Archive for Thou Shall Not Work – Page 3

Las Vegas, Joint Ventures and Sleep

Just in the Las Vegas airport after a whirlwind trip. I was here working on a joint venture with a friend Bill Walsh, the creator of PowerTeam International. I had a great time, thanks Bill for a great event, fun parties and amazing hospitality.

While I was working my dear wife Cory caught up on some much deserved sleep (that poor woman has not slept through the night in 5 months since our youngest Jasxon came home.)
Jaxson Jolly Jumper

Our trip was fantastic on all counts, we escaped -36 degree weather in Calgary, Cory got more sleep in 3 nights than she got in the previous 10 days and Bill and I are doing some very exciting work together. I am going to be speaking in Orlando at the end of April with Powerteam at their Inspiration 2020 event (I will have some amazing offers to share in a couple of weeks). In addition I and Personal Best will be bringing Bill and his team to Calgary on March 15th where he will be presenting “Vision to Wealth”.

PowerTeam is a fascinating category creator that offers a blend of personal development, business coaching and training PLUS venture funding! I am thrilled and excited to bring this talented diverse team to Calgary. We will be doing much more work together in the future. In the meantime set aside March 15th in your calender and prepare to give your business a quantum leap!

Visit PowerTeam

A special thanks to my Mom and Sister for taking such great care of our boys, they were under the weather and I know they can be a handful at the best of times. So thank you from the bottom of our hearts, if not for knowing you two were with them, Cory could never have left them and gotten the break that she needed so much!

Stay tuned for updates on new cities that Personal Best will be in this year, it is going to be a fantastic ride!

Jay

PS: One of my favorite quotes of all weekend was JD Rockafeller “As I got older, I stopped listening to what people said, and only paid attention to what they did” Love, Love, LOVE IT!

3 Keys to Creating Great Workshops and Seminars

We have all been there, a workshop or seminar that we ate truly fascinated by the topic and happy to be there. At the front of the room is a talented and gifted program leader with great wisdom and content to share. Then it begins to fall apart.

The program does not start on time. When it does it does not seem to be really purposeful. The facilitator get in a fight with the easel trying to flip paper. The leader gives directions to an activity that has 15 steps you and the rest of the group are confused and no one does anything. Or the instructions are clear but they do not give you any time to actually do the activity or make sure that everyone gets a chance to participate. Or one of my favorites is sitting there watching them read from a manual, good god I can read!! The list goes on and on and on. Again the material is great, the facilitator is brilliant in their area of expertise but the experience is diminished by their lack of training and knowledge in designing and delivering small and large group facilitated experiences.

It really is a crime because it costs tremendously: it costs value for the participants, it costs credibility for the program leader, it costs money for the organization in terms of ongoing sales.

Facilitating skills are NOT that complex or difficult but there are not that many places to learn them from people with significant experience.

I have trained and supported hundreds of facilitators to design, market and deliver their own programs over the past 20 years and I want to share my top 3 training tips with you.

1) Do your own work! Do your own work! Did I mention do your own work? The number of times I have seen people present material that they were not completely grounded on personally is scary! Please note I have worked primarily in the personal transformation industry where this is even more significant than in other arenas but it is vital everywhere. You MUST live your content to the best of your abilities or don’t bother.

2) Be clear about your motive, yea, yea I know you want to save the world, help people less fortunate than you, of course. However until you tell yourself the truth about ego and attention needs you will have great difficulty succeeding. Here is a little secret. EVERY facilitator/program leader who has ever stood on a stage has high (some super high) attention needs. It is part if what attracts them to the business. Significance, attention, needing to be needed, love, adoration superiority again the list can go on and on. Please understand these are pretty basic human needs, having the needs are not the issue…pretending being at the front of the room is a selfless act is an issue of epic proportions.

3) Overlooking basic skills. Usually under the erroneous view of the material and message is so valuable that the details do not matter. That is not true! Hire someone who has experience get a mentor who has designed content get the basic skills handled for you and your clients. It is not hard you just need the support!

As I am writing this I am getting flashbacks to a variety of crazy things that I have seen novice facilitators do that caused programs to suffer and in some cases outright fail. Please do not be one of those, the truth is the world needs you and your gift, there is greater demand for adult education today than ever before. Do what it takes to support yourself to succeed.

My core company Personal Best Seminars has been providing transformational seminars including Facilitator Development for over 20 years, we have over 30,000 graduates who tell us regularly that our programs are the best organized and delivered that they have ever experienced.

Due to a ton of requests I have created an Accelerated Facilitator Training program that starts late May. If you are interested contact me directly at jfiset@me.com

Jay

Thou Shall Not Work, Commandment Suggestions

Here is VERSION 2.0 of the 10 Commandments for Entrepreneurs.  Please note it is a work in progress. I am open to any and all suggestions.

Next week I will start fleshing out each of  the commandments and will keep you all posted.

If you want to keep up to date with the writing be sure to click the RSS feed on my main page.


Here are some of the suggestions that I received for the final Commandment for my book thank you to all who shared their opinions!

Linda Bidulka The very 1st thing that came straight out of my gut on this was :: Thou shall be a leader of ” Freedom of Choice” to all.

April Martin-Tranter Thou shalt always feel free to ask for and ACCEPT support

Jackie Dumaine Thou shall shut the hell up and just freekin’ GO FOR IT??

karen holmes Thou shall do what you say your going to do…when you say you will do it. customers appreciate integrity!

Manon Mitchell Related to Karen’s: Thou shalt live in integrity now and forever … amen!

Amy Lafleche #10 – Though shall dream BIG!!

The FIRST draft of the 10 Commandments of Entrepreneurship

1) Thou shall create value

2) Thou shall be sustainable in all endeavours

3) Thou shall build to scale

4) Thou shall become addicted to education

5) Thou shall release your limiting beliefs

6) Thou shall give, you will become a new breed of Philanthropreneur

7) Thou shall not create false economies

8) Thou shall create more than you consume

9) Thou shall focus exclusively on that which only YOU can do

10) What do you think it should be???

The SECOND draft

I have been thinking that the second commandment actually encompasses my first draft commandments 7 and 8.  It is the same theme just stated differently.

1) Thou shall dream big and be crazy enough to go for it!

2) Thou shall create value

3) Thou shall ask for and accept support

4) Thou shall focus exclusively on that which only YOU can do

5) Thou shall be sustainable in all endeavours

Thou shall not create false economies

Thou shall create more than you consume

6) Thou shall build to scale

7) Thou shall become addicted to education

8) Thou shall discover and release your limiting beliefs

9) Thou shall give, you will become a new breed of Philanthropreneur

10) Thou shall create freedom for self, family, community and the world

I hope that all of you have a great Easter with your family and friends.

Thou Shall Not Work…For Someone Else

I have been toying around with a book that I think is fun and squarely takes aim at the old industrial revolution beliefs of go to school, get a job, save for retirement and all will be well.

Thou Shall Not Work…For Someone Else, The 10 Commandments of Entrepreneurship.  I am going to start blogging my thoughts and notes for the book.  Please feel free to comment, share your point of view and let me know how you make out “Living the commandments”  ; )

The first draft of the 10 Commandments of Entrepreneurship


1) Thou shall create value

2) Thou shall be sustainable in all endeavours

3) Thou shall build to scale

4) Thou shall become addicted to education

5) Thou shall release your limiting beliefs

6) Thou shall give, you will become a new breed of Philanthropreneur

7) Thou shall not create false economies

8) Thou shall create more than you consume

9) Thou shall focus exclusively on that which only YOU can do

10) What do you think it should be???

I have about 5 others that are on my list but I would love to hear what the rest of you think.  What do you think should be one of the Commandments of Entrepreneurship?

The Problem With Coach Certification Programs

The key to your business success is not better technical skills, the key to your success is mastering entrepreneurship.  Entrepreneurship is THE  element that makes all the difference.  It took me far too long to get the lesson.  Your process could be faster, easier and even more profitable than mine!


Here is an interesting bit of information: of the 3 highest earning coaches/facilitators earning in excess of $1M a year (of which I am one), not one of us has any formal coach certification designation.  To me this is not just a bit of interesting information, it points to a problem in the industry, a problem with coach certification programs.

Yes I know I have designed and delivered my own coach certification program for the past 7 years  and yes, the problem exists with my program as well.

In fact I was aware of the gaping hole in my design. I even talked about it to everyone considering my program.  My grounding was that we will teach you what I believe to be the best processing framework that exists on the planet so that you can support your clients with REAL VALUE… and you need to go somewhere else to learn how to market and run your business…that is NOT what we do.

I remember saying that there are a multitude of business and entrepreneur training programs and encouraged my clients to go and take them.  What is funny is that so few would actually pursue business training.

I have a hypothesis and significant data to support my view that there is a belief block for many people about making money and helping people.  This belief block is a crime. There is no more valuable service on the planet than helping our fellow man, and it should and can be well rewarded.

What also became clear to me through supporting people in this industry over the past 15 years  is that coaching, facilitating and virtually ALL helping relationship businesses have their own unique issues and opportunities. Woefully there are VERY few programs that actually focus on this niche of entrepreneurship, although thankfully this has been growing in the past few years.

Being an entrepreneur from birth it seems, most of my skills in this area have been self taught (trial and lots of error!). Yes I took Business Administration at school, but be clear even that is NOT really entrepreneur training. It is primarily technical training of how to manage a business. Different, very different than designing a business, launching a business, nurturing a business to sustainability and ultimately reaping the rewards of that business in a multitude of ways.

The truth is that the majority of people who participated in our programs have succeeded in coaching and facilitating primarily because they had a supporting structure or organization that actually took care of the “business” end of the process.  Many became trainers within their existing careers and companies, like Telus, Nexen, and many others. Some coaches also became affiliated with Personal Best. By and large those that actually became coaches and facilitators did so within or in relationship to larger organizations. Those that hung out their own shingle and are continuing to practice are few and far between.

The message is clear: to succeed in this industry, the vast majority of people must have the support of a larger structure that teaches, assists with and in some cases even handles the business end of the business.

To succeed as a coach, facilitator or for that matter in ANY helping relationship, what is needed far more than technical skills are business skills and entrepreneurial moxie.  The fundamental beliefs and skills of an entrepreneur will have more to do with the long term success of a coach than any other single factor.

The cliché of “do what you love and the money will follow” is for the most part not true, there are a multitude of certified coaches who have been doing what they love and frankly starving to death.

Do what you love – do that which is congruent with what you are GREAT at; build a sustainable business model to support what you love and then the money will follow.

It is for this reason that my partner Colin and I have founded The Association of Helping Relationship Entrepreneurs.  An organization dedicated to the most important aspect of your business.  Building your business.

The truth is you are not alone, you do NOT need to struggle, you can and deserve to be abundant and wealthy sharing your gifts and supporting others.  If you make your living through helping relationships (or would like to) you must find out more about the new association.

We have 2 upcoming events:

A free informational webinar that you can register for here.

http://myoptinpage2.com/?pid=5144125

And for those of you who already know me and my capacity to create and support others to create meaningful, profitable businesses supporting individuals and the world,  you can register for the upcoming weekend sponsored by the Association of Helping Relationship Entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, The Missing Ingredient for Helping Relationship Businesses

When: June 26 – 28th

Where: Calgary AB

Investment: $997, if you are a friend of mine on Facebook, you can register now for only $747

Seating is very limited, secure your seat now.