ARE YOU BOLD ENOUGH TO GET NAKED?- Mentor, Coach, and Author CATRICE JACKSON says: "NAKED IS A MUST"

In the year 2000, a songwriter and singer named Erykah Badu released a song called “BAG LADY”. The message of the song was based around the idea that many of us are walking through life with way too many bags. If you have never heard the song, Erykah wasn’t talking about luggage in the literal sense, but more of a metaphor for all of the things we deal with during our daily grind emotionally, and mentally. To take it a step further, Ms. Badu went on to suggest that we would “miss out buss” carrying all these bags. Imagine that, everything that you’re holding on to is basically making it hard for you to get where you are going. Your bags are your personal issues, and your BUS is your path to greatness. Singing in my best Erykah voice: “BAG LADY, you gon’ miss yo bus, you can’t hurry up, ‘cause you got too much stuff”! Wow, how many of us are holding onto past failures? Rather it be relationships, business ventures, jobs that didn’t work out, how many of us are holding bags?

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Ms. Catrice Jackson is in a class all her own. With her “P-SPOT PASSIONISTA” series, as well as her “GET NAKED” MOVEMENT, she is taking aspiring speakers and businesswomen and men from a place of quiet confidence to bold, enthusiastic (yet humble) greatness. She is a sincere, thought provoking leader that I believe is going to change the face of what it means to empower women and men alike. You’ve got to love genuine compassion, someone that cares enough to give you undivided attention and still make sure you are having fun, while she’s giving you life changing information in a relevant “right now” format.

Within the first 60 seconds of being on the phone with Ms. Catrice Jackson, It was apparent that she has not only dealt with this issue, but more importantly has found an inner peace from confronting, and conquering all of her bags. As a matter of fact, the CEO and founder of www.catriceology.com has not only confronted them, she’s taking it a step further than the bags, Catrice says “LET’S GET NAKED" too. Not in the literal sense, but in the theoretical, spiritual sense. Imagine being able to strip away all of the false truths that we hold about ourselves, other people’s impressions and expectations of us, and the huge cloak of pressure and defeat that many people deal with every single day. I have to say that one of the things that I learned from Catrice during our time together is that when you begin to peel away the layers of “burden, doubt, and fear you are left with the strongest form of potential there is; your true beautiful self. Catrice has overcome her own personal obstacles on her past to greatness, and she is working tirelessly to help countless people all over the world to do the exact same thing.

CHALLENGE: Are you ready to get naked? Are you ready to peel back the bags, clothes, and mental, emotional layers that are hindering your greatness, blocking your “P-SPOT?” Write down the hurdles you know you face, at least 5 (YES FIVE)! Across from each item, write down the potential consequence you face, by NOT removing that layer. This interview will address those items, encourage you to be BOLD, FEARLESS, and empower you to “GET NAKED”



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The Learning Curve- Howard Jean Teaches How To "Be The CEO Of You"

Often the focus for business and entrepreneurship is focused on the hard work, the sacrifice, and “the grind” so to speak, while I ABSOLUTELY love those aspects, I have to be honest, if I only focused on the hard work, I’d be doing you and myself a disservice. So what’s the other part you ask? It’s education. The sorry excuse that a dreamer will give you sounds like this: “Well Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, etc… didn’t go to college, I don’t need it either” and to a point, you may be correct, but for the record, here’s my official stance: In anything you do, you’re going to need to learn the ropes, and you can either learn the easy way, or the hard way… It’s completely up to you.

When I reached out to the incomparable Mr. Howard Jean, I knew that I was reaching out to someone that lives up to his title of “EDUCATION REFORM LEADER” on a daily basis, but I had no idea how engaging, how approachable, and how positively insightful he would be. We all know that politics and education can be a “touchy” conversation, but this was the complete opposite. I want you to get ready for one of the most impactful interviews that seamlessly crossed the lines between education and entrepreneurship, politics, and music, and still manages to be fully loaded with motivation, inspiration, and FLAT OUT KNOWLEDGE.

Howard Jean, is an educator whose sincerity and passion to his craft has opened countless doors, for himself and those that he works with. What I’ve found most impressive is that he knows that the opened door for “him and his” isn’t enough. He works tirelessly to give back to students of all ages, while spreading the message of education, and showing the living proof, that with the proper education and work ethic, you not only afford yourself the choice to work in any area, for any company that you choose, but you can also be an amazingly successful entrepreneur as well. My personal goal with this interview is that you are able to make a decision if you’re on the fence about returning to school or not, and that you’re able to “pull the trigger” if you’re looking to get started in the roller coaster world of entrepreneurship. Howard Jean is proof that with the proper education, mindset, and work ethic, there is nothing that you can’t do…VERY WELL.




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ARE YOU IN A ZONE? -How To Seperate Your Month To Maximize Profits

There’s an ever growing debate on the most popular colors for branding your company and your logo, rather it’s blue, red or purple the color of your logo, and layout is almost as important as what your company actually does. However, that’s a topic we aren’t going to attempt to tackle right now, after all, I’m no where near an expert in advertising. I’ve had several people recently ask me how I have worked my businesses in the past, and I really had to think about it because it’s been second nature to me for a while now. So I thought about it and realized that from my time in sales, real estate, network marketing or even currently in my experience and opinion, the system for success has always been the same, and…I’m going to share it with you! Now by no means do I consider this to be the only way to work your business, or the “gospel” of success, it’s merely what works for me. So here’s what I want you to do… grab a pen, a fresh sheet of paper and separate it into 3 spaces. And we’re going to talk about the “zones” that you can work your business.

White Zone:
No matter what business you’re in, it will be unsuccessful if no one knows who you are, or what you offer. That being said for the first 10 days of every month, I’d make it a point to contact (for the sake of numbers) 50 new people. In your case it may be companies, customers or whatever the case may be, but imagine how much buzz you could create if you were in talks with 50 BRAND NEW PROSPECTS! I mean old school hitting the phones which I know some of you are scared of, but honestly, if you’re not STILL cold-calling, and/or getting in front of people live to build your brand, then you’re falling behind. Now when we’re contacting people the goal is NOT to seal the deal, it’s to set the appointment, to book the meeting, to get on someone’s calendar., it’s to “peak interest” This will give you a solid base to work with for the rest of the month. Don’t make the number something you know you won’t reach, but make it just a stretch past comfortable and a step below impossible!

Blue Zone:
Now that you’ve spent time getting in front of people, and booking your calendar, The NEXT 10 DAYS on your calendar are strictly for meetings, The first thing that I want you to notice is that this part obviously won’t work if you haven’t worked your “white zone” effectively. Secondly, depending on what type of business you have these meetings aren’t necessarily to “seal the deal” either, the goals of the meeting, or presentation or “pitch” are to do 2 things, assess need, and present value. I’ll do something on sales later, but any sales professional worth their weight in commission will tell you that sales is nothing but identifying a need, and providing adequate value to fill that need. Imagine you’ve made 50-75 calls, and now in the second part of the month you have 6 (managing your expectations) SOLID and legit meetings where you can confidently present YOURSELF, and what you do to potential partners. You might not leave with the check, or the contract, but you’ve positioned yourself and your solutions in their mind, and if you’re smart, you’ve booked a follow up or “next steps” meeting. This is major.

The “BLUE ZONE” is important because this is when you’ll be tested, often your potential clients or customers will do their research on you, negotiate prices, shop you to the competition for a better deal, and even evaluate if they really have a need. Your job is to be on top of your game and identify as many OBJECTIONS that the client may have so that there are no unexpected surprises coming GREEN ZONE! Okay, don’t want to get into too many of the sales nuggets… so… let’s continue!

GREEN ZONE:
The last ten days of the month are green! This is where you follow up with your customers and seal the deal, get the contract, cash the check…etc (sorry, I get carried away at this part) Now out of those initial calls, there may have only been 6-7 meetings, and you may only close 1-2 deals, that’s not the point, what I want you to focus on is the idea that you have to grow your client base. Hewlett Packard, Zerox, or even Office Max wasn’t always a household name, but because they built their customer base one company at a time, there aren’t many people that don’t know about what it is that they do. These last ten days should be full of your follow up meetings, conference calls to finalize negotiations, and setting your sights on the next 10 days which put you back in the white zone.

I hope you’re able to see how these zones all work together to create a nice pipeline for your business, the colors of the zones are unimportant, you can name them egg, chicken and dinner if you want, but I absolutely challenge you to use this system if you’re looking for a new way to drive more business. There’s nothing worse than running around with your head cut off, and being reactionary with your money! (I mean business) Face it, your business is your money, and I was always told that if your calendar is empty… so is your wallet! We all have someone depending on us to get it right, and produce at a high level, and I sincerely hope this will allow you to become more productive, and more importantly; guard your time so that you can enjoy the fruits of your labor!!!

-Oh and before I go, no..I didn’t come up with this all by myself! As much as I’d like to take credit for this one, I’m just sharing what I learned and what has worked effectively for me for years!

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FUNNY HOW TIME FLIES!

The best part about personal development for me has got to be the reading. Rather it’s being introduced to “the secret” or practicing the principles of money, there is always a golden nugget of knowledge waiting to either be discovered, or remind you of what it takes to get you to the next level of success. While shuffling through my notes, thoughts, ideas and all the other “light bulbs” and “what if’s” in my mind this past week, one topic stood out so clearly that it all but literally slapped me in the face…TIME MANAGEMENT.
Don’t worry, we’re not about to talk about the literal map out your day to the minute type stuff, this is more of a “yellow light” if you will to all of the entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to be out there. The goal here is to give you a few warning signs of some of the hidden time stealers, and maybe a suggestion or two on how to avoid and recover from them. First let’s talk about the time stealer that kills most businesses before they even start:
MENTALLY BUSY: Everyone with a burning desire falls into this category, but I want to poke my network marketing friends and brand new entrepreneurs in the arm on this one. Just because you want to win so bad that you can taste it, see it, feel it and all that, doesn’t mean you actually have it just yet. You still have to go out and physically do the work. I’ve wrestled this bear first hand guys, and know that if you don’t identify that you’re only mentally busy, you will grow to hate the opportunity that you have in front of you. Not because the opportunity is wrong, or didn’t produce the results you wished for, but because you spent more time thinking of how to do it, when to do it, what it would be like, etc…than actually physically doing anything. I personally feel that being mentally busy is the most dangerous of all time stealers. Whatever you think of more than likely will produce an emotional reaction, and if you measure all that you’ve been thinking about vs. the results that inactivity produces, you’ll start to put more pressure on yourself.

SPENDING TOO MUCH TIME PLANNING: Be honest, how many of us have had the perfect idea, the perfect addition, event, or next step to our businesses, only to have it waiting for the next 5 months because you’ve been “planning”, or you want it to be “just right?”. Don’t get me wrong, you always want to map things out and line up your eggs. But I want to tell you now; there is ABSOLUTELY NO SUCH THING as the perfect time to launch. The money may never be right, the kids will never be “all taken care of” and your customers WON’T HAVE MORE MONEY AFTER TAXES! (Sorry, I personally hate that one)- sidebar: your customers more than likely have already decided what they will spend their refund on well before they even file their taxes). Okay, now that I’ve gotten that out, I encourage us all to get started faster. Whatever the next step is, don’t let it fall victim to the excuse of it’s not the right time, only to fool yourself by hiding behind the planning button. The world has been robbed of many a great book, business, invention, and all around influential people because they are still planning their next move.

HIDDEN DISTRACTIONS: This is going to be a bit of a different take on distractions. I’ve got to admit, that this entire section was inspired by someone I have a great deal of respect for Ms. Donna Krech. She talks about the “hidden distractions” being the things we don’t even pay attention to during the day. Hidden distractions are a gut check here’s why: 1. You don’t think of them as distractions, you think of them as things that are helping you. 2. Hidden distractions don’t take long to appear or even complete, its 2 minutes here, 45 seconds there, or even 15 minutes…that you know you’re going to spend 90 minutes away. 3. They steal time from everyone around you. What are these vicious, large toothed, red eyed evil hidden distractions? The things we love the most of course, technology, social media and television. I know I am probably just as much a culprit as anyone, so I won’t poke fingers, but if you could write down how much time you spend on social media pages, as great as they may be for your business, how much time have you spent with your iPod instead of meeting people that you commute with? And dare I ask how many “shows” are yours on television that seem to keep forgetting to send you YOUR check (get it: Your show, YOUR CHECK?). For those of us chasing our dreams with families, try to get what you need to get done as quickly and efficiently as possible, without compromising the product. Also try to carve out time where they know what you’ll be doing, and during that time, FOCUS, and get it done.
So, now it’s time to show all of you the clip that just set me all on fire again. Because she hit the nail so right on the head from the very first 45 seconds of this video, I know that some of you will find this video absolutely helpful. Donna Krech is a phenomenal speaker that is actively in the business of helping people get better every day. I want you to enjoy this video as much as I have, and take it to heart throughout your day while you HUSTLEHARDER. I encourage some of us to start treating our time like we treat our money (protective) Some of us, should treat our time much better than we treat our money...maybe then money will be attracted to us.

**As always, if you find the contents of this blog helpful or inspiring, we ask that you share the page with your network, and leave a comment so we know what it is you're looking for and how we can help**