You Vs. One Red Paperclip

You Vs. One Red Paperclip

How does it make you feel knowing that one red paperclip is worth more than you earn all year? Confused? Angry? Bitter? Don’t feel so bad. Only paperclips that are used to their fullest potential reach that level of worth. This particular paperclip was the beneficiary of the Canadian blogger Kyle MacDonald. Kyle wanted to trade his paperclip for something better and was intrigued to see how much he could end up with after starting with just one paperclip. 14 trades and almost a year later he had turned the one red paperclip into a house!

While this may sound outlandish to most, just think about how the likes of the much maligned and envied Bill Gates and Warren Buffet got their start. They didn’t start with much, but they used what they had to their fullest advantage and transformed it into great wealth. Now most of us never even dream of this kind of success, it seems so unattainable, why even bother. But then again most paperclips aren’t considered to be worth much either.

Just as it is traditional for paperclips to be worth very little, it is traditional that most people are valued very little as evidenced by what they are paid by employers. In this case, employees trade their time and education for money.

At first, having very little of value to businesses, future employees trade their time and money for education. As they become educated and more valued by society and businesses, new employees trade that education and experience for a little money (and sometimes no money). Finally, employees have enough experience and education to trade for enough money to support themselves and their families.

For the most part, this system works. Employees are happy because they can buy things that they need and want and businesses are happy because they are able to provide the goods and services that the market demands while still making a profit.

Reading the story about the paperclip made me stop and think. If Kyle could trade a paperclip for a house with a little work and creativity, what am I trading my time and effort for? If a paperclip has the potential to be worth a house within a year then most people are selling themselves short. Way short!

Kinda puts things into a different perspective, doesn’t it?

So now that you know what one red paperclip can be worth in the hands of an enterprising young man (or woman), how are you going to treat yourself? Have any bigger ideas than you may be experiencing right now?

For me, my red paperclip idea was that I could trade my time on my own terms. That I didn’t have to just trade it to the highest bidder in the traditional job market. That is how I found my current business. One that I love and that has let me spend time with my family while providing us with a an income that before we could only dream about.

It took a little effort to achieve this and at times it wasn’t easy, but then again nothing worth achieving isn’t always easy. It all started with the idea that we were worth more than what we were currently trading ourselves for, just like the little red paperclip.

Your Tests are Different, so NO Cheating!

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Your Tests are Different, so NO Cheating!

How often do you find yourself looking at someone else and just wishing that you had it as well as they did? I know that I have in the past. It is only natural, at least that is what I’ve been reassured of in the past. But the more that I think about it, I’m not so sure that I buy into it.

A typical dreaded Scantron test

Have you ever taken one of those standardized, Scantron tests with the number 2 pencil where you fill in the bubble of the corresponding answer? I always thought that those would be the easiest to cheat off of because you didn’t really have to see the other person’s test. You could just glance and get the general ‘shape’ of the answers as they fell down the Scantron sheet. This was all fine and good until some bright teacher decided to make all of the tests different, so even if you were ‘just stretching’ and glanced at someone else’s paper, it wouldn’t matter. It was a different test!

It seems that once we graduate from school we think that the testing phase of our life is over, so we joyously start to compare our test sheets with everyone that we meet – what kind of car we drive, where we live, what is our job title, how fast have we reached a certain milestone, are we married or in a stable relationship? The list goes on. Now honestly have you ever peaked at someone else’s score card and thought “Wow, they have all the right answers! Maybe I’ll just copy what they have…” The problem is that you have a different score card so their answers won’t work for you. You need to find the answers for yourself.

I realized this today while I was running. I was doing a test of my own, a 5k time trial just to see where I was. Since school I have gotten over my fear and loathing of tests. I now enjoy testing myself. I set a goal for myself, a test if you will, to see if by January 1st, 2010 I can run a 10k (6 miles) in 42 minutes even. This is a 7 minute pace per mile. Now to some who run a lot, this pace may seem pedestrian while to others it may be a lifetime PR. But that is just it, each of us has a different test that we are taking. Some athletes may be really good at running. It takes them only minimal energy and effort to fly down the road, making it look mockingly easy. But that same athlete may never be able to lift their body weight off the ground, much less throw it up over their heads as some Olympic lifters do with ease.

As I started my business, I was constantly stuck in the rut of comparing my results with others that had come before me. I saw that they were getting results and since I was just starting out I tried to do the same things that they were doing and having success with. The only problem was that I wasn’t having the same sort of success that they had. I couldn’t figure this out for the longest time, but I finally started to realize that maybe, just maybe, I needed to figure out what worked for me instead of what worked for other people. I had fallen into the trap of trying to copy someone else’s test instead of focusing on my own.

We all have our own tests and trying to look at someone else’s answers only takes your eyes off of your test. So pick up your pencils. Heads down. The person sitting next to you has a different test so there is no use looking. You may begin.

Heads down and (their own) goals in sight!

YOU as an Entrepreneur

Sales people and entrepreneurs are generally the highest paid professionals. Why is that? Because they have taken risks to get rewards. Most people shy away from these professions. Why, if they offer the greatest rewards do people not want to participate and have the same rewards for themselves? Because the reward isn’t guaranteed. There is no lag and there are no safety nets. If your work doesn’t produce results, then you don’t get a reward, and the only person you can point your finger at, is the one who looks back at you in the mirror. Pretty scary for most people. Others thrive in this system and reap the huge rewards. In truth we are all sales people and entrepreneurs, we just don’t realize it.

Think about that for a second. You are a sales person and you always have been. It is as natural as breathing. When you were a kid, you sold your parents on getting you candy, going to the movies, getting you the shoes that your favorite basketball star wears. You sold your friends on who to invite to the party. You sold your girlfriend/boyfriend on going out with you. When you got a job, you sold your boss on hiring you and you’ll sell him/her again to give you that promotion that you deserve. You have sold yourself to where you are today. The results that you have are those you have earned.

Are you happy with the results that you have? If not, who do you need to sell to improve them? I would say that you first need to sell yourself that you are worth those better results. This brings us to entrepreneurism. The managing of the big picture.

Who are you spending your time with? What keeps you from sleeping at night? What do you watch on TV? What do you spend your money on? All of these decisions are being managed by you. You have control over all of them. Throughout your entire life you have managed your circumstances to get the best results that you could. While the selling may be the day to day decisions, even when they are big, being an entrepreneur is the lifelong mentality that one needs to cultivate to be successful. The results that you are getting are directly tied to these decisions. Want better results? Change your decisions. Change your limits and change your desires!

If life is all about these small decisions, then changing your life is just a thought away.

Now that you know that your results are directly tied to the decisions that you make, what are you going to do with that power? I would challenge you to buy stock in your own success. Learn a new language, start a business, spend more time reading and learning than listening and judging. By making conscious decisions to change the way that you think about how you are living, you will find yourself more engaged in life. And after you figure out how easy success can be, help someone else create that kind of success as well!

To find out about how I was able to turn my life around and take back control, you can visit my website. You can also contact me directly using the contact information at the bottom of this post.

Who Moved My Cheese? (Marketing)

What is eating your cheese?

Everyone has had one of these moments. You think that everything is going along great and then the next minute you are faced with a decision. Your “cheese” isn’t where it was a minute ago. What happened to it? Where did it go? I often have this discussion with my wife who usually says “It is where you left it!” She is always right. ALWAYS.

But sometimes I have to figure it out for myself. We recently started a business and I was tasked with marketing. A role that I felt pretty comfortable in since I have been doing online and offline advertising for almost the last decade. Being new to the business I first started to ask other successful people in our business what had been working for them. Almost without fail everyone pointed to Craigslist as the cheapest, most effective form of marketing out there. It is simple to use, free (most of the time) and creates massive amounts of leads. Perfect. That hit on all of our hot spots.

True to their word, Craigslist did produce great results. The results were so great in fact that we started to neglect the other forms of advertising that we had been doing. No worries though as Craigslist was pulling almost double the leads that we were getting from our other 4 sources.

Yeah, no worries until Craigslist started to crack down on spammers. Now I’ve talked to a a lot of people about their experiences with Craigslist. Many of them are experiencing the same difficulties as we have and are scrambling to find ways around them. Others are still cruising, pulling in an amount of leads that the rest of us just can’t understand. And here is where the leaders are separated from the followers. The deciding factor comes down to two decisions.

First, you get what you attract. A lot of marketers look at this as a numbers game. How many leads can I get or do I need to get in order to make the amount of money that I want. This kind of mentality invariably results in an attitude of more is better and a lot of it will be junk. It is my job to sift through it to find the gems. Ok, nothing really wrong with that, but it does force you to shoot for a large number of leads consistently. Without that number of leads to pull from you are left with, well, less. You come and the whole problem from a state of lack. You need leads because you don’t have enough or there aren’t enough good people out there.

Secondly, what are you going to do now that you are faced with a challenge. Many marketers have taken to the internet to find answers around their latest roadblock. They are trying to get to the same cheese so they are trying to climb over whatever is blocking them. But what if the cheese has been moved and it isn’t there anymore?

Google

It wasn’t too long ago that Google was the Craigslist of today. Thousands of businesses and individuals were rushing to get their slice of the Google pie. As the system matured costs went up and and a lot of the smaller businesses were pushed out. Not to mention that Google changed the game ever couple of months so that companies that had figured it out were suddenly not at the top of the results anymore. Just something as simple as that had HUGE effects on people’s businesses. This was especially troublesome when companies relied solely on Google as their main source of advertising. The companies that were able to adapt, say the smaller ones that couldn’t keep up or learned to deal with less from Google, are the ones that are still around today.

So, back to Craigslist. Craigslist moved my cheese. I needed to figure out what to do about it. I can either keep trying to make Craigslist work or I can make a decision and focus my attention on other forms of marketing. I have decided to do other forms of marketing that I hadn’t tried before and to go back to some other forms that I hadn’t been doing recently. Will I eventually come back to Craigslist. Probably. But for now I’m confident with the lesson that I’ve learned that I need to be exploring the other hallways that have cheese that is just waiting to be discovered.