The Leadership Framework

In this lesson I am excited to share with you the leadership framework: the three fundamental variables that all high performing exemplary entrepreneurs, leaders and sales professionals have in common. What do these people get control of throughout their day, that really enables them to produce extraordinary results in the moment right now? In other words what specifically are the strategies that these super achievers know and demonstrate in their daily pattern of how they live, how they execute? Not only are they able to get more done in a shorter period of time, but they have this energy, this vibrancy and passion that they transfer and exude to everyone around them. And it drives there life forward to not only succeed, but experience more joy throughout their day. How do these people create and sustain this momentum and progress in their business? They actually take that momentum and then transfer it back into their personal life. That’s what this video will be on, so thanks for tuning in.

Before we dive into this framework and how you can use it to achieve more yourself, I want to ask you a question. Whatever field or line of work you’re in right now, whether in sales or as an entrepreneur running a medium-to-large size business or running a family the most important job on the planet. Is there something in your life right now that you would like to change, achieve or improve and even make better? And just imagine right now as you think about that result, what would it mean to the quality of your life and how you would feel if those results were in your life right now, if you were able to make it happen? Now here is my question for you, do you believe you are capable to achieving it, really believe? You may not know how exactly to go about it strategically, but that’s what this video will show you how to do. But do you believe you were given the God given potential inside to pull it off, yes or no? Absolutely, absolutely and if you doubt yourself, that’s ok, because I have been there. But then we have to ask ourselves this question: in spite of what happened in the past, despite the challenges we might be experiencing right now, are there people out there hundreds, thousands of people who have been able to achieve whatever it is we want? Absolutely, and many of these people, would you agree did not have the resources, skills, talents or capabilities that you and I have. Now here is my question, if they can do it, we can do it too. Of course if we implement the right strategy, and you know what is exciting, not only can we do it, but if we implement the right strategy in a more holistic fashion, which is what this is going to show you how to do, you can accelerate the process of success. In other words, what took somebody two years to do, you can do in actually four to six months; what took somebody three months, you can do it in three weeks. Because, think about this for a moment and I will prove my point, are there people in your industry, in your field right now, that are producing, selling and are even earning ten times more than somebody else in your field? Of course, we see this all the time. Now these people are producing results that are ten times greater, think about this, are they ten times more intelligent, do they have ten times the skills or capabilities? Absolutely not, but they are producing a result that is ten times greater. That is a thousand percent increase. How does this happen? How does a person that isn’t working ten times harder, and they are not ten times more intelligent or have skills and capabilities ten times, produce a result that is ten times greater? And how can you and I increase our personal effectiveness and productivity by ten times? And that is exactly what this framework is going to show us how to do.

I have to tell you, answering these questions and then teaching these kind of strategies to other professionals, that has really driven my career now, for the past fifteen years as a professional speaker, seminar leader, cooperate trainer, business consultant and coach. I know that’s a mouthful but all these things I get and know how to do. One of my real passions is showing people how they can tap more of  their potential inside consistently throughout their day, psychologically, organizationally and strategically, so that they can do more, be more and have the life that they want and deserve. But for me to figure all this stuff out, this did not happen overnight.

A little bit about my story, if you don’t know it, for me to get to the point in my life where I now teach these strategies and frameworks to others.  I had worked for a top corporate trainer for ten years for some of the biggest names and personal professional development, and I really feelt that I was a good student when it came to personal development, success studies and achievement and, in some sense, I was addicted to learning about this stuff.  So, I had all this wealth of information, and I was teaching it to my clients and they were seeing extraordinary results in their professional and personal lives but there were areas of my life that just wasn’t working at the level that they could be and should be. It was plain and simple. It kind of reminded me of a phrase in the bible that says, physician first heal thyself. Because it’s as if I had all these powerful tools that produce all this success and I wasn’t using them on myself in certain areas, and it frustrated me. But, I’ve got to tell you, that the gift that came out of it created a drive, a hunger inside of me to want to understand how to create lasting success and fulfillment, because anybody can change for the moment. Anybody can have a good month financially, anybody can lose a little bit of weight, go on a diet. But then a lot of people gain it back. So what I was interested in was lasting success and achievement and that’s when I had a breakthrough, because, as I recommitted to learning about all of this, learning about science, neuroscience, psychology, neuro-linguistics, selling, persuasion, influence, negotiation, time management, anything that I can get me hands on, I started to see all these branches of knowledge, what they had in common. And how you and I could bring them all together, in a more holistic fashion, to not only achieve but to accelerate the process of achievement. I think the biggest problem that we face today is so many people come up to me and say, I read this book, I took this course I have great ideas but I did not implement them at the level that they could be applied, so I did not get the results that I could have.

Some of you might say, I have increased my sales, increased my revenue, I implemented some tools and strategies but then I went back to my old habits again. Why does this happen? Today in the 21st century I believe we do not have a shortage of information on success and achievement. There are all sorts of tools distinctively, out there, on how to succeed and achieve, but a lot of them tend to be one sided or one dimensional.

The problem you and I face today is that there are these different models that advocate different approaches on success and achievement. You have what I call the motivational model. And that basically says, look if you want to succeed and achieve, all you have to do is get motivated, ramp up your enthusiasm, get emotionally charged, because that emotion is going to drive you to greater level of success. But then you have another model that argues with that model: you can be motivated all day long but you can still behave foolishly, the key to your life is being organized and disciplined, life is happening too fast, you have to separate the relevant from the irrelevant. You have to strategically plan and prioritize to be efficiently effective. But then you have another model that uses that approach that says no, no, you can be organized and planned all day long, and yet you can still live in a place call paralysis by analysis; the key to your life is execution. You have to be skilled and proficient at selling. You have to be able to market to your clients and build high trust relationships, create and keep customers. These are just few of the models.

There is all of these models out there today, there are marketing models, management models and I think, what happens between you and I? We feel somewhat stunned and overwhelmed, asking ourselves the question, what do I do? What is going to get me from point A to Point B in a shortened period of time? What approach do I take? And here is what I found: it is not just one approach. Because our lives are not just about just one thing, they are a series of things. To be specific, it is a series of variables, that when you and I get control of these variables, we can accelerate the process of success and achievement, and it assures that our success will actually last.

So what is this framework and how is it going to work for you and I? So the first thing that we are going to cover today and what this framework is going to teach us is, it is going to clearly reveal to us why somebody succeeds and why somebody fails. And I think that is critical to you and I because, think about it, in this fast pace, busy, hectic society that we live in today, we have constant change and technology and interruption and distractions. If we are in the dark, if we don’t understand what is always going to affect our productivity, does it make sense to you, it is kind of like flying blind. It is very much like you and I, playing a game together and we are trying to win the game but we don’t know what it takes to score. Are you with me on that? But here is what is exciting, once you and I do understand what’s impacting productivity, moment by moment we can put our focus there. And where your focus goes, energy flows and results show. Isn’t that really true? If something’s important to you if it is a priority and you put your attention on it and you focus on it, you are going to move towards it. You are going to feel it and you are going to move towards it.

Now the other thing that I have learned is this: not always but most of the time, if we are not performing at the level that we want, if we are not getting the results that we want or we are not producing as fast as we want, most of the time it is because there are deficiencies within one or all of these variables. So we are going to give you some practical strategies that you can immediately implement within each variable to accelerate your process of success and achievements. By doing this you can really have the business and the quality of life that you deserve and desire, so let’s dive into this framework. I think you are really going to like this.

The first variable in the leadership framework that is always impacting your productivity is your psychology. Think about it, what is it about extraordinary individuals, leaders, these people that we revered, what is it that makes them so extraordinary? I think of great leaders historical leaders like Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr, John F. Kennedy or compassionate leaders, leaders of the heart like mother Theresa, and Gandhi or the late Nelson Mandela; or our brilliant, visionary leaders with great business minds like a Richard Branson, the late great Steve Jobs or Walt Disney or Bill Gates. What gives these people that edge in life? What gives these people the ability to persist and persevere in spite of insurmountable odds and obstacles? It is their psychology. These people are extraordinary thinkers. They have what I call an extraordinary philosophy of life; they have a philosophy of life that allows them to evaluate and interpret experiences in a way, anything that life throws at them, opportunities challenge, obstacles, experiences, problems, in a way that really causes them to feel good, follow through and consistently behave in a way that moves them closer to whatever it is they want. They have learned to master and control their mind, rather than allow their mind control and master them. They expect to succeed more often than they fail. In fact this whole idea of failure means nothing to them. They look on failure as an indispensable process of succeeding. Someone once said if you want to succeed in life, you will have to double your rate of failure.

But when they quote fail, they evaluate it in a very different way. They look at it as a process, where they learned something and they just intelligently picked themselves up again and they pursue and persist in spite of adversity in their mind. In their philosophy, their psychology of life, that vision becomes so compelling and so real and so believable to them that they act on it.

Let me explain my point here, one of the people that I revere not only because he was such a brilliant mind, but he was also an amazing humanitarian, it was Albert Einstein. Obviously Albert Einstein said a lot of things, but one of the quotes that he is really famous for, that really struck a chord with me is he said this:  the most fundamental, profound question that you and I have to answer as people is this, do I live in a friendly or hostile universe. In other words right now is the Universe conspiring to make you successful, or make you a failure? Is life working for you or is it working against you? Are you a lucky person, do you always find a way to pull it off, do you always find a way to have things turn up in your favor? Do you always find a way to come out smelling like a rose? Or are the odds always against you and you always tend to fail. Because I am here to tell you right now, that your answer to those questions, in your gut, is taking your life in a very unique direction. Think about it. Do we have our own unique way of looking at life? Richard Branson, does he always have a very unique way of looking at life? Oprah Winfrey, does she have very unique way of looking at life? Gandhi, did he have a very unique way of looking at life? I have a question for you, can two people experience an opportunity, be presented with the same opportunity, but what they do with this opportunity, is it radically different for these two people, yes or no? Absolutely, one person presents you with an opportunity and then they say to themselves, just think of what I could do? I mean I can build a business, I can make a fortune, I can help my family, I can make a difference, I can live a lavish lifestyle. This is going to be an exciting journey of growth and personal development, and I can’t wait to get started. But somebody else says yeah, but what if I fail? What if it doesn’t work out? I am not smart enough, I am not good enough, I don’t have the time, I don’t have the resources. Here is my question for you, does that one evaluation, based on their life philosophy, take these two people lives in a different direction that ultimately lead to a different destination, yes or no? You better believe it; pay attention to where your evaluations are taking you.

When you think about what you really want right now, physically, financially, spiritually, emotionally, relationships, do you see opportunities right now, or do you see obstacles? Do you see solutions right now, or do you see problems? Because we can think positive all day long, but at the end of the day, its what we see in the real world and what we believe? That’s what shapes our future more than anything else. Do you find that to be accurate? Well I am here to tell you what is shaping that more than anything else, is your learned perceptions, your learned perceptions and that’s been driven by your philosophy if life.

See why is it absolutely critical for you and I to take charge of our mind, for us to renew our mind. Because Einstein said this, he said, you and I can’t solve our problems in life from the same mind that has created them. And, in essence, what he meant is that the level of thinking that has gotten you and I where we are today is fantastic, but for you and I to get to the next level in life, we have to renew our mind. We have to elevate our consciousness; I call this a shift in consciousness, where we literally change our concept of ourselves. Does it make sense? I know you know this, but if we keep doing what we have always done, we are going to get what we have always gotten. And if we keep thinking the same thoughts, we are going to keep taking the same actions, and nothing new is going to happen in our lives. Does that make sense?

Think about it, what is the potential of a human being right now? What is the real potential of a human being right now? What do you think it is? Well here is some science for you: according neuroscience and psychology, the capacity, first of all let me ask you, where does the potential reside? It resides in our mind. And neuro science now shows us that the capacity of the human mind is practically infinite.

Here is some data for you: you have ten to ten to the eleventh power neurological connections in your brain and body. So there is more potential available to you, and thought available to you, emotionally, intellectually, and creatively, than there are stars in the known galaxy, than there is every grain of sand on every beach on the planet. Not only that, but you have been uniquely predisposed, you have genetic propensity to perform at genius Einstein levels, with certain intelligences that are common to the human experience. For example, typical education tests us for math, verbal, arithmetic, reading and writing but today we know that there are different intelligences out there; there is emotional intelligence, there is viseo-spacial intelligence, abstract intelligences, interpersonal intelligences, communicative intelligences, artistic intelligences, and physical intelligences.  You, right now, have an intellectual aptitude to perform at genius intelligences and you may not even know what they are. If you just think of the miracle of who you are right now, just the body. Did you know that right now, inside of your body, it is made up of 100 trillion cells and every single second those cells go through a 100 thousand chemical reactions. Not only that, but every single second you lose ten million cells and then you actually make 10 million new cells. And these cells are in constant communication with one another and this activity, this communication that is happening between these cells happens faster than the speed of light. And, guess what, all of this is being controlled by your mind. And it is in your mind, that’s where your potential resides, and when it comes to your mind, you actually have two of them.

Let’s dive into this a little bit deeper. There is always two minds within us, moment by moment. There is our conscious, logically thinking mind and then there is our unconscious, emotionally thinking mind. And most of these minds are critical for our success and survival. They operate very differently and they control very different things in our lives. Anytime the challenges that we face, if we are not performing and getting the results that we want as fast as we want, the two minds are in conflict with one another, rather than working in cooperation.

Recent breakthroughs today, in neuroscience and psychology, clearly show that 95% of what we think and feel throughout the day all stems from our unconscious mind. So 95% of your thoughts, feeling, behaviour, moods, attitude, demeanor, reactions, all of that is carried out and control by out unconscious mind.  So if that’s the case, does it makes sense that we better learn to control it, we better learn to influence it, and get it working for us, rather than against us. The challenge that most people have is that they don’t understand what I have just told you. In other words, they are congruently moving towards what they don’t want. Remember this phrase: whenever your conscious goals are in conflict with your conscious feelings, your unconscious mind, those unconscious feeling are going to pull you right back to your comfort zone, back to whatever feels natural and comfortable to you.

Have you ever found yourself wanting to achieve a goal in your life, but took one or two steps forward and six steps backward? And you didn’t consistently follow through with the level that you could. Or have you ever gotten a good idea or have gotten some good distinctions tools but you didn’t apply them at the level that you could. I can give you a great example from my own life. Back in the day, I used to be heavy and overweight and I really wanted to be thin. I wanted to have a certain level of energy and vibrancy, I wanted to be proud of the way I looked, I wanted to attract a certain lady into my life, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. So I wanted to be thin, consciously. But, unconsciously, when I thought about what I have to go through, for example exercising daily and eating certain types of foods, I had a certain type of feeling associated to those behaviors. It pulled me right back to my comfort zone. Can you relate to that in some areas of your own life? Are there things that you know in your life, right now, that you know intellectually, you can achieve and make happen, but when you think about what you have to go through, maybe it stirs up some feelings of worry, anxiety or tension. So you don’t follow through consistently. Can you relate to that in some areas of your life? Well I am here to tell you it is not because you are lazy, it is not because you are unmotivated and undisciplined. That’s all a bunch of garbage. It is because these two minds are in conflict with one another and here what is exciting, you and I can learn the language of each individual mind and how to communicate and control each individual mind and get them working together for us, rather than against us.

So, logically how do these two minds work? How can we get them working for us rather than against us? How do we do that? Well, let me start with the conscious mind. The conscious mind is everything that you are consciously aware of in this moment right now. Your conscious mind is your thinking mind, so all of your goals, dreams, desires, everything evolved out of your conscious, thinking mind. It plans, it reasons, it creates, it abstracts, it advances. So any kind of change, proactive positive change that you want to make in your life, it is going to evolve out of your conscious, logical mind; acts of will and acts of desire, a thought of desire, does that makes sense to you? But the power to carry that thought through, that’s your unconscious mind. Think of it like this, your unconscious mind is the engine that is driving your life forward. It is the engine that is going to carry out your thought. It’s very powerful; your unconscious mind is your body mind. It’s the part of you that blinks your eyes, that beats your heart, that pumps your lungs, that operates your metabolism, that circulates your blood. Think of everything inside you right now, the millions of processes going on inside you, keeping you alive.

Think of something as basic as walking, running, and shaking somebody’s hand. Now, when you do those activities, when you shake somebody’s hand, you don’t think consciously about the gestures and movements that you have to go through, you just shake somebody’s hand. Think of a goal you would like to make happen tomorrow and imagine that goal for a moment. Now imagine waking up in the morning, and that goal in your mind and body feels as natural, second nature and automatic as shaking somebody’s hand. What do you think your chances at achieving that gold will be? When, in your mind and body, it feels as believable, natural, and automatic as shaking somebody’s hand. Not only are you going to consistently move towards that goal, but you are going to move towards it with a level of congruency and expectancy. I think so many people are missing this level of congruency and expectancy when they try to make changes in their life, and so what happens is that they take one step forward and three steps backwards. So how do we actually get our unconscious mind working for us, so our goals, our dreams, our desires, in our mind and body feel as believable, natural, automatic and second nature as shaking somebody hand.

Remember this phrase: we have to learn to consciously communicate and control our unconscious mind. How do we do that? Well each and every individual’s mind has its own language that resonates with it, and influences it. So think of it like this, the language of your conscious mind is thinking, and the language of your unconscious is feeling. Let me say that again. The language of your conscious mind is thinking, and the language that mostly influences your unconscious mind is feeling. See your unconscious mind will accept anything as real and true; any thought that you hold in your mind consistently with intense feeling, it will accept it as real and true.

Your unconscious mind is impersonal and non-selective. It doesn’t know the difference between something you vividly imagine and something that you actual experience in reality, and this is very powerful because it is really our unconscious mind that is going to carry out 95% of our behavior. So, the question is how we get this unconscious mind, how do we control and influence it? How do we get ourselves to actually do that? Well, there are a lot of different ways to go about doing it, but there is a formula that I  like to teach people. This formula is called T x E = R. What exactly does that mean? That means thought multiplied by your emotions becomes your realty. I have a question for you, is it possible for you and I to feel, believe, and act on something that hasn’t happened yet and for it to become a reality, yes or no? Absolutely. Well let me ask you a question, because this used to happen to me all the time, have you ever gotten really concerned and upset about something that you thought was going to happen to you in the future, only to find out that it never did? Has that ever happened to you before? Yes, this is known as worry, and I used to be very good at it. Now here is my question for you, when you worried about that thing that didn’t happen, did you feel it in your body in that moment, at that time as if it is really happening in that current reality, yes or no? Absolutely. Now, not only did you feel it in your body, did it weaken your body physically, yes or no? Not only that, did it change your perspective on life or change your focus? I bet it did. Have you ever noticed that when you are really concerned, or upset, or worried about something, your perspective changes, your problem and perspective in life seems a lot more daunting and overwhelming? Can fear obscure our vision in life, yes or no? Here is my point, if we can take something that didn’t happen, won’t happen, will not happen in the future and yet feel it in our body and act on it as if it actually did happen, can we also take our dreams our goals and our desire, the things that we want to be, do, and create, can we also take those and literally think about them in such a profound way, that we trained this unconscious mind of ours to believe it is already here, yes or no? Absolutely, see what is worrying? Worrying is negatively imagining something. It is imagining the worst possible outcome in your mind and then believing that it is going to happen and because of that you feel it and you act on it. But can we do this in the positive, yes or no? You better believe it. Let me ask you this question: if feelings influence our unconscious mind, and 95% of our behavior and actions are carried out by our unconscious mind, and our unconscious mind does not know the difference between what we imagine with feeling and something that we actually experience, and worrying is negatively imagining, and when we worry we feel something in our body, and we act on it as if it was already here, can we worry in the positive, can we think about something in such a profound way, so that neurologically, in our brain, we wire ourselves to believe that what we want is already here? Can we do that, yes or no? You better believe that. It is called cognitive reprogramming. What gives human beings dominion over the earth is that we have the ability, inside this thing called our mind, to make thoughts more real than anything else and when you do that, what begins to happen is that your brain neurologically becomes a map into a new future, into a new reality, rather than a blue print of your past.  So how do we actually do this? I want to give you some questions you can ask yourself to create a level of positive expectancy in your life. So when you take on any new challenge and you do anything that is new in your life, you will expect to succeed.

So let me give you some questions right now, the first question that I want you to think about is, what is your level of expectancy? Prior to taking on any new challenge, and on a scale of zero to ten I want you to rate yourself, of what your level of conviction and expectancy that you can achieve this goal is. I am here to tell you that anything less than a 7 and you are not going to congruently move towards what you want. Let me ask you a question: does it feel different in your mind and body to expect something to happen versus hope it happens, is there a difference in your brain and body? Do you find that when you expect to get a goal or expect to expect something to happen in your life, you communicate more effectively with people? Do you find that when you expect to have something happening in your life, that people respond to you in a more agreeable fashion? Absolutely, expectancy is everything. Write this question down if you are taking notes or if you are just remembering it, what could I remember, relive or re-experience, that will increase my level of expectancy? Let me say that again, what could I remember, relive or re-experience, that will increase my level of expectancy that would increase my level of expectancy? Let me give you some questions to do that. All this is based on something that I believe, as people we can’t deny our own experiences; we can deny someone else’s but we can’t deny our own; we can’t deny our own facts, data and conclusions. In other words if something happens to us, and we feel it, we experience it, we do it, we own it. That is why all of my work is based on getting people to have an actual experience, where they experience it in their body. In fact, do me a favor right now, can you remember a time in your life, when you felt absolutely fantastic, when you felt incredible, when you were on a role, financially? Just think back to a time in your life when you felt unstoppably, confident and fantastic, and do me a favor, step back into that experience, and see what you saw back then, hear what you heard back then and feel that feeling that you felt back then, right now.

If you are really doing this right now, how do you feel? I bet you feel a little bit different because remember this phrase: what we re-experience we relive; what we remember we re-experience. You have an inventory, a gold mind of memories, that if you re-access them and you write them down, you will actually re-experience them in your body, because your brain does not know the difference between something you remember or you vividly imagine with emotions and something that you actually experience. Think about it like this, you are going to feel whatever you focus on. You can’t feel what you don’t focus on in life, focus equals feeling. Focus equals reality. Whatever we put our attention on, whatever we think about, throughout our day we tend to experience more of, we tend to move towards it.

I remember hearing this from my teacher years ago, he said, Matt once you realize that what you think about starts to expand in your life and show up, you just get real careful of what you think about. You don’t allow your mind and your thoughts to go to anything that you don’t want to create or have happen in your life, because our thoughts make us look for whatever it is we are thinking about. Let me say that again our thoughts make us look for whatever it is we are thinking about. So if we are thinking about the impossibility of it, if we are thinking that it can’t work. If we are thinking it is going to be difficult, then we are going to look for evidence unconsciously to create that and we are going to move towards it.

But adversely if we get a vision in our mind, and we start to think about it, we feel it as if it is already here unconsciously, outside of our conscious awareness, it begins to open up a whole new reality for us. And we start to move towards it and we start to notice things that we never noticed before. We start to see opportunities that we never saw before. And people and places and opportunities present themselves to us, are you with me on that? So remember this phrase: what we remember we re-access and we re-experience.

I am going to give you some questions right now that will increase your expectancy factor. Your expectancy factor is just the score that you gave yourself earlier on a scale of 0 to 10 what’s my level of expectancy that I can pull off and experience this goal prior to going into it. Remember what I said, anything less than a seven, then you are not congruently moving towards what you want. So you take one step forward and you take three steps backwards; it is going to affect your performance. Let me give you this next question and then I will move into the next variable.

The first question that you want to ask is this: to really increase your expectancy and really tap into the gold mine of inventory, talents and skills that you have right now, what talent, skills and ability do have I acquired over my life experiences that make me special and unique?  What talents, skills, and abilities do I have from my life experiences that make me special and unique? Let me give you the next question: what is the positive qualities about me that others would notice in me? What are the positive qualities about me that others would notice in me? What are your strengths? What are your qualities? What are your talents? What would others say about you? Are you intelligent, are you passionate, are you compassionate are you outgoing, are you friendly, are you well read, are you articulate, what is it about you that makes you great? And I want you to write all of this down. Write this question down, where has there been time in my life when I have broken through, overcome, and succeeded? Where has there been times in my life where the odds were stacked against me and I didn’t think I could pull it off and I found a way, I found something inside me? We all have had experiences like that. Write this question down, what have I done in my life that makes me feel proud? What are you proud of in your life? What have you done, what have you accomplished that makes you feel fantastic? See, I am here to tell you that you have a wealth of experiences that you need to tap into, because if we remember those experiences it will increase our expectancy factor.

What I learned years ago, studying human behavior, is that really any change you want to make in your life, any kind of proactive change, any results that we want to get, is only a matter of noticing the talents, skills and ability that we have in one area of our lives and then bringing in those talents, skills, and ability in another areas of our lives. One of the things that I always do when I am working with clients or seminars, when I am coaching, I always ask people in the audience, how many parents do we have in the room? And a lot of hands go up. First of all, I would say, how many of you are a great mom or great dad, and every one raises their hands and then I would say great. I would say let me ask you a question: to be a great mom, or a great dad, do you have to put somebody else’s needs above your own? Do you have to be able to have a certain amount of focus, resolve, discipline, determination, do you have to do things that you don’t want to do? But because you love your children so much, you do it anyway. All of them say absolutely, then I say focus, resolve, discipline, putting somebody else’s needs above your own, if you can bring those attributes, those character qualities, to the area of your business, your personal life or that specific area that you want to change. Would it accelerate the process of change and achievement, yes or no? And everybody says absolutely.

Many times all that were missing is the facts. We forget what we have done in life. I am here to tell you, if you are a parent, but especially if you are a single parent you can pretty much do anything you want. I am in awe of single parents. I am in awe of all parents but especially single parents. So if you can raise that child and you can do this and you can do all of these things, being a successful entrepreneur is a piece of cake. If you think about it from that perspective you would probably agree with me. So take inventory, answer those questions, take time to journal them and I think when you have list after list, after list, of all your accomplishments, your strengths, the times that you broke through, it is going to increase your expectancy factor. So let’s go onto the next variable.

The next variable from the leadership framework is time. All leaders and achievers place an extremely high value on their time, because they know that it is the one thing that they can’t get back. Time is perishable, it is inelastic, it is nonrefundable.  When its gone its gone.  I think it was Benjamin Franklin that said you and I may delay but time certainly will not. And our ability to maximize this moment and get the most out of our time, to me, that is where the game of both business and life is won. Let me ask you a question, what is time and what does it mean to us? Time is the capital, it is the currency of our lives, it is the stuff that our lives are made up of.

But does it make sense to you, for you and I to make use of our time we first have to determine where exactly we are spending our time right now, and are we squandering it, or are we investing in it? That’s going to lead us into the next video, where we are going to talk about something we call the Time Matrix.  The Time Matrix is going to show you very strategically where you are spending your time right now, how much time you are spending there and how you can free up some of that time so that your more efficient and effective in your endeavors to make your productivity absolutely skyrocket.