What If Michael Jordan Was An Accountant?

Imagine for a moment if Michael Jordan was an accountant. Or, Bill Gates...a painter. Or, perhaps Oprah...an engineer. While each likely would have thrived in their respective profession, odds are good they would not have had the monumental impact on our world they have been able to realize.

The same holds true for you. You have the power to change the world, impact millions of lives, and leave a legacy for lifetimes to come. In order to do so, however, you must be very clear on ONE specific thing.

Learn what that is HERE.

The world is waiting for you!

The One Thing You Need To Be Good At by Bob Bly

The other day, my oldest son expressed to me his concern that he would not be successful as an adult.

Why not? Because (in his mind) there are quite a number of things he isn't good at (math is at the top of the list).

I shared with him an encouraging success secret that I now pass on to you.

Namely, that to be extremely successful—in business, career, and wealth building—you don't have to be good at a lot of things.

In fact, you can attain an extremely high level of success even if you are really good at only one thing.

Warren Buffett made this point some years ago in a college lecture he gave with Bill Gates.

He said, in essence, that he (Buffett) is not very strong, not very fast, not very physical, not very athletic.

"If I was dropped in the middle of Africa, I'd be eaten by a lion within 2 minutes," he told the audience.

However, because he is good at only one thing—investing in the stock market—Buffett is an extremely wealthy man.

In my neighborhood, parents worry incessantly about whether their kids will be successful.

They fret over the kids' grades...piano lessons...sports...extra-curricular activities...even how many friends the kids have...summer camp...you name it.

My kids have it easy, because I don't worry about any of these things.

As long as they do their best, I don't obsess over their grades or what extra-curricular activities they should be doing but are not.

I tell them what I just told you...

Find the one thing in life that you love—that turns you on, that you are passionate about—and keep doing it.

The more you do it, the better you get at it.

With an early start and years of practice, your kids will get good at the one thing they love, become extremely competent, and therefore never have to worry about supporting themselves or being out of a job.

Of course, to ensure financial success, this "one thing"—the singular passion—must be something others will pay money for.

To paraphrase Aristotle, "Where your passions intersect with the needs of the public, therein lies your vocation."

Like Warren Buffett, I have very few talents and am not good at most things.

The list of what I am mediocre or bad at is very long indeed.

I'm incompetent at fixing things around the house, for example.

And I have a depth-perception problem that makes me lousy at tennis, baseball, or any sport where you have to hit a ball with a stick.

But I was always a voracious reader. I love books, reading, and writing. I began to write early—amateur comic books in elementary school, short stories in junior high school, articles for the papers in high school and college.

I spent so much time in college writing for our paper—it was a daily, and I became the features editor—that my writing began to improve significantly.

I realized writing was the one thing I love to do, have an aptitude for, and am good at.

And in copywriting, I found an area of writing where I could be paid handsomely for my efforts.

A mistake many people make is to continually work to improve themselves in areas where they are weak.

What you should do instead is to improve yourself in the one area where you are strongest.

Why?

Today we are a society of specialists.

When I was a kid, and the tiles in our bathroom began to crumble, my dad strapped on a tool belt and fixed them.

Today when my bathroom has a cracked tile, I call the tile guy—and pay him to fix it.

Success does not come from being a jack of all trades, and a master of none.

It comes from mastery of a skill or body of knowledge that others—an employer or customer—will pay you to share.

If I were to take a course in tiling, I would learn a little...but my abilities would be nothing compared to my tile guy, who has been doing this for 40 years.

I spend my time increasing my knowledge of marketing, which helps me make more money in my freelance copywriting and Internet marketing business.

Society admires the Renaissance man, the well-rounded individual.

But more often than not, it's the singularly focused individual—Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Tiger Woods—the person who is exceedingly good at just one thing—who reaps the greatest rewards.

 

Bob Bly is the author of "World's Best Copywriting Secrets" and has written copy for more than 100 companies including IBM, Boardroom, Medical Economics and AT&T. He is the author of more than 75 books and a columnist for Target Marketing, Early To Rise and The Writer. McGraw-Hill calls him "America's top copywriter".

Bill Gates' Helpful Lessons

Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a high school about 11 Rules they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair—get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening toyou talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

10 Thing About Warren Buffett You'd Never Knew...

There was a one-hour interview on CNBC with Mr Warren Buffet, the second richest man who has donated $31 billion to charity. Here are some very interesting aspects of his life:

1) He bought his first share at age 11 and he now regrets that he started too late!

2) He bought a small farm at age 14 with savings from delivering newspapers.

3) He still lives in the same small 3 bedroom house in mid-town Omaha, that he bought after he got married 50 years ago. He says that he has everything he needs in that house. His house does not have a wall or a fence.

4) He drives his own car everywhere and does not have a driver or security people around him.

5) He never travels by private jet, although he owns the world's largest private jet company.

6) His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 63 companies. He writes only one letter each year to the CEOs of these companies, giving them goals for the year. He never holds meetings or calls them on a regular basis.

7) He has given his CEO's only two rules. Rule number 1: do not lose any of your shareholder's money. Rule number 2: Do not forget rule number 1.

8) He does not socialize with the high society crowd. His pasttime after he gets home is to make himself some popcorn and watch television.

9) Bill Gates, the world's richest man met him for the first time only 5 years ago. Bill Gates did not think he had anything in common with Warren Buffet. So he had scheduled his meeting only for half hour. But when Mr Gates met him, the meeting lasted for ten hours and Bill Gates became a devotee of Warren Buffet.

10) Warren Buffet does not carry a cellphone, nor has a computer on his desk. and his advice to young people: Stay away from credit cards and invest in yourself.

How to attain a healthy work-life balance?

A recent survey in Singapore reveals that one of the greatest wish for 2007 is to attain a more pronounced work-life balance in life. This is not surprising when you take into consideration other findings like people are generally working harder, becoming more mobile, sleeping less, making less love, having less children and even getting divorced. The problem is that productivity at work does not translate into impactful results. More of us are getting more busy and worried over 'chores' like missing out on e-mails and phone calls. We interact more often through using technology and tools, but we definitely fail to communicate better, heart to heart, on the relationship front.

To tell the truth, according to Dr. Robert Anthony, money has always been the no. 1 factor that affects the way people live their lives. They mold their lifestyles after it, not before it, therefore they become servants of it by handing the power of control to it.

On the other hand, there are a few folks who charge much, much more for their work or consultation in an hour than what 95% of the world's population currently earn in a month. A joke goes around that Bill Gates' wealth equates to the GDP of Peru. A statistic I cam across once puts him at earning $300 per second...

For that rate of earnings, is Bill the most stress-out worker in the world? :)

But this question is not for you to answer. The question is: What do you really LOVE to do, and will do it so well that you can get paid for it?

How times have changed. Only 4 years ago, most Singaporeans looked down and rated poorly any kind of vocation related to the arts as one with no financial (read: lucrative) future. Today, we have the Esplanade By The Bay, a premise right in the city for the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and a burgeoning arts scene. Even computer gaming is becoming serious business in Singapore as we send our best teams of young people to compete in regional tournaments for cash prizes.

People who love to sing and dance, play computer games or blog all day are now given a chance at earning wages, but they have a secret most people don't know. How are you going to marry the love for your work with the love for your life? When does work become play and become $$$ too?

Perhaps you may deduce that when all the things you care most come integrated together, you would have achieved a complete fullness of life. This is an ideal of course, a holy grail that is impossible to achieve. There is never a sense of closure throughout life as challenges persist.

Let's start with an idea. Dora Yip has one. Good for her.

When she was a principal consultant and partner in a public relations company last year, she couldn't stop thinking about work. Even as she sat watching a movie, her mind would dwell on work matters.

Coming to the end of 2006, she could finally look back and say she is satisfied with her everyday life. Apart from welcoming a nephew into the world, the highlight of the year was moving to the non-profit sector in November 2006. It was a huge decision to leave her own company, yet it was the best one yet, for being a corporate communications manager at the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Center (NVPC) has brought about meaningful work to her.

While living in New Zealand with her husband David, Dora spent 3 years volunteering as a refugee support worker. She counted this as among her most satisfying experiences because it directly helped society. It was what she wanted to do full-time.

If not for life coaching, she reckoned she would have taken more time floundering towards her decision to switch lines.

Said Dora: "A lot of people think life coaching is a scary thing, but really, it's just having someone professional act as a personal sounding board to help you clarify your goals and aims in life and work out how to achieve them.

"The work at NVPC is just as much. Typical working hours I would say, but the difference is I feel more comfortable with the work and myself.

"It may sound contrived," she added, "but when you are passionate about what you do, you cope better with challenges and a lot of the stress you'd ordinarily feel is gone."

Dora has learnt to pause, reflect and listen to her inner voice. She also realized that there are no bad decisions in life, just bad reactions.

The most important she has learnt from life coaching is that even the seemingly scariest things in life can be made less scary if you talk them over with someone and make a list. She said, "Once things are itemized, they really don't seem insurmountable anymore."

Dora has brought some sense of order and maybe fullness to her life. How about you? Do you need a life coach to act as your personal sounding board? Here at Locate A Coach, you can easily search for one that suits your personality and needs in major areas like career, health, relationships, spirituality etc.

Are you a coach yourself? As you well know, it takes time and repeated exposures to get new clients. Most people don’t just happen upon a coach's website and make an impulse decision to hire them. Gain the widest amount of exposure for the longest period of time and your success with recruiting new clients increases dramatically! But many people, especially those just launching a new practice, can't afford to advertise for the length of time needed to turn prospects into clients.

Locate A Coach understands the plight of the coaching business, and has developed an economical, systematic and proven way to give you the exposure you need without breaking your bank account.

A Locate A Coach membership will economically put your message in front of a targeted audience. After all, the site visitors come to Locate A Coach to find the right coach for them. They are very interested in what you have to offer. Through promotion of your articles, newsletters, coaching services, books, teleclasses and other events you earn the credibility and exposure that turns prospects into paying clients.

You can get your coaching business up to a good start by applying for a Locate A Coach membership and receive targeted traffic through online publication of your materials very soon.

Dora Yip's story is extracted from a Straits Times interview printed in the "Mind Your Body" supplement dated February 21st, 2007.