Author Archives: Dr. Bill

Are you asking for too little? (Hint: Reading this post just might pay for your next vacation.)

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April 9, 2015, Dr. Bill Dyment, Co-Author of Fire Your Excuses

It was a pleasant fall Vegas afternoon as I emerged from the cab in front of the Bellagio Hotel, the sun was still bright and blinding in the November sky.  I was exuberant.   Professionally, I felt like I had finally arrived.  I had been chosen to deliver an all-day session for a Fortune 500 company at a 5-star hotel.  It would be an event to remember. Not only were the seminars a success and the audience engaging, I was treated like royalty complete with lavish dinners, a show and a great room overlooking the famous lake and fountains.

Just one bubbly but honest comment from the organizer gave me pause:  “We were delighted to learn your price was only X, in truth we would have paid double!”  I am so glad that I enjoyed all the extras, because the truth was, in a very real sense, I had paid for my 5-star room, dinners and the great show!

I wish I could say that I instantly began “right-pricing” my speaking and consulting services, but a decade later I am better at it than ever.  Equal parts “nice guy” and, at times, a second-guesser of my market worth, in the past, I have been an easy mark for better negotiators.

If you have your own business, sell a product or service on the side, or recently asked for a raise or interviewed for a new job, you may be able to relate to capitulating on your price or salary in the face of hard bargainers or sad stories of budget woes and personal finances.  The good news is, I am confident that applying some of principles and strategies below can put hundreds, even thousands more in your pocket and add to the financial security of your family.

 Underpriced is undervalued

Some years back, in an effort to make my consultation services more affordable to all, I priced my services at the lower end of my profession.  Feeling a bit self-righteous about it, I was shocked to her one client say; “We interviewed several firms for our project.  It came down to you and another group who charges considerably more. Since we had to choose, we figured they had to be more experienced to command and get their fees, so unfortunately, we have decided to go with them.” Wow! What an instant, albeit painful, education!

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Getting Real with Your Career: 10 Questions to Help You Decide Your Next Career Steps in 2015

New Career - Green Pushpin on a Map Background.

January 20, 2015, Dr. Bill Dyment, Co-Author of Fire Your Excuses

By this time, your 2015 should be well under way. Welcome to your annual Career Advantage Check-up! If you take a moment to read and answer the 10 questions below, I guarantee it will help you better strategize your career in 2015.  Would you consider spending a few minutes to map out how you might make hundreds, even thousands more this year? Enjoy!

Have you promised yourself that this will be the year to make a big change? Should you stay where you are?  Should you stay in your field but find another organization? Should you start your own business? Or should you start a supplemental part-time business?

How to get the most out of this resource:

1. First, read the 5 most common career transition scenarios below, can you relate to any of these individuals?

2. Next, work through The 10 Key Career Questions of 2015.  Revised yearly, they are designed to help you “get real with your career” and sort through your next career steps in this new year.

The 5 Most Common Career Transition Scenarios of 2015

In Need of A Change in Career Direction?
Does one of the following scenarios fit you?

Can you relate to any of the following real-life clients? (Names and details have been changed to protect privacy.)

1. The “It Was Just Business”  Robert lost his current position due to restructuring.  He knows that his field has changed and it is unlikely he will be hired at the same salary as before. He has been out of work for more than a year.  Every month he is not working, he is losing thousands of dollars.  He and his family are rapidly approaching a financial crisis.

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Welcome to 2015! It’s Never To Late to Say “Thank You.”

Thank You on Red Keyboard Button.

If your family is like ours, the end of 2014 was a blur of business, accounting, shopping and celebrations of the season with friends and family. Both coasts were visited, two sets of relatives enjoyed, and thousands of calories consumed! What didn’t happen for me was being able to thank everyone I wished for their many kindnesses, business, friendship and support.

This week several people I have spoken to have expressed similar regrets that they also left undone that thank you card, gift, phone call or visit. The demands of December were simply too much.

There is good news: It is never too late to communicate a heart-felt thank you in whatever way you choose. And, those who receive your good wishes, words and, perhaps, even that surprise January gift, will be delighted-wouldn’t you?

So, stop wasting a moment more on feeling guilty and go ahead and send that Happy New Year card, email or gift. Better yet, pick up the phone, old school style. (Hint: Start with your elderly relatives and unofficial “aunts” and “uncles.”) Sit down sometime this week and make a list of those you wish to connect with in some way before the end of January.

There are so many kindnesses to be grateful for that go unmentioned, remaining only in our hearts. Break the silence, reach out and say thank you in this brand new year you have been privileged to enter.

Happy New Year and blessings to all for a great 2015.

Dr. Bill

 

Why Wait Until January? Gain the December Advantage!

winter running

This year, my co-author and I are challenging our friends, family and business colleagues with the Fire Your Excuses December Challenge. Instead of raising the perennial “white flag” at Thanksgiving only to take up the assault again in January, we decided to commit to 20 workouts in the month of December. You can be sure that I will be enjoying some delicious holiday fare this season, on both coasts, but our growing team has decided that doing the post-New Years “get back into shape” dance is not in the cards for us this year. If you are interested in joining us in the December Challenge, we’d love to know. It may just help you enter 2015 in the best shape in years. Are you in?

But let’s take this challenge a step further. Without a doubt, there are corporate and personal career goals you may be tempted to delay until the start of the new year. What is still on your 2014 to-do list? Why not slide into the end of the holiday season having finished strong and accomplished many of those goals. In fact, for some, December might just turn out to be the most productive month of your year.

I was challenged by a recent quote: “Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.”
Theodore Roosevelt

Blessings to all and Happy Holidays!

How to Leverage the Almost Unfair Advantage of “The Golden Hours.”

 

Healthy trail run

In Fire Your Excuses we urge readers to hold a “Personal Business Meeting” at least once a week. Why is this strategy so powerful? Because, as Brendon Burchard, best-selling author and productivity expert, says, The inbox is nothing but a convenient organizing system of other people’s priorities” [for your day.] The minute you open your email, whether it be on your phone or computer, your day and priorities are no longer your own. Without a minimum weekly personal business meeting, your activities will likely be reactionary and defensive, not self-directed and purposeful.  This is not the blueprint for an extraordinary life.

Interested in joining the 5 A.M. Club?

Leadership expert, Robin Sharma, invites us to go a step further by joining “The 5 A.M. Club.” Sharma observes that many consider the hours between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., the “golden hours.”  It is a time before most of the world is at work and, for some, even awake. Many who do make the shift and capitalize on these early morning hours report that they are their moments of the highest productivity.  In the early morning quiet we are free of distractions and our will power has yet to be assaulted by the demands of the day.

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Video: Robin Sharma on “How to Wake Up Early”

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Making the Shift-A Personal Journey

As a personal experiment, over the past year, I have Inched slowly and deliberately into being not only conscious but alert and productive during the earliest “golden hours,” Immediately I noticed that whenever I won the battle of the bed, I enjoyed the significant psychological boost that comes from accomplishing so much before the traditional start of the work day. Today, several mornings before six, my wife and I are in the gym, and I also get time to pray and plan my day.  Business-wise, this practice has already yielded great dividends.  Big picture, strategic thinking gets done and game-changing projects that I have meant to do for months are now well underway. I have also become a more disciplined, professional, and prolific writer. As a result of getting up earlier, my outreach and networking is on overdrive as I follow-up more consistently with colleagues and clients. The golden hour has brought its health benefits too.   Let’s just say, “the cooler containing my six-pack” now has a bit less insulation.

Making the shift wasn’t easy.  I was definitively not a “morning person.”  My journey began in earnest in March 2013 when I started a mastermind group with five other entrepreneurs which continues to meet every Wednesday morning before work for 90 minutes. Now the highlight of my professional week, it has had a tremendous impact on my business and my soul. Once I began to catch the early morning rays of the golden hours, I was eager to spend more time there.  The breakthrough step was to plan one event that was so compelling that I didn’t mind getting up early for it. Our mastermind group has served that purpose for each of us and much more.

How about you? What weekly event could you put into place to help “jump-start” your new resolve to begin your day earlier and on “your own terms?”

I see a pattern here….

In my consulting over the past 25 years, I have noticed, as Burchard asserts in the video below, that many of my millionaire friends do, in fact, start the day both early and with a short planning session. While each has his or her own ritual, some high tech, some low, some involving exercise, others not, it is difficult to come to any other conclusion from my modest informal survey that there is a pattern: Those who are running a nice-sized chunk of the free world, order their day in a way the rest of us do not. Eventually, I decided that if I wanted to experience some of the successes they enjoyed, I could do far worse as starting place than taking notes and implementing some of the common work habits all of them seemed to share.

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Video: Brendon Burchard: How Millionaires Schedule Their Day

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What about “night owls?”

Some readers can no doubt make a compelling case that their circadian rhythms enable them to be highly productive late at night.  I am not one to argue with success.  In this article, though, I am addressing those who feel as if they could be more productive. For many, feeling worn out after work precludes those late night bursts of creative energy and output.  As mentioned, I was the quintessential “night owl” and it did work modestly well for me. Getting up early has simply worked better, now that I am used to it.

Afterword: Giving yourself a significant cognitive advantage

When exercise is included in your golden hours, results can be even more marked. It is not uncommon to feel as if one has gained an extra 10 IQ points after an exercise session.   A study conducted by University of Georgia’s Phillip D. Tomporowski seems to confirm it.  Tomporowski reported that just one workout immediately boosted higher-order thinking skills when BDNF, a protein, which sits at the synapses of your brain neurons, is activated by exercise making you more productive and efficient throughout your day.

Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, maintains that daily exercise DOUBLES his productivity. He still gets up early to run, and, he is 64 years old!

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Video: Branson on exercise and productivity

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Giving what we now know about productivity, exercise and planning, the evidence appears overwhelming. Who’s up for an early start?

If you have made the shift or, like me, are moving in that direction, let’s hear your story in the comment section below. See you at dawn!

 

Who needs to Hear From You Today? Target the “Small Five”

20140529_092207If I were to take you on a safari to Africa (and it is a must-do for anyone’s “bucket list,”) you would undoubtedly hear our guide speak of “The Big Five.” The phrase refers to the five animals that we simply must see during our time in the bush. They are: the elephant, the black rhino, the Cape buffalo, the lion, and the leopard.

Getting the opportunity to see magnificent African animals in their natural habitat is truly the experience of a lifetime. Seeing all of “The Big Five” makes for the ultimately special trip and an unequalled natural high.

Researchers like Robert Cialdini, from Arizona State University, however, have documented another type of peak emotional experience popularly known in the literature as “the helper’s high.” The helpers’ high is a euphoric feeling, followed by a period of calm, which we experience after performing an act of kindness. All of us have experienced this feeling at one time or the other, but did you know you can build into your life the weekly habit of service that blesses not only yourself but also those around you on a consistently blissful basis? For me, serving others is a natural expression of my Christian faith, but non-religious and religious people alike are involved in helping others and enjoy the great feelings engendered by doing so.

In thinking about the peak experience of serving, I would like to propose that as you support those causes closest to you heart, you don’t forget to also “serve small.” My Fire Your Excuses co-author, Dr. Dayhoff and I, define “serving small” as serving one-on-one, in a deliberate, often anonymous but powerful way. Each week make it your goal to reach out and encourage each of “the Small Five.”

Who are “The Small Five?” They are:

  1. Your relatives
  2. Your friends
  3. Your neighbors

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Spring Into A Better Career: The 10 Questions You Must Ask Yourself

By Dr. Bill Dyment, Co-author of Fire Your Excuses

Each year, I meet scores of career professionals and students whose stories closely parallel the ones below. Is one of these stories your own?

· Robert lost his current position due to restructuring. He knows that his field has changed and it is unlikely he will be hired at the same salary as before. He has been out of work for more than a year. Every month he is not working, he is losing thousands of dollars.

· Melissa’s job is not what it used to be. There is a salary freeze and she constantly hears, “You should be happy just to have a job.” Yet, her family’s bills keep rising and, then there is college and retirement. She doesn’t want to become a full-time entrepreneur, but an extra few hundred a month sure would help.

· Ryan will be entering college soon. He is smart but unfocused. Given the cost of college these days, a clearer understanding of his strengths, weaknesses and interests might save a lot in unnecessary classes, even an unnecessary extra year in school.

· Kim is an artist at heart. She is talented and helped a number of friends with parties, flowers, and crafts. Everyone says she should go into her own business but she doesn’t know where to begin.

· Daniel lost nearly all of his investments when the real estate market crashed. He knows at his current salary, he will never be able to make up that loss before retirement. He wonders what else he could do to earn more in the time he has to work.

Getting Real with Your Career:

10 Questions to Ask Yourself

1. Will my current position likely be in more or less demand in the next three years? If the answer is “less,” are you O.K. remaining in a fading position or field? (If you are close to retirement or have more than enough, this may not be a concern.)

2. If my position is not likely to grow, am I O.K. with capping my salary indefinitely at this point in my career? If you enjoy a rich, full life outside of work and you are fine with the income and the responsibilities you have now, this may be O.K. too. Just keep in mind, your expenses, i.e., fuel, health care, etc., will continue to rise each year.

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Free Teleseminar: Fire Your Excuses and Start Building Your Business

DRB

Your business is your heart and soul, your income, and your purpose! Make it exactly what you want and dream it to be by getting the latest inspiration, marketing, social media & business trends for FREE! Launch & Monetize Your Business Telesummit March 20-25! http://bit.ly/1hJkcxd Get in on the Free Training Tonight at 9 pm EST!

Title: Dr. Bill Dyment – Fire Your Excuses
Time: Tuesday, March 25th at 9:00pm Eastern/6:00pm Pacific
Listening method: Phone + Web Simulcast
Phone number: (425) 440-5100
PIN Code: 890575#

To attend, visit:
http://InstantTeleseminar.com/?eventID=52739157