you always brings up feelings. In the drink example these feelings could be: the guilt of not going home to your spouse; the jealously you feel because the person who invited you is single; or the anger at yourself for not taking responsibility for the state of your relationship; or the pessimism you feel about your future.

I see the feelings as far, far more important than what is happening and the search for happiness is going to be found by becoming friends with these feelings rather than naively thinking you just had evidence you should stay and have a drink and then leave a relationship.

Of course there are times when it is absolutely right to leave a relationship and you will be clear enough when that occurs. But if you walk from one relationship to another without knowing your feelings and managing your actions, you’ll probably find yourself following the same cycle of events over and over again.

Something I’m enjoying right now is happiness and good, graceful energy flowing. But recently that was tested…

It was at my 40th birthday party. As maybe you have, too, I had those pre-party feelings of who will show? Will they enjoy it? etc

Mid evening a friend said they had to go. My immediate feeling was disappointment and I wanted to say, “Please stay.” But as I checked my own feeling of disappointment, I realised it was born from nothing more than the sadness of not circulating fast enough to spend more than this moment with them.

It would have been easy to have done one of several things to get them to stay longer. But I paused a moment and armed myself with knowing why I felt a pang of sorrow at their exit.

Years ago, feeling vulnerable at a party, I might have tried a number of tactics to get them to stay. But because the experience I want is happiness with graceful energy flowing, it was easy to walk my friend to the door and at least enjoy the moment I had with them and wish them well on their journey home.

When you want to be happy and something happens that makes you unhappy, please don’t just judge it as more evidence that life sucks. Please learn to see it as an opportunity to make it better. Notice what feeling rises for you and think about what tells you about who you are and where you are heading beyond this crossroads.

Love and best wishes
Neil

There’s a technique to building a business beyond your dreams and in this article I’m going to share that with you.

As you may know I love writing. In the past I took a create writing course and drafted several novels, before finally publishing one.

Writing novels taught me about the tapestry of life, especially how we can weave it.

In a novel, when you’re creating the character’s journey one thing you have to do in is create conflict and you do this by continually asking one question and  repeating it over and over.

That question is: what could be worse than that?

Someone loses their job. What could be worse? They lose their relationship too. What would be worse than that? They find out their partner was having an affair. Worse than that? They get drunk as a result. Worse than that? They walk out in front of a car…

When you are creating your dream business, you follow the technique, but ask a different question… “What would be even better than this?”

So you’re doing great, everything is going really well, you’re appreciating the great things that have happened to you so far and now you drop in that question: what would be even better than this?

You then repeat this question over and over. Using this technique helped me transform my mentoring process: it gave my clients a huge saving in their investment, gave me back 1 month per year in time and in the first 12 months grew my income by 25% (it’s grown several times that in year two).

You can do this with other areas of your business too. You can ask: how can I reduce my impact on the environment? How can I help my local community through my business? What can I do to surprise and delight my customers?

Growing a business using this question: “What would be even better than this?” will transform the way you approach your business. I promise you. It will also be a lot more fun that thinking just logically.

Best wishes

Neil

Several years ago, a multi-millionaire told me to never listen to the news. He said, “It’s negative. Avoid it, but trust if things get bad enough, someone will tell you!” And that’s pretty much how I’ve been doing things ever since.

I generally only read the back page of a newspaper and I do it in a shop without buying it. I hardly watch the news on TV, though occasionally I do get caught by a story when I’m on the Internet.

What I’ve noticed about the media is that it can hook us and when it does it’s usually fear based: the fear of bad things happening to children in a street, going out after dark, the effects of war, debt and killer viruses, to name a few.

While we have half a mind on these things, we’ve got the other half running on survival. So there’s little room to think about developing life beyond the current struggles.

The foundation for developing life – give space…

We have to know where we’re heading; and in order to get a clear view of that, the first thing we may have to do is lighten the load we’re carrying i.e. let go of the things that hold us back.

This could mean blacking out the media. It could be removing anything that doesn’t work for you, so you can create the space to do things that help you develop and connect with the people important to you.

Recently a farmer cut through an electric cable and 27 homes were not just without power for several days, but all their electrical items blew. I asked one of the residents what it was like…

He said, “It was amazing. We lit candles and we sat in front of the log fire and talked. We don’t usually do that.”

So the foundation I’m talking about is giving yourself the space.

Where will it all take you?

To develop our life and create something better, we need to know what we want at the end. As Stephen Covey says, “Start with the end in mind.”

When you make a little space, you can create the strategy that will keep you on track. It’s this type of space that coaching creates – a space to step back and be objective.

But it all begins, by making a little space and knowing what you want.

Love and best wishes

Neil

What happens when you don’t invest in good marketing copy….

One of the reasons a lot of people struggle is because of poor marketing copy. If you look around the Internet you’ll see lots of sites that are poorly written and you can spot these very quickly.

If your website is one of those websites, then what happens to the visitors?

An uninterested website visitor clicks away if they can’t find what they want in seconds. That means that whatever your website costs you to create, host and manage costs you money.

So, how do you draw a crowd with your marketing copy?

One of the topics I covered with my Insiders Secrets group recently was what is important and why and how to write it and we went into a great deal of depth on the subject and that’s not something I can cover in an article.

What I can share here is that there is information you must get across and you have to put that in a way that is going to compel someone, who is interested in being your customer, to become your customer.

As a customer, when you or I read something, we’re subconsciously hunting for what’s in this for me? Can I get what I need? Can this person or business solve my problem?

And these days… when you have so much competition… and it’s all easily accessible… especially via the Internet… it’s the people writing the most engaging, compelling copy… that draw in the crowd.

And you’ll know how well you’re doing with compelling people to buy from you based on how many people buy from your web pages and how your bank balance looks… and I say that with lots of love, and I say that because what you put down on paper, or on a website, is probably also a fair reflection of how you verbalise the difference you make, too…

In the last 2 years we’ve run five really big events. And these are the events where we’ve really pulled out the stops on on the  marketing front. And these events have pretty much all been sell outs. In one case we had 1000 people register, in another more than 1800. On two other occasions, we couldn’t get any more people in the room.

And this was mostly due to the marketing copy we used to help people get along to these events.

Best wishes
Neil