Pension Funds and Assumed Rates of Return make an A** out of You and Me
Last week I had an interesting conversation with my client regarding our fears about pension funds and assumed rates of return. I mentioned that two of my biggest fears are this year’s seven-year bull market and the market’s correction. My client agreed with me, but I was left confused and intrigued. I wanted to know more. What are pension funds and assumed rates of return? Most pension funds assume a rate of return to get the target value into their funds. For example, If you have an assumed rate of return of 10%, you’ll need a certain number amount to pay for all employee pensions. You’ll double the amount, however, if you assume a 5% rate of return. Most pension funds currently have 7-8% assumed rates of return. I eagerly injected as my client is explaining the assumed rate of return. “Shouldn’t there be a 5% assumed rate of return because of the low growth mode?” My client laughed. He answered that the pension companies would never change because the very structure of the system would be dismantled. Who would have thought that the assumed rates of return were such a realistic fear? This is scary. What The Experts Are Saying Global chief economist for Vanguard Group, Joe Davis adds, “Global growth has been frustratingly fragile. In the last three years, it has been significantly lower than the cycle a decade ago, and there is little acceleration in any economy of the world right now.” Therefore, assumed rates of return should be closer to 6% or lower. As a result, the state would have to come up with the money to fund the deficit created within the pensions promised to employees. For example, Hawaii just lowered the assumed rate of return from 7.75% to 7.50%. The 60% funded ratio was ranked the ninth worst in the country (2013 statistics). Only two states, South Dakota and Wisconsin were 100% fully funded. Illinois (39%) and Kentucky (44%) were the worst. For more information visit this link. You can learn even more here. The Inverse Relationship Between Rate of Return and Your Pension Fund It is imperative to understand the inverse relationship between the rate of return and pension fund money. If you lower the rate of return, you will consequently need more money pushed into the pension fund because the capital demand must be met in the future. This is based on the assumed rate of return. So where will states get these funds? The public sector, the taxpayer. What can be done in the public sector to help this situation? What if Marijuana Was Legalized? Did you know that the tax rates for marijuana are 25-40%? Think about it in terms of generating funds from taxpayers. I would argue that the state pension fund shortage could be offset by the legalization of marijuana. Visit this link for more information. Medical Marijuana Is A Valuable Asset in Legalized States I never knew how much money there was in medical marijuana until I had a phone call with a Medical Marijuana Dispensary owner. I was blown away. If you haven’t seen it, please check out the CNBC program that highlights the medical marijuana dispensaries and their business model. Learn more here about the effects of marijuana on tax income growth. Marijuana tax rates generated by its legalization can effectively mitigate this frightening circumstance, especially after contemplating the fears of the assumed rate of return. Legalizing marijuana would allow its consumers to pick up the tax burden, which would enable states to conservatively decrease their assumed rates of return. Makes sense.
What Happens if the 10-year Treasury goes to Zero? The Decline of Interest Rates & The Rise in Bond Prices
Over the last thirty years, the trend of interest rates has been declining. As interest rates decline, the price of bond that consumers can pay goes up. The Inverse Relationship between Bond and Interest Rates I will give you a quick example. If interest rates are 5% and bonds are $100, say the interest rate decreases to 4% or 3%, or 2%, then the price of bonds increases. Let’s say the rate goes down to 4%. The cost would then be $105. If the rate goes to 3%, the bond could be worth $110. If it goes to 2%, it would be $115, and vice versa. So here is the problem that I see with bonds: We are at our lowest rates ever. The 10-year treasury is at 2.20 and is now down to 1.70, at the time of this writing. They have had a 30-year bull market. Where can interest rates go from here if they are already at 2%? I only see three options; Interest rates continue to go down to zero, and if that is the case we are in for a global recession and the cost of your bonds increase is not going to make you happy. This is because everything else will start to collapse. Visit the following article here. Could U.S. 10-Year Yields Turn Negative? It’s an inevitable question: Could U.S. 10-year yields turn negative now that German 10-year yields have fallen below zero for the first time ever? Not to mention Japanese 10-year yields have dipped to record lows of negative 0.17 percent. According to Dennis Davitt, partner at Harvest Volatility Management and a noted options market veteran, it may well happen. “I think you could see negative rates in the U.S. If Germany and other countries in the world go even further negative. It turns into a number line game. So where zero lies on the number line, who knows?” Davitt said Tuesday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation.” He sees rates being driven lower by two factors in addition to overall slow global growth: Stimulative central bank policies and regulations.” Option number two is interest rates can go up, now as I said before when interest rates go up, bond values go down. So if you are holding that $100 bond, and interest rates go from 2% to 3% to 4%, that bond now goes from $100 to $95 to $90 that you are holding. That is not good for our retirees that are trying to live on this income or for consumers trying to buy houses or cars. Option number three is most likely what is going to happen and there are ramifications on this as well but there is no change. We kinda bounce along at the bottom for the next five or six or seven years. Where the 10-year is fluctuating between 1%and 3% so we kinda keep just going up and down and kinda hugging that 2% line. If that’s the case, that doesn’t impact us as consumers directly right now. This is what the fed says into 2017. Fixed Annuity Vs. Bond To summarize I would actually opt for a fixed annuity rather than a bond. Because I know if interest rates rise, my value cannot go down (full disclosure if you buy individual bonds and hold them until they mature they will not go down either, but read this article for bond risks). When buying a fixed annuity I know, regardless of what interest rates do, my rate is locked in for that term of the fixed annuity.
Corporate America and the Fear of Getting Fired
The motivation to write this post stemmed from a meeting I had with a client where I noticed dumbfounding characteristics about corporate employees. The meeting was about a presentation on which I’m currently working. How can Corporate America continue to be profitable when it seems like not getting fired is the primary focus of the majority of corporate employees? How do you spend your time? Is your time or motivation being soaked up by gossiping or the fear of getting fired? I searched Google for “how do I not get fired”. As a result, it came back with 64 million articles, blogs and websites lol. What is wrong with people? Beating Around The Bush in Today’s Corporate America Corporate employees literally spend so much time dancing around conversations and trying not to commit. They’re simply trying not to get fired so consequently, they don’t express sometimes pivotal facts and ideas. I see this more and more and it has become prevalent to me because I come from a “noncorporate” background. While creating a presentation that was consumer-facing (for the general public), the presentation had to be reviewed by compliance. This presentation was for a client in the financial services industry. The people in compliance kept pointing fingers at each other, rather, and no one wanted to answer my question. They didn’t want to tell me exactly what they wanted. It blew my mind. As I was putting together this presentation, I had compliance tell me that I shouldn’t use certain phrases that talk directly about an issue. They said that I should instead use words such as, “may we suggest”, “for example”, and “as a suggestion”. This is instead of just coming out and telling them what you want them to do and what you want them to know. Pair this with a coworker of mine, who is a brilliant person. He’s much smarter and more analytical than I am and he tells me, “I don’t think you can really say that. I don’t think you should really put that in your presentation”. Blending in & The Lack of Motivation When I got up the next day, I decided to go on a run. I was in Georgia by a river, and doing sprints on the river walk. I thought to myself during my ‘unplugged time’, “Everybody is spending half of their time in Corporate America just trying not to get fired, not having an opinion, and not telling people what they really think. They’re not commenting directly and instead, they’re talking behind people’s backs.” It made me feel sad. To think that employees can try to work NOT too fast, or work NOT too slow. The employees think, “I don’t want to stick out” and “I don’t want to get noticed”. WTF. Most of all, blend this slow “Steady Eddy” mentality with all the “water cooler” talk. They are probably only at 30-50% production for that corporation. Seems like the corporation has a skewed perception of what factors can boost revenues. I don’t understand this. Please explain to me how people can get a job and then how that job gets away with motivating them to be “complacent” or lazy! I can sit down and work for four hours and the only reason I will even stop and get up is that I need to use the bathroom so bad that I could literally pee my pants!! Misinformation & Deception in Corporate America I walked into an office today and met with one prospect but the office had 7-8 prospects that needed to hear what I had to say. On my way out I ask the office manager, “Do you hold group meetings? Which is a blatant lie. She went on to explain that they are NOT part of a larger organization with any sort of hierarchy, furthermore, she does not have a boss. This is all BS. The company that employed her hired me to help them lol. She was happy not to help, which meant she was not committing, not going out on a limb, and not going above and beyond. She was just doing barely enough. It was mind-boggling to me. It was dumbfounding. How do you spend your time? What do you focus on? How do you treat others? What’s your working style? Do you stand up straight and walk tall? What’s your thought process in the workplace? Do you motivate yourself?
A New Take on the To-Do List
Here is how I work: I will make a to-do list at the end of the day for what I want to accomplish the following day. A lot of people talk about making to-do lists, and I know there are a lot of mobile apps out there that can help you make a to-do list. I use a pen and paper. I do feel that as scattered as my brain is, and as many things as I have going on, I have to, HAVE TO, keep a to-do list. At the end of the day I will re-organize that to-do list to ensure that I am effective and efficient. It also helps me sleep at night. A New Take on Time Management : The New To-Do List Wikipedia’s definition of time-management discusses the origin and organization of your typical, as-you-know-it, to-do list. “Task lists are often tiered. The simplest tiered system includes a general to-do list (or task-holding file) to record all the tasks the person needs to accomplish, and a daily to-do list which is created each day by transferring tasks from the general to-do list.” That said, I came across an article that talked about a new way to do, To-Do lists. This author, Josh Linkner, The Road to Reinvention: How to Drive Disruption and Accelerate Transformation states that we should make our To-Do lists and break it up into three different categories: More, Less and Stop. What Do You Need More Of? Under the More, “what do you need more of in your life”. Where are your efforts that deliver the highest value. These should be the items that you know you should be spending more time on because you are delivering the highest value (ie. Money, or simply you should focus more of your time and energy on this item because you value it). For example, more strategy meetings, more coaching clients or more reading to your kids, more feeding your brain! What Should You Focus Less On? The second category, Less. What do you need to spend less time doing? Less time surfing Social Media, less time gossiping, and less time texting your friends. Fortunately, I have no time for any of these but I do see a lot of people pissing away a lot of time. I probably need to do less of the smaller tasks on my personal side and more of picking up the phone and calling prospects. Minimize Actions That Are Not Productive Third, what do you need to stop doing? I thought this was really interesting, none of us really have a stop-to-doing list, as everything on our to-do lists is an actionable item, so on the stop is “what is unproductive”. What are you doing that is unproductive? You know what this is, it’s your excuse! What You Need To Do More Of: Maximize Your Time At the end of the day when you think “I should have called 12 more clients, stopped by 3 more offices…..”, “I should have scheduled more meetings”, “I should have read to my kids”… okay, great, what did you do that took up all your time that you should have not done? Then write that down. For the first thirty days – I welcome you to the Hugo and Marie 30-Day Challenge – make three lists. In order to produce the highest value, what do you want and need to do more of? What do you need to do less of (which you know better than anyone else)? What do you need to stop doing? Send us your list and your story and I will give you a free 2 hours of consulting!!! I would guess that the workflow would be that the “what do I need to do less of” would move to “what do I need to stop doing” and thus free you up more time for your more to-do list. Call it a hunch lol.
Baby Boomers Forced to take Required Minimum Distribution
Baby Boomers are a very large portion of our population. They’ll be taking their first RMDs this year. RMD stands for Required Minimum Distribution. The Government forces us to pay taxes on our retirement account when we turn 70 years of age. This is only on qualified plans (IRAs, 401Ks, and other qualified accounts). Consequently, only the people who have needed the income have had to take money from the market. That’s only up until this year. Edward Shane from BNY Mellon adds his own sentiment. “As a result, throughout the next 20 years, billions of dollars annually will be forced from retirement accounts through distributions. These distributions will, in many cases, be taken in the form of a single large annual payment.” The Required Minimum Distribution & The Bull Market Our whole population will be forced to pull out their first RMD for the first time this year. The RMD percentage goes up every year to force people to draw down their account value. As a result, the government gets tax revenue. Kristen Grind from WSJ said, “Assets held by 401(k) plans ballooned to $4.6 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2014, up 171% from $1.7 trillion in 2000, according to the Investment Company Institute, a trade organization for mutual funds.” Currently, We are sitting in a 7-year bull market. A bull market means it keeps going up and up. I think if you pair the expectation of an increasing market with a forced RMD, probably any drop in the market would be crushing to Baby Boomers. Consequently, this is good for the government and taxes, yes. What about the market and the young people investing in it? Assuming the average size of a retirement account is 250,000, here are the numbers: In this case, the resulting withdrawal of $9,124.09 represents 3.65% of the retiree’s retirement balances at the time of the calculation. Note that, over time, the formula results in a growing distribution percentage. However, it is eventually applied against a declining balance as withdrawals (likely) begin to exceed earnings in the account. Source: IRS5 Edward adds “The impact of these events will be substantial and will pose a challenge to the retirement industry. After decades of asset accumulation, this unbridled exit of funds is poised to have a material and adverse impact on the retirement companies that manage these accounts. “ Converging Elements While the actual valuation of current RMD outflows and projections of future distributions are inexact in the absence of hard data, consider the following statistics: The value of retirement assets for all RMD-eligible plans currently totals an estimated $16.2 trillion. The current population of 50-69-year-olds who will reach RMD status over the next 20 years will increase by more than 27 million individuals. As a result, by 2035, the total number of retirees taking RMDs could swell to 58.7 million individuals according to census projections. It is estimated that more than 65% of current traditional IRA investors (and their assets) will enter into the RMD strata in the coming 20-year period.6 As a result, if projections are correct, up to $10 trillion in assets will be subject to mandatory withdrawals over the next two decades. A first-year withdrawal, based on the current IRS formula, requires a distribution of 3.65% of eligible assets. Furthermore, the percentage grows as the retiree ages and jumps to 5.35% for that same individual at age 80. As a result, at age 90, the mandated withdrawal percentage leaps to 8.77% of the account holder’s balance. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/will-retiring-baby-boomers-lead-to-a-stock-market-bust/ http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2015/06/will-retiring-baby-boomers-ruin-future-market-returns/ http://www.wsj.com/articles/net-outflows-befall-401-k-plans-1434408836 http://time.com/money/3922594/401k-millennials-baby-boomers/ Can the Gen Xers, Gen Ys, and Millennials replace those lost funds in the market with their contributions to their retirement accounts? I don’t believe they can. In conclusion, our younger generations are not savers, rather, they’re spenders. Look at how much housing has gone up and how much they are spending on student loans. That does not leave them enough. Just my thoughts – what are yours?
Rich Dad, Poor Dad: The First Book I Read That Got My Mind Tweaked…
Sometimes a book can really change your outlook and your perception of your opportunities. In 2002, I was working at Home Depot, assisting a friend in starting a painting company. Additionally, I was going to college full-time. I had some extra time on my hands lol. I had also just bought my first rental property. During this time, I went to a multi-level marketing event. They were selling a website portal where you could purchase groceries online. This was well before the time of Amazon. The business model was to have each subscriber pay a monthly or yearly fee, like Costco or Sams Club. Consequently, the subscriber would have the ability to purchase items online for delivery like paper towels, soap, and other household items. One of the guys at the event gave me two books: Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and Cash Flow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki. Are you looking for a book that will help you take the LEAP? These are probably my top two books that tweaked my mind! Start your business today! Cash Flow Quadrant: If You’ve Never Read It, You Must The “quadrant” is broken up into 4 parts: E (employee), S (subcontractor), B (business owner), and I (investor). The premise behind the whole book is that if you’re an employee, you trade your time for money. A Subcontractor (meaning a trade job – Lawyer, Doctor, Painter, Carpenter, etc.) you’re trading your time for money, but there is no real way to scale this. For example, if you are a doctor and you don’t show up, you make no money, because you have no billable hours. At the time I was painting houses so it really resonated with me to say, “Hugo, the only way that you can make money, is if you show up and paint this guy’s living room”. That, I understood. It changed the way I started to think. If you are a business owner you are still working in the business and on the business and have to be there to manage that process. But you can scale, grow and make more money. As an investor, you are looking for passive income opportunities. Such as real estate, where you can make the purchase once, and the amount of money you make is disproportional to your time spent. For example, if it takes you an hour a month to manage the property, and you are making $200-300 per month in passive income, your income is disproportionate to the amount of time spent on that property. If you purchase stock in a company and get a dividend and do no work, you are making more income with less effort. Both of these can be scaled. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: New Ideas That Inspire Entrepreneurs The second book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, is about the author as a boy. He watched two dads (a friend of the family and a biological dad) work their whole lives. His own father was a schoolteacher and worked every day. His friend’s father was an investor. He saw how much wealthier this friend’s dad got. As a result, he started to work less and less. I have always remembered this. How can you think bigger? Think outside the box and look for new opportunities. For instance, with a SaaS (software as a service business) you probably spend a ton of money and a ton of time marketing it, growing it, and getting businesses to sign up for a monthly service fee. Furthermore, once you build it and build the client base, you are charging everyone throughout the month for the service. As a result, if you need to have Monday off, you can take Monday off and the world still turns and you still get paid. It is a great business model. But it does take a lot of work and time to get it to that point. (As a side note if you are interested in building your own SaaS platform, I am happy to advise you, to click here) Right now, I am back to being an employee, a business owner, and an investor. I get most of my income from the “E” quadrant but my goal is to start and grow more businesses so that more of my income comes from the “B” quadrant so that I can invest more money and time in the “I” quadrant. You can fit yourself into many different groups. I see the goal as getting to a place where you have enough passive income to be solely in the “Investor” category. Both of those books helped me see that there was more to life than just a job for 35 years. These books helped me take risks and explore new opportunities.
What Problem do You want to Solve?
When you are looking at starting a business, everything starts with a problem that needs to be solved, or a solution that has helped somebody do something. The Problem of The Massive Text To explore this, let us look at my life. To elaborate, in 2007, I had a family member that was running nightclubs. It was their job to create the VIP list, fill it up, and get the “who’s who” in Minneapolis to come out and get them in the doors each night. Their idea was to send text messages to these people to get them to come out, and they said it worked really, really well. That said, they couldn’t figure out how to send a mass text message to everybody at one time. The first attempt was to try sending text messages by purchasing many mobile phones to connect to a special modem (remember the old modems that people used to use when “dial-up” was used for internet access? The idea/problem: They needed more people to come out to the nightclubs so they could have more sales. The attempted solution: Sending text messages which got a reply and got people there. How to Start A Business That is how you start a business. Just try to apply the simple ideas. You need to get up and start thinking, “There’s got to be a better way,” “there’s got to be an easier way,” or “there’s got to be a more efficient way” if you don’t ask that question every single day. Back to the story, in the summer of 2007, when he said, “we’ve got to start sending text messages to increase business”, I asked him if he would like help getting that up and running and if I could take a crack at it. He said sure. After a year, our company uses opt to send messages to people. We still own that business now (part of it). Take whatever problem you see or that you may have that you want to fix and send that over to us. Send us an email. We can help you dive into your idea. We will give you suggestions and help design a workflow on getting your project online. Win $1000 Now I will give $1,000 to anyone that submits a good idea we want to partner on. Half the money has to be invested in the company. The other half is just a reward to the person.) So take a look around! What problem can you solve? Check out the related post, “Do you have what it takes to start a business?”
Do You have what it Takes to Start a Business?
I have helped a number of people start a number of business. With a lot of them I become a partner in the project/business; Some are part cash and part equity and others are paid consulting work for me. My love and passion is taking an idea that a client has and helping them start that business. So, what do I actually mean by, “do you have what it takes to start a business?” I’ll give you a couple examples of how a few ventures have gone. Example Number One Two women approached me that were very, very good physical therapists and speech therapists. They loved what they were doing, but they thought that the activities that the students had were very “blah”. Whether this was in a rehab facility, at home for the parents to use, or at school for the teachers to use. They thought, “what if we could create the activities, give them how-to-guides and package new items every month. This could really help the kids, the parents and be a game changer.” The idea was to create a monthly subscription service with three categories, for teachers, parents and rehab staff and create a new box every month. Take It To The Next Level: Creating A Business I know nothing about the therapy world but I do know how to start a business. I helped them take it from an idea to “startup stage”. We create a name, create a logo, create a brand, create a marketing plan, create a business plan (I hate that phrase of business plan, it was more of a road map). The business plan wasn’t the 30-100 page, it was a road map that included a break even on the monthly costs, how much each box could cost and at what point the business would be profitable. The business plans I find valuable include what we want to do, the goals we want to hit, the reason why we are in business, our revenue model and the steps we need to take for each item this will allow a road map for our MVP – Minimal Viable Product. From Zero To Sixty In 6 Months: Build Your Base The first step was to get the business established, the EIN set-up . We set up the website and the eCommerce platform from WordPress and we used Hostgator and for credit card payment processing Stripe. With this entity, we had turned it into a monthly subscription model where we would drop-ship “kits”. The kits included new exercises that the therapist could do to help their clients. It did not matter whether this was in a school setting or in facilities or to parents at home). We would drop-ship them a new kit every month, with fresh ideas!! I even helped them get into a trade show; we got a backdrop, we had T-Shirts made, business cards and demo boxes (before we sold anything). We created a form for clients to register online while at the show and if they did not buy at the show we got them to give us there email for a chance to win a 12 month free subscription. It was a great way to build a base of followers. We rocked it out, we got 10 sign ups at the show which reinforced that they had a great idea. We went from zero to sixty in six months to get this idea up and running and off the ground. Gaining Momentum: Stay On Board About 3-4 months into it, we had 20+ clients, we were building monthly boxes, working with vendors to get free products and started to help clients in Canada. We had everything moving forward, and then – one of the partners said that they didn’t have enough “family time”. They said that they were spending all of their evenings on the business – shopping for the products and putting together the boxes. I replied, “Yes, yes you are and you’ll also probably also be spending all day Saturday.” This is how it goes when you start a business and you should be ready for that for 2-3 years of massive action and staying busy!! After three-year if you’re not making money, it’s probably a good time to throw in the towel. Be Willing Sacrifice She wasn’t willing to make the sacrifices that is needed when starting a business. Some people just do not quite understand what it will take – they like the idea of starting a business, they like the idea of getting enough income to quit their job, they like the idea of creating something and watching it grow but when it comes down to it, they just don’t have the kahunas to make it happen or the timing is not right. In this case it was the timing, she has the motivation and kahunas to do it, it was just bad timing. I am sure this person will try it again when their spouse is more behind them. Before you start a business and before you decide to quit your job – you should really take a “gut check” to be sure this is something you absolutely want to do. That this is something that you have time to do and something that you want to make time to do. I Am Here To Help If it is a direction that you want to move forward in, you can always email us with your idea . I’m here to help you get something off the ground. We’re happy to help! Everyone is looking for motivation. I highly recommend the “Every Day is Saturday” podcast. This will help you get motivated to see if it would be the right fit for you. What ended up happening in this business is that the one women, the third partner, decided she had to go back to focusing on her family. The other women has now taken it, adjusted a little bit, changed the company name and is now loving
Tabata Is Like A Business
I took an exercise class with my wife, a class that she takes a few times a week. The class was a Tabata class. It was the first time that I have taken a class like this. For anyone that does not understand Tabata – you business exercise for a period of time, “You do 20 seconds of any high-intensity exercise followed by 10 seconds of rest, for 8 rounds (4 minutes total)” and then you have a minute off. Then you do 4-5 sets of these 4-minute rounds. You use dumbbell weights, and risers – it is a high, high-intensity workout. Never Rest What I noticed is that there are some people who decided during the in-between (the 1-minute rest) of exercise intervals, the “moment off”, that they would rest. Then there are other people, who instead of resting, opted to continue their workouts in various manners. This was fascinating to me and is a lot like business. There are people that will do just the bare minimum needed in order to get by, who take every single break that they can possibly have – they get excited for the next break, instead of excited for the next job. Those Who Rest Vs. Those Who Don’t Stop I found it interesting to look around the room and see the type of people that decided to not work through their break compared to the people that decided to work through their break. In the Tabata exercise, there are people that held the plank position (if you know what that is – it works your core) when other people rested. I tried to hold the plank a few times and then collapsed, but it was the choice to try and push myself. There are other people that decided to start the next exercise early, or continue the last exercise longer through the “minute break”. You can guess, the type of people, and the physical fitness levels of those people, that decided to take a rest and the ones that kept working during their break – was a night and day difference. That is a lot like business. Be Too Excited To Take Breaks! I see a lot of people just moping around, that is slow, that is excited about the wrong things- to take lunch – excited to gossip around the water cooler. They are choosing not to be happy with where they are, and what they are doing. Then I see other clients who are extremely excited, who are very passionate, who are fired up, and who are doing extremely well. These winners are crushing it in business, and they don’t take breaks. These people can’t even find time to go to the bathroom. These guys will sit at their desks. They’ll run around and meet with people for four straight hours before they will even take a breath. Choose your Time Wisely: Be A Winner So, just like in Tabata, there is a night and day difference between the winners and losers. Winners are people who choose to take on more. They’re the people who choose to expand their brains, their knowledge base, and their comfort zone. Conversely, there are people who choose to find time to take breaks. They actually look forward to how much less they can do. What direction do you go? Do you rest in the middle of Tabata? Or do you push forward and take it as a challenge to hold the plank position?
When YOU Present What Can YOU Do Different?
Last week I was listening to a podcast on my way to giving a seminar in Charlotte and Raleigh in North Carolina. I was reviewing my presentation, and going over my opening lines. To start, I planned to compare a financial product to Vegas. I then would explain how certain parts of finance are like Vegas and gambling . It was going to be edgy, I thought. This presentation was going to be different. During my drive, I was listening to an audio book that is called Fascinate Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation. In a section of the book, the she said, “You don’t have to be great. You just have to be different”. And so I thought, “what can I do that is totally different than what they are used to?”. Yes, I am going to have my PowerPoint. I am going to preform. I am going to communicate. But what can I do that is remarkable? I needed something that would stick in their minds and get their attention. What Can I do To Stick In their Minds? As I was driving, I was brainstorming what this “different” will look like. I started to sketch on my notepad how my idea was going to unfold. Its going to work like this, and I am going to do that, and I want to talk about this and am going to pause here…. I decided to go to the bank and pull out $250 in cash to be “different”. I used this money to illustrate investments going up and down. It was a lot to do on my drive in. Why not just stick with what I created and be happy with all my weekend work? Why make changes last minute and stress myself out? I literally pull up in front of where I was going to be giving the presentation, open the laptop, spent twenty minutes cranking out the new slide. Catching My Audiences Attention Luckily, I double checked all my numbers and I got them all right, but I went in, I did the presentation the but my hands were a little e shaky handing out that money. At one point I did hand out the wrong change and the audience was laughing and joking around but I tried to stay focused. The second day in Raleigh, North Carolina was much easier. I did the whole thing, I learned where I messed up and that I should count and organize the money ahead of time, continuous improvement (in japanese it’s called Kazen) 🙂 by the end of the second day the compliments started to flow. It wasn’t great but it was different. So, from a personal challenge, what can I do that is different then than everybody else in my industry? What can you do that is different in your industry? What can you do to differ from everybody else? Is it a better quality of service? Perhaps a different type of service? Are you letting your passion out more? Make sure you’re getting excited! Do something different than everyone else, as soon as you see/hear “normal” that should be a trigger to stop and put some brain power into changing it!