Clinton Skakun

As far as I can remember I’ve had a strong curiosity to know how things worked. Growing up I’d constantly tair things apart, until one day I figured out that it costs too much. Entrepreneurs love to build business systems, they don’t often have to bother with small details. Once the entrepreneur has mastered his own skills, and his mind, his work becomes very simple. Not easy … but simple. Something we all learn eventually is that the person who knows how to create a simple life, and still get everything he wants, is paid more than the multitasking yes-man who micromanages everything. The more technical a job is, the more average the pay. Even a technical consultant gets paid more for teaching others how to do their work than he does working him self.

You don’t need to know what you don’t need

If you ask someone to spent four years of their life in college will tell you it was a “great learning experience” but they never learned anything about on the job activities. In other words it got them a job with a yearly salary of 36K, barely enough to pay bills and rent/mortgage never mind other little things that add up…oh and student loans. If you don’t need to know something, don’t muck up your brain. Time is too important. For example, the other day I was installing Kubuntu on a computer for one of the people I serve, and a screen came up asking which processor we use. I didn’t know … so what did I do…take a crash course on computer processors? Hell no…all I did was Google it…it took a max of 3 minutes. No degree needed. No college experience needed…maybe I can spend those 4 years building wealth so I can sun tan while everyone else is still looking for a job.

Challenge old ways of thinking and learn new ways

Why do old companies die, old people live in the past and old habits die hard? This is why…they’re all based on the past! What worked back then wont work now days. Lately, the world has had a habit of rearanging itself every few years. If you stick to your outdated way of thinking you’ll get rearranged out of a job. Don’t pre-suppose that just because something has been done the same for decades or cenuries that it’s been proven. It may been been proven 40 years ago but might not make any sense now days.

Learn Timeless Principles

There are laws that dictate time and space, there are also laws that dictate our finances, our business, what we do subconsciously, the friends we make and the person we become. Timeless principles don’t change with time but rather prove themselves with time. Make it a habit to get curious about life and learn principles that dicatate life. This way, whether you’re in a down economy or the horse and buggy age you’ll know more about life than the people who study the markets, or stay stuck in practices that were rendered ineffective years ago. Principles are more important in an age where things can change over night than in any other age.

Learn how to speed seduce life

Who makes the most money in a free enterprise system? People who know how to leverage resources, money and time to serve them. These are the entrepreneurs, leaders, CEOs, salespeople, connectors and inventors. In all my reading and learning I constantly look for ways to leverage. How can I leverage time? How can I leverage one spending habit or one working habit that makes a long term difference on my income? Even learning is leveraging. Because if you’re constantly learning to leverage everything, you’re leveraging your life. People who rely purely on conventional wisdom stay at the bottom of the bin.

Conclusion

So again, don’t spend time learning what you don’t need to know. There are very few wealthy PHds, so that should tell you something. Challenge old ways of thinking and learn new ways, the past is the enemy of the future. The past is gone so prepare for the future, all your hope is in it. Learn Timeless Principles…practices are great but even practices go out of date. And finally, learn how to speed seduce and leverage life and use the latest human and computer technologies to simplify and streamline various aspects of your life.

What determines the shoulds vs. musts in your life? Why do you put up with garbage in one area of life but refuse it in another? Why are there people who have every reason to make something of themselves yet go no where, while there are people who have every excuse, every reason not to, yet still somehow make it?

We could say that the difference is in their mind-set, the goals they set and so on. All this makes a difference. However the biggest difference is the standards people set for themselves. Standards play a massive role in success. We don’t always get our goals, but we always live up to our standards. Standards are musts. Some people’s musts are to provide for their family, and other’s might be, not only to be a provider, but to build wealth for generations to come. What people really mean when they say, “I have to” is that it’s a standard they’ve set for themselves and anything lower means massive pain.

When I started recognizing this I started setting looking at what I did differently. Before the fact I was purely a possibility person. I didn’t have enough musts but I had a lot of shoulds, and there’s a world of difference. See most middle-class people’s musts are “pay the bills, save for retirement, provide for family, spend a few quality hours a day with kids.” The difference between the middle-class and the world-class, is not only that they think differently, but that they set higher standards. See before my mentality was, “all I NEED is enough to get by, but I WANT to be wealthy.” What’s the problem here? Income was only a should, and as a result, I was broke. After setting a high income as a must, things changed over night.

“The middle-class’s shoulds are the world-class’s musts!” – Clinton Skakun

To get a clearer picture about this let me give you a classic example: If you work a job, and work morning shifts, chances are you set your alarm early. Has there ever been a time when you woke up 5 minutes before you had to be somewhere. Did you lay there and try to convince yourself to get up? No…you probably panicked and jumped out of bed, ran to get dressed and ran out the door. Getting to work on time was a must for you and for a few reasons(mad boss, work ethic, etc). Now what happens on a day where you “should” get out of bed? You reach over and hit “snooze” and then wake up two hours later. What would you do if you knew that at 8:00am your bed was going to burst into flames? You’d probably get up before your alarm went off, now that hitting “snooze” might mean death! Now if staying alive isn’t a must for you, I don’t know what is.

“You don’t use your full capabilities, you only rise to your personal standards.” – Clinton Skakun

So what’s the real difference between a must and a should? Well, a must is something that you must do to be who you are…your identity. Why do people have trouble quitting smoking? Because usually they just focus on behavior, or cravings…but in their gut they still view themselves as a “smoker.” As long as they see themselves as a smoker, changing behavior will be extremely painful and they’ll keep coming back. Why? Because we always act consistent with our identity. But if you smoke a few cigarettes, and you say, “I’m not this type of person! I’m not a smoker!” then you will most likely take action to stop smoking, because of your subconscious need to stay consistent with your identity. People stay consistent with their identities whether their identities are negative or not. The labels you hold to yourself, will mean you will have to act in consistency with those labels. Have you ever believed that you’re “stupid”, “not a hard worker”, “someone who can never get a hot girl on a date”, “not tech savy”? You see … it’s not apart of your capabilities, it’s apart of your identity. I’ll give you an example: most, if not everyone, is capable of murder, but not everyone murders. Why not? Why wouldn’t you murder someone? You might say, “Well, I’m just not that type of person, I’d never do that.” It’s not apart of your identity, you don’t view yourself as a murderer, and so you don’t think or act like a murderer. The amazing thing is that you can change your identity by giving yourself different labels through, for instance, the roles you play in life(e.g. “I’m a scientist”), your emotions(e.g. “I’m mostly a happy person”), your talents(e.g. “I’m great at computers”) and so on and so forth. The thing to remember is, we act on who we feel we are in our gut. That has to be a gut level change, not just an intellectual one.

“Our identity can be grafted to allow us fuller access to our capabilities. If you don’t choose your own identity, someone else will, and your life will be colored by someone else, not you.” – Clinton Skakun

Here’s some action steps for you to take: find out which areas of your life are suffering because your standards are just too low. It could be anywhere in your life from how you spend your time to how you spend your money. Set new standards, throw away your shoulds. Quit “shoulding” all over your self! Saying, “I could/should be making $10k a month where I work but…” is completely different then “I’m going to make $10k this month if it takes 10 hours a day or 20 hours a day.” What happened if you had a son who needed surgery, and he only had 2 months to live, would you sit around and say, “well you know I should try to get him into surgery but I just don’t have enough time this week” Are you kidding? You’d search all over the world for a surgeon would could perform the operation, you’d even take out a loan, even if you had to re-mortgage your house, to get this surgery done! It wouldn’t be a should, it would be an absolute must! Isn’t that true? So what standards have you set in your life? For me, mediocrity was living way below my standard. Financial independence is a must, and even though I’m not there yet, I work towards it constantly. Because a picture of me at 50 years old, working a regular job is the worst kind of pain imaginable. Why is that so bad? Because I won’t be able to take care of my parents, I won’t be able to provide for my future family in a way that meet my standards(there’s that work again) and all those possibilities will be out of my reach. It’s all in what standards you set for yourself. Because, you always live up to your standards, not always your goals. Set big goals, and then set high standards to meet them. So, who are you? A few questions to ask yourself.

“You must demand more of yourself than anyone else could ever ask of you.” – Clinton Skakun

Please read this post a few times. In my opinion this is one of the most important blog posts I’ve ever written. Your life doesn’t get really juicy until you start demanding more from yourself. And you start at your identity and the standards you set for yourself. Why you do anything else really depends on who you are.

Photos by See Gee

Let’s talk about what you do for a living. Probably the most important state you can be in when “holding out” for your business or job is one of absolute certainty, coming from a place of conviction for what you do. The reason I say this because until you do … you’ll never give 150% of yourself and you’ll never feel as fulfilled as you could have. And for many of us, there’s nothing worse than being closer to being more mediocre than you have to be. If you don’t feel, in your gut and not just in your head, that what you do is 100% right … for YOU and right for the people you serve, you’ll always be constrained.

If you don’t have absolute conviction, or at least be in the process of developing that conviction, about what it is you do … you have NO business doing what you do. If you’re not convinced that what you do is 100% right for you, QUIT and go do something that is. Something that you dream about, can’t stop talking about and are completely passionate about and that shows through your voice when you speak. A person I highly respect and look up to said that, “Conviction is the most valuable state that you can transfer to your prospect.” Prospects don’t “get sold” on products, they “get sold” on states. Your enthusiasm is catching and one of the strongest mental and emotional states you can have, besides maybe love. Enthusiasm comes after you fall in love with your career, after you commit yourself whole heartedly to what you do.

Tony Robbins, probably an author who has the most impact on the basis of my thinking, says in his tapes, seminars and books that when you are approaching/meeting with/speaking to a prospect you need to work yourself into a frenzy of strong conviction so that no matter what objections, excuses, questions or negative statements the prospect throws at you … you have complete certainty that you will be able to reach from within and handle them in the most certain and persuasive way possible. Because if you’re not convinced, it will be even harder to convince your prospect. And you do this by being totally congruent in your words, thoughts, tone of voice, body language, mental state and actions. Enthusiasm is the most “catching” emotion, people will often listen to you purely because of the level of enthusiasm you display! Robbins also stresses many times that, if there’s rapport, the person who is most certain in themselves will influence the other person or people. Who is the most certain? The person who has the most certainty backing them up. Ever notice how the person who makes the most excuses will always be the most submissive? Either that or they get aggressive. Being certain is also about being truthful with yourself.

I’m sure there have been times in your life, and hopefully often, when you were so certain in yourself that it seemed like everyone you came in contact with stepped aside for you and looked up to you. Everything seemed to go in your favor to a certain extent, people were more friendly to you than usual, everything that happened was a blast, even problems seemed fun to handle. … Never confuse confidence or certainty with ego … ego is being a ass hole to cover up for the lack of conviction, the lack of purpose and lack of confidence. In fact when you dig deeper into people who seem to have the biggest ego in the world, you find that they are living a bluff, inside they’re dying and to hide the fact, they cover themselves with what psychologists call “nail polish” to cover up the shit. Egotistical people just haven’t yet understood that beneath the shit, there’s a diamond and the diamond is the true personality. And we often find that the real person under all that ego is much more impressive than their bluff cover up. When you are truly convinced in your own value and the value of your company an what you can do for other people, you don’t need ego, in fact people will look up to you and become attracted to your enthusiasm. You may not be the best looking person in the world, but your certainty in yourself is ten times more attractive because of the self-esteem that’s so rare that it’s often only portrayed by the world class, the most charismatic, the most influential and the most successful.

This is KEY: When “selling yourself” and prospecting(finding people to serve), you must be more certain that the person on the other side of the table needs your product or service than they are that they don’t.—you must be more certain than they are. How many times have you botched a “large deal” because you lacked conviction that this person needs your services more than they think they don’t? Maybe thoughts would have gone through your head like, “this person isn’t interested” or “why would they choose my business when they could XYZ?”

One thing that has caused me to self-sabotage my successes and caused me to blow golden opportunities over and over again is being self conscious about little things like, “what if I don’t know how to answer a question? [or] what if they think I lack credibility because I’m too young? [or] Will they use a fancy ‘business-term’ that I don’t understand and make a fool out of myself? [or] they might detect my nervousness… [or] Hopefully I’m not too causal/too dressed up… [or] what if I pour coffee all over the client’s pants?” These thoughts are as common as they are stupid! Imagine how stupid these kinds of limiting thoughts are! The funny thing is, most people are more nervous talking to YOU than you are talking to them, and usually they don’t have the fancy vocabulary you thought they’d use to trip you up and tare you apart with. Are you well read? Have you had experience? Do you have big dreams and goals? Drive to get there? You may lack a few of these but one thing is critical: YOU MUST HAVE CONVICTION and YOU MUST BE MORE CERTAIN THAN THEY ARE!

What do you do when people think you’re crazy for what you’re doing? Have more certainty that what you’re doing is more valuable than they are certain that you’re nuts. What do you do when your neighbors, parents, friends etc etc tell you to go “get a job”? Responding with a little weak voice like, “well … um .. uh .. you’re w-wrong .. um .. sir.” They’re going to tare you to shreds!

I can’t stress how important this power of being convinced in your own value is. Even animals are convincing when they are certain in themselves. Ever notice how pets, like dogs, pretty much live for food. They believe that food is the ultimate source of pleasure, they don’t have mixed feelings like, “well, what would that cat would think if I eat this slab of meat?” No! They’re fully congruent, they’re body, tiny brain and tone of bark(or meow) is saying, “I’m 100% certain I’ll going to scarf that beef down!” They don’t get bogged down and get mixed feelings about what they want, like humans do. When Tony Robbins was younger he worked for Jim Rohn selling tapes and books. He told the story about how when he started, he had to find someone to loan him the money to get his business going: “I put myself in such a frenzy of conviction that no one could escape my grasp! No one could tell me they couldn’t afford what I was selling. At 17, living in my $900 VW I parked at 7/11, I had found someone who loaned me the money. No 33-year-old could tell me they couldn’t afford what I was selling, even with bad credit. I believed in what I was selling so strongly that I broke every record they ever dreamed of and sold to absolutely everyone I sat down with that month.” (At 19 Tony Robbins was making nearly $10,000 month)

This is the question you need to ask yourself: Am I 100% convinced in what I do? Do I offer real value and do I feel it, not just intellectually, but in my gut as well?

Photo by scottburnham
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford

The word “team”, instead of staff, has become popular among many organizations now days and corporate leaders and entrepreneurs are understanding why teams are important. The days of management and carrot and sticking is slowly but surely coming to an end. It has far outlived its time.

Personal Weaknesses

John C. Maxwell, one of the world’s experts on leadership, says that strong teams compensate for individual weaknesses. Everyone has special strengths and talents. But no matter how talented we are we’ll always have weaknesses. A strong team goes through self-assessment and finds strong points in the their team members. They then coordinate and use these strong points to compensate for members with weaknesses. For example, a web design firm would assign technical tasks to people are gifted in technical areas, presentations would be given by people who are gifted at presenting, design would be given to people who are good at design, etc.

The Power of Leveraged Time

The real power of a successful business probably shows its teeth in the way it leverages OPM, OPT. What do big businesses have that sole proprietors or one-man-shows don’t? They know how to leverage man power! I really got excited about this idea when I first really “saw” and understood what this meant. It’s so simple that the world class seem to be the only ones who want to leverage it.

Take for example you work as a self-employed gardener. In the morning, you need to water the plants, open the store, and set anything else that needs setting up. During the day you have to water the plants, be the cashier etc etc. At night you need to close the place down and do whatever else needs doing. You’re the entrepreneur and the technician, the brains and the labor, the person who makes or breaks your business. But lets say you got tired of standing behind a cash register, so you hire someone to take over that area. Now your business has 32hrs of potential man power(lets say a potential 16hr days at max). With the extra time it gives you, you start getting time to think about innovating your business. You add on a little to the green house and set up for plants. The problem is now you’re working even harder than you did before. So you hire someone to take care of the watering and tending to the plants. That now gives your business a potential 40+ hours in a day. Plant sales are good so you add on even more, hiring two more people to take care of customers and other tasks that need doing. You add another 32 hours to your day, that’s almost 65+ hours in one day. Needless to say, 65 hours per day impossible for one person. That’s the power of leveraging.

24 x 1 = 24hrs (limited cash flow, bus factor of one, if you get hit by a bus your business does to)
24 x 2 = 48hrs (Already impossible for one person)
24 x 5 = 120hrs
24 x 10 = 240hrs
24 x 100 = 2400hrs (is that time management or what?)

Synergy, when the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

When people work together an interesting phenomenon happens. Stephan Covey talks about this in his book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Synergy is a dynamic type of state where 1 + 1 = the power of 3 or 4 or more instead of 2. The word synergy comes from the Greek word syn-ergos, which means to work together. Covey explains it as, “When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” Synergy works in all areas of live, not just business. Synergy works when people work toward a common goal. Take for example a brainstorm session, one person might not have any ideas … until sitting down with another person, then idea begin to flood from both of them as if there were 10 brains brainstorming.

It was like the two brains tapped into a higher form of intelligence and both ended up complimenting and inspiring one another. It wasn’t two brains thinking anymore, it was one super mind. Our minds are wired for communication and when we do so they work like magic.

Interdependence Paradigm

7 Habits of Highly Effective People is one of the best books I’ve ever read on personal development. It’s the basis of much of my thinking and has been for a few years. A powerful lesson I learned from this book is that we’re all interconnected. Stephan Covey considers co-dependence the highest stage of maturity. He explains that the first stage is dependency, we’re born into this world and have to depend heavily on our parents, teachers, etc to survive. Next comes independence, the stage at which we begin to think individual thoughts and depend on our own reasoning instead of seeking advice or support from the people we depended on as we grew up. The final stage is co-dependence, understanding that we all depend on each other and, in some way, we’re all interconnected and if one link in the chain loosens others are there to fix it. Co-dependence often exists in organizations, intimate relationships like dating couples or married people. It exists in communities, government and other such groups. Co-dependency is acknowledging that you alone can’t accomplish anything great alone.

“No one man can accomplish great things alone” – Maynas Eric Chua