Key distinctions

No competition…Just distractions

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Many times, people have asked me if I’m concerned about sharing my methods and techniques at my seminars, especially since many of the attendees are other web professionals wanting to improve their skills. I have often told them that I don’t believe in competition.

I can guarantee you with 100% certainty that there is NO ONE ELSE IN THE WORLD who has the same combination of strengths, experience, and abilities that I do. Since I’m a mathematician, I can even prove it numerically.

Recently, I was meeting with someone, and after he realized how different my approach was from a traditional web company, he leaned back and said, “Wow! You don’t have any competitors–just distractions.” I like that analysis. People going to other web companies and spending money and getting very little in return is not competition to what I do. It just distracts them from coming to the right place in the first place. It’s just a detour until they come to someone who builds them a website that actually make money, a website that can be their #1 employee.

Does this sound like I’m bragging? It isn’t intended to. I believe that many of you are just as unique in your skills, strengths and experience in your field as I am in mine. And when your website showcases that uniqueness, it will be an exciting place to visit.

Having a website that sets you apart from the crowd allows YOU to serve many more people with your unique gifts and skills. Don’t you owe it to them to have one?

To your success!

Three words that guarantee failure

by Steve Johnsen Leave a Comment

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There are three words you can use that guarantee failure in just about any endeavor, including both business and personal life.

My friend Gary Barnes (who happens to be one of America’s leading business coaches) does an exercise in his boot camps. He asks everyone in the audience to put their pen on the table, and then instructs them to try to pick it up. Most people figure out after 2-3 times how to follow the instructions correctly—“Trying” to pick up the pen is not the same as actually picking it up!

Darren Brown, the English stage hypnotist and magician, mystifies audiences using the same words. He explained in a rare behind-the-scenes documentary interview that when he gets people in a hypnotic state and tells them, “Try to stand up,” or “Try to lift your hand,” or, “Try to remember your name,” they cannot stand or move their hand or say their name. The reason is that the subconscious mind knows that the word, “Try,” is a command to fail. This seems amazing to the audience looking on, because they generally do not make that connection.

The words, “I will try,” sound very positive, but in fact are a code for, “I am not committed to seeing this happen.” If I ask a client to send over the headshots for their new website and they say “I will try,” I know that it will never really happen. Remember when Luke Skywalker’s spaceship was stuck in the swamp? Luke thought it would be too hard, so when Yoda told him to get it out of the swamp, he said “I will try.” In the immortal words of Yoda, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Gary Barnes has created a new icon:

I have almost no sense of balance and even less grace on my feet. (If you see me on the ski slopes, get far, far out of the way!) When I was a freshman in college, I took an ice skating class. I was determined that I was going to learn to skate, or else break some bones in the attempt. At the end of the course my teacher told me, “Steve, I’ve been teaching ice skating for 18 years, and I have never had another student who fell down as much as you.” But despite all the falls during the learning process, I was skating, and enjoying it immensely!

To your success!

Byte to Byte with Steve Johnsen

Three words that guarantee failure

Hands of Action!

by Steve Johnsen Leave a Comment

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In H.G. Wells’ book, The Time Machine, the time traveler jumps forward to the far distant future and encounters the Eloi, a race of semi-humans lacking much in the way of intellect, strength, compassion, or ambition, but horribly afraid of the dark.

Wells recognized that human beings were designed for action. When we sit around doing nothing, but worrying about what might happen, or wondering why things are not going well for us, we end up paralyzed by our own emotion.

It is not that we start to move once we are happy; it is that we are happy once we start to move. When we take action, we cease to be dependent on our emotion.

It’s just like your Grandma used to say, “Busy hands are happy hands.”

How is your marketing going this year? Instead of worrying about it, take a meaningful action that can pay huge dividends.

To your success!

Toss your cap over the wall!

by Steve Johnsen Leave a Comment

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In his autobiography, An Only Child, the Irish writer Frank O’Connor talks about when he and his friends were boys. When they came to an orchard wall blocking their way that seemed too high and too difficult to climb, they took off their caps and tossed them over the wall. Because their caps were quite valuable to them, they then had no choice but to follow them over the wall.

John F Kennedy was very inspired by this story, and used to tell it to his friends. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress the audacious goal of “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth” by the end of the decade.

In his dedication speech at the Aerospace Medical Health Center in San Antonio on November 21, 1963, the day before he was assassinated, President Kennedy mentioned Frank O’Connor’s story, and concluded his speech with this: “This nation has tossed its cap over the wall of space and we have no choice but to follow it.”

Do you have a huge goal that you have been secretly harboring? President Kennedy understood that one way to ensure that your goal gets achieved is to announce it to the world. Another way is to invest a financial stake in the outcome.

Some people lose weight only after they buy smaller clothes. I dreamed a long time about being an entrepreneur, but it wasn’t until I quit my day job that I got really focused about making that a success. A lot of the stuff we learn in college could be learned from a book. However, most of us will not study unless we paid for the class and give the teacher permission to give us a grade.

The bottom line is, we achieve our goals when we have a commitment to them. If you have a goal, why not create the circumstances that ensure your own commitment? What can you do today to create the commitment to achieving your dream?

To your success!