BREAKTHROUGH

Nice to have something other than a green juice

It might be that I’d overdosed on the flavour of pineapple or green juices, but by 7pm yesterday, day 2, the hunger pangs and cravings for food had vanished – nice.

Spurred on by friends on Facebook, like Lucy who really fancied the cake or the chilli her family were tucking into or Katie’s late lunch red juice the day seemed to be much easier.

The warmed apple with cinnamon at bed time was a treat and I wished I’d managed to summon up the energy to make that on day one.

V. tasty!

By the end of yesterday I’d also dropped 2lbs in weight.

Exercise this morning was much easier – a 20 minute rebound blast, 20 yoga sun salutes, half a dozen warrior poses and a handful of stretches to finish off with.

Loved the Zinger juice for breakfast, carrot, apple, ginger and lemon. Yummy in my tummy and felt energised and ready to tackle the day.

A routine check-up at the dentist was worth noting too.

Nattering to the dentist, as you do, she mentioned how acidic juices can be for your teeth and recommended not take too long over the drinking and swilling some water round your mouth when you had finished drinking juice so the acid didn’t sit on your teeth. She also said don’t brush for 30 mins after a juice or you’ll take enamel off your teeth.

Rock on… Day Four.

The kitchen table at the beginning of Juice Week

When all you do is drink all day, I guess you are going to spend at least some of the night getting up and down to the toilet.

And then every time I woke up to head to the bathroom it really played to my weakness…

You see I’m a snacker at night time. I don’t always need to eat late, but sometimes, when I do, it certainly helps me sleep better – must be comfort or something.

So last night around 11.30pm, after the third trip to the bathroom my stomach started. It sounded like a lonely wolf in a forest. After tossing and turning for a while I gave in and headed for the kitchen.

No while I appreciate  that might sound like I’m weak, I did do something smart…

Yes, I decided to munch on the closest thing to water – a stick of celery.

GETTING UP TO EXERCISE

Exercise is an important part of weight loss and eliminating toxic waste from your body. But today I found exercise unusually hard to get started on. I found it hard to focus and get started. Usually I just get straight down to it, but today my mind was all over the place and my body felt a little weaker than normal.

ON THE PLUS SIDE

I do feel lighter after just one day.

Now I’ve sunk the first juice of the day I’m also reenergised and feeling pretty good mentally.

I managed to complete my exercise routine once I got started – 15 mins of abs, 20 mins of weights, 25 mins of rebounding.

I’m not dreaming about eating food!

Result!

Trying a juice week this week and using Jason Vale’s 7lbs in 7 days as my bible. Day one started well. I was amazed that after juice 3-so around 2pm – my nose suddenly cleared. I’d just drunk one of the Juicemasters cocktails with ginger in it. Starting to feel a little light headed and ready to go gnaw on something now.

I’m doing this as my Xmas detox – I reckon when you go off track with some toxic food for a week – sugars etc – you need to compensate to bring things back into balance.

Quote I love today from John McDougall ~ “Eating like feasting kings every day – i.e. Easter for breakfast, Thanksgiving for lunch, Christmas for dinner and our birthday for dessert – does not promote good health. Best to eat a whole foods, plant based diet, while minimizing refined/processed foods.”

I’d love your comments below.

Christmas celebrations crept over into the new year a little more than normal. The hospital called to say I need another test on my back before they operate next week. Laser surgery on one of my wife’s eyes needs to be redone, then there’s life and those other little things it gifts me on a daily basis.

And while I’m never really one to complain, I’m right to feel a little concerned that the first 1/12^th of 2012 will be gone and I won’t even be out of the starting blocks with this year’s plans.

And I’m sure I’m not alone here. Am I right?

“What some people achieve in a year, others achieve in a day”

Down the years I’ve been lucky though…

I’ve been exposed to some extra-ordinary self-development and that accumulated knowledge, as I’ve embraced it into my everyday life, is paying off.

During the last 8 weeks of 2011 I spent my spare time daydreaming and wondering what was really important to me for 2012. Then I measured it against questions about happiness, the payment I’d give to get what I want, my ability to focus and willingness to commit.

What that means is that more than ever I can stamp some real authority on the moments when I act in line with my vision for 2012.

What this means is that more than ever, I can take big stride in short bursts.

But here’s the truth…

We all get stuck sometimes…

Things happen…

The vision gets blurred. Our purpose gets lost. Our belief and confidence withers. The way forward fades.

But does that mean we’re done here?

Does it mean our purpose in life is complete?

Does that mean we can now let go and allow life drift by?

“Is your purpose complete? Not if you are still breathing”

So here’s some questions…

Where are you stuck?

Are you stuck with the vision? Do you know what you want with clarity? If you don’t have a vision you are destined to drift and be at the mercy of people who have clarity.

Are you stuck with your purpose? Do you know what matters to you in life? Do you know why you are here? If you don’t know life can feel meaningless and your days will drift by.

Are you stuck on the strategy? If you know what you want and you have a purpose are you able to move forward or do you find you are still getting lost and distracted and unable to focus? It’s frustrating to be so close to your goal that you can visualise it, but yet so far away because you just can’t seem to get started.

Are you stuck with your self-belief? This is true for so many. Many know what they want, but because they have never achieved it before, or because of a tough time in life, they find it hard to confidently take the first steps and to believe in it can happen.

So look, if 2012 isn’t shaping up quite how you want it, or you’re finding that this year is very much like the last and you want it to be different, I want to hear from you…

put your answer to these questions below:

1. In 10 words or less tell me where you are stuck – is it knowing what you want, purpose, belief or the how to get it?
2. In 10 words or less tell me what you want (if you know it)
3. In 20 words or less tell me what you would give to get what you want in 2012 – how much time, how much money, what you would be prepared to give up to get what matters to you.

Because we’ve networked with so many great teachers over the last decade and been exposed to so many great teachings we can often recommend resources, books, workshops, teachers and coaches on specific areas – some of the best around!

We also have our own resources and if they are appropriate we’ll point them out to you too.

What we’re saying here isn’t: “Do you want life to be happy and fulfilled.”

What we are saying is: “When do you want it to be happy and fulfilled”.

We cover a range of resources and we’re here to serve you.  Tell us what you need and let us share those resources with you so this year can be your best yet.

Just comment below in the 40 words or less suggested above (and please respect the wording request – the more specific you are about what you need the easier it is for us to help).

Best wishes

Neil

When my daughter came home from school and told me she had been arguing with two children over how they receive pocket money I was shocked…

In the previous 90 days my daughter had saved over £100 of EARNINGS, bought herself a Ninetendo WII and learnt about setting goals and overcoming setbacks. She was proud of her achievement and rightly so.

But let’s go back to the start…

All kids need motivating and it’s our job as a parent to inspire that in them. As a practical parent I’m tuned in to what my children are looking for next. And when I noticed my daughter wanting more money I latched onto it.

We spoke about why she wanted money. We spoke about money values – saving, investing, spending and most importantly, earning.

Of course I deliberately dwelt on the “earning”, because this is the key for teaching children about money.

If we give kids handouts for doing nothing, they learn to take handouts and we teach them to “Get something for nothing” and this is just not teaching them how to be successful in the real world.

There are many stories of self-made millionaires who had a strong work ethic from very young. They instinctively learn how to make and manage money and are years ahead of the kids who wait until 16-22 years old before they enter the world of making money.

At 10 my daughter noticed her fellow students fancied her cake at lunchtime. So bought the whole cake for £1 and then sold it for £1 a slice, so she made £10 out of £1.

But that was before we sat down to talk about how she could make more money…

She asked me, “Dad what can I do at home to get more money?”

“What do you want more money for?” I asked.

“A WII,” she replied.

This was cool. She knew what she wanted and she was prepared to work for it.

She offered to cook. I said, “No I like cooking. I wouldn’t be prepared to pay you for doing something I love doing.”

“What about gardening?”

“I like that too?”

“Okay what don’t you like doing?”

I didn’t need to think about that. “Cleaning the house. Cleaning the car. Ironing…”

“Okay. I’ll clean the house.”

Done. We agreed on the amount. I then helped her set a goal – how much she needed to earn each week, to get her WII in 90 days. It was then that she realized that she needed to earn some extra money.

But that wasn’t a problem.

She got on the phone to her gran-parents and started to discuss what they didn’t like doing and would be prepared to pay her to do.

There are some huge benefits in having your kids earn their pocket money over giving them weekly handouts for doing nothing and that that’s where the argument with friends at the school comes in…

Her friends think it’s terrible that she works for her pocket money…

But she doesn’t…

You see my daughter knows that over the next year, through working for her pocket money she will be 6 times richer than her friends in money terms by the end of this year.

But there is something more important than money at work here – think appreciation, life values and morals…

While her friends spend all their money on sweets, my daughter knows how many hours she works to make her money, so she isn’t prepared to let it all slip through her fingers on things that give her no lasting pleasure.

She is already wise to the difference in how people spend and invest their money… while she invests £1 in one cake, her friends spend £10 to get theirs.

With my help she is investing 50% of the money she is making and letting it grow with compound interest, so while she is learning at school, having all her needs taken care of by parents, 50% what she earns is growing day-by-day.

From my point of view I’m not just teaching her about money, I’m leveraging my own…

When I pay her for doing a job, and she earns the money, which I may have paid a cleaner to do, the money stays in our family. I now don’t pay the cleaner, but pay my daughter. Because I pay my daughter, she doesn’t come to me for all the things she wants, but doesn’t have the money for. When she wants something she saves and she buys.

What he said still doesn’t resonate…

It feels wrong.

As I mull it over it feels a bit like an abusive father bad-mouthing his sons in order to look good in front of the rest of the family.

At least that’s how I view Prime Minister, David Cameron saying our society is “sick”.

Recently I was watching th

e movie Invictus, in which when asked about his family, Morgan Freeman (playing nelson Mandela) referred to the people he represented as his family.

I liked that. It sounded like a benevolent father with a deep care for his children and who wouldn’t put derogatory labels on them. It sounded like he wanted to nurture them so they could thrive.

Give them good names to live up to

If I called one of my children an “idiot” would it make them behave like a genius? Most likely not.

In his best-selling personal development book, Dale Carnigie suggests if you give a dog a good name by saying nice things about them, it gives them a reputation to live up to.

As a father (two of my own kids and a step parent to two others for 5 years) I’ve always found that more is achieved through praise and encouragement than by criticising

and making them feel bad about themselves.

When I complain about what they’ve done wrong, I fail to give them a standard to aim for. When I look past the wrong doings and just tell them the behaviour I expect, I immediately give them a chance to live up to my expectation.

On which note I want to say what I’d like from David Cameron and all the other politicians…

I want them to become leaders who inspire our nation to be great again and to never run down any member or part of our society in any way.

How we do anything is how we do everything

As a nation we are as strong as our weakest links. Our most vulnerable are our children, the elderly, people who fought for our country and who survived only to suffer illness as a result, the homeless, the ill and the lawless.

People are what our culture has created. The majority of people in our nation are functioning adults, able to work, parent and be good citizens. We had at the very least reasonable role models.

When I was growing up I felt a shift in our culture during the 80’s. As the unions were beaten, people power was broken. I remember banks, the Post Office, and centralised institutions being sold off. The reason behind it all was to create competition leading to better standards and fairer pricing.

Has that happened?

I’m sure you could argue yes.

But has it made us a better nation?

It seems we have a culture where the wealthy get rewarded for their bad behaviour while the poor get punished

It seems that privatising our central businesses has led to a drive to create more profit for shareholders and it seems to have widened a gap between the ordinary people and the wealthy.

Lately ordinary people have become a bit peeved. They see no accountability from the leaders of our country: banks being bailed out, the wealthy being paid off and rewarded after their mistakes and the poorest members of our society being hurt by cuts in benefits.

It seems we have a culture where the wealthy get rewarded for their bad behaviour while the poor get punished.

Do you agree, as a society we need to change this?

Are you frustrated with things happening in our country?

Our recent riots happened because, in Britain, we have grown an atmosphere where riots express the anger bubbling under the surface. People have no purpose. It starts in school when you wonder about algebra and how it informs the rest of your life. When you leave school there is no purpose laid out for us, except what we see our parents and others do: work, earn money, buy a house, have a relationship..

But inside, so many people lack fulfilment.

One of our drives as a business is to help people discover their purpose and we’ve put together an informative web page where you can begin Finding Life’s Purpose.

Referring to our fellow citizens as “sick” doesn’t make them happier. It doesn’t encourage them to feel better. It makes them look for how else to be sick. In the words of Martin Luther King, “Riots are the language of the unheard.”

I wish our leadership had said, “I know the people in Britain are great. I know today communities will start to pull together, they’ll get brooms in their hands and work together to put this right. I know people who rioted know it wasn’t right. I know some will have the courage to return goods they stole and to work with their neighbours to put right their towns. I know that there is a lot that is not right with our culture today, because that is what people express when they riot. So let’s work together and find the solutions.”

If our leadership had said this, some of the goods would have been returned and some of the people who rioted would have been part of the solution in putting things right – because some would have known what they did wasn’t right and they wouldn’t have then continued to riot for the rest of the week.

They would have realised that when they hurt their communities, they hurt themselves.

Do we have double standards?

I was watching the inspiring movie Freedom Writers recently. This is a true story in which teacher Erin Grunwell helps change the lives of her class. She comes up against some opposition to her methods from a deputy head teacher who feels she is rewarding badly behaved children by buying them books and giving them opportunites.

What stood out for me in this humbling movie was that Grunwell was not so much rewarding bad behaviour as giving children hope, opportunity and resources and showing them someone believed in them – fundamentals any child needs to thrive.

The fundamentals Grunwell gave her pupils were fundamentals you would hope all children would be given from the start. But sadly they seem to be missing in our western culture.

Police and Courts punishing rioters and the Prime Minister calling our society “sick” will not change anything substantially. What will change our society is changing the culture that breeds the anger and unrest that leads to riots.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmo8DG1gno4&feature=share

What do you think?

Love to hear your comments.

Information products, sold on-line or via your website, provide another income source for your business and this is really useful for those of you who already have clients and who want to develop another income stream that doesn’t require a lot of management.

What this allows you to do then is earn more money and help more people, or help people in a deeper way, than you can currently do, without you needing to be there to deliver it.

For those of you, who are starting out, or who are not yet earning what you want to earn, creating info products are a great way to give your clients a way to learn more about you, and this can supplement the other income you make from elsewhere.

I know that a number of people are ready to create information products that can be downloaded, but they are challenged by how to make these quickly enough and within a budget.

Also, there are a number of people who have already started creating products and are coming up against… what I see as… fairly typical issues.

Others have a stream of income which is growing, but you can see that you are just selling your time for money and in order for you to work less and earn more, you need to create products that you can sell on-line, so you create additional income, without using any time beyond what it takes to make and market the product.

So it’s clear there are lots of reasons to create product and sell them via a website or blog. The question is: how?

So here are a few quick tips:
1. Do not use a web designer or even marketing experts for this, but instead invest in someone who knows how to do this already and does it for a living
2. Make sure you use marketing systems that support your goals – don’t be cheap, invest in what you need
3. Reuse things you have already created where you can, but use them in inventive ways that make your new products a cut above the rest
4. When creating new products, try to create them from a talk or tele-seminar or webinar, rather than booking special time for it.

I hope that helps get you started

Good wishes
Neil
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In this article I’m about to give you the 7 essentials of writing good marketing copy. Every page where you want to sell something or even offer a free gift will need these elements to encourage people to take advantage of your offer.

If you miss any one of these 7 essentials out from your copy you will seriously reduce the effectiveness of your copy.

1.    Title – this has to make a promise about what you’ll deliver and it must speak to your audience – so an audience we were speaking to on one of our web pages wanted more money and they wanted to make a difference in the world and they wanted to start doing that right now… and this is something we can deliver, so our title reflected all of those things.

2.    Sub-title – the subtitle builds on the title, it build the picture and gives just a little more of the critical information that might attract someone to read on.

3.    Rapport/Credibility piece –  I know the people I wanted to attract to a  programme I was launching wanted to attract clients rather than “win” clients. I know they are interested in “flow” rather than being “motivated” and I know they wanted me to show them the “how-to”. So I used their language to build instant rapport and credibility.

4.    We then need to get the benefits across quickly and we do this through a bullet point listed benefits. When your benefits create curiosity, they tend to work better, than when you just state something as a fact.

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

6.    A call to action – this is about telling them what to do next. If you leave this out, it will seriously hurt your results.

7.    Contact details (either get theirs or give yours or both)

I want to mention that what I have covered here are just 7 essentials… These are just the basics.

Good wishes
Neil

p.s A great resource for something in more depth is my Insiders Secrets programme. Read about it here: http://www.communitysoulbusiness.com/insiderssecrets/

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What other essentials do you think are needed for great marketing copy?  Would love your thoughts on this blog. Leave a comment below.

In life you either get what you want or you get experiences of failing to have what you want. Life is that simple.

Why is that?

When we say we want something and then don’t do what needs to be done, our behaviour isn’t supporting our intention.

Interestingly our behaviour will always align to what we most want or to our fears about what we most want. What do I mean?

What I mean is when we really want something, our behaviour will align to it or to our anxieties about making the transformation.

So some people may currently have a contradiction between what they say they want and what they do to get it.

When we decide what we want, we create a resonance. That resonance can still include resistance or fear. Only when the resistance or fear is overcome we can achieve what we most want.

And it’s no different to where any of us are now. We have a choice to make our life or the world a better place by taking the steps to do that or to accept the status quo.

What makes the change is gentle action… loving action… spirited action… that keeps us on purpose and helps us be all we can be. And that doesn’t mean ignoring a fear, it means understanding it… accepting it… and working with it.

Fear doesn’t have to stop you. It can propel you!

We resonate with what we want when we make accepting second best a thing of the past. We resonate with what we want when we stop making excuses. We resonate with what we want if we accept our responsibility for everything we do and everything we are.

Contrast that with accepting second best… making excuses… not accepting responsibility… there is immediately a different resonance isn’t there?

Can you feel it?

If you are not currently getting what you want, look at where you accept second best, where you make excuses and where you might not be taking responsibility.

Lots of love and good wishes
Neil

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit. Visit his website at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk

When you gain a new customer or client what journey are you taking them on?

Let’s say you are selling to a business. So the journey you might take a client on is that you might offer the client a service that saves them time. Because you save them time, they now have more time. They might reinvest that time in a number of ways… to innovate in their business, to set up a charity,  to have more time with their family. Because you have saved them time, they have the potential to increase their income, give back or spend more time with their spouse and kids.

A recent personal example I can give you is what one of our web guys did for me. Recently I asked one of our team to do a job for us. It was a job I could have done, but I know it’s something he is niched in.

Because I thought of him and knew clearly what he could do, I was able to give him the work. That left me the time to think about one of our other services and how I improve that. What happened was I was able to reduce the few hours per week Jo puts into that project.

The result was Jo now has more time to spend working with her clients, created more space to make a bigger difference to our clients, which increases our income which means we can again make a bigger difference… and it also represented income for us of over £4300. So when the web guy sends me a bill for $60, around £45, do you think I’m happy?

Another journey you might take a client on is making them money. As someone who mentors businesses on making a difference and a profit, I know that when I work with someone and they follow the steps I give them, they will increase their income.

But I also know increasing their income is just part of the journey. This is true because income is so closely related to what the business owner thinks about money and how they feel about making more.

Sometimes someone needs to increase their income to sustain their family, but they don’t feel comfortable asking for money or closing a sale. So, I know when I work with someone to increase their income, they will go through many things.

As our income shot up, I hit a barrier. And I had to adjust my thoughts to go beyond it. I had to adjust my thought process to avoid self-sabotage and it was an interesting time of self-discovery where I had to really come back to the reasons why I do what I do.

A lovely appreciation to have  as you go about your week is that as you evolve, your clients and customers evolve. And as they evolve, so do you. You’re in it together!

Best Wishes
Neil

Neil Fellowes shows conscious entrepreneurs, coaches, consultants and complementary therapists how to make a difference AND a profit. Visit his website at http://www.communitysoul.co.uk