Hurry, because a small baking business, a home-based shoe business, and an aquatic rehab facility for dogs are already in the running. Enter your own business, or vote for your favorite entry.

Check it out here: tinyurl.com/3dn76cm

Here’s Ali Brown’s list of a few recommended reads for you to dig into during your downtime:

http://www.alibrown.com/blog/?p=1436

If you’re already a Success Circle Member, I want to give you a sneak preview of the information that you will be receiving shortly in your mailbox.

http://www.successcirclemonthly.com

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Guerrilla Marketing: How to Make Big Profits From Your Small Business

with Jay Conrad Levinson

Here’s some of what you’ll learn inside your June 2010 SUCCESS CIRCLE interview:

- What Guerrilla Marketing is… and what it isn’t

- The 11 things Guerrilla marketers do that non-Guerrillas don’t do

- A critical weapon for your Guerrilla arsenal (and it only takes 5 minutes to create!)

- Surefire strategies for determining the right Guerrilla Marketing tools for your business

- Jay’s favorite Guerrilla Marketing weapons, and how to implement them today!  

- How to balance the demands of Guerrilla Marketing with the joys of life outside of work 

Recently, I interviewed Jay Conrad Levinson. Jay Conrad Levinson is the father of Guerrilla Marketing and the author of the Guerrilla Marketing series of books.

Guerrilla Marketing is the best-known marketing brand in history and has been named one of the 100 best business books ever written, with over 21 million copies sold.

His Guerrilla Marketing concepts have influenced marketing so much that his books appear in 62 languages and are required reading in MBA programs worldwide.

A winner of first prizes in all the media, Jay has been part of the creative teams for such brands as the Marlboro Man, the Pillsbury Dough Boy, Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant and many others.

Additionally, Entrepreneur Magazine calls Jay Conrad Levinson “one of the foremost business marketing experts in the world.”  

Here’s an excerpt from my interview with Jay Conrad Levinson:

“It’s very simple because a Guerilla Marketing calendar, first of all, it prevents emergencies.  Secondly, it motivates planning.  And thirdly, it’s very simple and it’s free to do.  In order to create a Guerilla Marketing calendar, all you really need is one piece of paper and a pen and maybe it will be help if you had a ruler to draw straight lines with.  When you create a marketing calendar, you draw 12 lines, because there’s only 12 months in a year.  Then you have five columns, so it becomes a grid, 12 rows and five columns.  And the first column is called month, which is very easy.  Starting now, you’d say April, May, June, July, and so on.  That’s very easy. 

The second column is called thrust.  What was the thrust of your marketing that month?  What was the message you were putting forth?  Were you talking about a new innovation?  Were you talking about a new service?  Were you talking about a special price you’re now offering?  What is the thrust of your marketing that month?

The third column is called media.  What media did you use that month?  Did you happen to be, did you have a special promotion and market it on your Web site on a landing page?  Did you put an ad in the newspaper?  Maybe you ran an ad on cable TV.  Maybe you put something up on Google.  What media did you use that month?  That’s the third column. 

The fourth column is where you draw a dollar sign.  And that column says how much did you invest in marketing that month.  And the final column is when you magically transform yourself into a college professor.  And that month gets a grade, gets an A, B, C, D or F.   At the end of the year, and this is where the Guerillas are separated from the non-Guerillas, at the end of the year, you change everything in your marketing calendar that didn’t result in an A or B for you.  At the end of the second year, you get rid of the things that didn’t get an A for you.  So you’re left by the third year with things you’ve proved in action for your company that only got an A.”

Click here to join Success Circle now:

http://tinyurl.com/2ak97fl

For more information about Success Circle:

http://www.successcirclemonthly.com

By now you understand that in order to work less and make more, you’ll have to delegate. Your job is to focus the majority of your time on the high-payoff activities that best use your talents and feed your passion. What about all the other stuff that needs to get done? Those things can be delegated to motivated, trustworthy people who’ll do them better than you anyway.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re just at the beginning of your Work Less, Make More journey, and you’re budget won’t allow for extra support. How are you supposed to delegate if you can’t afford to?

Don’t worry. It’s a common problem, and there is a solution. Take one of my clients, Janet.

Janet owns a regional magazine, and she was about to give it up when she came to me. She had been in business for almost two years, and cash flow was extremely tight. While she had already done the hard part of defining where she should concentrate her efforts and where she needed help, she simply couldn’t afford that help. I was her last resort. Was there a way for her to save her business without bringing others on board?

My answer was a simple “no.” Unless Janet found a way to focus on the big stuff—which meant finding others to do the little stuff—her business would not succeed.

While Janet was looking a little dejected at this point, the next thing I told her perked her up a bit. It’s possible to delegate without spending a dime. You don’t need tons of money. As a matter of fact, you don’t need any money at all. All you need is a little creativity.

Here’s the basic idea: If it’s difficult for you to hire someone to handle important tasks, why not trade them out instead?

That’s right. Forming partnerships and sharing strengths is key to creative delegating. In Janet’s case, she traded advertising in her magazine for services that she needed—things like home and office cleaning, computer support, and administrative tasks. It worked extremely well. Janet got to do what she wanted to do, but the other stuff got done too.

Take my word for it. If you need something done, there’s a way to get it done. And you don’t need to break the bank. All you need to do is break open your creativity.

Each letter approached this topic differently. One reader (and a coaching client of mine) recalled that I had once taken my son Andy to the Super Bowl, and had a question related to an article I had written about that experience. The second letter, from a newsletter subscriber, asked about the work that I had done with Brian Tracy and Tony Robbins.

The third was more general in nature. The woman who wrote that email asked why I don’t talk more about my personal life, and about my family. “I know you have four children,” she wrote. “Since you’re all about LifeExcellence, working less and making more, and living a balanced life, why don’t you talk more about your family?”

I appreciate the questions, and I’ve receive similar questions and comments from time to time.

As I thought about those emails and letters, I realized that I’m guilty of something else. I realized that topic selection for newsletter articles and blog posts involves me and my staff coming up with topics that we think are relevant. I hope we are providing useful information (and the feedback we receive indicates that subscribers are getting value from it), but we should probably get more input from our clients, customers and newsletter subscribers.

To change things up a bit for August, I’ve created a theme called “You Asked For It.” Over the next few weeks, I would like you to submit questions that I will then respond to. Your questions can be about me, or they can be about anything else you would like to ask (including the areas of business/career, wealth/finance, relationships/family, health/fitness, spiritual/inspirational, etc.)

You may submit your questions in one of three ways:

1. Send an email to info@jwcgroup.com, with “You Asked For It” in the subject line.

2. Fax your question to our office. (734-254-9973, Attn: Marti)

3. Comment on the Work Less, Make More blog.

I’m really looking forward to this, and I hope you will find it useful, too.

So please so submit your questions now… and then in August tune in to read my response to your questions!

                   

If there’s one goal people have in common, it’s to be happy. In our society, we think people can buy happiness. That’s why millions of dollars per year are spent on fad diets, trendy clothes, and expensive cars. That’s why we work long hours at the expense of hobbies and relationships—to earn enough money to buy our happiness.

We design our lives around making money, and then wonder why we aren’t happy when we have it. It’s because we are working too hard and not feeding our passions and interests. We design our lives around making sure the items on our to-do list get checked off, whether they contribute to our overall goals or not.

This doesn’t work. In order to live your best life and find true happiness, you have to design your life around you.

What does this mean? It means giving serious thought to how you spend your time, as well as who you spend it with.

It means spending your time with the people who build you up, not tear you down. The only person you owe anything to is yourself. Get rid of the people who treat you badly or don’t support you.

It means recognizing your strengths and passions, and then prioritizing them so that the majority of your day revolves around them. Eliminate tasks that don’t make you feel good or slow your progress toward realizing your dreams. Spend time on the things that show your brilliance, and happiness and success will come easier.

It means investing in the relationships that matter to you. Take the time to enjoy your family and friends.

It means coming up with your own definition of success, and not basing it on what others think. Don’t compare what you have to what others have. Don’t compare what you’ve done to what others have done. The bigger question is how you measure up to your own personal definition of success.

It means taking care of yourself. Eat well, get enough sleep, allow for plenty of free time, and set aside some time each day for exercise.

It means focusing on what you want, not on what your friends, family, co-workers, or supervisors want.  

Design your life around you, and watch your dreams unfold. You’ll find that you’ll be working less and making more without really trying. And that’s because by designing your life around you, you’ll no longer be blocking your own success.

                   

Memos. Junk mail, Post-it notes. Catalogs. Bills. Permission slips. Newspapers. Look around you. Do these things seem to be everywhere? Many of us are surrounded by overwhelming piles of clutter. You’re probably so used to it you don’t realize its negative impact.

Clutter is one of the biggest reasons you aren’t more productive. You may not realize it, but clutter takes up valuable time and energy.

I once had a client named Stephanie who was so adamant that clutter had no affect on her whatsoever, that she actually renamed it “controlled chaos.”

“I know what it must look like to the outsider,” she said, gesturing toward the buried surfaces in her home office. “But I know exactly where everything is in every single pile. Go ahead, ask me.”

I played this game for a while, and it was true. I could say “tax file from three years ago” and Stephanie would hone right in on it. Great party trick, but I couldn’t help thinking that the amount of time spent memorizing where everything was could have been better spent.

Stephanie did admit that while she didn’t feel the clutter negatively impacted her, she did have a long-term plan for getting rid of it. What followed was a 30-minute explanation of how Stephanie planned on attacking the piles on her desk. At one point she whipped out a pencil and some paper and did a quick sketch of how she planned on reorganizing her office. When she had the time, of course.

At this point, I had to laugh. During the 30 minutes she had just spent talking about how she was going to someday get rid of the clutter on her desk, Stephanie probably could have eliminated half of it. And what about the time she spent thinking about her clutter on a daily basis? If she had spent that time chipping away at her clutter, her office reorganization could have gone from dream to reality in about a week.

The fact is, clutter is stressful. Whether it’s in your home or in your office, it’s hard to avoid. Not only do you spend unnecessary time looking for things that could be at your fingertips, you also expend a lot of mental energy. Energy being angry at yourself for not cleaning up. Energy thinking about how you’ll get things organized when you have the time. Energy beating yourself up for not being more organized.

If you tell yourself you’re not getting around to your clutter because you don’t have the time, you’re just kidding yourself. It’s not the time you lack, it’s the ability to make decisions. Because clutter is, quite simply, postponed decisions.

You can work less and make more unless you are ready to make decisions. I’m not saying those decisions will be easy. If that were the case, they wouldn’t still be sitting on your desk. The key to working less and making more is getting your life back on track. And that starts with cleaning up the clutter.

                                       

It was a beautiful fall day. The sun was shining, and the air was crisp. It was a perfect day for a hike in the woods. A woman – someone I would call a high achiever – was walking along on this gorgeous day when she suddenly heard a rustling behind her. She turned around and realized there was a family of tigers behind her. She knew they wanted to have her for lunch.

She started to run very fast. Good thing she was in top physical condition like most high achievers. After two years of working out with her personal trainer, she could outrace even the most physically fit tiger.  

And outrun the tigers she did.  

But she had a problem. She’d been working out on a treadmill for the last two years, and she wasn’t used to navigating her way through the trees. She soon ran right up to the edge of a cliff. Ever resourceful, she scampered down the side and hung on to a clump of vines.

Meanwhile, the tigers gathered above her breathing heavily and licking their lips.  And one of them started to make his way down to get her. These tigers were hungry.

She looked down to find an escape route, and instead she saw another family of tigers making their way up the cliff. Apparently, this second family wanted to have her for lunch as well. Just then she heard a faint rustle and saw a small field mouse chomping through the vines to which she clung.  

"It’s curtains for me," she said to the mouse. "All this work at being successful and look where it’s gotten me. I’ve suffered and I’ve sacrificed for my career. I’ve work long, hard hours, and when I’m almost there, this is how it’s going to end?"

At that very moment, she noticed a rich, ripe strawberry hanging from the vine right under her nose.  

With the tigers above her and the tigers below her, her life flashed before her eyes. All the years she had spent working, trying to create a better future. All those years she had spent on the fast track, believing true success and satisfaction was right around the corner. All those times she told her family and friends to wait just a few more weeks because she would have time to spend with them when she got that bonus or got promoted or moved into her new house. The right time never seemed to come.

All those ripe-strawberry moments she had passed up, waiting for riper strawberries, for better moments, for her life truly to begin.

So with the tigers above her and the tigers below her, she realized there was only one thing to do: eat the rich, luscious, delicious, red strawberry. It was in that moment that she learned how to find joy and meaning in her life.

There are always tigers above you and tigers below you, yet you refuse to eat the juicy, red strawberries that hang only inches away. You ignore the strawberries because you believe there’s something better up ahead. You spend your life waiting for your life to begin. And you die waiting for your life to begin.  

To find true meaning in your life is to recognize that there will always be tigers around you, but there will always be luscious strawberries right in front of you as well.  Living your life is about learning how to pick the strawberries. Learning how to enjoy them. And learning how to nourish the rich experiences of your life.

Don’t wait. Your strawberries are there. All you have to do is reach out and grab them.

* This ancient story was adapted from Geneen Roth’s book, When You Eat at the Refrigerator, Pull Up a Chair.