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4144 Responseshttp://blog.mindvalleylabs.com/live-blogging-blair-singer-identifying-where-you-are-on-the-five-power-levels-of-success-and-how-to-get-to-the-top-fast/414/Live+Blogging%3A+Blair+Singer+%26quot%3BIdentifying+Where+You+Are+On+the+Five+Power+Levels+of+Success+and+How+to+get+to+the+Top+Fast%21%26quot%3B2008-04-26+15%3A53%3A06Mike+Reining to “Live Blogging: Blair Singer “Identifying Where You Are On the Five Power Levels of Success and How to get to the Top Fast!””

1. April 26th, 2008 at 3:26 pm Paula

   Mike,
   I appre­ci­ate your com­ments about con­trol­ling “that Lit­tle Voice.” Our thoughts cre­ate our lives. And I agree we need to see what we can learn from every sit­u­a­tion. Always look­ing to that next level!
   Excel­lent article!

2. April 27th, 2008 at 11:39 am ComCrown

   As always, Com­Crown enjoys your arti­cles very much. The best reply we feel is from an arti­cle we recently wrote as follows:

   Say Hello Yo Your Competition

   Yes, they bite, and that’s when they’re just being friendly. It’s true: the major­ity of your com­peti­tors would derive plea­sure at see­ing your guts ripped out all over the road in their rear view mir­ror at the first oppor­tu­nity and would laugh them­selves all the way to the bank or just back to the office as the case may be, just as you would them, right? Well, am I right or are you really that much dif­fer­ent than your com­pe­ti­tion? Put another way, what type of “wound­ing” does your value sys­tem allow, assum­ing that you have one, and are you vio­lat­ing the slight­est of your val­ues by the way you cur­rently “bite” to com­pete? Tak­ing another per­spec­tive, is there a way to com­pete suc­cess­fully and obtain the effect of a “bite” while keep­ing high-road val­ues intact? Absolutely. Just take your focus off low-blow bit­ing and focus your time, tal­ent and energy on get­ting a grip on the 3 Vs: Value, Vis­i­bil­ity and Viability.

   Value speaks for itself. Value must reside in your prod­uct and should equally and con­sis­tently reside within your ser­vice deliv­ery of the prod­uct if you are to be even a can­di­date for suc­cess. It is not unusual for busi­ness to deceive them­selves as to the true ele­ment of value in their prod­uct. This decep­tion often occurs by default as a result of faulty improper analy­sis of their mar­ket and prod­uct. Need­less to say (or is it?) they rarely acquire any cus­tomers or their base is lim­ited to a few close and equally gullible or sym­pa­thetic “friends”. Con­stantly work to improve your prod­uct and ser­vice deliv­ery of your prod­uct. Do on point and aggres­sive analy­sis of cur­rent mar­ket trends, strive to broaden your hori­zons by devel­op­ing insight into cur­rent and pro­jected mar­ket trends and appor­tion your energy smartly, view­ing it as the rare and pre­cious com­mod­ity it is. And don’t con­fuse intel­li­gent work with stay­ing or look­ing “busy”. Most com­pa­nies stay and look “busy” enough, but busy­ness doesn’t equate to “build­ing”. More­over, unfet­tered and unfo­cused busy­ness with non-essentials and ill focus can effect the gen­tlest yet most fatal blow a com­pany could ever inflict on itself.

   Vis­i­bil­ity requires a blended bal­ance of mar­ket­ing strate­gies includ­ing SEO and a bal­anced array of other tech­niques so your mar­ket (and poten­tial mar­ket) can “see” your pres­ence through the least pos­si­ble effort and on a con­sis­tent, reoc­cur­ring basis so that famil­iar­ity may lend itself to com­fort. Main­tain­ing mar­ket vis­i­bil­ity is pro­por­tion­ately chal­leng­ing based on bud­get yet this can be a call for your cre­ativ­ity to fully engage effec­tive juice. Choos­ing an effec­tive brand­able domain name pro­vides a solid base­line from which to suc­ceed and a great domain name is the most con­trol­lable and obvi­ous way to pro­tect your busi­ness invest­ment because a mem­o­rable domain name will empower the bal­ance of your busi­ness strate­gies to achieve opti­mal mar­ket effect, whereas hav­ing a “dif­fi­cult” domain name or improper fit can cre­ate sig­nif­i­cant “drag” on your brand and mar­ket­ing sys­tems and effec­tively pull back the reins on profit. Regard­less of how you become vis­i­ble, the fact remains that to reach your mar­ket you must become vis­i­ble. This requires stay­ing on top of the cur­rent shifts in mar­ket­ing trends and by engag­ing a solid and com­pre­hen­sive mar­ket­ing base to obtain that vis­i­bil­ity. If you have to go out lit­er­ally, from door to door, and shake hands with every one of your prospects in order to gain vis­i­bil­ity, then like it or not, you should do it. And don’t for­get those busi­ness cards! They are tan­gi­ble last­ing reminders that could wind up in more than just one hand! The inter­net offers a plethora of avenues in which to build your vis­i­bil­ity but the key is to choose meth­ods which are most effi­cient and suited to your cur­rent busi­ness model and mar­ket and then to place your cap­i­tal eggs care­fully and with great fore­thought into those par­tic­u­lar mech­a­nisms to get you the most effec­tive results. So do your home­work and make sure insight goes into every effort because busi­ness suc­cess is not a free lunch.

   Via­bil­ity has to do with the “Per­sonal Rela­tion­ship Fac­tor” you build with your com­mu­nity and mar­ket which is com­posed of the trust and lik­a­bil­ity fac­tor for which there is absolutely no sub­sti­tute. Who wants to buy wid­gets from old man scrooge when sweet lit­tle Annie or George just down the road sells the very same ones for just a few pen­nies more? Like when Jerry Maguire’s old school but highly suc­cess­ful men­tor earnestly, sim­ply and pro­foundly explained to Jerry the secret to build­ing a busi­ness, he summed it up clearly as fol­lows: “It’s all about per­sonal rela­tion­ships.” We couldn’t agree more.
   All the 3 Vs demand your utter­most focus and ded­i­ca­tion to achieve har­mo­nious effect. Mas­ter­ing 2 out of 3 just won’t do.

   Now back to Com­peti­tors. Com­peti­tors bite because it’s their nature to bite and wound­ing you reaps pro­por­tion­ate kudos for them, or so they think. Sev­eral note­wor­thy ironies pen­e­trate this com­mon­place premise. First, many busi­nesses, includ­ing those low-road tac­tic com­pa­nies, are so busy wound­ing them­selves, either directly or indi­rectly, by action or, more often, by lack of it, that they are lit­er­ally inca­pable or unmo­ti­vated to wound their com­pe­ti­tion effec­tively. Iron­i­cally, this fact is only poten­tially ben­e­fi­cial to those target-companies who have ceased wound­ing them­selves and are in a posi­tion to reap “poten­tial” good from their ill-spirited competitor’s impo­tent self-inflictions. As such, just because your com­peti­tors slide off base through self-inflicted or outer-inflicted wounds does not nec­es­sar­ily increase the market’s per­cep­tion of your value or your value, unless you are the only game left in town and rest assured you are not unless you’ve just taken hold of the last golden egg.

   To pos­ture your­self to rise in the mar­ket­place, your focus should include “per­son­al­ized involve­ment”, net­work­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion within not only your imme­di­ate and known mar­ket but cru­sad­ing through var­i­ous mul­ti­me­dia chan­nels and beyond your com­fort zone of known mar­ket toward the out­er­most extrem­i­ties of the world in an effort to shake hands, fig­u­ra­tively or lit­er­ally, with every­one you can. Ladies and gen­tle­men, please per­mit me an anal­ogy of hus­band and bride as I employ it with all due respect: Con­sider your mar­ket your bride. It is your job to romance and woo her under the bal­cony of her choice, swoon her with choco­lates and flow­ers, offer her a propo­si­tion of per­ceived long-term value and then, when the moment is right, to look directly into her eyes and to offer her a “dia­mond ring” (offer) she just can’t refuse. Keep in mind, there are tons of hun­gry busi­ness Romeos like your­self, and yes, even more expe­ri­enced and savvy, flood­ing the foy­ers and stairs. And with the advent of niche splin­ter­ing, spe­cial­ized ser­vices and yes, increas­ing com­pe­ti­tion, prospects are becom­ing less and less. But don’t despair. Instead, con­sider the chal­lenge a golden oppor­tu­nity for you to go to work on your business.

   Sec­ondly, many com­pa­nies built on the rock of the scarcity men­tal­ity are, with rare excep­tion, built also on the side-rock of low-road tac­tics. These com­pa­nies fre­quently employ hyper-aggression, judg­ment, guilt and stick-and-carrot method­olo­gies within their ranks which effec­tively hand­i­caps inner-rank vision and sub­si­dizes req­ui­site inspi­ra­tion with forced and impo­tent tongue-in-cheek coop­er­a­tion. More often than not, these com­pa­nies ulti­mately fail through this self-inflicted dam­age. These com­pa­nies are eas­ily spot­ted due to the var­i­ous grab tac­tics they employ, iron­i­cally enough, with­out much effect. They are to be likened to a fren­zied shop­per at a white sale, push­ing and shov­ing their way to the goods or a gain with patent dis­re­gard for their “neigh­bors” which ulti­mately reveals the same dis­re­gard for their clients. Many of these com­pa­nies, ini­tially founded on a mar­ket­ing “vision” of offer­ing some opti­mal value prod­uct by founders whose psy­ches are rooted in the scarcity men­tal­ity, employ by nature com­pat­i­ble sub-systems to achieve their true aim, which aim is not to bol­ster the envi­sioned prod­uct, but rather to cre­ate and imple­ment scarcity-based sub-systems that serve to com­pli­ment and rein­force the neg­a­tive belief sys­tem on which the com­pany was truly founded. As such, these com­pa­nies of duplic­ity tend to carrot-and-stick inter­nal mech­a­nisms and feel deprived when the carrot-and-stick effect seeps out­ward to adversely affect their mar­ket. “Val­ue”, to these com­pa­nies, is coined as a mere catch­phrase, while inwardly value is cor­re­lated solely and improp­erly, to profit mar­gin. Value to this type of com­pany becomes that which prof­its them and not their cus­tomer. This modus operandi is a fatal mis­take. Quite often these same types of com­pa­nies endeavor to wound their com­pe­ti­tion via low-road tac­tics com­posed of neg­a­tive energy and believe that such tac­tics are always an accept­able inevitabil­ity in today’s mar­ket­place in order to sus­tain sur­vival. They believe their com­pany will nec­es­sar­ily pos­ture upwards and reap a pro­por­tion­ately higher mar­gin, pro­por­tion­ate to the “bat­tle blow”. This assump­tion is skewed and often backfires.

   Com­pa­nies whose focus is wound­ing com­pe­ti­tion through low road tac­tics sel­dom have or exert the pos­i­tive energy val­ues and dis­ci­plines required for opti­miz­ing prod­uct value and opti­miz­ing cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion, since it is log­i­cal that a com­pany can­not radi­ate both sub­stan­tial neg­a­tive and pos­i­tive ener­gies from the hub (soul) of its busi­ness. This is not to imply that merely “pos­i­tive” com­pa­nies have any edge what­so­ever over their com­pe­ti­tion or pos­sess the req­ui­site other require­ments for opti­miz­ing prod­uct value and becom­ing a busi­ness suc­cess, how­ever, pos­i­tive com­pa­nies who cre­ate trust, vision and respect within the ranks cre­ate a breed­ing envi­ron­ment for true solu­tions and this can opti­mize the chance for success.

   On an ironic yet pos­i­tive note, wound­ing, be it self-inflicted or from with­out, can help build strong mus­cles and healthy teeth when learned from and built upon. How­ever, in order to bounce back and achieve growth poten­tial from com­pet­i­tive blows, com­pa­nies must learn to be atten­tive, agile and attuned to the mar­ket. The great­est chal­lenge a com­pany faces today, online or oth­er­wise, is how to main­tain and keep their 3 Vs edge. This means hav­ing the abil­ity, although it is more akin to a tal­ent, of being able to sep­a­rate the req­ui­site wheat from quick­sand of chaff. The busi­ness road is lit­tered with legit­i­mate billion-dollar mega-machines that have gone belly-up overnight. Entre­pre­neur, small busi­ness owner and For­tune 500 CEO, dwell on this fact for a moment. If a billion-dollar cor­po­ra­tion with mind-boggling mar­ket share can lose their foot­ing and go belly-up overnight, due to the emer­gence of a “unfore­seen” par­a­digm shift — who’s to say it can’t hap­pen to you? Think smart, think fast, or for­feit the game. I will also add it’s to your advan­tage to play fair.

   Finally, begs the ques­tion: Does the con­sumer of the end-product really care what goes on behind the bat­tle lines of busi­ness? Does the con­sumer lay awake at night, los­ing sleep over visions about who is wound­ing who, who is being wounded or how they are being wounded and do they care in the slight­est about lis­ten­ing to those great recover-from-wound sto­ries told by emotionally-charged CEOs over candle-lit din­ners? The answer to this is no. Cus­tomers are solely focused on value of prod­uct, with the excep­tion that, with prod­uct being sub­stan­tially equal, cus­tomers choose to buy from those they like the most. In light of this fact, it’s wise to take note.

3. April 29th, 2008 at 8:32 am donald

   Hi Mike
   Great post! Thanks for shar­ing the notes. I just fin­ished day 1 of National Achiev­ers Con­gress 2008 in Singapore.

   I missed out por­tions of Blair Singer, and I was glad to see your blog post on his speech!

   Keep them com­ing, I am sure they will ben­e­fit more people!

4. April 29th, 2008 at 10:40 am Pamela

   Mike — thanks for the infor­ma­tion (great reminders!) but please oh please don’t keep mis­spelling “lad­der.” Sorry, my inner edi­tor escaped …

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