If you haven’t seen the highly debated Clint Eastwood/Chrysler Superbowl ad yet, watch it below. I just wanted to point out, politics aside, that it’s a great ad with great copywriting.

“It’s halftime in America” is an amazing line. I would swear Aaron Sorkin wrote this ad.

I know Clint has denied any support of Obama in the ad, but if I was Obama I’d take the concept and run with it. Great metaphor. Great copywriting.

F$%#, that’s good marketing. Don’t you agree?

This is an excerpt from my book entitled “Business Around A Lifestyle“.

Ideas Are Worthless

Right now there are 10 people out there making moves and taking action on the same idea you have in your head. The difference between you and them is that they are going to give it a try, and you are going to keep thinking that just having the idea is good enough.

It’s not.

Ideas as worthless unless they are acted upon. As a marketing person with several books I get contacted multiple times a day by people who have great ideas and want me to make them happen for them. The conversation always goes like this.

Them: I have this great idea Jim, and I want to give it to you, and we’ll both be rich.
Me: Why don’t you just do the idea yourself?
Them: Because it’s too hard to start up and I figured you’d handle it for me.
Me: So what do I need you for then?
Them: Because I have the idea!
Me: But you haven’t done anything yet. You haven’t done the hard work to make it a reality and it doesn’t seem like you want to.
Them: No, I’m too busy or don’t want to waste my time and see it fail.

That’s about the time I go into my “ideas are worthless” speech you’re reading right now. You see, ideas are nothing without action. If you don’t “do the hard part” then you will ALWAYS fail. Always. Every great business started with an idea. We all have them. In fact, if you read my book Attention! This Book Will Make You Money I give you countless sure-fire methods for generating ideas. I’d just put them here in this book by Attention! is published by Wiley and they will not allow me to republish it here in my self-published book.

Stop for a second and rethink this. You have an idea. You want to see it succeed. There is absolutely no way that is ever going to happen unless you make it happen yourself.

Period.

I want you to ask any person who has ever created anything that has succeeded how hard they worked in the beginning to implement their ideas. What you’re going to hear is they they poured their blood, sweat, tears and in most cases, their bank accounts, into trying.

My mentor, billionaire Mark Cuban, sold his company Broadcast.com to Yahoo! for a few billion dollars because he took action on his idea. Imagine if he walked into Yahoo!’s office and said this instead, “I have this great idea for a company I want to build that does this and will make this much money. You guys should fund it and give me 90% for the idea, and you do all the work and take all the risk, and then we have a deal.”

They’d laugh him out of the building. Do you see how ludicrous this sounds when put to a real situation? We’re talking about your lifestyle here anyway. Do you really believe that anyone else is going to do it for you? Why would anyone want to help you build your perfect life?

I know, I ask a lot of questions. You know why? Because you need to begin the process of asking them to yourself as well and feeling ok with it. That’s your problem in many ways. You’ve never thought you were allowed to ask those questions to yourself. You are. In fact, it’s an amazing way to challenge yourself and figure out what you really want.

Ask, then answer, then analyze. Then… ACT!

Below is a short excerpt from my soon to be released book entitled “Business Around a Lifestyle“.

The Things You Don’t Have To Do

Inevitably if you read any books on success you’re going to read a lot about all the things you HAVE to do to succeed. Things like travel a lot or hire an accountant or even things like “make lists and set goals”. Yes, I know those are things I said you have to do. I’m contradicting myself right now just to make a point.

You don’t HAVE to do anything. Books like mine, and others like it, are giving you guidelines to follow, not rules set in stone. You’re either going to do them, or you’re not. You’re either going to believe in them, or you’re not.

Having a lifestyle business isn’t about doing what others tell you you MUST do. It’s about doing what you want to do, at all costs. At some point you’re going to come across a rule that you think is absolutely ridiculous or you just hate even thinking about doing.

Guess what. Don’t do it. Figure out a way to do your YOUR way. There will be a massive temptation to want to “do what everybody else says works”. I get it. I’ve fallen into that trap before as well. You look at all the successful businesses and people in your industry and you want to emulate them. But what happens is you end up following THEIR plan, instead of yours.

Again, you’re building your lifestyle business, not theirs. Follow their example, but no need to copy them completely. They probably have different goals than you do.

The video says it all.

Free blog setup link here.

I keep having this argument over and over. On Facebook, Twitter, email, you name it. As I continue to push my mantra of “everyone should publish a book” around the Internets, I keep getting a very few people pushing back on me with one of the following objections.

1. Not everyone should have a book because it just makes more crap out there.
2. Books are better/different and should be researched and a lot more put into them.
3. If everyone writes a book, the world will end.
4. Blogs are a much better way to communicate your message.
5. And other reasons why people who are writing books now who shouldn’t are ruining the world.

C’mon. Do any of you remember 2001 when blogging really started to take hold? I do, I started this blog in August of 2001. Shortly after I started using blogs for business or to “make money online.” My point is to point out that the EXACT same arguments I was getting way back then about using blogs for business are the EXACT same arguments I’m getting today about self-publishing books.

The cycle continues. Something new hits the scene and the purists are quick to come out and hold to the old model and claim that the new way is going to ruin everything. The world is not flat people.

Then the argument comes out that “just because it’s content wrapped in a dead tree doesn’t make it any more valuable.” To that I say, when was the last time someone paid you to read your blog post?

They don’t, and they won’t. A book is the same content, wrapped in a different delivery mechanism. But because of how it is delivered, it offers more credibility (for now) and value in terms of “making money” from it.

Writing a book is a business decision, just like writing a blog is. Are you making the best possible decision?

At the beginning of every year I have a few ideas in my head that I want to work on. This year, one of those was giving. I mean true giving. I have built a 16-year career on the Web by helping other people find success, and I’ve learned that the more you give, the more you get back. So naturally, it’s time to give EVEN MORE!

So one of my first initiatives was to create my free blog setup and design service. You can read about it here. I’ve partnered with a top-notch hosting company to provide a start-up hosting package for people who want to either get started, or need a fresh redo of their current blogs.

I could explain it more, but really, it’s best to just go here and watch the video. And don’t forget to order your free blog setup!

I did a fun interview with Matthew Lesko a few weeks ago about the power of crowdfunding. You can watch it here.

The article also has a ton of crowdfunding resources on it that you can check out. If you haven’t picked up a copy of my book on how I crowdfunded over $35k to pre-fund my new books, then you should get a copy here and learn how I did it and how you can do it too!

I never have enough time to write out a super-long, super inspiring end of year post. Hey, I’m writing books, not blogs these days. (Yes, I know I’m writing a blog now, you know what I meant.)

But… I do have a short list of things to tell you before 2011 ends.

If you want to be successful in 2012… you must:

1. Trust your gut
2. Stay on course
3. Get past the hard part
4. Stop pitying yourself
5. Stop envying other’s success
6. Ship a ton of products/services/content
7. Do your own thing
8. Work on things that are fun
9. Read a lot of books
10. Decide on your life”style” plan before you decide on your business

Happy new year. Now get to work!

There’s a severe disadvantage when you have too much influence. Sure, having smart and successful people around you is VERY important. However, when you begin to let their influence overwhelm your gut ideas and thoughts and shape your direction, you’re in trouble.

That’s where I was in 2010. I had a massive circle of smart, influential people guiding me. Believe me, they helped, a lot! But after a while I realized that I was letting them guide me too much. I saw their success and tried to emulate it, instead of sticking with my gut and moving forward on what I really wanted to do.

There’s the trap. You listen and watch successful people, and you want to be like them, so you try to do what they do… but when you do that, you never truly innovate, or create something that you believe is the right thing to do.

So I removed myself from that influential group. Simply because I needed to see what I could come up with without someone telling me if it’d work or not.

Lesson? Trust your gut. Go out there and take your belief and see if it works. Even when others might say, or show you, that another way works best. Failure is a good thing. Happy new year.

I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Neil Cavuto show on Fox Business News yesterday. You can watch the clip below. I talk about how I got on the show below.

So how did I get on this show?

Step 1: Have a good website (your platform). No-brainer, right? You have to have a professional looking site, assuming you’re in a professional business. My website features videos of me speaking and testimonials from clients and media I’ve been mentioned in.

Step 2: Create content in other places. I got this invite because a show producer found my guest post article on Self-Growth.com that I did over a year ago. He then followed my byline link to my site (see step 1) and watched some of my other videos, saw my books, calculated in his head whether I was qualified to be a good guest or not, then contacted me.

Step 3: When a person from the media contacts you, drop EVERYTHING and call them back. I’m not kidding. Here’s what they are doing. They have a deadline. In my case it was for that night’s show. So after he contacted me and left a message, he continued to search for another guest. Guess what? If he found and booked another one before I called back, I’m out. It’s that simple. You MUST get back to them as soon as possible.

I’ve actually lost things like this before because of bad timing. One time I had just gotten on a plane and didn’t get the email until 5 hours later. I lost that one, even though I called back immediately from the airplane. I lost another one because I had shut my phone off during a business meeting. You win some, you lose some.